Cecilia W’emedi went to bed on Nov. 8 with a sense of uneasiness.
The next morning, her brother delivered the news that Donald Trump had been elected president of the United States. She laughed, thinking he was messing with her.
But when the 19-year-old South African realized Trump’s unlikely victory was no joke, she slumped onto her bed, shocked and disappointed. She had followed the nearly two-year-long U.S. presidential race, but she never expected Trump would actually win.
W’emedi lives in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, but she was raised all over Africa; she was born in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo and moved to Kenya, then Nigeria and eventually Ghana, all before age 10. She is now applying to universities in the U.S. for undergraduate study next fall. She has her heart set on New York University, but is also applying to Boston University, Northwestern and Columbia.
After she learned of Trump’s victory, she was no longer sure about moving to the U.S. “I felt sick to the pit of my stomach,” she told The Huffington Post. “And one thing came to mind: ‘Should I still move there?’”
More than a million international students attend college in the U.S., and thousands more will join them next fall. W’emedi is not alone in grappling with the decision of whether it’s still safe to come here. The incoming Trump administration has given pause to many international applicants. “It’s the main topic of conversation among my friends,” Palak Gera, a 21-year-old from India told the New York Times last month. “They don’t want to apply to the U.S. under Trump.”
The Times reported that many college admissions officials were concerned Trump’s presidency will hurt their enrollment numbers. Meanwhile, Canadian universities said they had a spike in website traffic and applications after Election Day, from the U.S. and elsewhere.
W’emedi is black, and although her English is excellent, she speaks with an accent that she says would unmistakably expose her as “foreign” in the U.S. She said she knows this makes her incredibly vulnerable to the type of hate speech and crimes against women and minorities that have escalated in the U.S. since the election — especially on college campuses.
“If it doesn’t happen [to me] in an extreme way, then it will happen subtly,” W’emedi said. “It’s not like I’m oblivious to it.”
“I come from a continent led by presidents just like Trump. Welcome to the club, America.”
- Cecilia W'emedi
She said she is less concerned about Trump himself than she is about the millions of Americans he has influenced. She worries that someone next to her on the New York subway could hate her simply because of the color of her skin.
But after giving it a lot of thought in the weeks since Trump was elected, she said she still wants to come to school in the U.S. “It actually makes me want to come to the U.S. even more now, to let people know that you can actually live with a bad president,” she said.
Africans “know well what it means to have a leader not fit to lead. We know how it crumbles the economy and splits the land,” she said. “I come from a continent led by presidents just like Trump. Welcome to the club, America.”
But the way W’emedi sees it, the U.S. is still pretty fortunate — the Constitution protects freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of expression and assembly. People in other countries are not guaranteed those protections. Even having late-night talk shows — like “The Daily Show,” which is now led by South African comedian Trevor Noah — that openly mock political figures would be unthinkable in many African countries.
“At the end of the day, it all depends on what Trump actually does,” she said. “The only thing, honestly, that you can do is wait and see.”
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