Where are you from?

Story of my Life

Truth is no matter how much we deny it, every one has an accent. A Ghanaian accent. A Nigerian accent. An American accent. An Indian accent. We all have accents. Most times we will not notice this until we go to a foreign land. Like I said in my previous posts, I used to think that talking with an American or a British slang was the only way to qualify as having an accent. And yes, back home a lot of people would do anything just to be considered as having a foreign accent. Coming to think about it now, that was really silly because the American can tell their own. They know their own people and of course you cant be more American than an American. So why don't we always embrace our beautiful, sexy African accents?lol yes some whites find it sexy.

So by  now I had been in the US a couple of days and my biggest frustration was with people not understanding me.  It happened all the time, in the restaurants, in the malls, on the phone, I just couldn't communicate with any American without having to repeat myself at least twice. Everywhere I went as soon as I opened my mouth, people knew I wasn't from here, and even a simple 'Thank You' muttered will surely follow up with 'Oh you have an accent, where are you from?'
I was really getting frustrated and so I refused to speak when we went out. Firstly I really didn't want to be repeating myself all the time and secondly I was getting tired of telling people I was from Ghana, and lastly people normally turned around when they heard my voice.*Stranger Alert*
My worst experience was when I tried to order subway(A sandwich shop where you get to pick your own ingredients) on my own, and when it got to my turn, I was asked what kind of bread I wanted, now I wanted to pick the easiest option to pronounce, which was flat bread and even with that I still had to repeat because I pronounced 'flaTbread' and there was no 'high pitched' tone in my voice. My voice was as flat as the bread I wanted to eat.Then I had to choose the type of vegetables I wanted, and by now the guy serving me knew I was pretty new so he had some kind of sympathetic look on his face.I just gave up and  ended up choosing only tomatoes in my sandwich because I was just getting too frustrated.
So to all first time visitors to the US from Africa, please be prepared to go through some of these situations, be prepared to be told you have an accent, and  it wouldn't hurt to tell the story of the rich heritage of your country if asked. From my experience most Americans mean well when they asked, so please don't feel offended at all.