Winnie and Ike Ogbogu in Nigeria 1970s, Courtesy of Frederick Douglass Opie
Towards the end of elementary school the Ogbogue Family moved to my hometown of Croton-on-Hudson in Westchester County, New York. We were a Nigerian and African American family living blocks away from each other for almost five years in a small lilly white village 30 or so miles north of New York City. The two oldest boys, Fran and Ben Ogbogu, were around my age and we became fast friends talking about and playing sports with the kids in the neighborhood and around town. Our parents also quickly became close friends and I can now understand why. They had to feel a similar Isolation in otherness that my wife and I have feel as one of the few black families in a town and how that experience can be exhausting. We found a sort of refuge in each others homes and eating each others culinary traditions—my mother made the southern dishes she learned from North Carolina born and raised mother—collard greens, rice, fried chicken and pork chops, corn bread, candied yams, and sweet potato pie, etc. I remember learning the delicious new smells of Ogbogu’s kitchen so well! Born and raised in Nigeria, she made traditional dishes like jollof rice and soups like Egusi Soup and ground nut soup and I loved them. These soups one ate with the fingers using yam fu fu and I made excuses to be at their house around mealtime.
