It Could Happen To You — An Immigrant's Story
Luck is not chance. Fortune’s expensive smile is earned. The chances of winning the Green Card lottery in 1995 were less than 1%. Hearing the news that her family of five had won, Nonye said, “I was so happy to be going to America. Everybody’s dream was to get out of Nigeria.”
Making it to America wasn’t always the Nigerian dream. Igbo Landing marked the site where Igbo slaves had defied slavery off the southeastern coast of Georgia. 192 years later, Nonye landed in Atlanta excited to be in obodo oyibo (white land).
Nonye, the sixth of eight siblings, was born in December 1970. Her father was a general contractor for construction firms and her mother traded petty goods. Despite the dark cloud cast by the Nigerian civil war (1967–1970) which saw two million Igbos die, Nonye remembers her youth as good and without quarrel. She loved to read. Her favorite author was James Hardley Chase. She hoped to pursue her passion for journalism by studying English at University. Marriage and motherhood would place her educational dreams on hold.
She had caught the eye of her brother’s friend. He was a flashy guy with a motorcycle. He would come visit the small village Ikenga from the big city Lagos. His name was Chimezie Okoye. He asked for her hand in marriage. She said yes.
At 19 years old, she had her first child, a boy. Of motherhood she says “I loved having someone I could call my own, someone to love unconditionally.” She would go on to have a daughter and and another son all within 3 years. She shared her love for reading with her oldest by teaching him to read when he was two years old. She wanted all her children to have access to education and opportunity.
In November 1990, four months after the birth of Nonye’s first-born, George HW Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990 into law. The Immigration Act created a Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (Green Card lottery). The Green Card lottery intended to diversify the immigrant pool to the US by allocating Visas for citizens of countries with low immigration rates.
Chimezie Okoye heard about the Green Card Lottery at a Nitel near the American Consulate, where he would make international calls. Nonye, who met the secondary education requirement, completed and submitted the application on behalf of her family. The Okoyes submitted the application in 1993 and forgot about it. In 1995, they were reminded that God doesn’t play dice.
America had opportunity, but it was expensive to survive. In Nigeria, the family at least always had enough to eat. In America, the money paid the bills before it could even set the table. Childcare was expensive so Nonye was a stay-at-home mom. Soon, financial realities forced her to find work.
In 1998, she started at Motorola where she soldered batteries on their production line until 2001. She started at $8 an hour and finished at $11 an hour before she was laid off in the dot com crash. She went back to school at the age of 31 graduating with her associates degree in networking in 2003. After her degree, she worked for CGS/IBM where she worked as a tech support representative helping customers diagnose issues with their laptops and their servers. Two years of school had doubled her production line hourly wage to $16 an hour.
The Okoyes set high standards for their children when it came to hard work. A typical day in the early 2000s: Chimezie would drive the family to their part time job cleaning Long Horn Steakhouse at 5am, then drop Nonye off at Motorola at 630am, then drop the kids off at school at 730am. He would go home to sleep until the kids came home at 3pm then bring Nonye home from work before starting his night shift at 5pm. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
In 2009, Nonye was laid off in another economic downturn. Fortunately, she had already applied to the pre-pharmacy program at a community college. She began taking classes that fall where her eldest son was a student. At 41 years old she felt out place among the twenty year olds roaming the campus. She struggled with course work like Biology and Calculus, but she perserevered and continued her pharmacy education at Xavier University of New Orleans with her only daughter. In 2015, Dr. Nonye Okoye graduated cum laude with her Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D). Six years of school had increased her production line hourly wage by a factor of seven.
When Nonye was a school girl, she once scored an A on a physics test. Her teacher accused her of cheating because she didn’t take the class seriously and often skipped. Some 35 years later, she had earned the title of scientist. Her role as care giver to three of her own children had prepared her to be a care giver to thousands of patients seeking advice on the safe use of prescriptions.
Over the past 4 years, Nonye has grown in her career as a retail pharmacist serving rural patients. She still loves to read and enjoys watching cable news. She is an active member of the Igbo Catholic community in Atlanta. For exercise, she logs four miles per run, three times a week. She still plans to pursue journalism with a focus on health in Africa.
Reflecting on her journey, “If someone had told me that I would be in science. Be a pharmacist? I’d have called them crazy. But, I’m proof that you can accomplish whatever you put your mind to.”
Winning the lottery is a chance event. Being lucky requires hard work. When someone sees Nonye today, they see a pharmacist with a thriving family. No one sees the sacrifice for the children or the deferred dreams. Nonye’s story reminds us that we make our own luck.
If it could happen to her, it could happen to you.
