FHS Teacher Raising Money For Nigerian Student's Tuition
Falmouth High School teacher Christine Brothers is crowdfunding tuition money for Nana Umar, a Nigerian woman who studied at Falmouth High as an exchange student four years ago and is now beginning her junior year as a biology major at Johnson & Wales University.
Ms. Brothers, head of the science department at Falmouth High, met Ms. Umar in 2017, when Ms. Umar was applying to come study in the United States. Ms. Brothers was interested in sponsoring an exchange student and had been looking at the American Field Studies program, or AFS, when she found Ms. Umar.
“I was looking at AFS in particular because we’ve had a number of AFS exchange students at the high school and I think they’re a really good organization,” Ms. Brothers said. “In the process of researching all of this a few years ago, I came across a program called the YES program, which is sponsored by the US State Department. It was set up after 9/11 to promote relations between predominantly Muslim countries and the United States, and one way they did that was by sponsoring exchange students to come to the US.”
Ms. Umar is from Kaduna, a city in Nigeria that is geographically central but culturally considered northern. In Nigeria, the population is split almost in half, with Muslims in the northern half and Christians in the southern half. Ms. Umar, now 20, is the eldest of six children in a family that makes roughly $800 annually.
“I wanted to give a student the opportunity to come to the US to study who wouldn’t normally have that opportunity,” Ms. Brothers said. “Most of the exchange students who come here, their families have enough money to be able to afford to come into a program and pay for it. That was not the case for Nana’s family. She would definitely not have had that opportunity otherwise if she weren’t sponsored by the State Department.”
Despite both of her parents being employed—her father works as security at a local polytechnic university and her mother owns a hair kiosk on that same campus—Ms. Umar’s family has struggled financially for her entire life. Nigeria’s economy is wildly unstable due to inflation, unemployment, and local conflicts spurred by militant groups, like the Fulani and Boka Haram.
Two years ago, when Ms. Umar was home in Nigeria after completing her studies at FHS, violence broke out within the state and soon spread to Kaduna, where Ms. Umar and her family were. She and her family were staying at an aunt’s house until it suddenly burned down amid the chaos, leaving them as internally displaced refugees within their own country. Before that, they had been forced to live inside her mother’s hair kiosk at the local university before that, too, was looted and burned down.
“And all of this is going on the year we’re trying to get her into college,” Ms. Brothers said. “Fortunately, they came out the other end of that and stabilized a little bit. They moved back to Kaduna. I helped them rebuild their business and it got a little bit stabilized. Nana’s father was unemployed for about two years but then he got his job back, so now they’re both working as long as the campus stays open. And then COVID happened.”
When the pandemic took hold in March 2020, Ms. Umar was one of the millions of college students who left campus to head for home. But because of a few important factors—money, proximity and the uncertainty of getting a Muslim woman back into the United States if she left—Ms. Umar moved back in with Ms. Brothers in East Falmouth.
“When she came home last spring because of COVID, she was a very different person than two-and-a-half years earlier,” Ms. Brothers said. “I think a lot of that was that she got here when she was 16 and now she’s 20. And I think some of it is that she’s had the chance to get an education and she has some hope for her life. When she was here earlier, she expressed that a lot: ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do when I go back to Nigeria. There are no jobs. I’m just going to end up married and having kids.’ Which is where a lot of her friends are at this point. She didn’t even realistically think that an education in the US was a possibility. I wasn’t sure if we could make it happen either, but so far it’s working.”
Ms. Umar is now in her junior year at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, and is studying biology. In addition to a rigorous course load of lectures and labs, Ms. Umar is the president of the Black Student Alliance, president of the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, and co-host of a campus radio show called “Black JWU.” She was also part of the 2019 inaugural class of #YouAreWelcomeHere scholars, having been chosen as one of the 34 recipients of the scholarship intended to promote diversity and inclusion on college campuses across the United States.
Ms. Umar explained that she is also a volunteer for the International Student Services at her school, giving tours and mentoring other international students. It is something she has been part of since the beginning of her time at JWU, but has recently gotten much more involved.
“That has been great but, oh my God, I just feel like a big sister once again,” she said. “Basically, we get to give tours to international students that come to campus and then kind of like be their big sister. It made me feel... not like I had to be the perfect example for them, but I have five siblings, so having all of this responsibility and students looking up to me, it’s kind of scary but at the same time, it’s a good feeling like ‘oh I can actually be a model for the students to look up to,’ but it’s definitely been scary.”
Ms. Umar’s dreams go far beyond education. Since childhood, attending medical school has been her goal. She hopes to go back to Nigeria one day and provide her people with the care they currently do not have access to. As a predominantly Muslim country, women and girls are generally not permitted to be seen by male doctors. But with so few female physicians in Nigeria, accessibility itself ends up being one of the biggest barriers to receiving care.
“It might sound crazy, but I’ve had that dream since I was 6 years old,” Ms. Umar said. “I lost a friend when I was 6 to a doctor’s negligence. Ever since I understood what that was, I wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to help people.”
Even in 2021, medical care in Nigeria is not particularly great unless one is wealthy enough to afford the out-of-pocket costs. But the average person in Nigeria does not have anything even remotely resembling health insurance, meaning they are asked to pay costs upfront prior to being seen and treated by a medical professional.
“Can you imagine if you went to the hospital here, and they said ‘You need to pay $10,000 before we can even look at you?’” Ms. Brothers said. “The cost wouldn’t be that [high] in Nigeria, but even if they said you need $500, Nana’s family income is $800 a year. So if they had a $500 medical expense, there’s no way they could afford that. Then people have to choose between feeding themselves or getting medical care. That’s what I think is motivating her.”
Looking ahead, Ms. Umar is excited for the school year and has been thinking about her plans for the future, including taking the MCAT.
“For the path I’ve chosen now for medical school, I want to be an OB-GYN,” Ms. Umar said. “That’s partly because when I was 9 years old, I helped my mom birth my sibling at home. It was a home birth and I had all these instructions being yelled at me and I was just going with it, like ‘yes, I’m the midwife for the day.’ I did that when I was 9 and then I helped my mom with my brother in 2016; I think I was 15. Since then I’ve been really interested in women’s health, especially the reproductive system. That pushed me to want to be an OB-GYN.”
In addition to her studies and academic interests, Ms. Umar is dedicated to giving back to the community that has helped her get to where she is today.
“I just want to do more for the community, so I will be volunteering a lot with the preprofessional health club, because I’m part of that club, too,” Ms. Umar said. “I’m big on giving back to the community and honestly, I just feel so indebted to a lot of people because I’ve been sponsored to go to school. I was 16 when I completed high school and I thought that was it for me. I thought, ‘Well, now I’m going to go get married.’ But look at me here! I’m a junior in college. I never saw this coming, so I just feel like I need to do more, need to give back, and reach people, directly or indirectly, and [do] anything within my capabilities.”
Because Ms. Umar is not a resident of Rhode Island nor a US citizen, she’s ineligible for federal financial aid or in-state tuition. On August 21, Ms. Brothers created a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds to pay the remaining $5,000 of Ms. Umar’s tuition. She has personally committed to covering Ms. Umar’s room and board, health insurance, books and personal expenses. As of September 1, two days after Ms. Umar started her junior year in Providence, the GoFundMe has nearly $3,000 in donations.
“Most parents start planning for their kid’s college funds when the child is born, and I’m like, ‘yeah, I wasn’t really planning on putting a kid through college,’” Ms. Brothers said. “This is my third year with the GoFundMe campaign; we’ve managed to raise about $5,000 per year with it. Fortunately, Nana got the scholarship and that was the dealmaker for us because honestly, we couldn’t afford it.”
For those interested in reading more about Ms. Umar’s journey or making a donation, Ms. Brothers’s GoFundMe campaign can be found here.