San Francisco State University - Franciscan Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

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MR. NIGERIA Motivation, psychologists tell us, is the thing that makes the little wheels go around in student heads. When a citizen of Nigeria decides he needs a college education in orderto help his people and, furthermore, that he wants to go to San Francisco State College to get his education, that spells motivation. How did he come here and why? Nwaeze Anyanwu had crossed the Atlantic Ocean, cruised through the Gulf of Mexico, and arrived in New Orleans alone and a stranger. He was not alone very long for he was met by three sets of welcomers--a man from the YMCA, two Nigerian students from Xavier University, and a representative of the Delta Steamship Line. Nwaeze was a stranger with a destination and a goal. He was going to prepare for medical school at San Francisco State College. The col- lege's traditional reputation for friendliness had snatched Nwaeze off a job as sub-inspector of telegraph lines in Nigeria, which is wedged be- tween the African Gold Coast and the equator, hard by French Equatorial Africa. After his graduation from high school, he taught school and worked on the telegraph lines and began saving his money. He also began a search for the right college for him in the United States of America--a college at which he could prepare to study medicine in order to help his people. Somewhere in his abundant reading about the U.S.A. 'he read that the friendliest people in America were found in the West and that decided him. He picked State College because its academic standards were high and would offer him the opportunities he sought and because it was lo- cated in a large, cosmopolitan city. In Lagos, the capital city of Nigeria, he stepped into the office of the American Consul and talked to officials of the Council for African Students in North America. Both CASNA and the American Consulate okayed Nwaeze's projected goal. With the money he had saved and with the aid of his father fwho has seven other children, and of his people, he embarked on his journey to San Francisco in mid-year of 1950. He arrived, alone, in New Orleans with his destination clear in his mind. To Nwaeze Anyanwu, fresh from distant Nigeria, America at first 9

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seemed an endless procession of shiny automobiles, bustling people, and booming factories. New Orleans, the home of jazz, the French Quar- ter, and Basin Street, was a huge, busy city. His committee ofwelcome took him to the YMCA and there he stepped into a telephone booth and called San Francisco State College. Hello, said Nwaeze, I'm in New Orleans. Can you pick me up? No one had thought to mention to him that New Orleans was about 2400 miles from San Francisco. The flabbergasted college authorities gave Nwaeze instructions to board a continental train to Los Angeles. Nwaeze dutifully boarded the train for Los Angeles, California. There he stepped into another telephone booth to call State College in San Francisco, this time only 450 miles awa Hello, l'm in Los Angeles. Can you pick me up. Once again he was instructed to board a train. And finally, in the middle of the semester, with his wallet almost deflated, Nwaeze arrived in San Francisco and at State College. He found that the West and the college's reputation for friendliness had not been overrated. He quickly made friends--friends who offered him jobs, financial aid, and living quarters. Faculty and students alike were interested in helping the new arrival to the campus. Because of his interest in tropical medicine, Nwaeze met Mr. Herman Zaiman, instructor in Biology. Zaiman took him home until Nwaeze could find himself living quarters. Zaiman also helped Nwaeze to find a job and get settled into his new life at college. When a vacancy came up at the Rock , Nwaeze movedinto the dormitory to become better acquainted with his fellow students and their way of life. To support himself through medical school, he needed a profession. Here Mr. Zaiman helped him to arrange his program to fit his needs and his interests. Nwaeze's courses are designed to make him a clinical technician, when he completes them, he will have a profession to pro- vide financial security and, at the 'same time, he will have gained valu- able units toward his pre-med requirements. I want to help my people and my country. The method doesn't matter so much as the doing, he said. But the doing requires an education. Should his plans for an M.D. degree fail to materialize, Nwaeze, thinks that he will major in some field of natural science--again with the thought of helping his people. There is no doubt in the minds of his many admiring friends that when Nwaeze leaves the U.S.A. to return to his people in Nigeria, he will take with him all the skills he came here to acquire plus a greater y. Q!! understanding of the Western way of life and the Western spirit of friend- ship' -The Staff. ' 1 I 3 1 1 l 1 l 1 l 1 I