From the Ivory Coast to Worthington

• Kouame

Julie buntjer/Daily Globe Leon Kouame, Worthington’s only resident native to Côte d’Ivoire, stands outside his home Monday. Kouame is a full-time student at Minnesota West Community and Technical College, Worthington.

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WORTHINGTON — Twenty-three years ago, Leon Kouame was working in a factory repairing IBM typewriters in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast), in West Africa. It was at a time when computers were starting to take over, and Kouame realized if he wanted to make more money, he needed to learn to work on them.

“IBM is an American product and I wanted to go to the origin, where the machine was made,” he said Monday from his Worthington home.

Getting to America was easy enough. With help from a cousin who was a United Nations diplomat, Kouame applied for and received a six-month tourist visa. He travelled from West Africa to Dakar, Senegal, and on to New York in May 1988.

Kouame’s cousin, the diplomat, provided his guest a place to live at their home on Roosevelt Island, N.Y., and Kouame’s first three months were spent in the classroom at the Cambridge School in Manhattan. The French-speaking Kouame needed to learn English, as did his fellow classmates, many of whom were from Japan and China.

The language wasn’t the only aspect of American life he had to learn.

“In Africa, they don’t show you the difficulties in America — they don’t show you really how hard it is when you don’t have the support … when you don’t speak the language,” he said.

After three months in New York, Kouame learned his cousin was transferring to a United Nations post in Europe. Kouame was suddenly faced with no place to live, no money and no job.

“He asked if I wanted to go back to Ivory Coast and I said, ‘No way,’” Kouame recalled.

Ultimately, he moved in with a roommate on Staten Island, found a job in a jewelry store and gave up on his education — at least temporarily.

“After (my cousin) left, my whole life turned upside down,” Kouame said.

The jewelry store wasn’t far from where Kouame attended school, but when he moved to Staten Island, he was forced to take the train, the ferry and the bus every day to get from his home to work.

For about a dozen years, Kouame struggled to make a living and a life for himself in New York, but there seemed to be one misfortune after another. Still learning the English language and adjusting to life in America, he said too many people took advantage of him — his roommate, his boss and then his girlfriend.

The turning point came in 1999 when, after spending a couple of weeks in jail because of a complaint filed by his ex-girlfriend, his public defender encouraged him to “go far, far away.” New York City perhaps wasn’t the place for a naïve West African.

It was through an invitation from a friend and fellow Côte d’Ivoire native that led to Kouame’s move to Minnesota. He settled in with his friends in Brooklyn Park, found a job and began to put some money aside for his future. He also found a wife.

Kouame and his bride, Jennifer, were married in June 2000.

It wasn’t until a year later that he decided to begin the citizenship process. Since his tourist visa had long run out, he was considered to be an illegal immigrant.

“It took Immigration four years to respond to my application,” he said. When they finally contacted him and asked the couple to report in for an interview, Kouame was arrested and put in jail for “overstaying in America.”

He spent eight hours behind bars.

“I was really fed up,” he said. “I was working, paying taxes, I got married and I had kids.”

Ultimately, the immigration officer let Kouame out of the jail cell and said sending him back to Côte d’Ivoire would hurt his family. Still, he wasn’t going to be entirely off the hook. He was told he needed to be at home between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. each day, just in case immigration officials went to his house, and he could no longer drive. The stipulations meant Kouame had to quit his day job (he was working two jobs at the time to support his family), and his wife had to get him to and from his night job.

“We had to do that for 90 days and, after that, they sent me a letter saying my paperwork was in process,” he said.

Kouame received his resident visa in 2007, not long before he and his family relocated to Nobles County. His wife was offered a teaching position at Worthington Area Language Academy in Bigelow, and they found a place to live in Brewster.

Kouame found work at JBS, and eventually the family moved to Worthington.

“Worthington is a lot better because there are so many cultures,” he said. “My wife loves this place.”

They own a home on Winifred Street, and the couple has three daughters, Grace, 10, Katie, 7, and Isabella, 2½. Their two older daughters attend school at Prairie Elementary.

Since WALA closed, Jennifer eventually found work as a teacher at Kids-R-It Daycare, while Kouame is a full-time student at Minnesota West Community and Technical College in Worthington. He began taking classes there in 2010, and is pursuing a career as an information technology technician.

In the 23 years since Kouame came to America, he’s never once returned to his home country.

“I miss all my family,” he said.

Kouame’s mother, nine brothers and two sisters still live in Côte d’Ivoire, near where he grew up in Treichville. His dad, who was a polygamist, also had 10 children with his second wife, though Kouame said the two sets of kids “didn’t get along.”

His dad died in 2004, and Kouame said it really hurt that he couldn’t go back then for a visit.

He misses their family traditions most.

“The biggest ceremony we used to have was at Easter,” he said. “It was like a family reunion — dancing, food and drinking.”

While Kouame said he can’t afford to travel back to Côte d’Ivoire at this time, he hopes one day to take his entire family there for a visit.

“They need to know where they come from,” he said, adding that the kids get to see their maternal grandparents — of German heritage — in the Twin Cities often.

“Hopefully some day God will open the door for me so I can take them (to Côte d’Ivoire),” Kouame said.

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