Anjali Mansukhani in New York Natives:
...It was the ’80s. Midtown felt affluent and bustling, and the West Africans were surreptitiously selling everything at bargain-basement prices: watches, scarves, hats, handbags, you name it.
New York City’s streets were paved with opportunities for all immigrants, and the single male West Africans came prepared. They housed in SROs and brought with them a few brightly dressed tribal women, whose primary function was to prepare huge quantities of dibi, attiéké and maafe, to feed their industrious countrymen (perhaps being the largest producers of cocoa in the world added to their sweet disposition).
Years later, armed with a degree and some money, I found that Harlem had become the capital of French-speaking Western Africa...[more]