Name: From Sierra Leone to Youngstown State: Aicha Sawaneh's 9,000-Mile Journey
Uploaded: 2026-01-18T17:51:26.000Z
Duration: 22 min 4 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Welcome back to another episode of Breaking Boundaries, the world's premier podcast for international students, or at least in the top 3,000.

The superlative

I am joined today by the most distinguished guest I have had.

This is Aisha Sawaneh, a senior at Youngstown State University who arrived in America all the way from the beautiful country of Sierra Leone.

The reason I reached out to you, some random dude on LinkedIn is because in my Google Alerts feed, an op ed popped up from someone at Youngstown State, and it was this heartfelt piece about your experience studying in the U.S. i laughed, I got a little misty, and I had to reach out.

And, Aisha, I think part of why it resonated so much with me was your experience actually aligns a little bit with me.

To give you an example, you mentioned an anecdote where you were asked by a fellow student if you had an elephant at home.

I think it was like my second week in America, and I was talking to this one girl.

Well, she was white, but I was talking to her, and she was like, oh, so do you have an elephant back home?

She was like, yeah, like a pet back home.

Growing up, I heard that Africa, they have, like, elephants, lions, as pet.

So I grew up in Oklahoma, which is kind of the country.

There's a lot of cattle and a lot of ranches, stuff like that.

And I went to school in the Northeast with a lot of students from Boston and New York, Philadelphia.

And I was asked on more than one occasion if I had cows at home.

I currently live in Cincinnati, which is on the other side of the state.

But you and I are both Ohio residents right now.

You traveled, as you said in your piece, 9253 miles to Youngstown State.

Ohio was quite different when I came here.

I don't know, but I just expected to be so busy.

I mean, this was my first time in America, but I just expect everything to just be fat, fast paced.

But when I got here, everyone was just like, taking their time.

I was like, oh, this is what I saw on tv.

It was crazy because it was like very fast.

Like, everyone was like super busy and I've been like, like, when I went to New York, I had already been here for like a year.

I was like, yeah, I'm not used to the fast pace anymore.

But another thing that caught me off gad was the weather.

I was like, oh, I don't know if this was the right time to come here, guys.

Now, have you grown accustomed to the Ohio winters?

Because you're, you're in north central, well, northeastern Ohio.

And I found out when I got here that I actually don't like the heat.

And when it's cold here, everyone put on like the heater and stuff like that.

And I live here with my brother and my sister.

So I have to have like a fan in my room, which is crazy because it's cold right now.

I'm like, no, guys, I'm sick because I don't know, the heater is like all the way, like 90 something.

I'm like, maybe put it down a little bit.

I think I've got used to, like, the cold, but hasn't.

I haven't got used to, like, the experience where people, when it's cold and people put on like the heater because I'm like, guys, I'm getting uncomfortable.

But then I don't want to look weird because it's cold.

I don't want to say the tone of the ac, guys.

So now when, when you return home to visit, do you have to cover yourself in ice cubes?

What's the strategy now that you've reversed your climatic conditioning?

That was so crazy because when I was growing up, my dad always has his like air conditioned on in his room and I always Complained I was like, it's so cold.

But then when I went home in 2020 and it was so hot, I was actually watching my dad's ear condition.

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From Sierra Leone to Youngstown State: Aicha Sawaneh's 9,000-Mile Journey

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