Whenever they call out in street: „Look, a N...o“, I smile, approach them and tell them in Georgian: „Hello, my name is Joseph“. First they are very surprised, then a cascade of stereotypes and prejudices are destroyed in seconds right before my eyes.

9 years ago when I came to Georgia from Nigeria, majority of locals hadn’t even seen people of colour. They looked at me with suspicion in the street and wanted to know who I was. I was a young man that had left his family, work and everything and had arrived to Georgia to find myself. I came here based on recommendations of my friends that love Georgia.

First three months were very difficult. I am a Christian and I was begging God to show me the way. Then I met a wonderful Georgian that offered me my first job at the cleaning service. Even though my salary was enough for essentials and rent, his support was a huge motivation for me not to give up. Then I continued studying, I learned how to speak Georgian and here I discovered my main calling.

I have often been a victim of psychological and physical violence. It seemed that people wanted to show they are better than me. At times like these, support of my very deer Georgian friends or even people that pass by, those who stand by me against oppression is very important.

I have a lot of Georgian friends; everyone knows me in the neighbourhood and I am on good terms with everyone. If they don’t see me for 2-3 weeks, everyone is asking where did I get lost.

Generally, it is easy for me to make friends. I work as a barman at a cafe and guests love me here – this is because of my positive character. Before serving a person, I always ask: how are you? How are you feeling? How was your day? I look at him in his eyes and I really want to make their visit at the cafe special. In reality, I am doing my job but my guests feel comfortable with me. In Nigeria, we had a small store. I helped my mother run it when I was a child and I know how to talk to people. On the one hand, this is my calling that I discovered in Georgia. On the other hand, this is a therapy that fills the void that I have because I miss my family.

It took me years to maintain peace and respond in a healthy manner to the oppression that I experience every day. I already have a reflex and I always feel if someone is negative toward me, so I try to avoid them. I can easily get over offence, however sometimes when I miss my family or feel sad, I have a desire to tell people directly that they have no right to oppress someone because of their nationality.

With my example I always try to prove that not all people of colour are criminal or bad. To the contrary, we love people and respect them and expect the same from others. I am very happy when I hear good stories about other Nigerians that live here. I am glad that they serve the same purpose and try to represent our country well.

I am a realist and I understand that elimination of racism is a very difficult process. However, we should try as much as possible to change such attitudes and teach people how to see the world from our perspective. We should talk to children from a young age and tell them that oppression is bad, colour of skin does not matter at all and human values are more important. It is difficult to change the worldview but we should absolutely try.

If I ever leave Georgia, I will come back here because I have many friends and I can’t live without them. I travel often and I know that these amazing places have a great tourism potential. Even though African quisine is my favourite, I can’t live without Georgian Lobio and Kubdari.