Temi Ogunjimi is a second year psychology student at the University of Victoria. She grew up an athlete; she was always busy playing some sort of sport. Before beginning her studies at UVic, Temi spent a lot of her time playing rugby. Temi laughs as she explains her recent journey has been discovering herself outside of the realm of sports—it’s “a thing [she’s] been going through” since her first year. Other activities that Temi enjoys are singing and writing spoken word poetry.
You can imagine that someone who is a member of the African & Caribbean Students’ Association, Israel club, Latino club and Indian club is a fan of different cultures and knows how to appreciate them. Temi details her membership in these clubs as a way to connect with her friends, many of whom are from these regions or are involved with the clubs.
Many young people from immigrant families end up living their life in the middle. When discussing her identity, Temi describes her frustrations with needing to prove that she is what she says she is: Canadian and Nigerian. When spending time with friends, Temi found that “[her] Canadian friends [would say] ‘you are Nigerian,’ yet [her] Nigerian friends would say, ‘eh, you’re Canadian.’”
When asked about Black History Month and what it means to her, Temi describes a celebration of life. She adores the message of unity and self-love within the black community and takes the time to look back in history and educate others.
“It’s a celebration,” she says, “of how far we have come.”
Despite the steps that many have taken to ensure rights and a voice for people of colour, Temi knows that the world is not perfect. She is very aware and conscious of her blackness on campus.
“Knowing that you are [sometimes] the only black person in a room of 200 makes you not want to [draw attention] to yourself,” she says as she recalls a memory of a video shown in class. The video documented babies from all over the world, and the only babies not in a modern, in Temi’s words, “civilized” area, were the black babies. Those children were shown playing with rocks while topless women gathered around them. “It was pretty uncomfortable to know that that’s what people think of.”
When asked about whether she felt the need to let people know that not all babies of colour are in that same circumstance, Temi admits that she struggles with the concept of speaking on behalf of an entire culture—it’s a lot of pressure.
Nonetheless, Temi is happy to be at UVic and in Canada.
“UVic was my first choice because it looked so nice and had everything I had ever wanted in a school,” she answers when asked about how she ended up on the campus. “And I keep running into so many people from Calgary—it’s nice to see familiar faces.”
In the near future, Temi hopes to see a Nando’s opening in Victoria. She once transited to Langford to get her Nando’s fix before the location closed down. If you happen to see Temi around town, don’t hesitate to say hi!
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Black on Campus is a feature series that hopes to highlight and recognize people of colour on UVic’s campus during Black History month.