Nigerian native to graduate Chester High at age of 16

She hopes to attend Bryn Mawr College & be an ambassador for her homeland

CHESTER >> Honored by the Chester branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, native African Deborah Ekwale, a student at Chester High School, last week received a scholarship to a college of her choosing.

Already a student pursuing a few credits Delaware County Community College, Ekwale is finishing up her high school career which began in Nigeria, her home county, and continued as a main focus once she traveled to the United States.

Her dream is to go Bryn Mawr College, an all-girls school, where women’s issues that affected her mother, family members, role models and friends back home, is the intended focus of her studies. She is also just 16 years old. “My motivation is to see women build empires,” she said. “That means everything to me.”

With five siblings in all, two living in Canada and an older sister living with a significant other and their child in the United States, Ekwale was just 14 years old when she first came to the United States.

Attending a private school in the city of Lagos, which is the largest city in Africa, which has estimated population of over 16 million people, she came as a visitor to the United States, where she first attended the Christian Academy in Brookhaven in October 2015.

However, it was the “very slow” immigration system she said precluded her from continuing her education there.

“Homeland Security came to the school and said I couldn’t go there,” she said.

Once her mother married a longtime friend who had decades ago come to the United States, granting her a green card, Deborah said that’s when she finally settled into her new American life.

“Moving around was too much and I was already in 11th grade,” she said.

Schools in Nigeria are very expensive, she continued. Her mother, a stylist, and father, a small-business owner, worked very hard to come up with the 2 million Naira a year, the Nigerian currency that for every U.S. dollar equates around 306 Naira back home, to put her through private school in Lagos.

However, the expenses were far too great, and she decided to travel to the United States to further her education. She currently takes courses at DCCC in English and algebra, in addition to reaching graduation at Chester High School.

“It’s kept me ahead,” she said, adding that she was hard-fought to find as many student organizations or clubs she could belong to in Chester.

She is the vice president of student government and hosts culture days at Chester High School where she represents her home country with food and clothing.

“Students were curious about other countries,” she said. “Most of them were willing to try my mother’s food — I had the best food around.”

With her biological father and some relatives still back in Nigeria, she said she is limited to the occasional long-distance phone

RICK KAUFFMAN — DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA Deborah Ekwale, 16, outside Chester High School, where she will graduate this year.