Danny Nahimana

You may have never met Danny Rumuri Nahimana personally, but you might know who he is. That is why people call him the “unmistakable Danny.”

Danny, 22, is an international student originally from Ethiopia, Africa. When he was six years old, his family moved to Yaounde, Cameroon, another small country in Africa. Cameroon is more precisely the size of the state of Georgia, and is where he was raised. Danny came to the United States in the Fall semester 2002. Now he is a senior at GC&SU, majoring in economics and international business.

Danny is instantly recognizable; it is almost impossible not notice his presence. According to Steven Arnall, a good friend of Danny, he is funny for being so loud and making jokes all the time.

“He stands out the crowd,” said Arnall, a junior business major. Danny is a big black man, 6 feet 4 inches tall, around 220 pounds.

“I used to have a six pack, but it is all melted now,” Danny said, laughing out loud.

He lives at Bobcat Village, which he considers to be the best place for students to live in Milledgeville.

“I have lived in pretty much all the (residence halls) and Bobcat Village is the nicest place of all,” he said, complaining about the dorm’s curfew policy.

His apartment looks “lived in,” but mostly clean, with books and clothing scattered casually.

Danny said the strangest thing he found when he first came to America was the people- their priorities, the way they interact to one another, as well as different culture, background, values and language.

“I had to answer dumb questions everyday, like if I used to ride a Zebra to go to school,” he complained.

Danny only knew basics English as he had learned it in high school. French is the language he speaks the most in his country, but he also knows about four African dialects.

Also, he was not used to so much junky food such as hamburgers and delivery pizzas, which he believes to be one of the reasons for his six pack melt.

Education was the main motive for Danny to come to the United States, as the education in Cameroon is not as good. He feels that the education in America is more specialized. He also got spanked by the teachers in Cameroon.

“If we did something wrong, we had to put our hands on a table for the teachers to hit it with a big ruler as a punishment,” Danny said, placing his hands on the table as a demonstration. “If we try to take our hands off the table, they would double the number of hits.”

Another reason for him to come to the United States was that he wanted to avoid the mandatory military service in Africa. He found GC&SU on the internet as he was searching for universities.

Danny hopes to graduate in May 2006 and the professors he considers to be most influential throughout these years are Dr. John Swinton and Dr. Douglas Walker. They have both taught him economics since his sophomore year. Danny said that Swinton was his first economics professor and also is a good friend.

“Being friends of the professors is great and this can only happen in a small university like GC&SU,” he said.

Danny also said he knows a lot of people besides professors and one of the reasons is because he has worked on campus. Some work experiences he has done on campus are tutoring at the computer lab and catering for The Pit, an old restaurant on campus.

“Working at the computer lab was the easiest job ever,” he said. “I pretty much studied all the time while I pretended I was working.”

Danny is also a member of the International Club and the Dean’s Student Advisor Board where he always gets to meet new people.

The most outrageous event he has been in throughout all his college years was being arrested by the Milledgeville police in front of dozens of people. This episode happened during one of those infamous Milledgeville Thursday nights.

“A wrong decision that I made cost me $600,” Danny said.

He ended up going to the Milledgeville Court because he was involved in a fight in front of Capital City.

“This was also the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me,” he said, with his dark eyes wide open. “I did not have a lawyer or a witness and nobody believed in my story, so I was all by myself.”

Danny has an overall GPA of 3.2 and after graduating he intends to go to graduate school in Hawaii.

“After I do my graduate school, I will go back to Africa and take whatever the kind of job comes,” he said, with a sad expression on his face. “My visa is already expired and what keeps me in the United States is the fact that I have not finished school.”

Danny advises freshmen just starting a college life simply. He said that new students should not listen to everything their peers say, they should not trust everyone and they should be their real themselves.

“Do what you came here to do, and get it done,” he said, laughing loudly, as always.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 10 2006. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry