I started NYU film school this week -- for the second time. To make a long story short, I began classes with last year's incoming students, but decided to take another year before starting grad school. I'm actually at least 2.5 times more excited this year than I was last year, which is a lot for me, because I'm typically too mellow to get excited about anything that doesn't involve some combination of sci-fi, vegan brownie-bottom cheesecake, or DJ Ian Friday.

In hindsight, waiting was one of the best decisions I have ever made. Unfortunately, unlike last year, I'm the only African in our class of 40-some-odd students, one out of six black students, and one out of two black females. At lunchtime on the first day, instead of talking with the other newbies, I commiserated with my fellow sistah who I abandoned last year, leaving her as the only (self-professed) angry black woman in the class.

She told me that the prof-politics are rough, which I had already heard through the grapevine. Nobody ever seems to understand her perspective or identify with the nuances of her black characters, deeming them implausible or unrealistic. While the most far-fetched white characters and plot lines are given a thumbs up. She got so stressed out about having to defend her choices and herself that her appetite suffered, ass disappeared, and hair started falling out.

Listening to her story, I finally realized what my secret weapon is, as articulated by one of my friends during a late-night powwow about my first day: I'm a non-threatening black female. I look like a softie, easily manipulated, swayed, or taken advantage of. Whether or not any of that is true, perception is 9/10ths of reality, and I'm beginning to think it could be quite useful if people underestimate how tough I am.

As nice as I look, I'm definitely blessed with a bit of Naija charm. Apart from 419 scams, Nigerians are shrewd and determined people. Maybe you have seen it in action. Your mother goes up to the register in a pleasant mood, setting the groceries on the conveyor belt quite calmly. The cashier rings them up, charging an extra $.10 per pound for her red onion, and suddenly the corners of your mother's mouth turn up, she sucks her teeth, and speaks in that angry-Naija-woman voice until the manager himself fixes the mistake.

I can definitely play the Naija card when I need it. In an industry dominated by white, predominantly Jewish, and entitled males, I will need to be tough. And I'm fairly certain that I will achieve my creative vision because of it.

Been back from Johannesburg for a couple of days trying to ease back into things slowly, though next week's film school orientation will likely upset my natural equilibrium. I hate coming back from vacation.

This morning I took a jog around Brooklyn Tech track a block from my apartment. As long as I didn't talk to too many folks, I could pretend that I was still on the continent surrounded by South Africans.

There was an older, stocky sista walking on the track in a black, ankle-length skirt. She wore headphones and kept raising her hands in the air and clapping as she shouted some indecipherable phrase to the heavens. Must be listening to gospel music, I thought, thanking God for another day. She was not unlike any of the women I saw at my friend's wedding ceremony, shouting and waving their hands in the air, clapping and stamping their feet rhythmically. The only real differences were language and zip code.

Crossing the 300-meter mark, I noticed that someone had cut a jagged, human-sized hole through a new chain link fence they had built last month. The fence was supposed to separate the track -- property of the prestigious Brooklyn Tech High School, down the road -- from the surrounding low-income housing buildings in Fort Greene.

Every time someone succeeded in bending back the metal, to make a way inside when the fence was locked after hours, they built a taller, stronger fence to replace the damaged one. Again, some clever young'un would rip a hole through it, so they would build another new fence. It was pointless and inevitable, but it didn't stop the powers that be from building bigger fences.

I looked up and saw a sheet hanging out of one of the project windows, like off some rooftop in the Ninth Ward. Humph. It's funny how, despite all our differences, black folks from Soweto to Brooklyn are really the same -- praying and waiting for deliverance. Trying to break free from physical, emotional, and mental ghettos while the rest of the world is hellbent on building bigger fences.

Maybe I never left Brooklyn after all. When I was in Soweto, some places reminded me of my own neighborhood. People on top of people on top of people and all black. Some places in Soweto are even becoming gentrified, so expensive that well off blacks can't afford houses there, not that that means whites are moving in.

I think things will flow to a natural order as long as folks who leave the ghetto never forget that our liberation is bound up with those still living in it. To forget that is to forget our communities and lose ourselves.

Yesterday was an interesting day. In order to get to Soweto, and hang with my friend Amelia's family, I had to rent a car. Easier said than done in S. Africa, where everybody drives on the lefthand side of the street and sits on the righthand side of the car.

My girlfriend's cousin Ref accompanied me to AVIS Rent-a-Car, which had just rented out their last automatic before our arrival. Ref called around to some more dealers around town checking for automatics, but there weren't any available.

So I, being the fierce woman that I am, agreed to rent a standard and just figure it out. "After all, how hard could it be?" I added.

I must inspire a lot of confidence in people, because the dealer handed me a pair of keys to a cute little black VW golf. And after a cursory explanation of what the clutch, brake, and accelerator were, Ref left me in the parking lot as he dashed off to a meeting.

Several stalls, shakes, and screeches later, one of the AVIS guys explained how to ease back on the clutch while applying light pressure to the accelerator. Several more jolts and stops after that, another walked up and asked if I was studying for my driver's license. I assured him that I had in fact been driving for a decade, just never a manual. Then a guy from the pizza joint next door, Thomas, agreed to give me some lessons around the parking lot.

He was a lifesaver. Three hours and a couple of tests later (parking, accelerating, reversing), I was declared fit for the road.

I got out into traffic and my car stalled about a half block away from the parking lot. I couldn't get it started. As people started honking I hoped Thomas would come running to help, but he was nowhere to be found.

A few kind men watching from the side of the road pushed me off the street into a taxi depot and suggested I call my mother or boyfriend to come pick me up. As they walked off, a gaggle of local traders and beggars gathered to watch the spectacle, smirking as my car sputtered, stalled and stopped until I finally got it moving and on the road again. Thankfully, I barely stalled all the way back to my girlfriend's house.

Fast forward a day later when I declared myself fit to drive to Soweto.

Despite my ignorance of maps, I found some very kind people who directed me towards Soweto on the outskirts of Joburg. On my way to Zone 6 in Meadowlands, I took a wrong turn and ended up in an entirely different town. I stopped by a makeshift car garage where a bunch of twenty-something-year-old bright-eyed boys were cleaning and fixing up cars. After they explained how to get to Zone 6, I was more confused than before I stopped. Seeing the glazed look in my eyes, three of the guys offered to direct me there as though it were an ad hoc field trip. They hopped in and started giving directions.

The deeper you go downtown, the more crowded it gets. You immediately know you have left town because all the spaces disappear between the houses and each fence is ringed with barbed wire. There's also very little open space. Soweto is so crowded -- almost like a traffic jam. It reminded me of more of what I'm used to of my fam in NG as compared to staying in the suburbs of Joburg. The tin roofs, broken lightbulbs, and buckets for bathing -- but with the addition of TVs, ATMs, clubs, and internet cafes.

By the time we finally arrived at my friend Amelia's family's house, it was too late to see any of the sites, so we chilled a bit and tried to hit up a few clubs. There was The Ozone, The Rock, and White Horse, complete with neon flashing lights and red painted walls.

People in Soweto were living life, albeit crowded in to tiny spaces. I hope to make it back there someday, but maybe in an automatic.

I'm leaving town for my girlfriend's wedding in Botswana this weekend. We went to undergrad together at Stanford and have been each other's family in NYC for the past couple of years. She's from all over -- South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Botswana -- and is marrying a white boy from Oklahoma that's so down everyone assumes he's at least Puerto Rican. They met at church and it's been history ever since.

It's about time that I took a vacation. Every now and again I get that itching to flee the US as fast as possible. I've been to quite a few places -- Brazil, Belize, and S. Africa, among others. My first really major trip, outside of family trips back home to Nigeria, was the summer after my sophomore year of college that I spent in Accra.

I was there for 9 weeks, studying plant medicine at the University of Ghana-Legon. At the time, I was a fearless and naive 19. Not speaking a word of Twi, I rode a tro-tro every Tuesday and Thursday to class with folks from the Ghana Dance Ensemble and National Theatre; took a bus ride down to Cape Coast with some friends for Panafest; and a bus tour to Kumasi just to see the sights.

I have some video of myself dancing at a rehearsal, whirling round and round, my hair cut in a short afro. Man. I had so much gumption! Actually got into a taxi once and told the driver that I didn't know where I was going, but could he please help me find it. LOL.

I think it's only when we travel that we come to understand ourselves and our place in the world better. Here's to more travel and life lessons.