Inviolata “Invo” Chami ’16
Inviolata “Invo” Chami, Class of 2016, spent a portion of her childhood in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, but her home is Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. For the last two years of high school, Invo attended an international boarding school in New Mexico. That was the image of America she was most familiar with, an image very different than the Northeast. Nothing like Hanover, New Hampshire. When she first visited Dartmouth during Dimensions, a weekend in spring for admitted students, Invo believed Dartmouth was beautiful. Maybe too beautiful. She described her transition into Dartmouth as one of culture shock, yet she realized the best way to maneuver through the space was to be herself, even if she did not fit into the mainstream culture.
When asked if she thinks her socioeconomic status impacted her Dartmouth experience, Invo points to incongruities in how her family’s status is viewed in America and at home in Tanzania.
I mean I think it’s very interesting for me, being an international student. My socioeconomic status at home is pretty well off, but in the context of Dartmouth and America it’s not, just because of exchange rates and currencies. Costs of living are different in different countries. So, I am on financial aid. It is definitely a very different experience to be in a place that is full of people who can afford to pay the fees for this school. I’ve always found myself in a very strange predicament. I don’t feel like I come from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background because I don’t, in my own context. At the same time, I do have to deal with the fact that I can’t afford to do everything that Dartmouth students do on the regular. I’ve become very comfortable with expressing that. I don’t have any problem saying that I can’t afford to do this or I have three jobs. At the end of the day, as time went on, I think it only limited me in the ways that I was interacting with people that I actually ended up not wanting to interact with in the first place. A lot of my social dynamics right now don’t really require me to have a specific financial background so I like that. It hasn’t affected me right now, so far. I haven’t felt that I’m any less than other people.
When asked where she is now and what she plans for the near future, Invo expresses her desire to finish out her time at Dartmouth by continuing to support Black women on campus. She also notes her desire to return home.
Right now, I think my main focus here is to support the Black women that I know and love. Nothing more than that to be honest. I just really don’t have the time for anyone else on this campus, except Black women. And I fully embrace that. I fully accept that that’s what I want to do. I mean sometimes it makes me feel like, dang I really want to hang out with these people… but do I? You know? Do I really want to be in this space with these people who have done nothing but diminish Black women? So making that decision. I think I’ve made a lot of stances, moral stances, this year that I’m trying really hard to stick to. I’m leaving the country after graduation. I’m going back to Tanzania to work there just because that was my plan from the get-go anyways. But I mean, America is very tiring to live in, to be honest. I know that’s also, in some ways, very privileged to be able to say, fuck it, I’m leaving the country.