Behold the Dreamers

Clark Edwards interviews Jende Jonga for a job as a chauffeur in the winter of 2007. Jende tells Clark that he has a work permit but not more permanent documents because he is engaged in a request for asylum. Clark says he is not curious about his status. Instead, he wants a driver who unquestioningly does what is needed and with absolute discretion.

Neni Jonga, Jende's wife, shops with Fatou, her best friend, and talks about how much she loves America still, after having been in the country for eighteen months. She works as a home health aide, goes to her classes at Borough of Manhattan Community College, studies, and takes care of her little boy, Liomi, a grade-school student. She remembers with great clarity when Jende sent for them after she and her son received their visas. At 33, she cannot believe how much her life has changed and that she is now on the cusp of fulfilling all of her dreams.

Clark offers Jende the job at a salary of $35,000, a huge amount from Jende's perspective. He immediately calls his cousin, Winston, a lawyer who aided him in coming over to the US and fabricating sterling references for Jende’s job search. Jende has been in the US for three years and has been fighting to gain asylum status since his first month in the country. His lawyer, a Nigerian man named Bubakar, has assured him that concocting a story about persecution from Neni's father was the best route to a green card. Jende is uncertain if he should trust Bubakar. Neni's father, then a rich man, had indeed pressed charges against Jende for getting his underage daughter pregnant, but Jende's term in prison ended and the baby died. All this seemed water under the bridge once the two married and Jende brought Neni and their second child to America. Winston is also skeptical.

Jende tells Neni all about the Edwards family the evening of his first day of work. The Edwards family lives in a fancy apartment. Jende drives 9-year-old Mighty to his private school. The Edwards almost never see Vince, their eldest and a Columbia law student. Cindy is a nutritionist and pretty in the way of affluent white women. Neni is most excited about how the new job will allow them to save more, perhaps for a house in the suburbs, so they can move out of their illegal Harlem sublet. 

Jende drives Cindy Edwards, who makes him jumpy, to work, as she holds phone conversations with people. Cindy argues with Clark, who is once again skipping out on a family event for work. She angrily blames her husband for Vince's decision to go on a Costa Rican retreat instead of a vacation with the family. Jende also listens in as one friend after another appears to be too busy to bother with Cindy's disappointment and need for support.

Jende drives Clark around. During the breaks between Clark's fraught conversations with co-workers and superiors, Jende makes light conversation with Clark by describing Limbe, his Cameroonian hometown, a dusty, rural place that Jende nevertheless represents as a kind of paradise. When Clark asks why Jende left such a paradise, Jende explains that there is no way to advance up the social and economic ladder unless you start out rich or privileged. Jende is insistent that in America, people can become anything. He mentions the rise of presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Robinson Obama, as examples of nobodies becoming important people.

Clark takes a work call from Phil and explains to Phil that he is unhappy with the way Lehman Brothers is handling its finances and investments. He is sure that any day now the Securities and Exchange Commission (the federal oversight body for financial firms) will figure out that Lehman's actions are not above board. Everyone will suffer. Clark ends the conversation by agreeing to play golf.

Clark then tells Jende about his own upbringing as the child of a professor and his decision to pursue a lucrative career in finance instead of being an academic like his father. Clark calls his sister, a widow, and tells her to charge all her expenses for an upcoming family trip and other items to his credit card. Clark laughs when Jende explains that he respected Neni so much that he paid a bride price for her so they could marry and so Neni could come to America. Clark leaves a voicemail for Vince, in which he chides Vince for turning down a prestigious internship at a white-shoe law firm.

Clark tells Jende he is glad someone in America appreciates that it’s a land of opportunity, and Jende wholeheartedly agrees, explaining that he envisions greater and greater upward mobility for each generation of the Jonga family.

Clark, as it turns out, is an executive at Lehman Brothers, a Wall Street firm with a building that Jende finds impressive. Jende meets Leah, Clark’s administrative assistant, one day when he picks up a folder Clark needs for a meeting. Leah is an older woman and talks in gushing if embarrassing terms about how much she likes Africans. Jende is used to such ignorance from Americans and American women in particular, so he cuts her some slack. Leah shares with Jende that the company has encountered grave financial troubles in their subprime mortgage business. She also explicitly tells him that the company is falsifying its financial records.

It’s late at night, and Neni stays up to get all her housekeeping and studying completed. She enjoys the silence and checks on Liomi as he sleeps. She feels pressure because she only has a B- in her math course. She has tried study groups with Americans to improve her grade, but she has found that the Americans seem more interested in eating and socializing than studying. Near the end of the night, she drinks a coffee and muses that “[l]ife in America had made her into someone who was always thinking and planning the next step” (54). She goes to bed.

The day that Bubakar calls to tell Jende that his application for asylum has been turned down is just an ordinary day at first. Jende, having been reassured by Bubakar's confidence that everything would turn out fine, is shocked and angry. Bubakar tells Jende that the court will schedule a date for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to request his deportation. Jende demands to know how this outcome came to be. Bubakar reminds Jende that all his successes—Jende’s work permit, Neni's visa—show that Bubakar is competent.

Jende tells Neni the bad news that night, and they agree that they will need to use their savings—originally intended for Liomi's education, the down payment on a house, and the funds to renovate the home of Jende's parents—for the legal fees instead. Jende insists that there is no need to tell Liomi just yet.