My wife and I are in the US mainly because of our children. Many people have asked me why I chose Wisconsin of all places. Here is the answer I give them. I did not choose Wisconsin. I did not know about Wisconsin and so could not choose to come to the State I did not know. I came to Wisconsin only by divine intervention and I am most thankful to God for leading me here. I came to the United States as a Hubert H. Humphrey International Fellow to study world leadership from August 1995 to June 1996. I was placed at the University of Minnesota’s HHH Institute of Public Affairs with 11 other fellows from different parts of the world. Early in 1996, I participated in a Christian event, The Promise Keepers, held at the Metrodome in Minneapolis.
The event was to teach men to be good husbands. There were about 70,000 men at the event there. I happened to sit beside Jimmy Thomas, a participant from Neenah, Wisconsin. I had never known Wisconsin or Neenah. Over the two days of the event, we became friendly, shared pictures of our families and exchanged addresses. At the end of my program, I returned to Cameroon in West Central Africa. My wife was a teacher-trainer, and I was a senior official of the foreign ministry in Yaoundé before ascending to the throne of my ancestors.
Some years after my return to Cameroon, my wife, Dr. Patience Fonkem, won the United States Immigrant Visa Lottery, a program that brought 55,000 new immigrants to the US every year. We landed in Chicago, a city my wife and I already knew because we had each spent Christmas holidays there. My wife came there in 1991 while she studied at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, and I visited for Christmas in 1995 while studying at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute in Minneapolis. Upon arrival in Chicago, I wrote to my friend in Neenah, Wisconsin to informed him that I was back in the US with my family.
My friend, Jimmy Thomas, his wife, Alli, and their two children, got pots and pans and lamps and furniture and invited another family, Scott & Jane Laue, from their church, Christ the Rock. The two families drove two vans and a small trailer filled with the things they collected to meet us in Chicago on December 15, 1998. They also brought a Christmas tree and Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch. Upon return to Neenah, Kimberly Clarke transferred my friend to Charlotte, North Carolina in January 1999 as Marketing Director for the company. In February 1999, Scott Laue picked my wife and me up from Chicago to Neenah to participate in the Going Away Party organized for Jimmy and Alli Thomas.
As we found ourselves in the Fox Cities, we discovered how calm and quiet the cities were and decided to bring our children to live here. We came to the Fox Valley because we found the place ideal to raise our children for whom we came to the US in the first place. God so kind, our decision paid off very well both for us and our children. We remain most thankful to God for choosing the Fox Valley for us.
Professor Fuankem Achankeng, PhD
Ruler of Atoabechied & John McNaughton Rosebush Professor
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Hubert H. Humphrey International Fellow
Executive Council Member, Wisconsin Institute for Peace & Conflict Studies (WIPCS)
Global Education & Research Team, Dignity & Humiliation Studies (DHS)
Leadership Team Member, Transnational Education & Learning Society (TELS)
