America

America has given me a virus. Not the human kind. The computer kind. For months, I've been surfing the Internet in England: I've gone on secure connections, unsecure, semi secure, everything. Three days in America and gbosa, I have a virus. Now I have no laptop to divert myself I must turn to the television for amusement. But American TV, it's something else. I can't watch any shows here because I find it difficult to follow the story. The main actor says five lines and it switches to fifteen minutes of Buy Orange Juice. By the time the show comes backs, I've forgotten what it's about.

However, watching adverts can prove to be a diversion in itself. You can learn a lot about a country that way. For example, I have deduced that many Americans are overly concerned with their weight. Every other advert is diet this or gastric band that. Every other show is Biggest Loser, How I lost Weight in One year, Help I'm Too Large. Or, if it's not about shedding weight, it's about suing somebody. I kid you not (to use an Americanism) in just three days, I've seen about fifty adverts calling on people to sue somebody. If you've been hit by a car, or slipped on a floor, or taken X medication and have an ingrown nail then call 1-800 SUE. If you think I'm exaggerating, dial that number and find out.

The adverts don't seem to have affected peoples' nature though. You would expect that with so much incitement to legal activity people would be more querulous. Still, I think I've met the most good natured people in America. I pass people on the corridor and instead of doing that furtive eye contact, look away quickly thing that people do in England, or hissing at you like we do in Nigeria, people smile and say hello. I'm not used to smiling at strangers or friends or even close family members.

However, this their friendliness can sometimes tend towards familiarity. At immigration, there was a nice jokey guy at the booth. How you doing today? How was your flight? He asked a few more questions, the answers to which his job required he know. How long are you staying? Where do you go to school in England? What are you studying? "History," I told him. Mr. Immigration officer replied, "History? Why you studying that? You won't get a job with History." If that wasn't enough he added, "You'll need to do a Masters to get a job unless you want to work in the university." I laughed. It was all meant in jest but really, it was a little unexpected for this immigration officer to be giving me career advice on the basis of a three minute meeting.

In other American news, I think I'm getting a warped view of the world from listening to the news here. It seems like only three things are happening: Maria Shriver, IMF guy and Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you don't know what I'm talking about, maybe you live in the real world. I just don't understand it. Even CNN that bastion and paragon of international news has succumbed to the dissection of Maria and Arnold's private life. How can the news anchor be asking me rhetorically, How would you feel if your husband cheated on you and got another woman pregnant at the same time that he got you pregnant? Is this CNN or Jerry Springer? I'm confused. Elsewhere in the world, revolutions might be happening, planes might be crashing, dictators might be tumbling and I'm stuck watching the nitty gritty of Arnold's affair. He's done a bad thing but for goodness sake, let him and his family deal with it in private. Too many panels of amebos have been convened over this issue.

This is not to say that I don't enjoy being in America. I love the place. I can stretch my hands without touching the ceiling, which is a vast improvement on England. I haven't slept so well in months. The cars are bigger, the roads are bigger. There's really nothing to complain about. I'm going to feel like Gulliver in Lilliput when I return to the U.K.

My exams went alright, we thank God. More on that at a later date... maybe.

My Cousins in Texas: A Study

My cousins E-girl, E-boy and C-boy have become very American. They are very open with their feelings, they hug a lot and they dispense encouragement and good cheer as freely as a Lagos policeman collects bribes.

E-girl is a little neurotic. She cleans stains as they appear ever on the ready with her anti-bacterial sprays and wet wipes. The middle compartment of her bag is stuffed with medicine from Bonjela to Tylenol to a small resuscitating machine that she has thankfully never had occasion to use. E-girl is also very generous. When shopping with her, quietly sneak off to the till or after the cashier has scanned your goods and just as you are about to pay, she will barge past, push her card into the machine and sign before you get the chance to say Emeka Okeke.

I never really knew E-girl when I was growing up. She was that much taller and that much older than me. It was very nice to re-acquaint myself with this cousin who is now that much smaller and that much shorter than me. I am not surprised that she turned out well, she has good parents, but I'm glad.

Her brothers E-boy and C-boy could not be more different. When he was in Nigeria, E-boy used to be worryingly quiet but thanks to America and her out going ways, he would now be considered demonstrative in many parts of the world.

E-boy was the one who took us shopping and while perambulating through rows and rows of American discount clothing, my sister and I soon discovered that E-boy has an uncanny eye for fashion. We would be trawling through a rack discouraged and dispirited not finding anything but all E-boy had to do was walk past the same rack and he would find at least five fashionable outfits. It's funny because E-boy looks like a man's man's man who wouldn't know nail polish from eye shadow. He is built like an American football player who should be nicknamed The Wall yet he has such a good eye. It's uncanny.

C-boy, I think, is the most like me out of the Texas cousins. He's the last born; I'm the last born. His name starts with C, mine starts with C. He never puts things back where he finds them; I'm starting to learn. As you can see I'm one step ahead.

C-boy used to be very gregarious back in Nigeria. Out of his siblings, he is the only one that America has had a quietening effect on. His explanation for what seems like a sudden change as I haven't seen him in over seven years is that it's cool to be gregarious and loquacious and precocious when you're a teenager but once you hit your mid-twenties and have to become a MAN, then it becomes annoying. Me and E-girl joked that when I reach my early twenties and have to become a WOMAN, then I will suddenly wake up one morning introspective and reserved like C-boy. We'll see about that.

Anyways, I had a great time Texas with all three of them and as they won't accept cash, I wrote this paean to thank them.

American Diary: The Sheltered Ones

Americans are very well mannered people. I've only been here one week yet the number of times I've heard the phrases - are you ok ma'am, can I help you ma'am, please ma'am, thank you ma'am, what would you like ma'am, yes ma'am, no ma'am - could fill the dialogue in a book. Everywhere I go, the people are nice, they are helpful, they smile and they make conversation with strangers on public transport, something that I find perturbing, fresh from London.

All this politeness got me thinking: why are Americans so nice? What special thing do they have in their water that makes the bon homie switch function in them. Then I realised. They have food, they have water and they have light. It's not only that they have these things, because there is steady electricity in England, its the abundance of it, the readiness, the convenience whose peak is the drive through cash machine.

I don't make light of the suffering that can happen in America, the trauma, the ugly side of first world poverty, but still, I feel it is the blunted edge of suffering, never its full impact. Even the poorest will not starve, the kwashiorked belly of a child will never be seen in the projects and water will always be found for those who are thirsty.

In America, more than any other first world country I can think of, here live the sheltered ones but I, scion of the backward world, bear no resentment. Perhaps something is lost when you live your whole life in a shelter, unaware and removed from the outside, perhaps knowing intimately the details of the shelter and nowhere else is stunting to the soul, perhaps some deep springs of personality are never unlocked because one never sees the need to leave the shelter.

Or perhaps the shelter just makes you polite.

American Diary Part 1: God Bless America

Last Tuesday was the first time I'd set foot in America in over two years. In this short space,the nine hours it took to cross the Atlantic and reach the prickly heat of Georgia had grown more difficult to fill, especially as I was flying BA.

At the end of the flight I was vaguely irritated: by the men who sat beside me and hurdled over my aisle seat when they needed to pee, by the tasteless chicken tikka masala that came in plastic containers hot enough to burn, by the antiquated BA entertainment system that gave me a choice of only 7 movies and by the men who sat beside me and needed to pee at least five times on that flight.

I knew there would be heavy security when I landed. I had steeled my mind for it but I did not expect 4 security checks, 2 baggage reclaims and one x-ray in which nobody explained that the machine I had just stepped into was an x-ray machine until after I had been zapped or whatever it is that happens when a full body x-ray machine is turned on with a human being inside.

This last really, really, really annoyed me. I was seething from this violation of my fundamental human right to be warned before x-rays are passed through my body. And what was most galling was their politeness. Step this way ma'am, please place your hands like this and before I knew what was happening, the doors shut with me trapped inside a clear plastic box, I heard a sucking sound and the doors were opening and the man in the dark blue uniform was saying, "Please step this way ma'am."

So seething was I, that I did not realise that I could take the transit instead of walking to the second baggage reclaim which was five terminals away. And so I walked, and I was walked I grew angrier, and as I grew angrier, I walked.

Who did these people think they were?

Terminal A.

To X ray me without my permission.

Terminal B.

And display me deshabille on their blue screen.

Terminal C.

And potentially murder some of my cells.

Terminal D.

And

I stopped walking. In front of me was a row of wood and stone sculptures. I moved closer to the first and read, Summer Time and the profile of the African sculptor who had created it. I read the next one and the the next one and the next one.

I have never seen anything like this in Nigeria but here in the middle of Atlanta's International Airport was an exhibition of African art, loving oiled and dusted. I stopped in front of each one and browsed the cards stuck to their bases. Here was a mother and child from Zimbabwe, a family from Cameroon but the one that struck with me most was a giant foot called: "Travelling Family."

From the back all I could see was the sole of a giant foot. I paused in front of this sculpture wondering what statement the artist was trying to make. Was it that travelling families got swollen feet after flying for nine hours? Or in travelling they all moulded together to form that prehistoric unit of travel: the foot.

I rolled my eyes as I walked off... modern art.

Then I saw Travelling Family from the other side. Each of the toes was a head and the heads were so close together that they looked like a sleeping family that took up the whole middle row in Economy.

As I left the exhibition, I was glad I had just spent half an hour getting to the baggage reclaim, I was still angry that I had been xrayed but as I left, I thought, only in an American airport would I have had the privilege to see such an exhibition, only in America.

And so for this, God bless America.

P.S
The picture doesn't do Travelling Family justice but I thought I'd show you anyway.