The older you get, your relationship with America changes. But America will never cease to amaze you.
Your relationship with America starts with chocolates and candy bars gleefully shared at the end of camp. This is one of those camps where it was rumored that a white woman spoke Hausa and another, Igbo, but it turned out they were speaking in tongues.
Ah! Familiarity smiled at you when you saw them speaking in tongues. They felt like kinfolk. Distant relatives you wanted to see again during the Easter after Christmas.
I guess we can call that disillusionment. They weren’t special. They spoke in tongues and you spoke in tongues. Although they had original toothpaste and toiletries, the sameness of the Holy Ghost in all of you was enough for you.
Shortly after, America would weep. You didn’t understand much, but the Twin Towers just went down, and they called it 9/11. You weren’t sure Radio Nigeria had something else to say other than what the BBC had just said.
You somewhat believe that America is doing okay because there were more camps with free candy bars and chocolates and free books and free medical supplies, which a few of the supposed Holy Ghost-filled people would later sell. I suppose it was okay to sell them since they weren’t the truth.
America denied several people visas but you believed you both had something special so, the fire stayed up.
Somewhere along the line entered Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Some have said there’s a thin line between love and hate. For you, the line disappeared. But the story of Abraham Lincoln was looming in the background. America is the white man. No, America was the white man. America was not the white man.
History chimed in. Or was it the movies? You found the storytelling compelling. Heroes everywhere. Your America. Always saving the world.
Some have argued that a pregnant woman will never crave what she’s never had. This was true for you. For a while, if a while is a few years.
But who would have thought that a Nigerian-bred mouse, perpetually fed Garri and Afang and the occasional Edikang Ikong, would crave American cheese? American cheese made in Nigeria, for that matter!
I suppose it is true, your relationship with America changes the older you get. Maybe this is a beautiful symbiotic relationship after all: you get America’s chocolates and candy bars, America gets your homegrown mouse. Perhaps the “A” in “America” stands for awe.
