By Douglas Anele

The title of this essay is adapted from a classic comic movie I watched several years ago entitled Coming to America. In it, the lead actor, Eddie Murphy, played the role of Akeem, a young prince from Zamunda, an African country, who went to America for the first time in search of true love.

The main theme of the movie is that, despite the uncertainties and conflicts that arise when a man and a woman from different cultural backgrounds meet and fall in love, true love would eventually prevail. Now, in this essay, I will summarise my experiences as a first time visitor to the United States, where I spent the last Christmas and New Year holidays.

Although many people believe that travel is educative, I dislike travelling because of the inconveniences associated with it, including selecting and packing those items one would need for the journey. Indeed, I detest air travel even more, for I am uncomfortable with the very idea of sitting down for hours suspended thousands of feet above sea level inside a somewhat tunnel-like contraption called an aircraft.

This is inspite of the fact that, according to available records, air travel is the safest mode of transportation across the globe. Moreover, anytime I travel by air, I marvel at the creative ingenuity of the scientists, engineers and technicians who contributed to the manufacture of aeroplanes. In my opinion, an aircraft is a paradigm example of what human beings are capable of accomplishing if they cooperatively apply their knowledge productively in seeking solutions to human problems instead of wasting their imaginative and creative talents on hating and killing one another for no good reason.

Yet, inspite of the undoubted advantages and marvels of air transportation, the possibility of air crash with its attendant violent loss of lives and property is horrifying. I feel really bad anytime I think about the agony and psychological trauma passengers experience shortly before ill-fated aircraft crashes. And the rare cases of pilots who deliberately crash planes and terrorists that hijack commercial jetliners aggravate my phobia for flying, since there is no foolproof method yet of detecting mentally deranged suicidal pilots and potential terrorists. Perhaps, the next generation of aircrafts would be fitted with artificially intelligent technology that enables them evaluate flying conditions and requirements continuously while in the air and automatically override inappropriate commands from pilots. But until that happens, that is, until aircrafts become vastly more intelligent than they are at the moment, air travellers must reckon with the constant possibility of air crashes caused by psychologically damaged pilots and inhuman terrorists.

Last month, I put aside my dislike of air travel and flew to Los Angeles, California, for Christmas. I had never gone on a proper vacation since I began teaching Philosophy at the University of Lagos many years ago. Therefore, I needed rest, and decided to make good use of the lull in academic activities during Yuletide. Besides, I have procrastinated for almost two years after securing a multiple entry visa to the United States of America. Before I travelled, I had less than a week left before my visa would expire, and some friends said that failure to travel before the visa expires would make it extremely difficult for me to get another American visa in future.

I was in a dilemma: I do not like travelling, and the prospect of sitting for more than fourteen hours in an aircraft headed to America was quite disturbing. Furthermore, the price of air tickets had gone up considerably as Christmas approached, mainly because the naira was depreciating against the dollar and because of the usual increase in demand for air travel during Yuletide. Eventually, I finally made up my mind that nothing would stop me from travelling to America this time around. Prof. Rahamon A. Bello, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, graciously granted my application to proceed on Christmas vacation.

I boarded an Emirates aircraft on a Saturday afternoon, having missed the one on Friday. Our plane landed at Dubai international airport several hours later. Compared to the beautiful Dubai airport, our own Murtala Mohammed international airport is ghetto. The egg-shaped structure of the building in Dubai houses state-of-the-art facilities, and everywhere was sparkling. Early the following day, I joined other passengers for the connecting flight to America.

We arrived Tom Bradley international airport in Los Angeles on a cold Monday afternoon. Of course, it was winter, and the blast of cold air on my face as I stepped out of the aircraft brought it home to me that I am in another country, that the weather in America is quite different from the weather condition in Nigeria. After collecting my luggage, I sent a text message to Apostle Frank Uwakwe, my host in America, telling him that I had arrived.

About thirty minutes later, he picked me from the airport and drove straight to his house in Moreno Valley, California. Largely, I enjoyed my vacation in the United States. I slept a lot, savoured delicious African meals prepared by my friend’s wife, Ngozi, and occasionally visited places of interest in California, including Beverley Hills, where some of the most famous entertainers in America live. My major problem, aside from the occasional cold winter weather, was lack of money to buy some of the beautiful and relatively affordable items I saw in big supermarkets and shopping malls in California. My severely limited spending power was aggravated by strict restrictions on the amount one can withdraw abroad in a day with Nigerian ATM cards. On several occasions when my cards were rejected at the pay point in shops, I paid with the dollars I bought in Nigeria.

Food and basic groceries are quite affordable in the US: big shops like Ross and Bloomington sell clothes, shoes, bags and household goods at very low prices. One can even buy a used car in America for two hundred and fifty dollars! But getting suitable accommodation is expensive, although there is a well-regulated mortgage and credit system that allows people to own houses, in the long run.

Anyone who has visited the United States or, for that, matter any of the well-organised countries in the world, would be struck by the lack of genuine progress in Nigeria, especially in terms of infrastructural development, environmental sanitation, and strict adherence to rules and regulations. Throughout my stay in the United States, electricity and water supply did not stop even for one second. I went to several places in California; the roads are solid and well maintained.

I did not see a single heap of garbage anywhere. Indeed, unlike the situation here in which refuse disposal personnel had to manually empty the refuse bins into trucks and some of the rubbish dropped from the trucks as they moved along the road, in America the process is more efficient because refuse disposal vehicles are fitted with elongated mechanical hands that empty the bins into the trucks without dropping anything on the ground.

An important and often neglected index of human development or civilised society is the condition of restrooms in public places, because it reflects how people respond to the biological imperatives of their humanity. Of course, the sanitary condition of toilets in our markets, educational institutions and other public buildings is utterly disgraceful, an indication that Nigeria is still at the lower levels of civilization.

While in the United States, the restrooms I used in all the public places I visited were scrupulously clean – there was no need for me to hold my breath or hurry out of the toilet because of dirty surroundings or foul smell. In addition, toilets in America are far more effective in flushing human waste than the ones in Nigeria: the former use a combination of water and powerful suction pressure to evacuate the waste whereas the latter operate mainly on water pressure. I do not understand why the relevant authorities in Nigeria did not adopt the American system as the standard for buildings in the country.

To be continued.