This is the flip side of the monthly argument that started here. I suggest that you read it first.
10. Food. When you think about it, there is really nothing so spectacular about Nigerian food that one can’t do without it for a year. Yea, you can call it a case of sour grapes conditioned by inevitability, but this is my story and I’m sticking to it. Give me panini with potato pudding and chicken sauce. On a more serious note, the American continent is filled with a diverse list of amazing cuisines, and I’m glad to share in them.
9. Books. I like the ease with which I can buy books here. It doesn’t make me a fan of paper books over electronic ones, but there are so many paperbacks that are always keepsake materials.
8. People. There is something beautiful in being able to maintain a personal space, individuality, and not worry about a certain crowdiness that is characteristics of so many streets I know. It is a sense of violation from the piercing stares of strangers. I have not had much of that here. There is no pressure to speak to anyone one meets on the road, or share a bus stop with.
7. NEPA. No further comments. #lightupNigeria.
6. Mosquitoes.
5. Family. So many people have gone to great lengths to make me feel so much at home here, and I will definitely miss their warmth and support when it’s time for me to say goodbye.
4. Love. No comments. See #5 above.
3. New Experiences. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine, Winter, Spring, Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King’s Birthday… etc. There are definitely many things to look forward to.
2. Friends. See 5 above. Plus, it seems that I am closer to many of my Nigerian friends now than when I was back home.
1. Well, it’s called a “home”, not a “house”. Home is in the heart, and it goes where the heart is.
PS: Much of this list is tongue-in-cheek anyway. Next month, I’ll tell you a few hostile experiences that I’ve had in Edwardsville that reminded me of how similar people are all over the world, both in goodness and in not-so-goodness. Happy Halloween. See you in November.
(Picture credits: The Cougar Lake “Lantern”, taken from a photo exhibition of sights of SIUE.)
10. Food. There is a certain pain in hearing the words fufu, amala, iyan, gbegiri, ewédú or egúsí from this distance. And no, I will not go into St. Louis just because of them, although once in a while it might be worth it. From now on, I forbid anyone to mention the following words to me in online chats: snail, okú ekó, panla or ponmo. Or akpu, ogbono and afang. All the defaulters will take turns to host me in their houses as soon as I return home.