“What did you miss about America while in Nigeria?” (II)

I also told my friends that I missed the high-speed Internet that many Americans take for granted. Although I had Internet access at home during my stay in Nigeria, which is at least better than nothing at all, it was painfully slow, gallingly unreliable, and scandalously incapable of supporting even basic video and graphics, all […]

I also told my friends that I missed the high-speed Internet that many Americans take for granted. Although I had Internet access at home during my stay in Nigeria, which is at least better than nothing at all, it was painfully slow, gallingly unreliable, and scandalously incapable of supporting even basic video and graphics, all thanks to the low and overcrowded bandwidth in the country. I had hoped that by now broadband Internet would be widely available to ordinary folks like me. But we are still stuck with 1990s Internet technology which, sadly, is a lot costlier than high-speed Internet in the US.

Similarly, I missed visiting some of my favorite sites on the Internet because the sites won’t allow me to access them from Nigeria. A case in point: Pandora.com. Pandora is a free personalized Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project, which allows users to choose what kind of music they want to listen to and helps them find new music based on their old and current favorites. Each time I tried to visit the site in Nigeria I often got a message that said they had not yet extended their service to Nigerian users. It was the same story with Google voice. I didn’t know it was possible to discriminate against Internet users based on their geographical location.

I also missed the psychological comfort in the knowledge that the institutions of government work for citizens and residents. In America, when you are sick, in trouble, or just scared for your safety for any number of reasons, you can simply dial 911 on your cell phone and police vans will arrive at your location in a matter of minutes. We have no such comfort in Nigeria. And, for much of the time I was in Nigeria, I lived with disabling anxieties about kidnapping or robbery—which is actually a holdover from a previous experience two year ago.

Interestingly, many Americans, especially conservative Americans, chafe at what they call “too much government” in their lives. It would seem that most human beings don’t appreciate what they have until they lose it. I often advise my conservative American friends to live in Nigeria (or, for an extreme experience, Somalia, which has had no government since the early 1990s) for just a few months to experience what it means to have no government. They can then return and compare it with the “too much government” they resent in their country. Nigerians would gladly trade places with them.

“So you basically missed the basic conveniences of life that we take for granted here?” my friend’s wife asked. Sadly, yes. “Well, but I also missed my friends, including your husband,” I joked.

The conversation was strangely cathartic for me. My friend, who is white, always told me he would relocate to Nigeria if American conservatives take over America. I don’t know what he thought of that idea after this conversation.

Of course, in spite of everything, I can’t quantify the joy I felt being with my family and friends and seeing the familiar sights and sounds of the country of my birth. For all its failings, Nigeria is still where my heart is. America can’t take that away even it were paradise itself, which it is not.

I am unsparingly tough on my country because I am impatient with its unnaturally prolonged gestation in developmental infancy as a result of the incompetence, sordid avarice, and base venality of the leaders it has had the misfortune to be saddled with.