what are some of the things i have learned since my arrival in the states?
1. Americans have food but do not know what to do with it. If it has salt, it is spicy.
2. they eat everything with cheese: picture chicken and cheese; it is nasty looking, nasty smelling, nasty tasting and Americans love it.
3. Americans do not know where Africa is or that it is not a country
4. They are very "PATRIOTIC". That is why i write this blog under a different name so I do not get deported
5. Race is always an issue.
6. As a people they must have made God angry because he rewarded them with about four months of snow
7. You cannot get anything without credit and you cannot get credit without anything
8. They have loans for everything that you cannot get for anything
9. You can sue the clock manufacturing company if you slept through the alarm
10. you can sue the brewery for your DUI
11. They loose weight on their on their diets because the food is even more tasteless than before...thus, they do not eat.
12. Anything with zero calories tastes like feet
13. Raising a child in this country is left to the internet, Nickolodeon and Disney
14. Don't offer to hold someone's child for them. You will be arrested for pedophillia. And if you are an African man, don't even dare to buy treats for a crying child (like you would at home to get them to stop crying): it interprets that YOU are the CAUSE for the "tears" and that you are trying to lure the child away for more "crying"
15. Only African Americans spank their children, beyond the view of security cameras
16. there is therapy for everything and support groups of every kind. Even blogging
17. I am in love with whoever created HBO
18. Desperate Housewives is a reality show. i have seen the people they play
19. Sex is not an issue. It is the only issue
20. Fourteen year olds know much more about sex than I do but nothing about its repercussions which I seem to have a lexicon of information of.
21. Race determines neighbourhood and in turn what amenities are available to you. Par example: DC buses stink, VA buses don't. DC buses stop for you where you ask, VA buses.....would you even dare to ask?
22. There is nothing on the news
23. There is really nothing on the local news
24. The "hungry" look is considered sexy.
25. White women do not have butts. they buy it from the plastic surgeon
26. Black people are usually late...like me. I am supposed to be researching something for my boss and I am here blogging.
Have to go...the man is coming: to hold me down (27. That's a common thought among lazy black people)

getting to the Hill

On the 13th of august last year, I made my way from the Dulles airport to Howard university where I was to begin my new adventure as a communications major. I was coming in to the United States for the first time and after enduring a flight that took almost two days and passing through the paranoid scrutiny of the US airport officials, I arrived on U.S soil, hungry (I refused to eat the nonsense I was served on my KLM flight), dirty (it had been two days and a girl does tend to feel sticky) and pissed( how dare they rummage through my things like that).
The drive to DC from what I later found out was Virginia was uneventful. Shared the 'super shuttle' with six other people; three whites and three blacks and was introduced to my first sign of colour seperation. the whites sat at the back and launched into some conversation that revolved around the heat and SPF of sunscreen. The blacks were talking about 'family reunions'. I was tired and a bit nauseous. Our driver was from Ethiopia.
"Your first time here in the United States?" He asked me in heavily accented English. I jerked out of my misery. I was missing my family and making such a long trip into unknown lands by myself and arriving hungry did not do much for my countenance.
'Sir?" I answered in what I hoped was my best immitation of american English. Not that many syllables to make a difference but I was willing to try.
"I asked if this was your first time in the states?" he repeated.
"Yes, Sir."
The convesations around me seized.
"Where're you from?" The huge african american lady who was taking up two seats with her bulk asked me.
"Nigeria." I replied.
"I know a man from Nigeria. He is a doctor." The man who appeared to be her husband, told me.
I smiled my 'oh' but said nothing.
"Isn't Lafonda's man from Nigeria too?" the big woman asked again.
'That's right." The man replied with a look of utmost surprise like he had just discovered quantum mechanics.
I realised that a conversation was about to ensue and I immediately began to rack my brain for the most polite way to ask them to shut up and leave me alone.