Edosewele's script

I had a friend named Chad, ask about a Country called Chad. He said he had heard that the people who lived in Chad were poor, and that it was close to Nigeria, and he wanted to know If I knew anything about it. In the split seconds I had before I replied to him, I thought to myself, “Why was that the first thing to be thought about?”. I didn’t know anything about the country Chad and had never looked it up, except from in school where we had to draw my country’s map and represent a portion of Chad as an intersection to the country itself.  

I defended Chad. I defended Chad like I had forgotten about my own country. I told him that they were not poor, they were living peacefully according to their population, but they weren’t poor. I asked him if he was going to visit there sometime, and he responded with “Nah, I don’t want to leave my home”. There was nothing wrong with what he had said, but his nonchalance displeased me. What a weird way ,I thought, to say that a country was poor, with confidence and without the general sympathy. 

Another person also asked me if I knew about the Wars in Congo. I didn’t know, but I thought that I may have heard of it happening. The only Congolese person I knew was Jonathan from South Korea, and I had never even met him in real life. This person also asked me if there were any wars in Nigeria. I turned and I looked at him as I drove. I was disappointed, but there was nothing I could do about my disappointment, except to change my facial expressions. Was there really nothing positive these people could say ?,Wasn’t there something good about African Countries that this people knew about? 

Every Sunday when My Dad drives us to church, I am forever amazed at the homeless people on a particular street we pass, it is to the point that if I tell my Friends, they would gasp and scream, “you’re lying”. But I would not be lying, I would only be saying exactly what I had seen, it is not as if it is not possible for a country to have homeless people but to say that the “ The Great America”, “The U S of A” had those people, would almost be to insult the Economy itself. 

No matter how much I thought of it, there was no way in which all these could be America’s fault, A country I assume is expected to be majorly individualistic towards its own roots and progress, to work hard for the betterment of a nation and to yield profits for its general growth, but how many are interested in that growth ?,Is it a concern for the government or the citizens who would later become the government. My Mum used to say to me that even if there is a brand new man ready to sit on the presidential seat, his hands would have been soiled and his mind and heart changed from the original goal, before he is even able to sit in the seat. What I think might be the fault of America’s media is the excitement that comes with talking about a poverty that is not theirs, the display of pictures, and the things only their citizens are made to know. I wonder what it means to perhaps feel joy for another’s misfortune. Maybe someone had spoken of our Agriculture, our Music, or culture and had been dismissed, and told that that was not what the people wanted to see. Whenever I checked for pictures of the Biafra War, I wished Google would just blur the images of the starving children and show the Bright Ones, the ones of their temporary victory, their patriotism and courage, Or was no one interested in that ?, Did no one take any ?, and is there really no one interested in seeing them?. 

I am usually familiar with the general upsetting curiosity of the place of my origin and its environs , but never thought to be a human background spectacle for other African countries. Perhaps Chad  wanted to engage in a conversation, and thought to begin with the poverty of another country, but if that was his first thought choice, of a topic for a conversation, what a terrible job he had done. Recently, I have been on a journey of discovery for South African Movies, and have developed an affection for their manner of speech and their variety of languages. One in particular I like is “Chomi” meaning Friend. Here in America, I am also beginning to discover and learn more about countries in Africa, and it has only dawned on me that I had only known to be Nigerian, but never truly African.