America

I couldn't sleep the whole week before I left Senegal to go to America. I was so excited that my father cautioned me that "America is not magic, it's just the same as it always was." To which I replied, "Exactly, it is always magic." My belief was reinforced when I stepped off the plane and found that everyone around me was speaking English. It was weird, and magical. In fact, the whole three weeks I was home were filled with shocking experiences of seeing my native country with fresh eyes. Here are a few observations from my witnessing.
- We are generally ignorant of other cultures. This observation happened even before I arrived in America. Once my Delta flight was off the ground the first thing the stewards (esses) did was serve us ham sandwiches. (Muslims, who made up probably 80% of the DL216 population, do not eat pork products, whoops.) I had a good laugh and delicious sandwich at this. God Bless America.
- America is green. I had this observation while sitting on my back deck. In much of America, if we don't cut down the trees, shrubs, and grass they will over grow our homes. The environment in Senegal is better, but in Mauritania, if they do nothing (or even if they do something) their homes will covered with sand. God Bless America.
- Large grocery stores. I walked through Wegmans (a chain grocery store somewhere in between Whole Foods and Quality Markets (R.I.P.)) and bought five of everything, literally shoveling goods off the shelves. The only luggage I returned to Senegal with was full of food. God Bless America.
- Americans are wonderfully and excessively inventive. Keystone Light now gives away plastic bottle necks that you can pop onto the top of a can to beer to make it look like a bottle of beer. Who ever said Keystone Light wasn't classy? Too bad they have to give them away because no one in their right mind would buy them (I have two). God Bless America.
- We Americans are living the good life. I avoided saying this while I was home and I am hesitant to say it now because it sounds cliche, makes me sound holier-than-thou, and no one having a bad day likes to hear it, but the fact is, it's true. There is so much that we take for granted in America (for example, that drinking water comes out of the ground cool, not piping hot (and even though it is already cool we have the means to cool it further, just cause)) that at times it was difficult for me to hear anyone complain about anything. At the same time, as I have said when describing people's attitudes over here, life is relative. If your basic requirements for survival are met, when you get up in the morning in a place you are used to you tend to think "Ok, what's for breakfast?, what am I going to do this morning?, I wonder if Joe/Mamadou is feeling better." not "Wow! I own my own car! My house is made of beautiful wood! Grass is growing on my lawn!" or "Wow! I own my own donkey! My house has an excellent thatched roof! There is enough manure in my sandy yard to grow corn when the rains come!" If you have enough to eat, a decent shelter, clothes, and some sort of work to do, your day to day emotions are probably not so different from a billionaire. A few decades from now the newest generation of Americans will look back at the America my generation grew up with and wonder how we could have survived such a backwards existence, where we did not even have the internet, just as my generation looked back at a time not so long ago where household electricity did not exist. Prosperity's affect on an individual's enjoyment of life is not a direct correlation, other wise we would be just be high all the time. We ought to turn down the dial of need since it's not getting us anywhere and in its place we ought to appreciate the grass covering the topsoil covering the rest of the earth that we stand on. God Bless America.
- Transportation. At no time while I was in America did I have to ride in a make shift seat in the trunk of a station wagon that was 20 years old. God Bless America.
- Being in your own culture. Zero is the number of times I was called Toubab (white person) by little kids while I was in America. I heard it 10 times just on the taxi ride out of the airport when I returned to Senegal. Similar to that, I was describing the Senegalese habit of hissing at people to get their attention to some American friends and they responded that they thought it seemed pretty offensive, I agree. God Bless America.
- America is magic. As if all this was not enough, I spent the last night at home, standing on my back deck watching fireflies light up the woods. America is magic. God Bless America.