A Spot to Perch: A Tortuous Journey to Citizenship

by Dr. Oliver Akamnonu

Overview

They had initially made yearly vacation visits to the United States. Those were fun and relaxation times. But the monumental insecurity in their homeland coupled with disgust with the incessant mounting corruption and harassment from men in flowing robes and in uniform who were supposed to protect the citizens became so unbearable that the couple started surveying avenues for relocation to God’s Own Country.

When the opportunity finally came by, and the couple landed in Los Angeles airport they came to discover new challenges which they were to grapple with.
The belief that a perfect spot to perch had been found was soon to be soured by the saga of two apparently innocuous tubers of yams whose combined value was less than one dollar.
Even after the yams were confiscated and destroyed at the airport the aftermath of the violation was to replay nearly five years later when naturalization for citizenship of the United States was sought.

The enormous powers of two tubers of yams were greatly displayed as the applicants grappled with unforeseen situations which had sought to thwart the life-long desires of a couple to be participants of the promises of God’s own country.
Would the promise of realization of the American Dream succumb to the evil machinations of two inanimate tubers of yams?
Or would the justice and fair play in a country that prides itself with its trust in God; one that holds certain truths as self evident, once again proclaim its superiority over apparent trivialities in the Land of the free and the Home of the brave.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781463433956
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	08/19/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	411 KB

Read an Excerpt

A SPOT TO PERCH

A Tortuous Journey to Citizenship

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By Oliver Akamnonu

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Dr. Oliver Akamnonu
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-3394-9

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Chapter One

A DAY AT THE 'DINER'

"I ain't gonna go to that hotel no more, Dege", Kofi had told his friend Dege as the latter marveled at his old friend's newly-acquired American parlance. The two teenage friends mounted their respective bicycles to ride away from the little side street eatery. The duo had gone to the eatery which was popularly called "mama-put" to treat themselves to boiled and stewed cow skin delicacy which was called "kpomo". Kofi had motioned to his friend that they should leave immediately even after they had placed and paid for their orders. The decision to leave was triggered by Kofi's observation that the lady serving customers had furtively pulled out what appeared to be a large winged insect out of the pot from which she was dishing out the stew and 'kpomo" meat to customers. The serving had continued after the hotelier had pulled the large dead insect from the steaming pot of stew. The hotelier did not appear in the least perturbed by the presence of the large blue bottle fly which had obviously drowned in the pot of soup. Kofi had imagined that there might be many other drowned little creatures in the same pot from which he and his friend would be served. Many kinsmen of the drowned little creature were still seen flying around the room buzzing menacingly as they flew around competing for space and even for free food which the paying customers had paid for. Blue bottle flies did not have to pay to perch on, or partake of the food from any customer's plate or from the hotelier's pot.

Kofi had paid the required one dollar for the stewed cow skin meal but had decided to forfeit the payment and leave the 'restaurant' after he saw the dead fly removed from the pot of stew. The amount was not up to what it would have cost him in America to have a hamburger.

Both Kofi and Dege had been classmates right from primary school through secondary school until after the secondary school certificate examinations which both friends had passed in the first division.

Kofi had applied for admission into a junior college in the USA while Dege had proceeded to do the Higher School Certificate Examinations, popularly called HSC of the University of London. Dege whose full name was Igbodege had completed the HSC examinations and had passed all three papers in physics, chemistry and zoology. He was as of the time of Kofi's visit, waiting for direct entry admission for medicine which was the course that he had applied for in the country's premier university. The latter was still administered as a campus of the University of London.

Kofi on his part had completed his studies in a community college and was briefly home on vacation in his country Konganoga. He too was looking forward to completing college work preparatory to his seeking admission into a medical school.

"Betty's Café" was the name that was hand-written on a wooden board with blue paint and mounted on an ungainly wooden stick in front of the one room make-shift eatery that was run by one Mrs. Betty Fisher who hailed from a neighboring country to Konganoga.

Betty's Café was reputed to be very affordable. It therefore enjoyed the patronage of relatively poor students and tradesmen who could not afford the higher cost of the bigger restaurants. Despite its low quality, Betty's Café was considered more elitist than the true "mama put" eateries which were mobile eateries that were mounted on wheels, hand-rolled carts which were rolled from place to place for itinerant workers and workers on construction sites.

Mrs. Betty Fisher usually cooked all the food at her house and brought them by the hand-pushed trolley to the café where they were displayed on long wooden tables.

Betty's Café was indeed akin to a "mama put", the major difference was that it was sold in a room where the customers had some wooden benches as seats. A multicolored curtain shielded the customers who often sat on the wooden benches from the views of passers-by since the door to the café opened directly to the road. Only an open gutter separated the interior of the café from the poorly tarred road which had no pedestrians' walkway.

The curtain both sides of which had accumulated quite some dirt from the constant flow of traffic shielded the customers of Betty's Café from the direct views of passers-by. The curtain however did not shield away the non-fee-paying customers, the little uninvited winged ones who, attracted to the café by the rich aroma from the stewed rice and ogiri-flavored soup, would want to partake for free, part of the food by perching on them. The latter groups of customers were the blue-bottle flies which constantly buzzed uninvited, in and out of the single room café.

Mrs. Betty Fisher the proprietress of the restaurant did not appear to be very worried about the flies. She would occasionally try to repel them with a wave of her fingers. If any fly mistakenly perched on the stew and got stuck, Mrs. Betty would simply sigh and pull out the unruly customer out with her thumb and index finger. She would then crush the pest on the cement floor with her slippers, cursing the little animal before killing it.

"Foolish fly, you don't see the latrines at the back of the house. You want free food that is meant for humans. Go to your death and warn your living kinsmen never to come here again", Mrs. Betty would whisper to herself as if in a quiet discussion with the adventurous fly before crushing the latter on the floor.

On any particular day that the flies were too many, Mrs. Betty would provide each customer with a raffia-made fan which the customer would hold on one hand for repelling the menacing flies while he or she ate with the other hand.

"This Betty's café is shit!" Kofi again said to his bemused friend Dege.

"The god-damned owner must be a son of a bitch to charge people a dime for any bullshit food in this place. Those f—king people in Department of Health aren't doing their jobs. They need to be taken to a few places in Houston, Dallas or Las Vegas to see how places where human beings eat look like. F—king idiots! All they know here is how to collect bribes and f—king free lunch." Kofi continued angrily, as the gutter language which he had acquired over a couple of years from his contacts at school in America flowed almost naturally from his lips.

Dege looked with awe and admiration at his friend as the latter displayed his anger and his newly-acquired accent and vulgar vocabulary.

The two friends thereafter mounted their bicycles and headed for Dege's father's house which was situated less than half a mile down the road.

The traffic was light as there were only few people who owned cars in Anga the medium-sized city where both Kofi and Dege grew up and did their primary schooling in the same school before heading to the secondary school.

Just before Dege and Kofi entered the house after dismounting from their bicycles, Dege observed that the face of his friend Kofi was looking a little different.

"You look different Kofi. Your face looks bare!"

"It may be because I was angry at the flies in that Mama Betty's f-king hotel." Kofi replied.

Kofi then rubbed his face and exclaimed: "Oh, my eye-glasses! Shit! I left my glasses on that god-dam hotel when the flies were getting between the glasses and my eyes."

"Then we have to go back and collect the glasses" Dege suggested.

"No, it is worth only one dollar. The woman can have it. It may help buy some fly repellants." Kofi concluded.

"But how will you see and read?"

"Hmm-m ..." Kofi smiled and remained silent.

It was only after Kofi and Dege had finished consuming the two plates of white rice with red tomato and hot pepper cooked by Dege's mother that Kofi for the first time informed Dege that the series of eyeglasses which he had worn from his third year in the secondary school were indeed simply plain glasses which had no corrective lens for any defective vision.

"I had bought those plain glasses from Ekoha market just to impress the babes and to let people around me know that I was a student. Men, the glasses fitted me and I had to stick to them. In fact my first girlfriend Theresa told me that she fell in love with me because of my glasses. Men, it sounded awesome. So you can see that glasses make a difference. I kept changing the glasses from the dollar stores when I went over to America. Even when we went chilling out in Dallas with our girls, and I donned my jeans and sleeveless shirts in summer, I only looked complete when I fitted on the glasses. Men, it made the heads of the chicks turn!"

The desire on the part of Dege to also experience such bliss was obvious on the latter's face.

Dege had known Kofi for nearly twelve years. But he never really got to know that the glasses that his friend wore were merely for aesthetic purposes. So well had the soft spoken and mild-mannered Kofi been able to conceal the real intentions for which he wore glasses that not even his closest friend knew that they were merely plain glasses.

Chapter Two

REMINISCENCES OF DEFEAT AND DISPERSAL

Dege and his friend Kofi were in their final years in high school when a devastating civil war took place in their country. It was a very brutal war in which laws governing combatants and non-combatants alike were not obeyed, not even by some acclaimed world powers that were expected to know better. Both Dege and Kofi had participated in one way or another in the war efforts. Both had witnessed the dastardly bombing and strafing of civilian populations in market places, schools and churches. Both had experienced the deliberate starvation to death of large sections of the populace by blockade of their sources of food supply.

Both had endured the insecurity which was a direct consequence of war. Both had at one time or another watched as the heads and limbs of their fellows were torn apart and flung in different directions by bombs that dropped as huge rain drops from the sky.

Both Kofi and Dege had witnessed the defeat of their side of the war by superior armament supplied by a coalition of economically and politically interested world powers and super powers. And the defeat came on in spite of the amazing gallantry and doggedness displayed by the young and old in the defeated territory. It was a war the details of which ought to have been made available to the world if only to help prevent atrocities in other wars. It was a war in which religious affiliations were downplayed on the part of the war brokers but were allowed to be emphasized among the foot soldiers of the opposing side who were being armed. It was also emphasized among the ordinary men and women in the street who armed themselves with whatever crude weapons they could muster against people who were once seen as their brothers. These latter had, for the exigencies of the moment, been made to believe that difference in language made all the difference between brotherhood and enmity.

Both Dege and Kofi had witnessed the joys of unity in diversity while the founding fathers of their country were on saddle. They had also seen the devastating effects of inflamed passions occasioned by betrayal of the principles of espirit de corps when a group in the military of their country rose under cover of darkness to butcher their colleagues who had hitherto taken them for brothers. They had witnessed the backlash effect consequent upon the betrayal of trust. They had in different capacities, even as early teenagers, fought for, prayed and wished, along with millions of their kinsmen, for the realization of their dream for a nation which they could call their own. They had wished for a homogenous nation by choice, as distinct from one that was forged out of the whims and caprices of some colonizing powers. They had looked forward to a nation where no one was oppressed and where the terms of association were freely chosen by the federating units as opposed to one that was forced by amalgamation by a foreign power which at best was for administrative convenience or for maximum economic returns alone.

But wishes were only wishes, and hard work did not always translate to horses. And so, neither Dege, nor Kofi, nor indeed any of the millions of their kinsmen and compatriots could ride the sweet horse of success for the attainment of nationhood. Two world powers, nay a long standing world power well known for its super-conniving and contriving wizardly even in the most perilous of circumstances, and an acknowledged superpower known for its ruthlessness, had forged a marriage of strategic convenience to ensure the defeat of a small emerging and promising young nation which posed no immediate or remote threat to either of the acknowledged giants. The dream of a nation of their own lived on, even in minds that were as young as Dege's and Kofi's much as the duo would have loved to see peace, unity and progress in the country that was forged by the erstwhile colonial overlords. The dream lived on even after a realization that the possibility of attainment of true nationhood appeared to have faded into oblivion following the defeat of the young people's side of the conflict. What appeared to reign in the opinion of many was a marriage of convenience that appeared to have been dictated by the economic advantages that the union would yield to one section and their sponsors with little consideration for the deprivation, pollution and devastation that the unequal union wrought on others.

The reminiscence of the sufferings of war, the humiliation of defeat followed by the unabashed display of intent to economically strangulate the defeated side did not deter the young friends from their pursuit of academic excellence. As Kofi proceeded straight to the United States through the help of his cousin who had lived overseas during the war years, Dege, thanks to the goodwill of a few who still insisted on merit as the yardstick for admission to the Universities in his country, was able to gain entry into the preliminary medicine course which he had applied for in one of the country's universities.

The loss of time during the war years and the realization that only had work would save them, spurred both young men to greater effort through their courses in their respective institutions. Both friends were thus able, later from two different continents, to graduate as medical doctors and had proceeded to specialize from reputable medical schools, Dege in Africa, and Kofi in the United States of America.

The passage of time had a positive multiplier effect on the technological and other developmental fortunes of the likes of Kofi's domain. On the other hand the same invisible time appeared to have the opposite effect on the land where Dege found himself. The retrogression that appeared to engulf the continent appeared even much more manifest on the part of the world which had only lately suffered the devastating effects of a civil war.

With loss of the civil war, even after four decades of its official end, the scars of war and the consequences of the initial deprivation persisted in Dege's part of the country.

Representation at the seat of power was lopsided against Dege's part of the country. These manifested even where the decisions which were to affect the destiny of the country for the following century or more were being taken.

Collectively these robbed Dege's part of the country of the voice and value in governance as well as in amenities.

Power supply had collapsed. The roads were in shambles. Schools were more of laughable structures.

The teachers were weary without regular salaries and the necessary tools, and the students rapidly got disillusioned when they saw their role models graduate from college only to roam the streets without jobs. These factors extinguished the enthusiasm in the majority of the students.

Hospitals were bereft of the basic necessities that would be expected in any 21st century center. Morale was very low. To crown it all, the security situation began to deteriorate so fast that people could no longer feel safe within their homes. People of highly questionable character began to ascend to positions of authority both within the highly manipulated political arena and even, and worse so, in the hitherto revered traditional institutions.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A SPOT TO PERCH by Oliver Akamnonu Copyright © 2011 by Dr. Oliver Akamnonu. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Dedication....................ix
Prologue 1....................xi
Prologue 2....................xv
1. A Day at the 'Diner'....................1
2. Reminiscences of Defeat and Dispersal....................7
3. The Wooing to Safer Pastures....................13
4. Acquiscing to the Temptation to Move....................21
5. The Gathering Clouds for Despair....................27
6. Fight for a Flight....................40
7. Road Safety and Road Beastiality....................45
8. Moment of Decision....................67
9. A New World for an Old Mind....................81
10. On a Twig; a Tender Twig....................93
11. Bracing Up for the Future....................105
12. The Job Market and the Chant of Freedom....................114
13. Tumultuous Welcome to New York....................125
14. The First Winter....................139
15. "Buy and Discard" Mentality and the Job Flight....................154
16. Escape by the Whiskers: The Chocolate Debacle....................162
17. The Coming of Age as a New Yorker....................177
18. Ben and the Pregnant Nanny-Goat....................183
19. Quest for Citizenship....................196
20. The Power of the Yam Tuber Over Citizenship....................204
21. The Joys of Citizenship; The Agony of Denial....................218
22. A Tenuous Twig....................234
23. A Tale of Two Residents....................246
24. Eternity as Days; Distressed Old Pal Comes Calling....................255
25. "The Mail" at Last....................263
26. The Joys of Citizenship; A Promise Fulfilled....................269