You come to America, young and dashing, on full scholarship, finish school, get a great job, marry a glamorous spouse, have cute children, and retire at a young age with a great pension, portfolio and posture.

…And live happily ever after. Yes champ; rub it in.

For the rest of you, life abroad is a crest of trajectories.

You come into America, by air, by sea, or via a midnight sneak-in across the Mexican border; fooling the Minute Men and Lou Dobbs all at once. You come to school, to join your spouse, to work after winning the Green Card Lottery, or to raise your hand at the airport and claim persecution in your own country because you are a Mormon as well as a leader in MEND.

You behold America the beautiful. The triple-decker burgers and the giant cup of coke and cars that are wider than your village road and you wonder what took you so long to get here. You get on with schooling. For now any cheap school will do. You study the things people who came before you say brings money – the things Americans do not want to study- to prepare you for the job Americans do not want to do. You hear nursing, bloody, nursing. You say, bring it on. You get on with marriage - the convenience marriage- discovering that you married three persons at once; the person you thought you married, the person your spouse really is and the person your spouse becomes because you got married in this America. For work, you do anything for a dollar; fast food restaurant, drive a cab, guard the parking lot of company executives younger than you, even care for the disabled, breaking your back to pay the bills.

Then reality hits. The dollar is not adding up. There’s more going out than coming in. Time is running. Letters, emails and phone calls are enveloping you from home. School is done; where is the job? Your accent is a problem. Racism is real. You’re finally squeezed in. Corporate job at last. Work place politics really sucks. Meanwhile, the American spouse is gone but your residency is established. Now where do you find someone to marry for real? A Blind date? E-harmony.com? Town conventions? What of picking up someone from your village? But these are all packages which content you cannot ascertain. Somehow, you settle with one. Honeymoon over, now what is the state of the marriage? First mission accomplished, now what next?

You start a house in your village. A big house. You sink in any money you can get. Some of it goes to the house but most of it goes to your family member who is supervising the construction. It costs more than it will to buy a comparable house in America. You afraid to calculate how many days you will sleep in this house in your life time. You say, Tufiakwa. It will not be your portion. You need to do it not just because everyone is doing it – your daddy is demanding it. He’s asking you to wipe away the shame on the family’s face.

Your daddy dies. Your dentist extracts a tooth.

Then America begins to reveal itself quietly. Oh tribalism again; discrimination at the work place. Your head touches the virtual ceiling for immigrants. You now understand affirmative action. Kids come but housemaids are tagged slavery, who will care for them? Now you have day care, mortgage, after school sport activities, mid-life career crisis, more phone calls from home, and marital problems. If only some of these can wait. You can call marital problems by its real name- money problems entangled with control problems, decision making disagreements, tasks and privileges, status problems and in-law problems. Maybe you will stay home with the kids. Maybe your mother will come and help … and incense your spouse.

With caning banished, you raise teens with your hands tied to your back. Marital problems persist because as your fortune falls that of your spouse rises. You have done your calculation. Something has to give. You try selling real estate. You prepare taxes. You sell insurance. You run out of contacts. You buy cars from the auction and ship them home. You get duped by friends and family. Nothing is adding up. Fast insurance fraud deals? You try other businesses on the side, but total dedication is needed. You quit your job entirely and start a business. Cleaning business. Staffing business. Medical equipment. Home Health business. Escort service. Oh, these taxes, running costs, government paper works and lack of patronage by your own people.

Marital problems persist. You wish you had married the lover you left in Nigeria to come to America. You take the divorce option. Half of your wealth is wiped out. Now rages the battle for visitation rights, alimony and child support. You’re estranged from the kids because of the stories your spouse made up against you to win custody. But you keep paying up. You have no option. You start afresh. A new apartment. Maybe a new spouse? No, that can wait. Your classmate at home becomes the CEO of a multinational company. A chieftaincy title follows and you wonder what happened to you.

You consider a fast 419 advance fee fraud deal. You remember those acquaintances still doing time in US prisons. You hold off. You dream of a contract from the government at home. You write a proposal. You get in touch with an old classmate who has done well.

Home looks attractive. The people you left behind are doing better. You conveniently forget the majority who are not making ends meet. You are overwhelmed. High blood pressure is diagnosed. High cholesterol. Heart problems. Another tooth is extracted. You join the gym. You stay away from garri and farina. You join a church. You can be a pastor too, but you don’t like that lifestyle of pretending to be what you’re not. Life is no more fun. You go home, dabble in business, in politics, in entertainment.

You are burnt. You return. You start afresh.

No, you won't take the divorce option. You will manage. You will live like roommates, until the kids are grown and are out of the house. You will wait for retirement. You need just ten more years. At 56, with social security plus pension pay and 401K, you can go to the village, if kidnappers permit, and enjoy your old age. And start afresh. Maybe marry anew. Maybe teach in a college in Nigeria. Yeah! You register for a PhD with an online college.

Your Mummy dies. Your dentist extracts another tooth. Your doctor suggests knee and hip replacement. Your shrink prescribes Prozac.

In spite of your wahala, the children grow. The girls do well in school. The boys go from four-year colleges to two- year colleges, in between gang membership and police troubles. The boys marry White girls. The girls marry African-Americans. You’re glad the girls did not get pregnant out of wedlock. You thank God the boys did not throw a coming out party to announce that they are gay. One lives in Arizona and another in Hawaii. Your house is empty, calls come on holidays only.

It is now time to really go home. But what about managing the diabetes? Do you trust the doctors at home to handle your dialysis? Your medication cocktail will be hard to find at home. Daddy and Mummy are dead. You have to make new friends again. The ones you used to have are now strangers to you. Your spouse refuses to go with you. Spouse cannot deal with the sound of electric generators, untreated well water, Afor Igwe meat without an FDA inspection tag.

You retire. You sell the big house and move into a small condo. When you cannot wipe your behind, you go from the condo to a nursing home. Your children are too busy to have you share their homes. They visit every presidential election year. Once again, you think of going home but no, it is rather too late for that. The twelfth tooth is gone. You now take more pills than the teeth in your mouth.

So you stay until your autopsy is ready. Your townsfolk contribute money to ship you home. As your coffin lands in Lagos, your relations who have gathered to receive you for the last time mutter in between breaths, Tufiakwa. Yes, the same tufiakwa that you said the time you read the article called ‘This American Life’.

Oh, about your kids, well, some of them went home with your body. Those few times you cleaned your bank account to take them home paid off. They watch as sand lands on your coffin. One even remembered how to say, ‘Kedu’. They leave soon after. They will come back one more time – when they accompany your ex on the final journey home.



http://saharareporters.com/column/american-life-rudolf-ogoo-okonkwo

Interesting post....I fully expect it to make front page....

MY FAV QUOTE FROM THIS PIECE: " You thankGod the boys did not throw a coming out party to announce that they are gay. One lives in Arizona and another in Hawaii. Your house is empty, calls come on holidays only."

Was he paid to prepare this write-up?

So you mean every immigrants will end their lives just the same way ?...just because it happened to a relative of yours does not mean it will happen to every other person.
'The painful part of being poor is seeing another person living ur dreams, and the consoling part is that we are all gon' die'
We all can't live the same!

ola4yinka: So you mean every immigrants will end their lives just the same way ?...just because it happened to a relative of yours does not mean it will happen to every other person.
'The painful part of being poor is seeing another person living ur dreams, and the consoling part is that we are all gon' die'
We all can't live the same!

And where precisely in the article did it say that every immigrant will end his/her life this way? Mtshew!

I hope as many people as possible read this. By and large, it is the bitter truth. Having lived in the UK for 10 years, and as a professional at that, I can say firmly that a lot of Our folks who venture abroad need to think it through well. I have seen quite a few folks wander till the prime of life is past. And then even their kids get lost to the 'system'. By the time everyone wakes up to reality, a lot water has passed under the bridge. If you are young person thinking of moving abroad, think carefully. I would not even advice anyone over 35 to consider relocating abroad permanently in terms of starting a new life/career. If you are under 35 and have been abroad and struggling with no clear end in sight, go back home.

Even in the Bible people migrated..there's nothing I repeat nothing u can do about it!...continue giving bad tales about living abroad pple will still travel #fact.

Front page MOD..nawa oo..
if na tonto now e for dey F-page since.

Wow life....

l am currently in the States..l hope l don't end up like this.The American dream can also end up as a nightmare

Hope it makes the front page. Bitter truth I tell ya. you need to see the way fellow Nigerians are reacting to this article via their comments on saharareporters. very typical of Nigerians.

am surprised this hasnt made front page yet....@justwise you had a change of heart?

This bad-bi-tch of a life men...
but this isn't peculiar to Nigerians. Anyone living here on earth can relate to this...I haven't stepped out of Nigeria but I can relate to most of what the author describes, even as a young person..the feeling of unaccomplishment, jealousy, lovelessness; it assaults us all as individuals alike. We're either winners or losers in this cruel wicked world; for the most part we are all losers!

Very funny, really interesting

The sad Reality, but they won't listen.

Who America epp, if not for our worthless leaders, na Americans for dey beg us to visit them

This one is life of hard knocks!! God forbid


But I feel The Nigeria dream is even more depressing and won't even permit you to live this long!


Last last, na to work hard and pray to God for favor every day!

Even the Nigerian dream is 100 times worst than this

Nigerians and rubbish.

How about you're young 24years with a stylish hair, you get to ikorodu, you're called a badoo member and lynched.

You work very hard but you're surrounded by bunch of delusional church goers who believe one day they will be very rich without doing anything cause they have grace which you do not.

We pray morning and night, 4 different churches in one plaza and still we depend on China to get almost every thing we use.

You pay 1500$ to 2000$ for a Toyota venza, then you pay an extra 1 million naira to the government in other to bring the vehicle into the country.

Nigeria a place filled with hypocrites of the highest form, corruption, crime justifiers, tribalism, lazy youths looking for easy money, very bad roads, generic minded people.

Yet they will come on blogs to spill trash about a country doing 100times better than them.

A place where nothing works(tufiakwa to the person who wrote this).

Funny, interesting, deep and deep!!!!

Interesting post....I fully expect it to make front page....

interesting piece, u should have holla uncle lalasticlala

@op well done but what you were trying to depicts in your post is that all African American or immigrants live this kind of life and ended up same.well your realities may necessarily not same with others..is not for fun they call abroad greener pasture..
80% immigrants ended up being better than their peers at home.challenge me to a debate on this.

apache77:
You come to America, young and dashing, on full scholarship, finish school, get a great job, marry a glamorous spouse, have cute children, and retire at a young age with a great pension, portfolio and posture.

…And live happily ever after. Yes champ; rub it in.

For the rest of you, life abroad is a crest of trajectories.

You come into America, by air, by sea, or via a midnight sneak-in across the Mexican border; fooling the Minute Men and Lou Dobbs all at once. You come to school, to join your spouse, to work after winning the Green Card Lottery, or to raise your hand at the airport and claim persecution in your own country because you are a Mormon as well as a leader in MEND.

You behold America the beautiful. The triple-decker burgers and the giant cup of coke and cars that are wider than your village road and you wonder what took you so long to get here. You get on with schooling. For now any cheap school will do. You study the things people who came before you say brings money – the things Americans do not want to study- to prepare you for the job Americans do not want to do. You hear nursing, bloody, nursing. You say, bring it on. You get on with marriage - the convenience marriage- discovering that you married three persons at once; the person you thought you married, the person your spouse really is and the person your spouse becomes because you got married in this America. For work, you do anything for a dollar; fast food restaurant, drive a cab, guard the parking lot of company executives younger than you, even care for the disabled, breaking your back to pay the bills.

Then reality hits. The dollar is not adding up. There’s more going out than coming in. Time is running. Letters, emails and phone calls are enveloping you from home. School is done; where is the job? Your accent is a problem. Racism is real. You’re finally squeezed in. Corporate job at last. Work place politics really sucks. Meanwhile, the American spouse is gone but your residency is established. Now where do you find someone to marry for real? A Blind date? E-harmony.com? Town conventions? What of picking up someone from your village? But these are all packages which content you cannot ascertain. Somehow, you settle with one. Honeymoon over, now what is the state of the marriage? First mission accomplished, now what next?

You start a house in your village. A big house. You sink in any money you can get. Some of it goes to the house but most of it goes to your family member who is supervising the construction. It costs more than it will to buy a comparable house in America. You afraid to calculate how many days you will sleep in this house in your life time. You say, Tufiakwa. It will not be your portion. You need to do it not just because everyone is doing it – your daddy is demanding it. He’s asking you to wipe away the shame on the family’s face.

Your daddy dies. Your dentist extracts a tooth.

Then America begins to reveal itself quietly. Oh tribalism again; discrimination at the work place. Your head touches the virtual ceiling for immigrants. You now understand affirmative action. Kids come but housemaids are tagged slavery, who will care for them? Now you have day care, mortgage, after school sport activities, mid-life career crisis, more phone calls from home, and marital problems. If only some of these can wait. You can call marital problems by its real name- money problems entangled with control problems, decision making disagreements, tasks and privileges, status problems and in-law problems. Maybe you will stay home with the kids. Maybe your mother will come and help … and incense your spouse.

With caning banished, you raise teens with your hands tied to your back. Marital problems persist because as your fortune falls that of your spouse rises. You have done your calculation. Something has to give. You try selling real estate. You prepare taxes. You sell insurance. You run out of contacts. You buy cars from the auction and ship them home. You get duped by friends and family. Nothing is adding up. Fast insurance fraud deals? You try other businesses on the side, but total dedication is needed. You quit your job entirely and start a business. Cleaning business. Staffing business. Medical equipment. Home Health business. Escort service. Oh, these taxes, running costs, government paper works and lack of patronage by your own people.

Marital problems persist. You wish you had married the lover you left in Nigeria to come to America. You take the divorce option. Half of your wealth is wiped out. Now rages the battle for visitation rights, alimony and child support. You’re estranged from the kids because of the stories your spouse made up against you to win custody. But you keep paying up. You have no option. You start afresh. A new apartment. Maybe a new spouse? No, that can wait. Your classmate at home becomes the CEO of a multinational company. A chieftaincy title follows and you wonder what happened to you.

You consider a fast 419 advance fee fraud deal. You remember those acquaintances still doing time in US prisons. You hold off. You dream of a contract from the government at home. You write a proposal. You get in touch with an old classmate who has done well.

Home looks attractive. The people you left behind are doing better. You conveniently forget the majority who are not making ends meet. You are overwhelmed. High blood pressure is diagnosed. High cholesterol. Heart problems. Another tooth is extracted. You join the gym. You stay away from garri and farina. You join a church. You can be a pastor too, but you don’t like that lifestyle of pretending to be what you’re not. Life is no more fun. You go home, dabble in business, in politics, in entertainment.

You are burnt. You return. You start afresh.

No, you won't take the divorce option. You will manage. You will live like roommates, until the kids are grown and are out of the house. You will wait for retirement. You need just ten more years. At 56, with social security plus pension pay and 401K, you can go to the village, if kidnappers permit, and enjoy your old age. And start afresh. Maybe marry anew. Maybe teach in a college in Nigeria. Yeah! You register for a PhD with an online college.

Your Mummy dies. Your dentist extracts another tooth. Your doctor suggests knee and hip replacement. Your shrink prescribes Prozac.

In spite of your wahala, the children grow. The girls do well in school. The boys go from four-year colleges to two- year colleges, in between gang membership and police troubles. The boys marry White girls. The girls marry African-Americans. You’re glad the girls did not get pregnant out of wedlock. You thank God the boys did not throw a coming out party to announce that they are gay. One lives in Arizona and another in Hawaii. Your house is empty, calls come on holidays only.

It is now time to really go home. But what about managing the diabetes? Do you trust the doctors at home to handle your dialysis? Your medication cocktail will be hard to find at home. Daddy and Mummy are dead. You have to make new friends again. The ones you used to have are now strangers to you. Your spouse refuses to go with you. Spouse cannot deal with the sound of electric generators, untreated well water, Afor Igwe meat without an FDA inspection tag.

You retire. You sell the big house and move into a small condo. When you cannot wipe your behind, you go from the condo to a nursing home. Your children are too busy to have you share their homes. They visit every presidential election year. Once again, you think of going home but no, it is rather too late for that. The twelfth tooth is gone. You now take more pills than the teeth in your mouth.

So you stay until your autopsy is ready. Your townsfolk contribute money to ship you home. As your coffin lands in Lagos, your relations who have gathered to receive you for the last time mutter in between breaths, Tufiakwa. Yes, the same tufiakwa that you said the time you read the article called ‘This American Life’.

Oh, about your kids, well, some of them went home with your body. Those few times you cleaned your bank account to take them home paid off. They watch as sand lands on your coffin. One even remembered how to say, ‘Kedu’. They leave soon after. They will come back one more time – when they accompany your ex on the final journey home.



http://saharareporters.com/column/american-life-rudolf-ogoo-okonkwo

Insightful and thought provoking. Your link to Nigeria will be completely eroded, if this is what you want then your decision to migrate is a good one in the long run but if you still want your children to establish some contact with their root even while you are gone in future then you should think long and hard about the decisions you make


Lalasticlala, oga justwise, myd44, Dominique this is a good thread worthy of FP

The irony is the writer still lives in the US. Keep deceiving yourselves

Western world is this...As you lay your Bed,Na so u go sleep on top am...Its very important to plan a life over here and thats the principle so many immigrants lack

skitkid2:
Nigerians and rubbish.

How about you're young 24years with a stylish hair, you get to ikorodu, you're called a badoo member and lynched.

You work very hard but you're surrounded by bunch of delusional church goers who believe one day they will be very rich without doing anything cause they have grace which you do not.

We pray morning and night, 4 different churches in one plaza and still we depend on China to get almost every thing we use.

You pay 1500$ to 2000$ for a Toyota venza, then you pay an extra 1 million naira to the government in other to bring the vehicle into the country.

Nigeria a place filled with hypocrites of the highest form, corruption, crime justifiers, tribalism, lazy youths looking for easy money, very bad roads, generic minded people.

Yet they will come on blogs to spill trash about a country doing 100times better than them.

A place where nothing works(tufiakwa to the person who wrote this).

The truth about Home the OP refuse to mention

OP you're a #Hypocite