The American Home

 For almost a week I didn’t make a call to Nigeria with no significant discomfort or awareness except for the fact my phone’s network went completely dead. Like the phone, my PC charger too wasn’t American standard. Social media replaced the need for traditional phone calling with cheaper price and improved features.

However, I needed to buy new phone and PC charger. I needed new phone for my line to continue receiving authentication code messages. Michael took me and the lady for the business of the day. He is our eyes. He took us around, speaking on our behalf as we struggled with American accent. Americans are warmth, but they aren’t considerate on accent. Michael would sometime allow us try our luck, and when we failed, he would jump in with assistance.  

Tolu, Mike and I at a restaurant

 

The bucks stop at Michael’s desk for our bewilderment. For instance, one day the power in our temporary housing unexpectedly went out. The outage brought to the fore the sudden realization of the vital role of electricity in countries like America. The wi-fi, our sole means of communication infrastructure, went dead. The toilet couldn’t work, the food in the fridge would perish. You couldn’t bathe or eat or call office to make your case.

We got up and tried to figure things out. We needed to call Michael urgently and inform him of our situation. Otherwise, we should have to wait till the next day when he would come to take us out.

We’re stuck before an idea occurred to me. The incident affected only a part of the house, the kitchen and dining area were normal. American home is wired in a way that prevents experiencing total power blackout. At least three sections of the house were connected differently so that you could always have a chance to use the power in emergency situation.

We tried to move the router to the other part of the house. But our strategy didn’t work. The lady suggested we knock at our neighbor’s door for assistance. Concerned about the individualistic America and its fervor for privacy, I was reluctant to buy into the idea. Practically speaking we had no option except if we should wait for Michael, which wasn’t a decision we were aiming for.

We walked out tentatively, knocked at the opposite unit of the condo. A piano was playing, the voice answered barely above the sound. A minute later the door opened to a tall man in his 60s.

“I am Abubakar, a Fulbright scholar from Nigeria at UW-Madison.” The lady also did the same. We’re Black and strangers who wanted to earn his respect and trust. 

We told him the problem and asked if we could please use his wi-fi to call our brother. He agreed and went back inside. Minutes later he showed up with the login details of his network. We called Michael and told him what had happened. This was a big problem which we thought we caused. But the way Michael talked so lightly washed away my fears. This is apparently a common experience in America.

Michael asked few questions and gave us directions to the main. Our neighbor went with us to the house. He opened the main, shone a torch into the box and kept playing tricks on the switches until the light came back. The American home sits on a massive, intricate power connection equivalent to portable transformer. It’s an artful work of engineering that connects the unit’s power, gas, heater, and plumbing from the larger system.

I began to fear one day accident might happen, but trust Americans, nothing would happen if you stick to the manual. 

American home, generally, is like a mini office or a colony that contains almost everything the occupant needed, from first aid kits to maintenance tools. 

 

Madison, WI