Home, through another's eyes

If you look hard enough, you’ll find traces of the people and places you miss almost anywhere you go. Waiting in the International Programs Office at the university early in ther term, I glanced at a bookshelf to my left and saw a promo VHS for Marywood University, my sister’s alma mater. A few weeks later, I was handing my backpack to the porter at the library when I found myself staring at the logo on his polo shirt. It was from Bishop Hoban, the now defunct Catholic High School in Wilkes-Barres whose baseball and basketball teams dealt me and my friends many a sound defeat. I constantly find myself in circumstances that remind me of my parents, my girlfriend, my home.

Not too long ago I was having a conversation with a friend and fellow grad student from the Gambia (not my roommate) when he mentioned that he had studied for a semester in the US. I asked him where. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, in the western part of the state. I asked him his impressions. He replied that while he found the people at the school to be very pleasant, small town Pennsylvania wasn’t exactly his cup of tea. So he headed for Boston where he spent the rest of the year with family. On the bus ride to Boston, he looked at the window. And I know what he saw. The low-lying hills, the bare rock where the road was blasted through, the forests and cornfields tripping over each other, truck stops, and Perkins. So he wondered to himself what types of opportunities could possibly exist in a place like this. His bus stopped for a time in a small, gray city, a very depressing place. “W something. Wiksbaum maybe.”

I held my breath. “Wilkes-Barre?”

“That’s it.”

I laughed nervously. He was saying exactly what many of my friends have said about the non-Pittsburgh, non-Philly parts of PA and doing exactly what many of my friends and, despite my genuine fondness for my home, myself have done: leave. But he’s an African. Shouldn’t Africans look upon America – all of America – as the land of opportunity? Whether its amber waves of grain or a strip mall, doesn’t America at its least appealing beat Africa at its best?

Well, no. Brain drain from Africa is a much-discussed topic, but it’s just as live an issue in the rural T of PA (the Northern Tier and the central part of the state). My friend’s impressions don’t prove anything about the US, PA, or the Gambia. They just present a reminder that Africa does not look upon the US with unqualified envy and that America need not look back with unqualified pity. For that particular man, gazing upon that particular part of the country, the Gambia held more promise.