My America

I stepped off the plane from South Africa, in Washington, DC. I went outside and smoked a cigarette and surveyed what I could see of the city. It was early morning and gleaming. I saw people with coffees and cell phones looking busy and badly dressed.

I used to drive by Africans waiting at the bus stop on North Coast Road in my home town of Durban, South Africa. Those Africans had something I never saw in the fabulous people that lived in my neighborhood and went to gym at Virgin Active in La Lucia. They carried a sadness with them that was visible even when they were smiling. There was a hardness to them that couldn’t be covered up with their clothes.

I live in Nashville, Tennessee now. My neighbors; the people I see at the gas stations and in the malls all have that sadness I used to see in the Africans. I used to think that it was there because of the injustice of the lives of the African people. Living in their squatter camps and villages and commuting into nice neighborhoods every day to work. But here I see people who weren’t politically abused or unjustly oppressed living in a kind of squalor that that they bought into of their own free will. They have more money here and they have more stuff, nicer clothes, better cars, i-phones, i-pods, good jobs. But they’re just as lost and hopeless as those Africans who are still standing at that bus-stop every day.

The America in my memory is a backyard next to a football field with warm summer rains and bare-chested summer days. The America in my memory is a friendly place full of familiar places and things and routines. The America in my memory is proud and right and confident and righteous and just. Now it seems America has doubts. There is an awareness among Americans that maybe things are changing. All that seemed so sure and steady; our position in the world, our economy, our jobs are in question. “Where are our troops?”, “Why are they there?”, “Are we fighting the right battles?”, “Are we right?”; These are the questions America is asking. Where is my America now? Maybe it was only ever in my head.

Street signs bark at me everywhere I drive. “Jimmy’s Auto Parts and Repair” shouts in peeling paint. “Kroger” screams high atop its mast; a scream that can be heard a mile down the road. America is strip malls, signage and parking lots. America is fast food. America is fat people. America is BIG. Big is good. Bigger is better. Big cars. Big trucks. Big movie theatres. Big popcorn. Big people. Big houses. Big highways. Big signs. Big churches. Big sin. America is fast.
America is cars on highways always moving, always going, always driving. Where are you going America?

America is vast and beautiful. From the sky she is mountains, plains, trees and water. Rigid cities rise from the earth. They look small and peaceful, surrounded by so much nature, dwarfed by mountains. Tiny roads like symmetrical arteries spread and fade into the distance.

America is 9 to 5 and 5 til late. America never goes home. Always moving, eating, going, doing, meeting, greeting, partying, playing, running, gymming, driving, watching, seeing, using, buying, selling.

I am 32. My generation expects so much and appreciates so little. Everything is a ‘given’. Everything is taken for granted. There is no country where this is more apparent than in America.

But I love America. She is my home. She is my people. She is opportunity upon opportunity. She is welcoming and warm. She is a Sunday afternoon nap. She is a symphony of cultures, sometimes dissonant, but always music. She is free. She is everyone matters. She is a conversation with a stranger. She is speak your mind. She is wealthy.

America is a personal journey that for me has just begun.