The Burden of My Being

I have just learnt that for one with a Nigerian passport, getting a visa into Kenya is like drawing teeth. It is excruciating. It is long.
“We will have to refer your visa request to Nairobi, Madam. It will take around six weeks before we get a response. And even then we can’t assure you that you’ll get a visa.” The receptionist’s voice at the Kenyan embassy on Winston Churchillstraat in Brussels is polite. Calm. Almost bored. She might have been filing her nails. I do not have six weeks to wait for a visa application that may or may not be granted. I have to be in Kenya at the beginning of March for the Caine Writing Workshop. It will be my first time in East Africa and I do not intend to miss it.

“And if I had an EU passport? A Belgian passport?” I try. I really want to make this workshop. It will be a chance to see Kenya. To visit with my sister-in-law and her family in Kisumu. To meet up with old friends. To make some new ones. And to work on my writing.
The almost-bored voice rises. It is like a volume switch has been turned up several notches .
 “Do you have a Belgian passport?” I imagine her discarding the nail file and holding the ear piece closer to her ear, all the better to hear me with. I have her full attention. “You have a Belgian passport?” She asks again. I wonder if she thinks I am slightly deaf.
“Yes.” My voice is flat. My heart is weighed down by guilt. Guilt because I am already wondering if I am selling out by resorting to my EU passport. I already feel like a sellout when I am in between braids. And as far as I am concerned, this is worse than having your hair chemically stretched and in a pony tail. I mean, I have seen blue-eyed, blonde-haired women in braids.
“Then madam, your visa application will only take twenty-four hours to process. When do you intend to travel?”
” February,” I reply. My voice is low. Subdued by the guilt that is ravaging my insides like acid on paper.
“You have got loads of time, then. It would have been a different matter with your Nigerian passport.” She manages a laugh. Amused, I think, by the fact I would think of traveling with a Nigerian passport when I had a Belgian one. I imagine that she expects me to join in the laughter. I remain silent. Her laughter tapers out and I ask myself if I have embarrassed her by my silence. She tells me what to bring along to the embassy. A passport picture. Forty Euro. A return ticket or a letter of invitation from the Caine Organization. “Your visa should be ready for you to pick up the day after you apply, Madam.”
I am relieved that I will make the workshop after all. But there is a bitter aftertaste in the wake of my relief. It is as if I have chewed on ugolo, bitter-kola. I remember the first time I ate ugolo. I blocked out the taste while I chewed, as I had been advised to by veteran eaters. But once I swallowed it, its bitterness rose from deep down my throat and clouded my mouth. It was like nothing I had ever eaten. It was more acrid than I had thought possible for anything to be. I could no longer ignore it. Or pretend like it was not there. That is the same way I feel now. I do not want to enter Africa as a naturalized European. I am almost angry. Why should I be forced to enter Kenya with a Belgian passport? I resent it and I am almost tempted to go ahead and apply for a visa with my Nigerian passport. But I know I do not have the luxury of that choice. Six weeks is too long to wait. And what if it gets turned down? I know I will have to swallow my pride. This time. I try to feel grateful that I have an alternative nationality. The way I feel when I vote to keep the extreme right out of power. The way I felt when I ran for council elections in 2000. However, that gratitude is reluctant to surface this time. It is stubborn. It refuses to be dredged up.
All day, the same question keeps turning in my head. It multiplies and takes on varying forms, but in essence, it remains the same: “How are the mighty fallen?” I have always known that Nigeria has lost its place on the ladder. We all know that. Yet, I have to admit that I never realized how far down we were.
Maybe I have been an ostrich, I think, hiding my head in the sand. Refusing to see what is obvious: the way my Nigerian passport is thumbed and closely examined by immigration officials. The snickers when I say I am Nigerian. The jokes about 419 scams. Recent fiction coming out of the rest of Africa where characters are warned to steer clear of Nigerians. Strange, middle-aged, white women coming up to me at readings to tell me they have got Nigerian daughters-in-law, schoondochters, who want to go on vacation to Nigeria with their children and is it safe? What with the problems in the Delta region. And from what they hear, the lack of drinking water. And lack of proper healthcare. And lack of gas. And oh, let us not forget the robberies.
I have got sand in my eyes. The more I rid my eyes of the sand, the clearer my vision is. And the clearer my vision is, the more unbearable the burden of my being becomes.