Jabula' s Happiness Autobiography book

Chapter Thirteen

The Motherland

My mother took me to JFK airport. I had a backpack and one piece of luggage and I met up with the group I was going with. Mom gave me $400 for the trip. The flight was mad long like fifteen hours or so, with three different flight changes. I sat next to this girl I was digging that was in our group, and we shared my walk man. Looking back in retrospect, if somebody had taped this trip it would have made a hell of a reality show like Real World or something. Every guy was looking for who they were going to hook up with for the four weeks we were going to be there. We went through customs and had to pay for a 30 day visa, it only cost me $30, I got it before we left JFK airport. Africa was cool, it was different but not that different. It wasn’t as primitive as people would like you to think. It was pretty modern.

We stayed at a college campus dormitory and we had to pick our roommates, of course I wanted to roommate with my new lady friend. But the adult supervisors weren’t having that under their watch. So I shared a room with this other kid. I cant remember his name for some reason, but he wasn’t that bad to room with. He was feeling that same girl I was talking to, but he was talking to this other girl on the trip that was feeling me. So we would sneak to their rooms late, or they would sneak to ours, and we’d be up all night acting silly. During the days we would take a class about African culture for a couple hours, and then the rest of the day would be ours. I wasn’t accustomed to the food there. I’m a visual person, and to me the food didn’t look too appetizing. I would go to this place they called the government store; they sold crackers, cookies, sodas, and that kind of stuff. For that whole trip I didn’t really eat anything real, just junk food and snacks. The only thing I did eat if we went to a restaurant was the French fries. We had to switch our money to their currency out there. I remembered only having to switch like $20 or $30 that gave me a lot of money worth in their currency.

We would go into town, and buy little things, go hiking, and interact with natives. If we needed to use the phones we had to go kind of far. It was to the point where they had to schedule time to go somewhere where we could call home. I spoke to my mom and she was excited for me, she said she was doing okay and that she missed me. My little brother came back home to New York from California, so they were spending time together. Things were good the first week and a half, but after that people on the trip were acting funny. There was a lot of he said, she said bullshit with people talking behind your back. Needless to say I was ready to go back home. It was always hot and the funny thing was, I seen more white people in Africa than I’ve ever seen in my life.

When we would be in town some people were nice to us, but some acted like we were traitors because we were from America. They would talk down on the fact that some of the girls with us on the trip wore make up and permed their hair. It was a little weird to experience that, but I learned that nigga’s will be nigga’s no matter where you go or where you’re from. We tear each other down in the U.S. and I’m in the motherland and the same shit is going on. I was really ready to go at that point. By this time I was in my third week, and I pretty much kept to myself. I was tired, I needed a haircut and I didn’t get to speak to my mom much the last time I called she wasn’t home. I got a chance to call and this time she was there, we spoke for a short while and she told me she was all right. She was getting ready to go to the Virgin Island for a vacation for a couple of days, and she’d be back before I got home. The last thing we said to each other was I love you.

Now I’m in the last week, and we were each scheduled to stay at a native’s house for the week, to really live the lifestyle. We all met with different families, and this one girl in particular decided to pick me. She was a little older than I was, but she was cute. Her choosing me made my day, and all the guys were jealous. I’m sad that I can’t remember her and her family’s names, because they treated me so nice. They did everything to make me comfortable, like renting videos for me to watch movies. I still didn’t agree with the food so I didn’t really eat, but they still tried to get me things that I would like, and I appreciated it so much.