A German lady's love for Naija

A German Lady’s love For Naija

By YINKA FABOWALE, (Just back from Vomperberg, Austria)

  

 

 

I met her just after we disembarked from the Lufthansa airbus that flew us from Lagos to Frankfurt, Germany.

We both had connecting flights to catch- she to Munich, I to Innsbruck. She seemed to know her way around among the crowd of passengers trying to find directions to the next various boarding gates – so, I asked her help, which she willingly gave on learning I was a Nigerian.

Obviously, Cathy Streicher was still delirious about her experience staying in Nigeria. She had been on vacation and spent two weeks in the country – her first trip to Africa as an adult.

 Cathy is black, of Camerounian parentage, in fact, albeit, a German citizen by birth and marriage. She was born in Germany, she said, and could remember having been taken to Cameroun only as a child by her parents. She was, therefore, visiting Africa by herself for the first time, she told me proudly.

But, why the choice of Nigeria and not her native Cameroun? I was curious.

My friend, who speaks German, French and English and who I rather found chatty, said she had come to pray at Prophet T.B. Joshua’s Synagogue, whose “miracles” and preaching she had been watching on Emmanuel TV.

Then, I suddenly recalled noticing her among a group of foreigners including some Filipinos who talked excitedly about the blessing they received from the Synagogue, while on the queue for immigration formalities at the departure lounge of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos September 3, 2013.

“Your country is beautiful. Ah, I love it. Lagos is good city. All they tell us here about Nigeria is all lies, lies I say”, Cathy enthused, with a tinge of annoyance at her compatriots, as we dragged our luggage along, trying to find our way at the German airport.

In what amounted to more than racial solidarity, she railed at the mass media in Europe for allegedly feeding the public with negative stories and comments about Africa, especially, Nigeria, saying she was almost dissuaded from making the trip by friends because the country has been portrayed as an unsafe enclave of scammers, criminals, terrorists and dangerous religious fundamentalists.

According to her, even her bankers were reluctant to transfer money she wanted to spend, warning her prowling fraudsters would easily detect and access the pin number of her master card and clean out her account. But, the brave lady was adamant on taking the risk. “I told them I would take some money along then. But again I was told robbers would attack me, because I am a foreigner, but I said how would they know (that she is a foreigner) I am black as them”.

Cathy, a young, rotund mother of three, married to a Munich- based automobile engineer to whom she works as secretary, said she loved Lagos, except for the traffic. “In Munich, I start the car, I go on the highway to Stuttgart, no stopping. But in Lagos, you wait, wait in the traffic”, she complained, recalling her frustration at spending five hours in the traffic between her hotel in Ikotun area and Lagos Island where she went for shopping.

She was surprised I was on holiday without my family.

I countered her veiled accusation, pointing out that she too was alone on the trip.

But, she explained her husband had to mind the kids in addition to managing the workshop, because they had not planned their vacation together. I made a mock show of alarm at hearing what I told her was sacrilege in masochist Africa.

Cathy replied that, that was why she married a white and not a chauvinistic black man, reasoning that if she always took the burden of caring for the kids any time the man was away on business or even holiday, she expected him to endure her turn for a brief period.

Yet, she would not stop talking about Nigeria, which, she promised to revisit. “The people are very nice”, she remarked, adding: “Never mind the lies they tell us here. I trust the people, they are very, very friendly and helpful”.

Then she informed me of her plan to open a boutique in Lagos. She had found a young girl to manage the business and very shortly she intended sending money down to the manager of the hotel she stayed in to help in setting up”, she said.

Immediately, I felt uneasy and my first impulse was to warn her to be wary and not be rash, wondering how long and well she had known the people to have developed that level of trust in them.

But coming from a Nigerian, I knew that could send a wrong signal, confuse and persuade her that the image of the country she had heard about was probably correct after all.

But if she is defrauded by her prospective business associates, who, she told me were the ones who persuaded her to invest in the country, that could do a greater damage to her impression of Nigerians, I surmised.

Dilemma.

I was still contemplating what my response should be, when a female police officer of the German Federal Police (Bundensen Polizei) bawled out a segregation order as we approached queues of travelers undergoing immigration checks ahead of us. “Europeans this way, please”, she shouted.

That brought an abrupt end to our conversation. I saw a look of regret on Cathy’s face, as she moved in the direction indicated by the policewoman. She was, no doubt reluctant to part company yet and evidently wanted my opinion. But, I had moved to queue behind other nationals, waving at her, and sad at my lack of courage.

But then she turned to look at me from her side of the queue and said with a little nervous smile: “Well, if I’m duped, I just won’t come back to Nigeria. There will be no reason to”.

A grateful feeling of relief flooded my mind, as I realized that despite my silence, she was able to pick my thoughts. Or, perhaps, something in my uncertain mien told her my mind.