The joy and pain of American life

By Egara Kabaji

The hundreds of people who visit the United States Embassy in Nairobi to apply for visas say it all — their expectations in the rosy US are high. They are partly motivated by other Kenyans living in America who are economical with truth on their status and life.

It is true that America’s spotless roads devoid of potholes, wide boulevards, skyscrapers that make our own skyscrapers in Nairobi look like babies are tempting. But behind this facade there is another reality characterised by struggle and pain. This is the story that is never told.

"I was excited when I received my passport with that small piece of paper called a visa pinned in it from the American Embassy. It was the breakthrough that I had been praying for," says Samuel Karanja a businessman living in Pennsylvania.

Karanja says he departed from Kenya believing he had left poverty behind and all his problems had been solved. Despite his expectations, America had a number of shocks for him.

"I am a lawyer by profession but I could not practice law in this country. I was asked to go back to school," he says.

"I had done all manner of manual jobs until I decided to establish my own business," he adds.

Karanja is just one of the many professional Kenyans who got a shock when they arrived in the US.

On the positive side, America is an orderly society where rules are followed to the letter. It is not the place for perennial lawbreakers. Bad driving, driving under the influence of alcohol, smoking in public and urinating in public attract severe punishment.

A police state

"America is positively a police state. It is a country for women, children and pets. Never mess with these three," says a professor in Pennsylvania. "I did not know that by leaving Kenya, I was abandoning my social life," says Gilbert Lwedeya who loved socialised easily in Kenya.

"There is no time here to get together. People work for 16 or 18 hours a day for survival," he says.

Life in America can be a struggle especially when one divides his earnings between paying mortgage, maintaining a car, food and hospital bills. An average family cannot afford the luxury of having a resident house-help to take care of children. A couple with a child has to work in shifts in order to care for the child.

The good thing about the US is that so long as you remain on the right side of the law, even if your visa expires, you can still do odd jobs and stay unnoticed. These are the invisible Kenyans in America. They work in nursing homes, clean toilets and wash dishes.

Kenyans in the US keenly follow what is going on at home. They read our newspapers online and have formed social networks through which they discuss Kenyan politics. They live in clusters that are sometimes defined by ethnicity. Occasionally, they organise parties in which they consume nyama choma, sing and tell folktales just to remind themselves of who they are.

The open secret is that many of them lead lonely and nostalgic lives. Though American law prohibits discrimination, subtle forms of racism exist. This makes many of our people yearn for home.

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