‘Now let me see,’ I said, ‘it must be about the size of Texas and Oregon put together.’

‘What’s that?’ someone leaned over to hear better.

‘He says Nigeria is as large as Texas and Oregon put together.’

The gentleman leaning over whistled softly to himself. ‘It must be a very large city,’ he said.

‘Not a city but a whole country,’ I said pushing back my chair. I was beginning to get tired and hot.

‘And what is the population, do you know?’ my host followed on.

‘About one-fifth that of the US,’ I said.

‘Wow,’ they all leaned forward together, nearly bumping their heads in the process, ‘the place must be overcrowded!’

Such ignorance of the outside world or rather the total assumption by Americans that the world ends with the United States, with Europe perhaps as a mere historical extension, and the first of those old holes that the US for her own safety has to seal off from the red rats, provided for me a rude concrete barrier against which I bruised my shins again and again. And it was not confined to just the wealthy and white who could very well afford to live, thrive and die in their individual cocoons completely insulated from the rest of the world. I once took out a black girl in search of fun in New York City. Black, by the way, was just the one adjective to make her fingernails rear for some flesh to tear to pieces. Our first meeting had been at that AMSAC banquet for African Ambassadors to the United Nations. She was no black or Afro-anything but a Negro she had told me in no uncertain terms, and a Negro, she gave a clear definition, was a combination of the strains of all the peoples in the world. And when I asked whether any one of these strains could prove dominant, she replied that the combination made her a new distinct whole. ‘How spirited you are! This is the first time I have had my own fire turned back on me,’ I confessed to her.

‘Is it so?’ she smiled, and moved over to my table shawl and handbag. ‘I might as well,’ she added, ‘my escort is no great shakes. See him there dancing with someone else? But you Africans are different. You sure can talk!’

‘And act too!’ I added, calling her a drink.

Marlene was an actress with great ambition and hopes, who had appeared last on The Blacks when that show opened in New York to offer white liberals and masochists and penitents the one therapeutic treatment they had long been after; but that was almost six months ago, and since then pretty, vivacious Marlene had been a good-humoured guest of her parents far out in Brooklyn as well as of the Social Security people. And there I turn up, a real playwright! Would I please write her a part? Of course, yes, I promised. As a matter of fact, she might well fit into the plans just then taking shape for a production.

And so in the meantime Marlene and I went out in search of excitement, a quest that landed us in the exotic lap of The Village Gate in Greenwich Village. Cat, Israel and their friend Naomi with whom I became quite close made up the company. Music literally poured in from all sides that night, from the magnificent voice of the blues and folksong queen Odetta, for whom the microphone will always be superfluous, from the combo drums and brass of Herbie Mann, who had not forgotten the beat he picked up in Africa, and from the harmonica of the ingenious Adler who ranges from jazz to Bach.’We must go out more,’ Israel suggested, himself a good musician on the ‘cello. ‘Cat’s father, you remember, is a first violinist in the New York Philharmonic. We all should go and hear them sometime.’

‘Wouldn’t that be great!’ I agreed.

‘Sorry we haven’t taken you to see more of the city,’ Cat joined in.

‘Oh, I should love to see the Zoo.’ I jumped at their offer. ‘I missed it in London coming out.’

The sandwich Marlene was eating stopped half-way to her luscious wide mouth, and her eyes, unusually bright in the dim light, bore straight into me.

‘What do you want to go to the Zoo for?’ she asked in a sharp voice.

‘Why, to see the inmates there,’ I explained. ‘I’m dying to see those lions, elephants, tigers and all my other wild cousins in there.’

‘You miss them?’ Marlene looked real scared.

‘Haven’t seen any of them before in all my life,’ I disclosed.

‘No, are you kidding? Don’t those creatures crawl your village like automobiles here?’

I gave her a light smack on the shoulder, accompanied with a loud yell and laugh.

‘Now you are laughing at me!’ she pouted in her spirited way. ‘All my life I have been taught Africans live on tree-tops among those animals. How should I know you’d be coming to New York to see lions for the first time?’ It took a couple more beers and sandwiches, Naomi and Cat joining in the latter, to wash out the sick taste now on every tongue.

The point was often made, and conceded sometimes by me, that America is actually a continent and not just an ordinary country. To know her in all her amplitude and fifty odd sprawling states must therefore require specialist interest and knowledge. Of course, lots of Americans I knew, and they were not necessarily privileged or belonging to the exclusive jet set, did quite some travelling in and out of the Union. Thus in the course of the holiday season lots of the New Yorkers would flock to places like Cape Cod or Miami and beyond. But for the majority it seems the Union centres around their individual states and cities, which is good patriotism, except that it is not uncommon to run into perfectly literate and sophisticated Americans, like one young lady friend of mine from New York, asking me at Princeton in New Jersey to look her up in the city on my way to Washington, DC, way down South at the other end as the plane flies. ‘I come from California,’ had been her excuse.

For a candidate, however, for ever seeking election as the champion of what the slogan calls the free world in opposition to the flaming red devil and dragon, such an excuse would be lame indeed and holding up no real shield. Even in ordinary local politics, the candidate has first to tour his constituency and make himself familiar with the faces and facts of life of those he aspires to represent and lead. Maybe this is asking too much. Today, any candidate can handshake, buss and bribe his way to the heart of the most remote and difficult electorate, and this is the path that Americans, being a practical people and government, have chosen to tread. One danger, however, with all straight and short roads is that they often are the death of the antelope.

‘You hold back your votes and we hold back our help,’ was more or less the frank and cordial message high executives at the USAID division told us Parvin Fellows during a session with the State Department in Washington. General Lucius Clay had then just issued his report to President Kennedy calling for a trimming of sails and a bailing of ballast out of a boat whose actual trouble was not any sea rougher than normal but a crew and perhaps captain who often showed nothing but awkwardness. ‘We have all the funds, equipment and experts to supply any country soliciting our help, yes, even communist countries, but we demand not simply a native hand willing to plan and work as we direct but also a heart that will for ever say thank-you to the American people.’

Later, at the various divisions serving the different member countries we held even more frank and cordial discussions with divisional heads. The man for West Africa had just returned from a working tour of his beat and had a lot of local news from Nigeria. ‘Was that country getting her fair share of USAID?’ I asked. ‘I ask because the US has as yet no military bases there, and the bogey of a communist takeover does not stalk her as in other places. As a result, it seems that much smaller states, and not just those satisfying the twin prior conditions above, are getting more aid, although it is a pity, reports say, that this often is frittered away, less by corrupt local politicians than by US experts ill-loaded with privileges and tax exemptions, most of whom have little or no sympathetic touch with the people and plan they are despatched out to serve.’ His Excellency listened to me patiently to the end and then in his soft purring voice, while his junior at his side sat spinning circles on his note-book, spoke confidingly of the just and fair principle of aid awards.

‘Oh yes, Nigeria gets her fair share,’ he assured me, and then with a twinkle in his eyes added: ‘Even now moneys and men are ready any minute for release to Nigeria, but your governments still have not asked for them.’

‘Is that part of the $80 million given a year ago before I left home?’

‘That’s right. With a federal set-up such as you have, it has not been very easy making allocations to the individual regions without appearing to favour one to the disadvantage of the others. But we are managing all right and we all expect great things of your country both on the continent of Africa and in the councils of the world as a whole.’

Americans, very true to their candidatural role, like being liked a lot by foreigners. The picture they cut is of a big shaggy dog charging up to the chance caller, in mixed feelings of welcome and defiance, and romping one moment up your front with its great weight, all in a plea to be fondled, and in the next breaking off the embrace to canter about you, head chasing after tail, and snout in the air, offering furious barks and bites. ‘Where you from?’ they breathe hot over the stranger to their shores. And before you have had time to reply, they are pumping and priming you more: ‘How do you like the US? Do you plan to go back to that country? Don’t you find it most free here? In Russia the individual is not free, you know, he cannot even worship God as he likes and make all the money he should.’ And from this torrential downpour of self-praise the American never allows the overwhelmed visitor any cover, actually expecting in return more praise and a complete instant endorsement. God save the brash impolitic stranger who does not!

That in a small way was my fate at the loving hands of a Baptist church in Trenton, the capital city of the State of New Jersey. A chapter of ladies, not exactly the Daughters of the Revolution, anxious to welcome graduate students from countries abroad, communist countries not included, asked those of us at Princeton to come over one Sunday afternoon for tea. The cards, or invites as they call them over there, were all conspicuously signed by a certain Miss Harriet who made it very clear that the girls were all most willing and anxious to make friends. So all of us who were invited, bachelors as well as grass widowers, trouped over to Trenton that Sunday in cars made available and driven by several kind ladies. I rode in a Cadillac, a mother’s loving gift to her daughter when she married more than ten years ago, and all this for me was a real pleasant surprise, the only one of the day, as it turned out.

First, it was not a tea party after all but a tepid punch affair, served liberally from bowls by two august women who with noses all crinkled up showed no obvious relish for the fare they were filling others with. Next, our dear Miss Harriet, the exact physical opposite of her namesake in Guy de Maupassant, had passed the age of discretion and had been safely beyond all desires a long, long time ago. At that moment, she was actually bowing her way out of the scene she had for years dominated. The third and final shock I personally could not bear and rose up against was a roll-call of guests, already invested with badges telling their names and countries of origin, and the request, it was more like a command, that each stand up before the full church hall announce to all there his name and nation, and recount for the gratification of his hosts how much he liked the United States of America. Which apparently everybody there did very much. Only a few, to the silent moral disapproval of all present, pleaded neutrality on grounds of their short stay so far in the United States. But, foolhardy fellow that I was, I threw all discretion and courtesy to the winds, and gave the great romping American dog a rather vicious kick on the backside, sending a terrible hush down and up the whole house.

Later, one or two sour-faced inmates sidled up to me: ‘This is freedom of speech as it can only be enjoyed in the United States,’ they drooled. And one middle-aged woman, something of a squatter in the place and sporting an Italian accent, stole a quick glance this way and that, and then hurried over to me to offer her surprised cheers: ‘Only you Africans from abroad can afford to tell them the plain truth. We can’t here, you know, having settled here for so long. But do you know, our children – my first boy is in the Army right now doing his national service and the girl after him is at college – they are all on the bandwagon, you know, and sometimes their father – he works in a garage – he and I kind of wonder if our children are not even louder at it than most.’

Having unburdened her bosom, she looked this way and that a second time, and scurried off, leaving me more exposed than ever, for nobody at that stage of development would be seen near me.

Nor was this the only punishment for my outrageous behaviour. Some weeks after, a letter came in the post for me from Trenton. I could not recall anybody there except the laundry people. Nor was I anywhere the wiser for opening that letter. It bore no address, no signature. All the kind correspondent had to say was this;

‘Dear Mr Clark,

Please bathe more frequently.’

Shadows of anger and amusement raced across my face in quick vivid succession. A mathematician from Chicago sharing the same entry with me calculated something was the matter, and on reading the letter, suggested I see the Princeton people or the pastor of the Baptist flock. But I thought better of it, particularly of the latter, having no mind at that time of day to get immersed in ablution matters, bath-wise or baptismal.

Brain-picking was another habit of mind for which I could not stand many Americans. One April day in particular there had been so much picking that I felt emptied and pinched all over. First came a long distance call from the Nigerian Consulate-General in New York. A certain professor at Columbia wanted to start classes in Modern African Literature, and very much wished to have me over in the city for lunch that day. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. As they had put him off a lot of times before, they could not help but accept his invitation without first consulting me. Would I please accept and not let the home side down?

I told them yes, provided they would talk the matter over with the Colonel himself who alone could excuse me from attending the great Parvin seminar due for that afternoon, since the man was already full of frowns for my many outings to address groups as different from one another as college students and faculty members at Cornell and Adelphi, Unitarian church women at Princeton, and diplomats bound for Africa from the State Department in Washington DC, They called me back a few minutes after to say they had successfully carried this off, adding for my benefit that the old Colonel had said I was a very bright talented young man but one obviously needing to see more of the United States to understand and admire its people, and that task they were still trying to perform with me! The eleven-thirty Suburban Transit bus took me into town in under two hours. An old university colleague was on hand to collect me; so we drove straight to the Columbia University area where we eventually located our professor host inside a Chinese restaurant. Tired of waiting, he said he had cancelled his booking and finished a quiet luncheon with a guest from the Ivory Coast who kept time. Anyway, could we start on our discussion of new African authors? This was the signal for his systematic plying of me with questions about the vision, the point of view, the philosophy and so on and so forth of Nigerian writers, especially the novelists, from Tutuola through Ekwensi and Nzekwu to Achebe. And every word I said he gave me the impression of cataloguing away for future use and reference. Later, at his apartment uptown, when he had eventually found the right key out of a huge bunch to let us in, we had some argument about these authors.

‘Well, you have them here in your library, haven’t you?’ I asked rather heatedly.

‘Of course, yes,’ he took my challenge. Promptly he found his way to an extensive rack against the wall but he could not fetch the volumes we wanted even though one or two of them were staring us right in the face. The fellow didn’t even know his texts, and he wanted to teach others African Literature! I got furious in my own short-sightedness. A week afterwards I heard that my professor friend had gone stone-blind. He had first fallen ill aboard an aeroplane somewhere over the Atlantic, and that short day of our meeting had been the tail end of a twilight fast failing into complete darkness. And I had taunted him for trying to be smart with me. I felt rotten for days afterwards.

With others, however, that day and elsewhere, I still have no sympathy. I returned to Princeton that April day to find that some publishers wanted me over immediately to their place for supper. Co-guest with me that night was a very learned man, Dr William Spaudling, sometimes something of a titular head for the publishing industry all over the Union. After a rocking handshake with me, he resumed the folksong he was singing with the young married daughter of the house, whom I thought I had seen before singing folksongs of all lands to her own guitar accompaniment at the Princeton YMCA some time during the Christmas season. This was his last night home before flying to Europe and Africa, Nigeria being one of his stops. In fact, host Dr Datus Smith, the Director of Franklin Publications, and guest had only recently returned from a business tour there and still remembered vividly the rough-surfaced crooked roads of that country. ‘Real death-traps, those! And how you folks drive your automobiles! So crazy-why don’t they clear those wrecks off the highways?’ the travellers reminisced together.

But host and hostess, fearing a head-on collision between their two guests right there at the setting out, steered the conversation to educational publishing in Nigeria, the abiding subject of their mission to Africa and other dark places needing light. And the publisher president was full of questions for which he had himself all the answers. Like, what did I think of my country’s novelists? They were a promising lot, weren’t they? Oh, so I did think the novel was not African because it was a literate form and experienced only by the individual? Which meant I disapproved of all my colleagues! But seriously, didn’t I agree that the elimination of English matter from our school syllabus would affect standards for the worse? It might be good politics, but that’s not what he meant. His fear was that African students history and English ones for example, going overseas, would no longer be at home with the subjects others were studying in the great universities. Yes, a start had to be made somewhere, but how was the balance to be preserved, and where to find the teachers able to put across the new material? And could I tell them where to find the authors for the new African histories and readers? It seemed to him the solution lay in the present syllabus for all its being colonial.

I had hardly touched my supper for arguing with the publisher. Now both husband and wife stepped in again and directed us to the safe course of the table, all superbly laid out by their Negro housekeeper, who threw me an anxious look now and again. Later they all took me back to the Graduate College, and for once I was glad to be back there, alone and unsolicited in my room.

At nearly all the large house parties I had invitations to, either from couples living in a perpetual state of unpack in tenement buildings, say in the deep lower and upper reaches of New York, or from career couples comfortably established in shiny, anonymous apartment blocks, as well as from upper middle class, middle-aged couples retired far away from the madding crowd in wooden-fronted suburban mansions, I always ended up right in the heart of a curious circle of guests asking this or that question about Africa and giving me that knowing quizzical look when I provided a piece of information quite contrary to the prototype image they had in mind. The tenement people showed a preference for the arty subjects and were more open and disinterested in discussing matters American.

On the other hand, the aspiring prospering professionals inclined to topics political or economics and sociology within their group. Conversation was often a criss-cross of comparisons and queries to the ding-dong tune of ‘did-you-read-that?’ and ‘you-should-read-the-other-fellow: his-latest-work-is-a-sure-must.’ With the propertied and the nouveau riche, usually ensconced away in self-contained communities, the pattern becomes even more interesting. First one accommodating man, armed with a glass of gin or some other firewater, ambles up and discloses a mind curious for geography. He takes a chair by me in one corner of the overdone and decorated lounge, and immediately another pulls up his seat to join in so that before we have left the realm of the flora and fauna of Africa, others have made a complete circle about us. How is the state of education down there? Nigeria has up to five colleges? Always thought the place no bigger than a penny-stamp on the map. And you have cities and civilizations long established before Columbus discovered us? Fancy that! Now, which of the presidents was shot recently? Oh, yes, aren’t things a bit unstable there right now? You don’t think so? In other words, you are saying foreign investment would be safe for a long time to come in the New Africa. Hm, the newspapers don’t make it look so!

But the discussion, somewhat dry and impersonal before, inevitably turns to sex, love and marriage habits in other lands, that is, in Africa, as compared to the honourable, democratic practice of co-equal, loving partners observed among American couples. By this time however, the ladies in their silk and fineries, smelling a conspiracy of males against their dominance of the house, fan their way floatingly to form an outer ring to the group. Did they understand me to be offering defence for the obnoxious practice of polygamy, almost as vile as that other uncivilized practice of clitoridectomy? They flounce up to me.