Giving Birth in the Time of Obama

In the past several weeks, I have gone from a villa in St. Thomas to a theatre in Amsterdam, to a Nobel Prize laureate’s home in Abeokuta, Nigeria to the garbage ridden, and beautifully chaotic world of Lagos, Nigeria. And yet, everywhere I went, we spoke about the place where I am from: America. And, for once, it wasn’t solely in scorn – everywhere, we were speaking about Obama.

In St. Thomas, my friends, newly-wed, and cheerfully swaying away early marital bliss at a Caribbean destination wedding, discussed the promises of what it might mean to have Obama as a president. While putting on a play in Amsterdam, the Dutch told us they might stop hating us (Americans) if Obama won. And, perhaps the most interesting – in Nigeria, where I was lucky to be in the company of writer and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, we lunched and dined – our dinner conversations revolving around the comparison of current corruption in Nigeria and America (under Bush – seemingly not so different from that of Nigeria. American corruption being more disguised, but just as powerful). And, then, later, in a marketplace in Lagos, when I was standing, buying old silkworm strands of cloth with a friend, the vendor asked us if we had any children. My friend is 27 and I am 29 – both of us are unmarried and childless. We explained this to the vendor and the vendor said: “Oh, I see, you are waiting. When Obama is president then you will have children.” And then he smiled, enormously. As if, in his own way, uttering the very essence of Obama’s campaign: hope.

In a world where Bush claims God told him to invade Iraq; when there are t-shirts of a monkey eating a banana with the slogan Obama ’08 inscribed (sold in Georgia), Obama is America’s only hope. It is also, our most difficult feat – to get him elected, under such circumstances. I can only hope that the vendor in Africa was right – that within the next eight years, I will live an America that I am proud of, under a president that I admire…and that I will, indeed, give birth to my children under such a state.