I LOVE AMERICA

"Now listen here mister. We got no way of understanding this world. We got about as much sense of it as a bird flying in the sky. Now there's a lot that bird don't know; but the world is happening around him just the same..."
-->>Forrest Bondurant (Lawless)

You just love some things. Some can be explained: your love for/of self, parents, siblings, friends. Some are understandable: your love of/for your girlfriend, food. Some are tolerable: the love you have for 'your' football team, masturbation, a particular soap opera. Some are brow-raisingly questionable: like your love of violent porn, older women and other peculiar fetishes. And then there's stuff you love without a discernible reason. My friend, 'Lekan, loves drinking water straight from the bottle and he can't quite explain why.
Me? I've never been to the country, but I love America. I love their egotistical way of referring to a championship that, exclusively involves teams within the country as a 'World Series'. I love the arrogance etched on the faces of their athletes at the Olympics. I love the fact that people like Kim Kardashian make it big in America. I love Harvard. I love their reverence of their heroes. The sheer intensity of their diversity is astonishing (even black people have blue eyes) -- I love that as well. I love how they value convenience (have you been in a Ford?). I love Hollywood, and a great many of its movies. I love the cheap food. I adore Johnny Depp and Daniel Day-Lewis. I love so many things about America.
But I'm not from America, and I'm not in anyway downcast about it. I used to be sha. A friend's dad would say "..we didn't come to a wrong world, we only came to the wrong country". That line still cracks me up when it comes to mind.
Being a Nigerian is a really big challenge as its hard for a man to rise, whose qualities are thwarted by poverty. Make we no lie ourselves, poverty pervades the land. Why that is, is anybody's guess.
Like that man said, sometimes I really do wonder if Providence could've made me an American -- but it is what it is. I'm not gonna cry foul at the ways of my country, I'm not even gonna complain. I think I'm Nigerian for a reason. The reason, I do not know just yet, but I like to think its to effect a positive change or two around here.
My love for my country is borderline xenophobic. Walai I don't know why that is. I guess I have as much sense of it as a bird flying in the sky. I know that wishes aren't horses, but if mine count for anything, I wish that we somehow..somehow, surmount our many challenges.
Happy Birthday Nigeria.

---->>>>Captaincue (...and uphold her honour and glory...)