As I sit in the comfort of my apartment far away from the United States, I watch the storms devastating the American South and badgering Florida twice in a space of three weeks, first, Hurricane Helene, and then, Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 with speeds of over 150mph.
It’s a mixture of anxiety, fear, trepidation and at the same time, thankfulness that I am no longer in the United States.
America is a country of extreme weather conditions, and it does not matter what part of it you choose to dwell in.
Is it Arizona with heat conditions of sometimes 120 degrees Fahrenheit, or the Midwest with snow up to 26 inches in the winter, or again, earthquake prone California coupled with the perennial wild bushfires, to fire devastation in Hawaii, or the tornado alley that stretches through Oklahoma, Missouri and Texas?
America is what America is.
No wonder they captured it as the land of the brave. It takes guts to live in America. It rewards ambition and punishes mistakes with a certain level of ferociousness that is probably responsible for high levels of mental illness. In simple terminology, “you gotta love it to hate it.”
What a play on words!
In 1998, two years into my American sojourn, I was manager at an Arby’s Restaurant. I did the afternoon shift which meant I had to close the store every night, wash down the restaurant with brush and soap, close the accounts, and do a money drop-off at the bank before heading home.
About 10:00pm on this particular night, the skies started to rumble. A tornado was coming through town. Because I was new in the country, I did not know what the expressions—To hunker down or to shelter in place meant.
In my Nigerian mind, I thought— here they go. These people know how to exaggerate.
I did my drop off at the bank and got in my car. It was a small Toyota that I had purchased at a local Charity dealership for $400. It was a new car that had been written off by insurance and donated to a charity. All that I needed to do was put in a new radiator which cost me $200 and I basically had a new car on my hands.
As I drove home that night, I recall the fear that was heavy on my mind. I was alone on the highway for the most part of what was usually a one hour drive home from the city where I worked in Sterling Heights, Michigan to my abode in Dearborn, Michigan.
Once I got off the highway to 8-Mile which was supposed to be a straight drive home, the heavy storm hit. I was frightened as electric poles were uprooted from the ground and live wire laid across the road. Fortunately, in many ways, Michigan has well laid out roads, pretty much like a grid. If you could not take road A, you could make a left or right turn to lead you to another parallel road that would take you to your destination.
I began to meander into road after road, each time running into fallen trees completely uprooted from the ground or some mighty object that had been lifted from some nearby point to block the road. This back and forth continued from midnight until about 4am. I had been wandering trying to find my way home for four hours for a journey of one hour. By the time I finally found my way to some place near the Ford Headquarters in Dearborn, I got to a traffic light. The light was red. I waited for it to turn green and I went into a deep sleep from extreme exhaustion and, I believe, some relief that the worst was over.
I was at this point probably about 10 minutes from home. We lived on a street called Rockdale at the time. I probably slept for some time right there behind the wheels until the blaring of a horn finally woke me up. I was frightened and disoriented. Where was I?
As I navigated my car into Rockdale Street, happy that I was home at last, I heard a bang and something like an explosion. A tree had fallen across the road and I had run into the tree. The sound I heard was of my radiator damage. I could see my house beyond the tree. I parked the car and walked home, thankful that I had made it home to my warm house, wife, and three little children.
That’s a night I will never forget.
America is beautiful, but there is no place like Nigeria. We may experience occasional natural disasters like the recent catastrophe in Borno, but they are few and far between.
The only real natural disaster we have here is the quality of our leadership. We may not be able to make it as a great nation, a place that God has destined for us with all the endowments unless a Messiah comes, and how is the Messiah going to arise in a country that is much given to prebendalism?
This, my friends, is the great question of our time.
By the time you finish reading this article, Milton would have completed its devastation of countless cities, flattened whole communities, turned roofs into projectiles, and uprooted trees like a child breaking a pencil and consumed many livelihoods along with lives. Every time I think of wholesale destruction, I am reminded of that line by Wyatt Earp in the movie, Tombstone Arizona: “Go tell them I’m coming,” he said, “and hell’s coming with me.”
If Hurricane Milton is not hell, I wonder what is.
Michael O. Ovienmhada.
