The Many Faces: London, England

A certain day will go down in history, or at least be carved on the walls of someone's Twitter or Snapchat or Facebook feed. That day, when in the small town of Luton, England, McDonald's experienced a mechanical failure resulting in a lack of hot meals. Customers could only purchase drinks and desserts. You can be sure that the pot-bellied man on break from his job at the financial headquarters or the Norwegian tourist, were both seething with anger when they insisted on an order of piping hot salty fries (or chips, as the Brits call them), only to be turned down, this combined with a heightened irritation because they had not bothered to read the signs posted all over the restaurant.  England is a place where anything can happen. A Mcdonald's eatery can shut down.  You can attend an Ariana Grande concert and not come back alive. While I was asleep, a few hours away from our flat, a bomb was detonating in the Manchester Arena, a bomb that killed twenty-two people who had been swaying to the cadence of Grande's soprano voice only twenty minutes before the chaos began.

                                                 
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We streamed Guvna B tunes to the clanking of horse's hooves on the cobblestone pathway as police troopers cleared the area to make way for the exchange of the guards in front of Buckingham Palace. London has an endearing way of blending ancient traditions with evolving modernity. A Five Guys burger joint stands a few miles away from the Queen's elaborate garden parties at which approximately 6,000 cups of tea are served each year.  As I explored the hills of Luton, a city about two hours away from London, I envisioned myself twirling in the greenery, singing the hills are alive, with the sound of music, like the vivacious Maria Von Trapp.  As I stood on those grassy mountains, a beautiful view of the city below stretched out before me. The houses were rustic in design. The streets were narrow, and flanked by strips of land. If ever one was looking for a Mount Sinai, a place to hear the voice of God, a soft whisper in the cool breeze, I bet that place would suffice. There is a sense of being detached from the world below.

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Much like any other city, London was fraught with obvious wealth gaps. All the pretty buildings resided in Central London.The high rise apartments, the Ritz, noted as the most expensive hotel in the area, small but over-priced shops and cafes, a house worth ten million pounds in a cozy section of Canary Wharf.  As we kept driving, the novelty wore off. The paint chafed, the lawns lost their exactness, the fraying ropes sagged with the weight of clothes left to drip dry in the sun. We were approaching the "drug district" as coined by my tour guide/ uncle. Nonetheless, people eked out a living there. Of course, the homeless guy sitting on the wall outside of an alley, picking the moldy bits away from a burger he found lying around, would not be one to discriminate about living conditions.

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By the end of my adventure, I played golf for the first time, escaped a bio-hazard lab through a series of mind-boggling puzzles and riddles, and visited a homey church set up in a school complete with its own church cats that were well fed, and prowled around the building. I wondered if the cats were born-again, bible-believing cats,  or merely church goers. Somehow I was able to contain my four-leg-o-phobia while listening to Pastor Chris talk as we sat in a circle at the Thursday night prayer meeting. The congregation was colorful in its own right: Whites, Blacks, Nigerians, Indians, the petite woman with cropped, jet black hair and peach pants who looked Indian but was really from a tiny island in the Caribbean called St.Vincent. I can't forget the radical pastor who insisted on writing to members of Parliament about controversial issues and tried to reassure me of Trump's divine appointment to office when he discovered I was from the States, since my accent gave me away quite easily. The city of Luton, as with London, was quite diverse as a whole. Afro beats wafted through our car as a man sauntered down the road chatting on his phone in Igbo, as a family of Arabs ran home after prayer at the Mosque, trying to escape the pouring rain--the rain that came whenever it desired. One minute the sun would be shining, gracing us with its presence. The next minute, the rain came in a steady stream and umbrellas would bloom open as an unwelcome chill swept through the air. 

                                       

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When I stepped off the plane in England, I approached border patrol and was questioned about the purpose of my visit and my accommodations. The validity of my status was up for trial. I noted that I was a student on the landing form I filled and he asked what school I attended. This line of questioning was nothing compared to what many immigrants faced regularly. Try, having your passport rubbed and stretched and manipulated in search of something dubious. I was grateful for the lack of serious interrogation but also realized that others were not as fortunate. When the officer felt satisfied with my answers, he stamped a page in my passport, and that was the end of the exchange.

On my return to the States, when I stepped off the plane in Baltimore, the American border patrol officers caught my eye. There were five of them: one Asian, one Nigerian, one White, one Black, one Hispanic. The verdict: there is more than one way to be an American. By virtue of being built on the backs of immigrants,  America has more than one face, no matter how much people try to blanch that face.