I woke up that Thursday morning especially grouchy. I had set my alarm clock, the one on my mobile phone, for six thirty in the morning but my phone started ringing at around five. It was my mom, that incurable insomniac, calling to pray with me. She talked about how she had already made a ‘covenant sacrifice to the lord’. It is already written that you will get this visa. Nosa, my kid brother, knocked on the door at six, a full thirty minutes before I had hoped to wake up. Bleary-eyed, I crawled out of bed, stumbled to the Boys’ Quarter’s door and let him in.

     “You never wake?” he asked, pushing me out of the way to reach for the light switch.

     My eyes hurt. “You drove all the way from Ilupeju this morning?”

     “Ilupeju to Victoria Island? There’s nothing there. But guy, that small Warri don spoil you o; travel na wetin we dey do for Lagos everyday. Mommy never call you?” Not waiting for my answer, he reached into the wardrobe to bring out the clothes I packed from Warri for my appointment; a Pierre Cardin maroon shirt and trousers I had pinched from my suit bag. The blazer had been left back in the Doctor’s Quarters in Warri.

     “Mommy, Aunty Alero, Aunty Jules, Eniye . . . ee be like say I hammer one million naira. They haven’t let me sleep.”

     “Eghosa, your appointment is for seven thirty. You should have been awake by five getting ready.”

     “Why?”

     “Because of traffic.”

     “The place no be inside the same VI? And I set my alarm for six,” I lied, knowing that my brother would scream if he heard the actual time I had put on the clock.

     Nosa did not answer. He pushed me calmly but strongly into the bathroom and shut the door. I had my bath. I hoped the day would go well. While pretending to be above it all, at the back of my mind I knew I had not been sleeping well for the last week. Back in Warri, it was my patients who had borne the brunt of an absent minded caregiver: subtly overdosed anti-malarials; consultations cut short; stuttering explanations from their normally verbose doctor of when they should take this tablet or that. It was a wonder that I had not killed anybody. Dr McCormick, the expatriate Cardiologist had seen it all before. She had just seen off her son, a medical doctor like me who had a Nigerian passport because of his father’s nationality, to the UK after a gruelling session with the UK high commission that lasted six months. Everybody was saying that the insults offered by the embassies were not worth the trip.

     I let out a gasp, “Cold!” I did not bother with hot water. It would have taken another fifteen minutes to boil and the young man outside would have broken my head if I mentioned it. My pretence of aloofness was really a ploy to hide ignorance. I had been out of the country just once, to the UK for a wedding in the summer of 1980, when I was just four. I had never been to an embassy before. What I remembered was that my mom got my and Nosa’s passports stamped when we arrived at Gatwick that June day. But I will not risk being called naïve, or worse stupid, if I report here that I had not heard the stories. A friend based in Port Harcourt who was in a medical job paying six figures had gisted me of his own experience. Chuka had just completed a six month rotation with one oyibo air-ambulance service that worked the off-shore rigs. He was pulling in a monthly take home of about two-fifty to three hundred thousand Naira and felt the time was right to spend a holiday with his immediate elder brother – a blue passport holder living in Texas and working with Mobil as a project engineer. Chuka went to the embassy armed with an envelope as fat as a two-by-four filled with his account statements, copies of his brother’s utility bills, shares he had accrued in his short professional life, and an assortment of professional certificates and documents. Sure, he could pay for his trip himself. Sure, he had every reason to want to come back: he was a doctor in an exceptionally good job. He was not going to leave this for a year or two of washing plates before the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Exam) which rumour said was exceptionally hard, or the TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language), which I agreed with Chuka was just a silly and unnecessary exam for a country where most of us, born in the seventies, had English as our first language. He was cocky. He was sure. He was shot down as fast as a chicken attempting to escape a duck hunt by flying. Over beer two weeks after his ordeal, Chuka said they had asked him three questions to which he provided three monosyllabic answers before one rather attractive, freckled, oyibo chick said, “I am sorry but you do not qualify for this visa. If you have any questions this piece of paper will hopefully answer them. You are welcome again to reapply.” Chuka said it was an irony that the world’s capital of 419 was being swindled out of a hundred dollars a pop by the mugus at the American Embassy. That was typical Chuka. He was not worried about the national insult o. Just his fourteen thousand Naira.

#

     I got out of the shower, dressed up and hopped into the car beside Nosa. I called Aunty Alero, in whose Boy’s Quarters I was staying, to tell her we were on our way. She almost started another round of prayers but for my cry that I was running out credits. I hoped God was hearing everybody. During the drive Nosa ran through the contents of my two-by-four envelope verbally while I ticked them off.

     “You carry the Passport?”

     Bush boy. Instead of sounding like we were on a mission to some exotic locale, a la James Bond, Nosa was sounding like we were going to the market. “Check!” I replied. Hopefully he would take the hint and sound more professional.

     He did. “Appointment letter; form DS-156, form DS-157?”

     “Check; check; check!”

     “Letter of invitation?”

     My aunt, Weyinmi, was a Professor of Literature and Africana (whatever the hell that means) in a New Jersey University. Irreverent Aunty Weyinmi, with the bad mouth and acerbic wit. Kai, I loved her. During a holiday she spent in Nigeria three months ago, she had stumbled upon my stash of short stories and the first draft of a novel I am currently writing. She had been impressed and basically spent her entire holiday buried neck deep with me in my work. She gave some tips and invited me over to spend time with her in the states where, she said, I would hone my skills. Cool, I had thought. Cool.

     “Check!”

     “Articles and Memorandum of Association?”

     Getting this had been a nice surprise. My normally surly dad had been quite helpful. When I told him I was writing, a fact I had kept to myself for the past few years, he was very glad. He said it was something he felt I always had, a way with words. That and my head in the clouds, he had added. My dad owned a Savings and Loans. Nosa and I were directors and shareholders in the business, holding what amounted to thirty percent of its equity. We attended meetings with Central Bank officials and had been on an allowance since we turned twenty-one, Nosa two years after me.

     “Check. And daddy added that of the Bureau de Change along with both their end of year statements. Plus evidence of the paid up share capital of the bank . . . that is, a hundred million Naira.”

     “Correct guy,” Nosa whistled. “Account statements?”

     “Check.”

     “Letter of leave from the clinic?”

     “Check.”