by Bennet Omalu
The receptionist gave me a perplexed look and asked, “Do you have an appointment?”
“No, I do not,” I replied.
Skeptical, she asked, “Why do you need to see the director?”
I pulled my file out of my bag. “I am a doctor in Jos. I have been granted a scholarship by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyons, France, to go to the University of Washington in Seattle as a visiting scholar for one year. I hope to apply to a PhD program after that. I have an appointment at the U.S. Embassy tomorrow for a visa interview.”
The receptionist gave me a look that said “you are a doctor?” Back then I had a baby face and looked much younger than my years. “Hold on just a minute,” she said. She picked up her phone and made a quick call. When she hung up, she said, “Go down that hall. The director’s secretary will see you.”
I walked down to the director’s office, where I was greeted by a man and a woman, both in their thirties and both Nigerians. When I introduced myself, the man recognized my name. He attended the same church as my brother Ikem. “Is the director expecting you?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. I took out my papers and explained my situation. Both were extremely sympathetic. The woman looked through her appointment book. “The director should be in soon, and he has an opening in his schedule. If you can wait, I can arrange for you to see him.”
“Thank you. Yes, I will wait,” I said. The man told me the director was new, which worked in my favor. Being new on the job, he had not yet had any negative experiences in the country to prejudice his view of Nigerians.
I took a seat on one of the sofas in the office and waited. And waited. And waited. As I waited, I prayed, Jesus, I love You. All I have is Thine. Yours I am, and Yours I want to be. Do with me what Thou wilt.
An hour later, a very friendly, slightly overweight man walked into the room. Sticking out his hand to shake mine, he introduced himself as the USIS director and said, “Come into my office and have a seat.”
I followed him into his office and handed him my file. When I explained my situation, he seemed surprised to hear that I was a doctor. I went through the entire process I had followed to land both the scholarship and my entry into the visiting scholar program. As I talked about the visa process and my upcoming interview, he looked through my papers, listening intently, not saying a word. When I finished, he looked up at me, rather puzzled, and said, “How can I help? I’m not really involved in the visa process.”
I looked him in the eye and said, “I have been told that my visa application will probably be denied because I am a young, black Nigerian male. That is not right. I have diligently followed all the instructions given me. I have fulfilled all criteria required of me. All of my documents are together. Nothing is lacking. I therefore see no reason why I should be denied an entry visa. I want to go to America not to take, but to give. I have much to offer in service to the country.”
“I agree,” the director said. He looked over my papers for a few more moments. “I tell you what,” he said. “Go to your visa interview tomorrow, and I fully believe you will receive your visa without a problem. However, if you are denied, come back and see me.”
“Okay, thank you,” I said. Not wanting to take any chances, I then asked, “Would you call the embassy and explain my situation to them?”
“No, that won’t be necessary,” he said. “I need not interfere in the process. But if you are denied, you come back and see me.”
“Thank you so much,” I said and left.
• • • •
The next morning, I woke up very early. I did not have time for prayer. I had to be at the United States Embassy by 5:00 a.m. Why they chose such an early hour, I do not know. The American Embassy did not exactly go out of its way to be accommodating toward Nigerians in those days.
I caught a cab and arrived at the embassy before the sun was up. A long line snaked across the front of the building. I walked over to the line and asked someone next to me what was going on. “Why such a long line?” I asked. “I thought I had an appointment.”
“It’s like this every day,” the person replied. “They make us stand outside like this in the dark or in the hottest part of the day. It doesn’t matter. Even when it pours down rain, we have to stand outside, waiting our turn to get in. It is like we are not even human.”
“That’s not right,” I said.
The person just laughed. “Then this must be your first trip to the American Embassy.”
I stood in line for an hour. The sun came up, and the temperature quickly rose. Finally someone from the embassy stepped out and said, “Bennet Omalu.”
“Right here,” I said.
“Follow me,” the person said and walked into the building without waiting to see where I was.
Once inside, I found a place to wait in a large lobby. Other people waited as well. Ten or fifteen minutes later, a young American woman called my name and case number through a speaker from behind a thick glass window like you would find in a highly secured bank in a poor, crime-ridden inner-city neighborhood. I walked over to the window and noticed there was no chair or stool for me to sit upon. The young woman behind the glass sat above me and looked down at me. I could not tell if she was black or white. I could only tell she was American. Perhaps I was too nervous to see much else. The thickness of the glass also made it hard to see her clearly.
“Passport,” she said without emotion. I passed it through the small slot at the bottom of the window.
“Do you have your documents?” she asked without looking up. I passed them through the slot. She flipped through the papers very quickly, one after another. If she was reading them, she had to be the fastest reader on the planet.
“How long do you hope to stay in the United States?” she asked, again without looking at me.
“One year,” I replied.
“You’re a doctor?” she asked with a tone that made it clear she did not believe me.
“Yes. I graduated from—”
Before I could finish my answer, she said, “Thank you,” in a way that didn’t sound like she was thanking me for anything. She then pushed the papers back into a stack, pulled out a rubber stamp from a drawer, and banged it down on the top page of my documents and on a page in my passport. “Visa denied,” she said as she signed the paper. She pushed all my papers back through the slot and said, “You may file a petition to have your denial reviewed,” in a voice that sounded like an answering machine recording.
“But I have—”
“Thank you, NEXT,” she said looking past me as she waved me off.
• • • •
I walked out of the embassy and back onto the streets of Lagos. A long line of people stood in the heat waiting their turn to go in and be denied. I wondered why anyone bothered applying for a visa. Everything anyone had ever told me about the U.S. visa process had been confirmed. Never had I felt so dehumanized. Stopping at a pay phone, I called my family and told them what had happened. “What are you going to do now?” my brother Ikem asked.
“I guess I will go see the USIS director. I don’t know what else I can do,” I said.
I caught a cab and went straight to the USIS office. When I walked in, the two assistants to the director I had met the day before acted like they were expecting me. “The director told me to come back to see him if my visa was denied,” I explained. “It was, so here I am.”
Both the assistants nodded knowingly as I spoke, as if they had already been told I was going to be denied. “The director is out right now,” the man said, “but you may wait for him.” He said it in a way that made me think they had already contacted the director and let him know I needed to see him.
For two hours I sat and waited. Those may have been two of the darkest hours of my life. Everything for which I had worked for so long now appeared to have been yanked out of my hands. I was afraid. Why did I even try? I wondered. My coworkers’ words echoed in my ears. How can I go back and
face them? They will never let me hear the end of this. The scene from the embassy replayed in my mind over and over. How can my fate, my entire future, rest in the hands of one person? It cannot. My fate, my future, rests in the hands of God. I began to pray aloud, Jesus, I love You. All I have is Thine. Yours I am, and Yours I want to be. Do with me what Thou wilt. I started to wonder if God’s will might be Australia or New Zealand. If this falls through, I will try them next. Don’t worry. This is not the end.
My brother Ikem called his friend in the USIS office as I sat there. He just wanted to make sure I was still there and that I had not gone off somewhere to harm myself. My family was genuinely worried about me. I had put all my hope into going to the United States. They did not know what I might do if I were forced to remain in Nigeria and give up my dream forever.
After my two hours of waiting, the USIS director came running into the office. Sweat poured off of him, and he was out of breath. When he saw me, he stopped dead in his tracks. “Bennet, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“They denied my visa,” I replied.
“What?” he said, shocked. “Follow me.” I walked with him into his office. He sat down next to me and picked up his phone. After a few moments, he said into the phone, “Consular office, please. Yes, I’ll hold.” When the consul picked up on the other end, the director said, “Hola.” He then began speaking in a language I did not recognize. Later—as in years later—I figured out he was speaking Spanish. I guess he did so to keep me from hearing the whole conversation. Apparently the director was Hispanic. Back then, he just looked white to me. In Nigeria, everyone was either white, black, or Asian. I was not nearly as conscious of race then as I am now.
After a five-minute conversation, the director hung up the phone and scribbled a note on a piece of paper. He slipped it into an envelope and handed it to me. On the front of the envelope he wrote the consul’s name. “Take this back to the embassy. Show it to the guards at the gate, and they will let you right in. Hurry. They’re expecting you, and the office will close soon.”
“Thank you so much,” I said. I rushed back to the embassy and did exactly what I had been told. Rather than make me wait in line, a guard ushered me right in. I went inside the embassy and walked right past the large lobby ringed with glass-windowed cubicles where everyone else had to do their business. The guard led me to the consular office, where I was invited to wait on a very comfortable sofa. All around me, people came and went. I sat quietly. A half hour later, a lovely African-American woman appeared out of nowhere. “Are you Bennet?” she asked with a smile.
“Yes,” I said, a little startled.
“May I have your passport?” she said, not even asking for the rest of my documents. As I handed it to her, she said, “I think you know my daughter.” She gave me her daughter’s name, which I no longer remember. “She was in medical school with you. She came here from America, but being so far from home was hard for her, so she went back.”
The name was very familiar to me then. “Yes, I know her. Such a lovely girl.” The two of us then talked about her daughter like we were two old friends. I sympathized with her over her daughter going back to the States. “I nearly quit myself more than once,” I said. We talked like this for about five minutes. Finally the woman smiled and said, “If you come back tomorrow afternoon at two, your passport and visa will be ready for you.”
“Oh, thank you—thank you so much!” I said. By now it was nearly dark, so I rushed back to my sister’s house, so excited and nervous that I could hardly eat or sleep. The next day at two o’clock, I had my passport with the visa stamp in my hand. I called the USIS office to thank the director, but he was not in, so I left a message. The next day I called again but still could not reach him. I should have gone back and thanked him in person, but I never did. He truly was an angel from God for me.
• • • •
I returned to Jos and immediately resigned from my job at the hospital. Suddenly my colleagues who had laughed at me for wanting to go to America now came to me asking for advice. “What should I do to get a visa too?” they asked. I didn’t have any advice to give them. God had opened this door for me. He would have to do the same for them.
Even though my visa was only good for a year, I did not plan on returning to Nigeria. Already I had started thinking of applying to the PhD program at the University of Washington. If accepted, my visa could easily be extended. Since I did not plan on returning to Nigeria, I spent my last couple of weeks in the country of my birth giving away all my possessions. I didn’t have a lot. Most things went to my family, but I also gave treasured items to friends. Giving my things away made the reality of going to America seem real. I was like the old Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés dismantling my ships before my plane even got off the ground.
I flew back to Lagos before departing for America. I stopped over for one night at my sister Winny’s house. That night, I enjoyed my last meal in Nigeria. Right before I left for the airport, my two sisters, Winny and Uche, along with my brother Ikem, gathered in Winny’s living room. A couple of years earlier, Winny and Ikem had become evangelical Christians. We worshiped together in their living room, singing songs of praise. They also read Scripture passages over me and laid their hands on me, asking God to cover me with the blood of Jesus as I went out on this new adventure. I will never forget Winny’s prayer over me. She prayed, “God, if there is anything that will make Bennet turn away from You, please take that thing away from him. No man or woman created by the mighty God can deny Bennet his blessings. And we claim Bennet’s blessings in the MIGHTY NAME OF JESUS!”
My eyes filled with tears as Winny prayed. I felt like heaven had come to earth in that living room. But I could not sit and take it all in. I had to get to the airport. Time was now against me. When I rushed out the front door, I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. I walked out toward the waiting car with Winny. Ikem was driving. I looked up at the empty blue sky and thought back to how I used to wait for night to fall so that I could see the lights of the jumbo jets streaking across the sky from the international airport. Every light made me wonder where the plane was going. Europe? America? And I always wondered if someday I might be on one of those planes. Now that day had come.
On the way to the airport, we ran into a terrible traffic jam. Lagos has the worst traffic I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Most days it did not present a problem for me. Today it did. Cars, trucks, and buses were all at a standstill. I glanced down at my watch. “I hope I don’t miss my plane,” I said.
“What time is it?” Winny asked. I showed her my watch. “This isn’t going to work,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” I asked. “We’re already in the car.”
“Just follow me,” she said. Winny jumped out of the car, opened the trunk, and pulled out my luggage. Looking around, she saw a couple of motorcycle cabs called okadas. She hailed two. The okadas could weave in and out of the traffic and go places when no one else could. “Get on the second bike and follow me,” she said. Winny then took my luggage, placed it on top of her head, straddled the first motorcycle, and told the driver, “Get to the airport as fast as you can.” I nearly fell off the second motorcycle laughing at the sight of my sister balancing on the okada with my suitcase on her head.
Winny’s plan worked. In less than thirty minutes, we arrived at the airport. The two of us didn’t have time for a long good-bye. Tears ran down my face. I don’t know if they were tears of sadness at leaving my family or tears of joy that I was going to America. Either way, there was no time to think. We hugged, and I ran into the airport and toward my gate. Security lines did not exist back then, which allowed me to get to my gate just in time for my flight’s scheduled departure. On the flight sign, I saw the words, “Delayed: two hours.” That gave me time to go back and say a proper good-bye to my sister and brother. My brother Ikem arrived just as I did. We hugged and cried, and then I said goodbye. Walking away, I turned and waved to them. As ha
rd as it was to leave them, I could not wait to get on with my journey. I could hardly wait to discover what awaited me in America.
I went to the departure lounge inside the airport, got a drink, and sat down to calm my nerves. I raised my glass and gave a toast to God. “Thank You,” I said. I felt relieved that God had answered so many prayers for me, but from this point forward, He wouldn’t need to help me so much. I was on my way to God’s own country—America, the heavenly country. God could now go help some other lost child. I was going to be fine in the place to which He had already given so much.
Chapter Six
Welcome to America
When I boarded the Swissair jumbo jet in Lagos on October 23, 1994, I believed all my troubles were behind me. The flight first landed in Geneva, Switzerland, and then flew eleven hours to Los Angeles International Airport. Once I was on the ground, it did not take long for me to realize I may have left all my troubles in Nigeria, but a whole new set awaited me in America. I spoke English, and I thought my father had well prepared me for the cultural changes I was to encounter here. After all, he had spent four years in England while attending college. He spoke often about the differences between Nigeria and the English-speaking world.
Unfortunately, my father left out a few crucial details, beginning with what was quickly becoming an urgent problem. After landing in Los Angeles, I needed to use the bathroom before I caught my connecting flight to Seattle. In Nigeria, bathrooms are called toilets. Walking through the airport concourse, I searched for a sign that read “Toilet,” to no avail. I only saw signs that read “Bathroom” or “Restroom.” Since I did not need to take a bath and I did not need to rest, I kept walking. I needed a toilet, and the longer it took to find one, the greater the sense of urgency became. I walked up to a white couple. “Excuse me, can you direct me to a toilet?” I asked. They kept walking and acted like they did not hear me. I approached another white man who was standing over to one side. “Sir, can you help me find the toilet?” He looked at me like I was from Mars.
