The Capital
The cold winter breeze slaps my face and almost snatches my soul as I step out of the car. It was deceptively warm in there and I’d subconsciously expected the same outside. It takes me a moment to gather myself and adjust to the weather. Three weeks in the US and I’m still not used to the cold. The March sun is out and bright but its effect is more aesthetic than functional. I put my hands in my coat pocket, sigh deeply, and begin my march towards 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
This is my third time visiting Washington D.C., my first touring it on foot. I was here first in February 2018 when I visited the Newseum on 555 Pennsylvania Avenue, a few blocks away from the White House. Then, I couldn’t help but notice the grandeur of the buildings in the city, with their neoclassical designs reminiscent of Ancient Greece, built to be beautiful and built to last, each stone chiseled to perfection by skilled craftsmen. There was something appealing about the buildings, something romantic. Looking at them permeated me with a deep sense of history. They looked like they’d been around for a long time and will be around for a long time still. The buildings were bursting at their edges with stories and the stones with which they were built looked like they had annals of the city’s history stored within them.
There are similarities between D.C. and New York, where I spent a few weeks in 2017, but there are also sharp contrasts. Where New York is fast-paced and choked, D.C. seems more deliberative and expansive. If the people in D.C. are in a hurry, they do not show it. They move like they have all the time in the world. I pass by joggers and dog walkers in the afternoon on a workday. The subway is a million times neater and saner than that in New York, but that is not unexpected. There are 8 million more people living in New York than in D.C. Whereas New York is a cocoon of brown and silver skyscrapers, D.C.’s buildings, though high and mighty in their own right, are not as tall. The city is designed so that the Washington Monument, a 555-foot marble obelisk shaped like a pen rooted upside down can be spotted from anywhere. I could even see its tip from the hotel I resided in Arlington, a nearby town.
Both New York and D.C. remind me of Lagos and Abuja. Think of Lagos as a raging tornado of impatient people and an army of cars constantly stuck in traffic. Abuja, on the other hand, is gentle breeze waving over calm waters. Lagos, as New York is to America, is Nigeria’s most populous city, while Abuja, like D.C., is the country’s capital and the centre of political power.
My visit to the Newseum in February was brief. It is a museum dedicated to the freedom of expression, the press, and the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Walking through the Concourse Level, I was confronted with artefacts reminding me of the potency and importance of an independent media, one that is free from all forms of interference, especially from the government, a media that is accountable to itself and the people it serves, a media whose objective is to inform and not to divide.
As a journalist in Nigeria, I have encountered instances threatening press freedom. I have been threatened for chasing leads and publishing stories critical of the government.
Between 2010 and 2017, 506 journalists were killed in Nigeria, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and those are only the deaths that were recorded. As at 2017, Nigeria ranked 122 out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index, down 6 places from 116 in 2016. Press freedom is a vital index for measuring the freedom of a people. In any country where the press is under attack, the citizens too are under attack and bound in the chains of fear and censorship. Where there is no freedom of the press, there is no freedom of the people.
On the Concourse Level of the Newseum, a part of the Berlin Wall, a historical symbol of division and oppression in Old Germany, was on display. On another side of the hall was a repository dedicated to the FBI in the media. The car abandoned by two of the hijackers a day before the September 11, 2001 attack, a 1988 Toyota Corolla, was parked in a corner of the room. It was found at Dulles Airport, outside Washington D.C.
Further into the FBI repository were artefacts dedicated to John Dillinger, the most famous bank robber in America’s history. I saw his straw hat, his body armour, the Colt .380 pistol that was on him when he died, and his death mask. Hanging above those artefacts was a wanted poster promising cash rewards of $10 million for his capture or $5 million for information leading to his arrest. There was also a frontpage clipping announcing “Dillinger Shot Dead In Chicago”.
I think about all the things I saw at the museum and I wonder what it would be like to have even a portion of that in Nigeria, a place where history is an unwanted guest and memorialisation is anything but institutionalised, a place where young people are unaware of the intricacies of the stories that have shaped their country, and museums have become waste places. I grew up hearing about the National Museum in Lagos but a visit there left me feeling empty and disappointed. Disappointed in myself for even expecting much and disappointed in my country for not caring about her history enough.
I couldn’t complete my Newseum tour that day and I couldn’t visit the White House as I’d intended. I promised myself I’d be back in D.C. again soon. There was just so much to take in.
Three weeks later, here I am.
There’s a crowd outside the White House, a congregation of diverse races and ages, most of them holding up their smartphones to take pictures. Everyone is distanced from the White House’s fence by black barricades. It is as I’ve seen in the movies, no one can get in without security clearance. There are red and white sign plates on the barricades warning us not to enter. I imagine for a moment how many people have tried to do it anyways.
The White House looks smaller than I expected. There are two black SUVs parked outside the building. Its pristine white is accentuated by green lawns and sparsely-leafed trees, it’s winter of course but spring is lurking in the corner. A small fountain spurts water in front and in the background is the vast cloudless sky. Everything is made more beautiful by the gentle golden rays of the sun. They reflect off the lawn as if all the blades were polished to shining like pieces of a battle armour. It is funny to me that I do not care much for what Aso Villa, the official residence of Nigeria’s president, looks like. I do not hold any aspirations to see it and write about it the way I do the White House.
A young man walks up to me and asks that I take pictures of him with the White House in the background. I quickly guess from his accent that he is a fellow African, but I can’t tell which country he is from. I reply that he must take pictures of me as well and he agrees. Within the crowd, I notice a Jehovah’s Witness stand. “These people are relentless,” I think to myself, “They are everywhere.” I remember seeing their stand outside Union Station when I went there a few days ago. There is a police car parked a few metres behind us with four officers standing by the front doors. They seem to be enjoying whatever they are talking about, booming with laughter while their hands rest on their duty belts. I wonder how often they have to apprehend people who try to climb the fence.
The White House is sandwiched between the Treasury Building to my left and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to my right. The latter is structured like an old British palace. It reminds me of Downton Abbey, an eponymous castle from one of my favourite TV shows.
I take out my phone and Google ‘museums near me’. I look through the options and determine my next stop to be the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. It’s one of the museums I don’t have to pay to get into. Perfect. I find out later that I had mistaken it for the Museum of Natural History. I had assumed that there was only one Smithsonian museum and that the one I was visiting housed the dinosaur skeletons I was eager to see.
It takes me twenty minutes to walk to the National Museum of American History, sometimes interrupted by traffic lights and a confusing Google map director.
Upon entry into the museum, I empty my pockets and pass through a metal detector. Right there in the lobby is a real-life Batmobile guarded by railings and spotlighted by blue and purple lights. The Batman logo is projected onto the floor in front of the vehicle. I try to contain my excitement. All the children in my belly leap in adulation.
To the left of the hall, there is a Warner Bros. theatre, an information desk and a display of artefacts from the golden age of advertising. Many of the posters conjure memories from episodes of Mad Men and feelings of nostalgia from a previous life rife with excess drinking, smoking and debauchery. Add to that a culture of misogyny and the objectification of women. Only, I have never lived such a life before. At some point, however, I wanted to be an adman, but along the way, I turned my sights to something else. As has been proven over and over again by experience, we can’t be all the things we hope to be.
I walk into the East Wing and explore the transportation exhibit called ‘America on the Move’. I walk past the John Bull locomotive, an 1831 locomotive train and the world’s oldest operable steam locomotive. The trains that operate in Nigeria are not very much different from it, yet they are touted as symbols of innovation and are celebrated by clueless government officials and citizens alike. The thought triggers a bitter chuckle which I hold within. How easy it is to deceive people that something mediocre is excellent when they haven’t beheld better.
My next stop is a room dedicated to innovation. It houses artefacts from Thomas Edison’s work in the late 19th century. In that room, I see different iterations of Edison’s light bulb invention and copies of his patents framed on the wall. I struggle to take it all in — the very things I was taught about in school, about science and the inventions of Edison, I now see before me. It feels to me like I am walking a hall of fame, my private hall of fame. The moment transports me back 16 years, to a time when I was as obsessed with inventions as I was with art. I would spend my evenings after school and weekends reading about the inventions of Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, and Nikola Tesla. Then I would switch to painting and mess up my fingers with watercolours. I just wanted to create. I hoped that one day, I too would invent things that will change the world. As I grew older, my obsessions became less adventurous, less interesting, and more realistic. I became an adult and life lost some of its colour.
When Americans speak about their country, they often do so with a tone of idealism that sometimes makes me cringe. They speak about their country with the conviction of Biblical prophets. They talk about America and they talk about freedom and liberty and other nice-sounding virtues. If they really believe those things is a topic for another conversation. But while I walk through the second floor of the National Museum of American History, I can see why some may believe the things they believe about their country.
I am standing behind a glass wall that encases the famous Star-Spangled Banner flag, a flag stitched by Mary Pickersgill with help from her daughter, her two nieces, and a Black slave. The flag is inspired by a Francis Scott Key poem that is now America’s anthem — The Star Spangled Banner. The anthem is inspiring in of itself, but even more so when accompanied by musical instruments. I feel a wave of electricity run through my body as the anthem plays in the background and the lyrics roll up a screen projected on the wall behind the flag. It is not my country’s anthem but even I feel inspired by it.
Nigeria’s flag was designed by Taiwo Akinwunmi, who was paid a hundred pounds but has lived the majority of his life in penury and obscurity, save for the occasional mention he gets in Social Studies classes. The Nigerian anthem, ‘Arise, O Compatriots’ (which replaced the previous anthem ‘Nigeria, We Hail Thee’ in 1978), was composed by Benedict Odiase, and it was the result of a national contest. But over time, the anthem has lost its meaning to the average Nigerian. Where Americans have gone as far as fighting a political battle because someone decided to kneel down in protest while the anthem was being sung, hardly will you find a Nigerian that cares enough about the country to fight someone over the anthem. Where Americans venerate their nation and its symbols, the strongest emotion Nigerians have towards their country is a bifurcated feeling of hope — hope that they would one day be able to rise above the country’s mediocrity (in any way possible) or the hope that, maybe someday, things will get better.
I often ask myself what it means to be Nigerian. The question lingers because neither history nor the present are competent enough to provide a satisfactory answer. At the end of my tour of the National Museum of American History, I feel a little more affinity for America than I did before I walked through the metal detectors. I may not always agree with their actions, but now I respect and understand them more.
I emerge through the exit and back out into the cold. My tummy grumbles a little and I make my way to the Museum of Natural History across the street. I haven’t eaten all day but I am determined to see the dinosaur skeletons before I eat.
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