In 2008, I was travelling to the US to attend the NAB Radio Show, which was taking place at Austin, Texas. I took a KLM flight from Lagos to Amsterdam. From there I joined a connecting flight on Northwest Airline from Amsterdam to Detroit. I had reason to believe that I was discriminated against on account of my religion - probably a backlash of the 9/11 - right from the beginning of the trip.
You see, three of us from the same organization were on the trip and I was the only Muslim and bearing a clearly Muslim name. So when we applied for visa, the other two companions were given two years visa while I was given only a few days. In fact, my visa expired before I came back. Secondly, our tickets were purchased at the same time, but somehow when we reached Amsterdam, we were separated. We didn't know this until we collected boarding passes. While I was routed through Detroit, they were routed through another town (Michigan or Mississippi, I can't recall) and we went our separate ways and linked up at Austin after I had gone through some difficulties as I couldn't talk to them on phone to know where they were. I believe I was being profiled at the time as I was subjected to rigorous checking and observation.
It was while I was on another flight from Detroit to Austin that I became very sick. Fever got hold of me and I was shivering with cold. So I requested for Panadol from the Air Hostess to relieve the pain, but she couldn't understand what Panadol was. In the end, I requested for Aspirin, which she immediately brought to me. I later learned that what we called panadol in Nigeria was called something else there.
Another interesting episode happened in Austin, Texas, my final destination. I went to a hospital near my hotel the following day. I don't know whether it was a private or government hospital and I can't recall the name now. But I was diagnosed with Flu. All the doctors and hospital staff were very surprised that they got someone suffering from Flu and especially at that time of the year (It was in September, I think). I suddenly became a case study. People started gathering and were asking me questions. They wanted to know from which country I came and whether it was a common ailment there. They said it wasn't common there at that time of the year.
After I was examined, before the prescription of drugs, my bill came down to about $800. I looked at the Doctor and told him to forget it as I didn't have that kind of money. He told me not to worry that there was some kind of arrangement to help anyone who couldn't pay. He asked how much I could afford and I said I could pay $200. He asked if that was comfortable for me and I said yes. So, they accepted that amount. Isn't that wonderful?
After I had gotten over my flu - the drugs worked like magic - I continued to attend the show and did some shopping together with my colleagues in Austin. Just close to my hotel, within walking distance was a good restaurant we discovered that was inexpensive and had the kind of food we could stomach. We frequented it a lot and we got friendly with one of the waitresses. She was a friendly elderly lady who immediately spotted that we were foreigners. When she learned that I was sick and that I had lost my appetite, she went out of her way to advise me on how to go about it and what kind of food I should eat. I found her advice useful.
I think she noticed also that we didn't know that we were expected to be giving tips. So she advised us to be doing that. She said it was expected of us. She said everybody in America gave tips. That was something we learned, too.
After about eight days, we returned to Nigeria. That was quite an eventful trip, wasn't it? 😃