My Encounter with America
Part 9: Travel ordeals still haunt me
By Zadok Ekimwere
zomwere@hotmail.com

Zadok Ekimwere

I traveled to Berlin twice - before the great wall fell, and after. I went in the summer of 1983 when there were two Germanys - East and West - and likewise two Berlins, also East and West. And I again went back in the spring of 1999, under a united Germany. It is a country I hold with dual sentiments of love and hate. I love the country because that is where I was initiated into professional journalism during my advanced postgraduate course in newspaper journalism at the International Institute for Journalism, West Berlin. That aside, let me give you the lighter side.

During my first visit, after I had rested a little and recovered from jet lag, I strolled to a nearby supermarket to buy some provisions. It was a well- stocked store with all varieties of items. But I could not tell what was what because every label was in Deutsche (German).

I sought assistance from an attendant nearby. When I spoke to her in English, she just shrugged me off as she spoke back in Deutsche, which was quite rude. I decided to do my best on my own and returned to my room.

I sorted out the stuff, packing most of it in the fridge. I then settled down to drink a juice and a biscuit, known as cookies in the U.S. Those years I simply adored them. But when I picked the sophisticated packet of biscuit I had bought, I saw a dog's picture on it.

I rushed to the front desk to find out. Immediately the man at the desk saw the packet, he ran upstairs to my room barking like a dog. I followed him, and found him turning things upside down. He even opened my box. He asked me if I had brought a dog from Africa in my box, which is why I had bought dog food, what with German love for dogs. I told him not at all. This did not amuse me a bit. I donated the dog food to him and quit eating biscuits.

Our journalism class was quite mixed. Participants came mainly from Africa and Asia. Among us was someone who claimed he was a professor of journalism, and another had a Ph.D. in mass communications. But this professor was very strange. He did not know how to type and he was quite irritable. He would hit the keyboard as if he was poking hot fire with his fingers. If a joke was cracked about him, he would want to fight. One day he got so mad he switched off the lights and locked up the computer lab.

Another day we had a regrettable but big laugh when police came to search the professor's room. At the shopping mall he pocketed a parker pen and thought he would get away with it, but the electronic detector picked him. Police arrested him and decided his room must be searched as well. When some cheeky journalist saw him with police he asked him why he could not fight them.

Now for the serious side of Germany.

The worst thing that happened to the people of Germany was the overnight arbitrary division by the wall. Imagine waking up one day in Columbia and you find you cannot cross Gervais or Green streets, with your families and friends split in two by a wall fitted with dangerous weapons.

While West Germany prospered, the East wallowed under repressive communist rulers. Thank God, the wall came down in 1989 and the people of Germany reunited. By the time I visited Berlin again in 1999, you could describe it as the city of forests of cranes as the city was being reconstructed, because once again, it had become the capital of Germany.

(Next week:

Berlin after the Wall)