A retrospective journey to the USA – part 1 (arrival and initial explorations)

This time last year I had jetted over to the United States as part of the Edward R Murrow Program for Journalists, after having been nominated by the U.S. Embassy in Namibia but having had to wait through the ‘Covid years’.

At the time I didn’t really share too much of the trip on any of Future Media’s official channels, but having seen the memories come up on Facebook this morning, I decided that I should probably create a more ‘permanent’, or at any rate more public, record of the trip – because after all, what is the point of the human experience if we’re not sharing it!

Over the next three weeks I’ll therefore be posting (almost) exactly what I posted previously – with slight editing to allow for better clarity, and to protect the innocent 🙂

With all of that said, here is part 1:

Day 1 (arrival):

More than 24 hours of travelling later and I made it to Washington ‘Da Capital’. I won’t harbour on the travel itself, suffice to say that a 15 and a half hour flight from Joburg to Newark is way too long to maintain your sanity – especially when never able to fall asleep properly. At about 3:30am DC time, when I knew it was 9:30 back at home and Steven [my son] would probably be getting ready for his karate Nationals I did have slight sense of humour failure and wish I was there where the sun was shining rather than having to be subjected to an additional 6 hours of darkness!

America did try to make up for it though with the most amazing sunrise behind the New York skyline that had everyone rushing to the windows to try to get photos that definitely do not do justice to what it actually looked like.

I was treated again when we took off for Washington as the way the plane banked and where I was sitting gave me a great view of the skyline. The two things that stood out for me about the flight from Newark to Dulles was the fact that at a mere 335km and 45 minutes it makes no sense to me that the US doesn’t have a properly high speed rail network at least serving the BosWash Megalopolis area, especially seeing as for the entire flight (that I spent staring out the window – it’s SO green and there’s SO much water!) there was not a single undeveloped area. The entire way was farms, industry, small towns, and large gated-community style ‘suburban hell’ type housing estates that seem to be miles from any discernable source of employment.

Getting back to the airport though, I don’t think I’ll complain about our unfriendly immigration officials and airport police again, at least they’re just grumpy, the ones in the states are angry! There is a sense of militancy about them, from the person whose sole job it is to tell you where to line up to the ones actually responsible for allowing you an easy passage into the country or a visit to a back room for ‘additional screening’. They bark orders at you and get even angrier when anyone doesn’t immediately do as they say – forgetting perhaps that not everyone’s first language is the same as theirs. The ‘see-through-you’ X-Ray machine and the bag search protocol is also no joke – though I suppose I did set myself up for additional hassle in that regard by bringing along 10 small glass bottles filled with Namibian sand, all wrapped up together in bubble wrap, as gifts!