Visiting the Big Apple, one of the world's fastest, most expensive and famous cities thrice is no mean feat.
My first visit to New York City, the commercial capital of the United States of America, was in 1980. The next visit was in 1985 and the third was in 2008. NYC is also renowned as the headquarters of the United Nations (UN) and as: "The city that never sleeps."
My first visit in 1980 was as I headed to Tucson, Arizona, to the South West of the U.S., to start my four-year undergraduate course at University of Arizona. I landed at John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) International Airport aboard Pan American Airlines (Pan-Am) after a marathon 14.5 hour flight. It took 8-hours in the Trans-Atlantic flight and 7.5 hours between Nairobi and Free Town where the pilot made a brief stopover to refuel.
That was my maiden flight out of the country and was my first time to leave home having been a day scholar at Karen ‘C’ Primary School and Ofafa Jericho Secondary School in Nairobi. In fact, the impact of my decision together with my parents to resign from my clerical job at Standard Bank headquarters in Nairobi to pursue my academic dreams didn't dawn on me until I handed my passport to the immigration officials and the Pan-Am ground crew to start my first step in my journey of self-discovery and ultimate dream.
Tears flowed freely as I bid my parents and relatives and friends 'kwaheri (goodbye)' as I took the step of faith heading into the travelers’ lounge and later into the biggest airplane I had ever seen.
The flying experience was a combination of being exciting, sad and enjoyable at the same time as I ate and drank myself to sleep in between, listening to a variety of music and watching movies. On landing at JFK, the biggest and busiest airport I had seen by then, I disembarked together with fellow passengers and got my first cultural shock! The number of whites dwarfed that of blacks and Asians, who are the majority back home. In addition to that, I was also shocked to see many whites doing manual work at the airport like cleaning, waiters and waitresses, carrying luggage for passengers while others were taxi drivers among others.
I had a six-hour stop over to connect to my flight to Los Angeles in California and then a bus trip to Tucson, Arizona. It was during the stop over that I took advantage to go on a tour of the major tourist attractions in the Big Apple. My first stop was the iconic UN Headquarters where I paid a fee to join fellow tourists on a conducted tour of the complex which is made up of the 39-floor Secretariat Tower, the domed General Assembly, the Dag Hammarskjold Library and the Visitor’s Centre.
The building is on Manhattan island and was built in 1952. The complex is also notable for its gardens and outdoor sculpture and is considered “international territory” and features 193 flags which included the UN flag. Thank God the UN was not in session so we were taken inside the debating chamber where we also saw the UN Security Council meeting room and the beautiful wall and roof murals used to decorate it.
From the UN headquarters, we had a tour of the Twin Towers and a drive down town to see the "rat race" of Americans going about their business using the metro (rail service) and the yellow taxis. In order to catch my flight to LA, I cut shot other visits to be back at JFK.
Fast forward to August 1985, I was back in the City that never sleeps for three days enroute back to Kenya after graduating at University of Arizona and working for one year.
This time around, my mother and I were guests of a family friend, the Kenyan Embassy Consular General and Tourism Attaché Sam Okungu.
He not only accommodated us, but went out of his way to help me renew my expired Kenyan passport ready for use on my return flight to Nairobi. Okungu was very useful taking me around some tourist attractions in the Big Apple in his personal Volvo saloon, which had a unique registration number plate “Kenya One.” Even President Daniel arap Moi would admire and hitch a ride in the machine whenever he visited the UN headquarters for meetings and tour New York City.
One of the trips was to visit another Kenyan, Ben Mudho, who was the deputy to Kenya’s Representative to the UN. It was while at the home of the Mudhos in the leafy part of Manhattan Island, that we also met two Kenyans who were on a business trip. They were Fred Gumbo, General Manager, Amazon Motors Kenya Ltd, dealers of Volvo, in Nairobi and his younger brother Joseph Jamwaka Jangima, who had recently graduated from a university in India.
Because I had tried to "carry the whole of America" in my suitcases back to Kenya, my Samsonite suitcase was too small to fit the other souvenirs I had bought in New York, so I had requested Jangima to switch his very large size suitcase with my smaller one with my "DT" initial marked on it.
We introduced ourselves and then enjoyed a sumptuous dinner and drinks before we called it a night ready for my return flight the following morning. My next NYC visit was in 2008 when I made a whistle stop detour from Atlanta Georgia where I had stayed for 30 days covering the historic U.S. Presidential Election where Illinois Senator Barack Obama Jr, whose father was a Kenyan with roots in Kogelo in Alego-Usonga in Siaya County, made history as the first African American to be elected to the most powerful office in the world.
Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., was among the hundreds of beneficiaries of the famous Tom Mboya airlifts of Kenyans and East African youth who were assisted to travel to the U.S. in the early 1960s and further their education at various universities on the eve of Kenya’s independence in 1963.
From JFK, I boarded a taxi driven by a Puetorican man who was very excited to meet a "Kenyan bro" whom according him was a relative of their President in waiting The driver was even more impressed that I had flown to Albany, the administrative capital of New York State, visited a Kenyan friend, Dick Oyuo, his wife, Judy, and two children, Joel and Crystal, for two days, as the winter season was starting. To survive, my friend helped me with winter clothes which included vests and under wears, which I had never seen.
During the brief visit to Albany, my friend took a day off from work to drive me in his American car together with his wife and children to visit my kid brother, Benjamin Oruko, in Boston, Massachusetts, some 223 kilometers away, almost like from Nairobi to Eldoret. It took almost three hours on one of the best highways I had ever seen and been driven on.
By then, Oyuo had relocated to the U.S., thanks to his Ugandan wife, whom he married in Kisumu, who had successfully applied for a green card, took me around Albany city on a tour of down town, the leafy neighbourhoods and stopped by a supermarket for groceries.
On the eve of my departure, Oyuo and his Kenyan friends and his elder brother, Morris Odondi, threw a dinner party for me in his house where the 'chief guest' was a university don who revealed that he has been my keen reader of my articles in Daily Nation for the past decade.
The following day, I took a dawn flight from Albany to New York and was amused to see traffic lights operating as usual at 4am and the few motorists respecting them lest they be caught by the secret cameras and sent a fine via their postal boxes. In New York, the jovial and very talkative driver had also shared many stories about his challenges in school, life and work as a minority. He concluded by saying he had voted for Barry with hope that he would "remember his bros and sisters once he takes over the hot seat."
I was amazed at the numerous highways, bridges and tunnels along the route. As the cars slowed down in a major traffic jam before we got to downtown, I asked him what was causing it, the driver was happy to inform me that it was because the police had blocked some sections leading to and from the UN headquarters" because U.S. President George Bush Jr was headed to address delegates and fellow Heads of States for the last time before handing over to his successor.
Because of that tip, he adviced me to alight several streets away, so as to keep time at my Ford Foundation appointment. I obliged and enjoyed the short walk to the FF offices close to the UN headquarters where we had a two-hour meeting with my sponsors and two other Kenya journalists, Carol Karongo (Capital FM) and Gitau Warigi (Sunday Nation), for de-briefing, before I hailed a taxi to drop me at JKIA for my overnight return flight back to JKIA via Amsterdam at The Hague to resume my work on December 1, which coincided with my 49th birthday.
The two colleagues spent the night in a hotel there and returned home the following day.
Looking back now, I was glad to visit NYC, no matter how short the stay was.
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