By Amat Jeng
By 6am, the bus that was to take us from the Frederick Douglass building at Howard University to New York was already idling by the curb. Wipers swirling, cabin lights dimmed, the inside was fresh and clean—filled with that gentle, floral scent that might remind you of spring magnolias. Nina Simone would’ve had second thoughts about the lyrics in her haunting Strange Fruit, with its “scent of magnolia, clean and fresh.”
I live just four hours from New York and yet, I’ve never visited. For most Americans, a four-hour drive is the equivalent of walking to your mailbox. In Sweden, driving four hours westward from my student apartment in Uppsala would’ve landed me in Norway. But I had my reasons: rats, mostly. Also: people. Noise. Work. Tariffs. Maybe it was just my loyalty to small places. After all, I am from a village. I grew up in Fulladou, where childhood was built on chasing goats, knocking birds off branches with wooden slingshots, and watching white egrets pick ticks off the backs of lazy cows. A wonderful experience. At least, that’s what I say now. Back then, I hated it. Truly. No lies told.
Every time I’d complain about the rats in Washington DC, my Nigerian friend, who teaches at the Pratt Institute and makes weekly pilgrimages to New York, would shrug with poetic flair:“Wait till you get to New York. There, the rats will shake your hand, sit beside you on the train, and deliver pizza to your neighbors.”
Now, Nigerians are known for many things, among them their love of allegory and their inability to ever lose an argument. Especially Nigerian scholars. Don’t even try. He might be right though. New York is said to have over three million rats. That’s more than the population of The Gambia – a country still struggling to define itself.
Our driver, Rosalind, stood tall in her pristine uniform, flashing a warm smile at every student boarding. The students beamed, buzzing with excitement, while I raised my head occasionally to see who was missing. There! Shawna. She came running like the wind, her legs, shaped like French baguettes, slicing through the morning drizzle. An athlete, obviously, always ready to remind us. Once we were all in and belted up, Rosalind pulled the mic close and cleared her throat:
“Good morning, good morning. This is your driver, Rosalind. Today, you’re riding to New York. Expected arrival: 11:20. We’ll stop for a short break at the Biden Welcome Center in Delaware. Please fasten your seat belts. Thank you!”
She spoke with such clarity that I couldn’t help but wonder where she was from. She speaks good English. Cannot be Liberia. My inner anthropologist kicked in, but I reeled it back. Isn’t English the official language in Liberia? I don’t know. Wasn’t Liberia America’s only ‘colony’ in Africa? Let’s not go there!
Rosalind adjusted her seat, glanced at the mirrors, and gently ignited the engine. Someone shouted from the back, “It’s cold in here!” Without skipping a beat, Rosalind turned and calmly announced she was adjusting the heat. The bus began to roll out of Howard’s campus, making a soft turn past the Sankofa Bookstore and onto Georgia Avenue.
The chat-chat and hullabaloo began to die quietly, not due to fatigue, but because of a more formidable force: smart phones. Technology is the new lullaby. Everyone was neck-deep in their glowing rectangles. It reminded me of that time I rode an ABC bus from Lagos to Abuja. On that ride, passengers weren’t allowed to bring phones onboard. Coming from peaceful Gambia, I didn’t understand why until a young woman from Ibadan whispered:
“Brada, they don’t let people bring phones so no one can call the armed robbers and leak our location.” She didn’t have to say much. That journey took eight hours, and through the window I saw two Nigerians: one rich with hills, trees, and architectural ambition; the other poor, cracked, and crawling with hardship. Nigeria is a land of contradiction.
As the bus rolls, I thought of reciting some Qur’anic verses or even a few Fulfulde incantations to ask the ancestors to steer the wheel. But I quickly reminded myself that none of my ancestors had a driver’s license. Rosalind was my best bet here. In Rosalind I trust.
As we coasted into Maryland, I started thinking about Harlem. Ah, Harlem. Sheriff Bojang, our literary giant, would waste no time visiting Harlem to indulge himself in the remnant of the literary reservoir of the Harlem Renaissance.
Just when I was deep in my thoughts, Cassidy came over. Political Science major, African Studies minor—don’t ask me why those are separate departments. Curious, perceptive, and armed with a copy of Africa Is Not a Country by Dipo Faloyin. She smiled:“So, what do you think about this book?”I liked many things in it. But I couldn’t get over one unforgivable claim: that Nigerian Jollof rice—Benachin, as I call it—is the best in the world. That, dear Cassidy, is what we call culinary propaganda.
“The verdict is in the name,” I told her. “Taco belongs to Mexico. Pizza to Italy. Jollof is for Jolof—the old Senegambian kingdom. Period.” Americans can put pineapples on pizza all they want, but no one calls it American cuisine. Same applies here. Benachin is ours. Bite that, Dipo.
Our stop at the Biden Welcome Centre in Delaware felt like a commercial for American multiculturalism: hijabs, cowboy hats, biker jackets, Sikhs, suitcases rolling in every direction. Cassidy gestured toward her friends and whispered: “You see? This place is America. Everyone from everywhere.” I nodded. I was too focused on finding coffee that didn’t come from Starbucks. I had my reasons, but we’re not going into that today.
By noon, we arrived at the African Burial Ground National Monument. A sacred place. Over 4,000 African men, women, and children were buried here between the 1630s and 1795. When their remains were rediscovered in the 1990s, the city trembled. Students wept. Some knelt and prayed. Others stood frozen in solemnity. It wasn’t just history: it was presence. Ancestral gravity.
As the bus rolled past Lower Manhattan and pointed us toward uptown, my mind was already two stops ahead – Harlem. Harlem! That mythical ground where the Harlem Renaissance unfolded like a spiritual explosion. Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, all draped in defiance and velvet. Harlem was more than a neighbourhood: it was a revolutionary intellect. Harlem was more than a location: it was a vibe, an era, a thunderclap in Black consciousness. It was the fire that warmed the bones of Pan-Africanism, of jazz, of Black selfhood, unapologetically proclaimed in verse, in fashion, in politics. It is where Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston once argued over art and race at rent parties fueled by moonshine and metaphors.
I thought of John Henrik Clarke, the late, great historian who taught the world that African people had no obligation to explain themselves through European eyes. He didn’t just write history: he dismantled it with a machete in one hand and a citation in the other. If Clarke was the fire, then Ta-Nehisi Coates, now at Howard, is the smoke we’re still inhaling. He is sharp, lucid, sometimes choking. His Between the World and Me turned private grief into public scripture. The way he wrote about growing up in West Baltimore, about Howard as “The Mecca,” about body, race, and danger, it all echoed in my head. Coates helped me understand that cities like Harlem weren’t just geographic dots; they were epicenters of radical memory.
I wanted to visit Harlem’s Little Senegal not only for café Touba and spicy Benachin, but because Harlem was once the heartbeat of Black radicalism – the intellectual lungs that gave breath to Pan-Africanism, Garveyism, Negritude, and every shade of Black aesthetic defiance. In Harlem, even the streets, they say, hum with echoes of Baldwin’s voice. I imagined him walking past the Apollo Theatre, trench coat flaring, cigarette smoke curling above his head like a halo of rebellion, speaking truths that America still runs from. To visit Harlem and not feel the ghosts, impossible.
From there, we found ourselves on Broadway Avenue. For a moment, I thought I was in Château Rouge in Parisor Marché Sandaga in Dakar. Senegalese vendors lined the sidewalks, speaking Wolof and Pulaar to one another, selling phone cases, incense, fake Gucci bags, and nostalgia. I tried to get to Chipotle, but gossip on the sidewalk was too rich to miss. That’s where I met Malau. Or should I say that’s where Malau stepped on my foot, splashed water on his face, and declared, “Da tang tey.” It’s hot today. That behaviour earns him the day’s only valid “rat” title: short, squealing, and universally unloved. Though technically he’s human. Actual rodents? Zero. Score one for the skeptics.
After five minutes of scolding from fellow Senegalese vendors for behaving like a rat, Malau, perhaps feeling publicly exorcised, threw the rest of his water on someone else’s goods. That’s when I decided I had seen enough of Broadway Avenue. Still no rats. So far, the only creature that stepped on me, figuratively and literally, was Malau.
As the sun prepared its descent, slipping behind Manhattan’s skyline, I called my Nigerian friend.
“Hey, I’m leaving New York. Guess what? No rats.”
“Did you take the train?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“Nope.”
“Then abeg, don’t talk yet. The real New York begins underground.”
Touché. One cannot win arguments with Nigerians.
My time in New York was sliced thin between historical monuments and Chipotle detours. Harlem remained a silhouette, waving from a distance. I knew it was there, though, like a line from a poem you never quite memorize but never forget either.
Still, I’ll be back. Harlem’s beckoning, Baldwin’s ghost pacing 128th Street, and yes, I’ll brave the subway, if only for the anecdote. After all, a village boy who once feared city crowds just logged his first bite of Broadway and lived to tell the tale: pizza‑stealing rodents, street squabbles, and all. But next time, I’ll pack extra courage, and maybe a slice of authentic Senegambian Benachin for the inevitable underground rat meet‑and‑greet.
Washington-bound, Rosalind coaxes the coach onto I‑95 while the students debate whether Benachin or Chipotle’s “Afrik‑inspired” bowl wins dinner. I let them fight it out. If New York’s rat army exists, it skipped reveille today.
