Visa!

Kairaba: I would like to go to America. Binta, do you think I will?
Me: I don’t know.
Kairaba: You know!
Me: A visa will be a problem. America's government will not give a visa to many people.
Kairaba: Why?
Me: I do not know.
Kairaba: You know!
Me: I do not know.
Kairaba: Binta, do not say "I don't know!"
Me: If I will give visas, I will give them to many people.

Then I thought a bit and possibly managed to explain that America is afraid people will say they are just coming to look at America and then leave but actually they will stay a long time. They will lie. They will be in America and they will work, but they will not pay the government.

Kairaba agreed that it is true, that it is the government who does not want to give a lot of visas. “And Binta, even if you were giving the visas, the government would not accept.” But surely, surely Kairaba has had these conversations with these answers from at least one of the family’s four or five previous volunteers?

Gaye joined our conversation and talked about how Americans do not want the blacks to come and how Americans think they are al alike. He wasn’t relly talking to me, which I was glad about, because I wouldn’t have known what to say.