“Oh yeah is all corrupt,” Freddy said in his deep, rolling Nigerian accent I so loved. His face broke into a huge smile and he laughed—his laugh is high and lilting—something you wouldn’t expect from the six foot something, very large African.

“You know my father is a prince, right? Yes, well, when we have dese elections, my uncle was running an’ I was about eight years old an’ he called me an’ had me and my little cousin come to his house. So we went there and….” He paused the story to laugh again, “an’ we counted deh votes, you know, we stuffed dese ballots, and people come over with deir bribes and such an’ that helped stuff the ballots as well. Is all a joke. Is all corrupt and fake.” He laughed again and my mouth dropped open.

“But Freddy,” I said, “I thought you said you wanted to go back and get into politics. Are you going to keep doing things like that?”

“Oh well, I hope not to be too corrupt. But chu know, is different there. There is corruption everywhere—it just depends on how is done. And I want to make Nigeria better, but you can’t just expect everytin to change overnight.”

He paused, took a sip from his soda in our cafeteria, and smiled again. “Yeah so I was just a little kid and corrupting the votes. That was so funny….”

That is what comes to mind when I read about this