The Cranfield Journey: Part 2 – Integration Shockers

Have you read Part 1 – In the Beginning?

The next Monday, 3 October 2016, Cranfield’s School of Water, Energy, Environment and Agrifood (SWEE) began its induction week. Then the following week, we had our first module, Dynamics of Fluidic Energy Devices.

After two days of arriving before the 9am start time, the Uno Bus service decided to run late on Wednesday, thereby investing me with a badge of lateness alongside a sentence to the back of the class. That was truly my worst lecture day in Cranfield as I could only hear but not see the board and had to rely on a neighbour’s note for copying. For a module concentrated with differential equations, audio-alone was surely not a way to go. I thought about my £17,500 school fees and resolved it could not be allowed to waste. Two decisions were made that day. Firstly, I would leave my house earlier each morning, so that even if the buses were to run late any day, I would still get to the campus before time. This ended up making me the earliest to arrive on at least 80-90% of all subsequent lectures I attended.

My second decision was to get prescription glasses for my eyes. I had gone through primary and secondary school always sitting in front. Hence, I did not notice my eyes struggled with reading text from a distance until I entered my undergraduate university where the usually crowded lecture halls were much larger, and I stayed at the back on several occasions. It was here I realised while some colleagues could see the board from the back, I had to depend on second-hand copying to cope. Booking an eye test turned out to be a hassle. Unlike in Nigeria, where I would have just walked into an eye clinic to test my eyes, I had to contact several opticians to find a slot. I finally got an eye test slot almost two weeks away and ended up with corrective glasses to deal with any village people who may have planned to use my eyes against my school fees.

Talking about booking slots, I had to book an appointment to open an account in England. It truly made no sense to me coming from a country where we just walk into any bank, pick an account opening form, submit required documents and return later to get our account numbers. Here, with the exception of some bank branches in less active areas, one had to book an appointment. Another shocker came when I tried getting my hair cut by a “professional” after a colleague had forced me to cover my head for over a week thanks to his ultra-admirable design on my head. I walked into a salon in Cranfield Village and the first question I was asked was whether I had an appointment. “Appointment? To cut my hair?” The guy then informed me he was a hairdresser, not a barber. I guess he meant to say he had a doctorate in cutting hair unlike some “roadside” O-Level barbers. I took the cue and henceforth stuck with salons that felt like Nigeria where I could just walk in and walk out with a neater face.

When I first arrived in the UK, a friend in the Netherlands had advised me not to be like many Nigerians who remained within the circle of Nigerians. His advice was to relate with Europeans and try to understand their culture. Hence, in addition to joining the Nigerian Society, I signed up for Cranfield University’s Green Team and when a request was made for volunteers to join a trip to Tattenhoe Knolls, a forested conservatory, I threw my hat into the ring. The garden boots I bought for that trip turned out to be very effective against the stubs on the ground, although in retrospect, that was a hurried purchase as I had no need for garden boots after that day.

Relating with non-Nigerians saw me feature as the only black person whenever my class had an out-of-class activity. For some unclear reasons, the other three Nigerians in my class avoided any activity that required them to spend a minute outside lecture halls with the rest of the class. Hence, when my classmates had a basketball game, I was invited to my first ever game, where I substituted my lack of handling and shooting skills with a defensive stamina that received some accolades. When my classmates had a cross-cultural food display and tasting session, my plantain porridge was the only African dish, and I was surprised “whites” thought it was “spicy”. As a proper Nigerian, “peppery food” is not food that contains pepper but food that contains excess pepper. I was now relating with persons who swore that even curry was corrosive to their taste buds.

I took the opportunity offered by Cranfield to attend a manufacturing workshop where I encountered my first 3D printer, then a trip to an Airbus facility in Filton where the wings of the A400 are produced. At Airbus, I got my first truly 3D experience, navigating inside a wing with the realism of an in-person experience, with sensors all around the room tracking movement. I wondered why I always seemed to be the only Nigerian, sometimes, the only black at events like this whereas Cranfield had a sizable Nigerian population.

Continue reading: Part 3 – Academics and Flexing