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“I didn’t expect to find an actual civilized city. I heard so much about Africa; how you stay in huts, how you live with wild animals, how everywhere was like being in a very poor village.” These were the words of my German friend who had never been to Africa before now but only knew what they showed in the media. I remember my cousin, who just came back from the United States, telling me how her son had come home from school crying one day because his classmate had said he lived in trees with Monkeys in Africa that’s why he looked like one. If children already have this notion what’s to say it will change as they grown older. I realized then that we make the same mistake of already expecting the picture we have seen in the media when leaving our country and going to another. We have a picture in our mind of what a place should have and look like and end up sticking to it till we find we are closed off to the possibility of a new adventure. I looked at my beautiful country through the eyes of every foreigner and realized how bad we have been portrayed. I have lived in Nigeria all my life and I am yet to see a mud hut like the ones shown on Television. I am yet to climb a tree and I definitely don’t have a lion as my neighbor. Through their eyes I could see only the bad, I could see a poverty stricken nation with nothing to offer but corruption and malaria. Through their eyes, I could see a nation so backwards, that the rest of the world ignored. But when I stopped looking through their eyes which were tainted by what was shown by the media, when I looked through my eyes, I found my beautiful home once more. Through my eyes, I saw the skyscrapers and the busy roads, I saw restaurants and parks, I saw game houses and movie theaters. I saw the side of Nigeria that was rarely shown by the media. I saw scenery and culture preserved, practiced and thriving. I saw color and life bursting with every party. I saw a place with so many possibilities and adventures. This is my home, the home I know, the home I love, the home I want the rest of the world to know and love I didn’t think there was anything wrong with my country till I heard what foreigners thought of it, and so I’m determined to stop finding things wrong with other countries and form my opinion based on what I see. It takes one person to begin, soon the whole world will join.