'Little America' Episode 3: A Nigerian's attempt to settle in America sees him reconnect with his cowboy dreams
This article contains spoilers for Season 1 Episode 3 'The Cowboy'/'Iwegbuna'
In Nigeria of the late 60s and almost 70s grew a little boy fond of signature American Western classics. Later, our cheeky Iwegbuna moved to Norman, Oklahoma, surrounded by an alien land and people alien to the ones he knew back home.
He is a student at a university where woke culture hasn't been initiated yet, and his only source of relief where everybody seems to have already found their preferred people is a guy in a cowboy hat.
The inquisitive Iwegbuna is met with his apathetic teacher's snarky cynicism when not being laughed at by his fellow classmates just for asking simple questions during the lecture.
He eats American food at the university cafeteria and says grace before he proceeds to scrape off the cheese and throw away the buns and just eat the meaty patty.
He rushes home to the comforts of his family whose voices echo through the cassette they have sent him in the mail along with his mother's handwoven quilt and some snacks he clearly misses.
The screenplay shows the entire family present in Iwegbuna's house as their voices ring through the cassette and that is what helps signify the emotion of peace and comfort he feels upon hearing their voices.
They give him hope and encouragement as he struggles to make it big so he can return home soon and take care of his now-deceased father's business, along with his brother.
Later in the day, we see Iwegbuna attending classes to perfect his American accent amidst a bunch of migrants from varying ethnicities.
But it's clear why Iwegbuna's brother worries about him being lonely: he has a problem of being explicitly honest and not knowing when to hold the brutal truth bombs back — what some might call "alienating his audience".
His professor observes that he is extremely pushy too and often tends to make people uncomfortable.
According to him, the boy brimming with pride for his heritage does not try very hard to fit in, but it doesn't matter for Iwegbuna because he finds his place at last: a store that stocks all the cowboy fashion nitty-gritty.
Strutting around in his new hat, boots and a red bandana, Iwegbuna seems to find the confidence and thrill that watching Western movies back in Nigeria with projectors flashing the reel against a plain white sheet would inject him with.
He wears the same to class the next day and suddenly heads turn in both shock and respect for the Nigerian cowboy who has figured out his identity in America finally.
He visits the nearby ranch for a taste of the farm life with goats and horses — something that is his second form of entertainment other than his family's recorded tapes he gets daily.
Iwegbuna soon cracks up his speech class when he rants about the mess that is the concept of burgers and its unnecessarily extensive list of add ons. But first, he puts on his cowboy hat to channel that persona — a token of confidence that resonates with his childhood back home.
His Nigerian friends and cousins living in Tulsa announce him as the "African howdy-doody" and to their concerns about him being lonely, he insists that it is getting better. He relates a cowboy's pride to the Igbe man back home, thus explaining what his cousins call his "cowboy fetish".
Sadly, all this enthusiasm is met with the terrifying news that things in Nigeria are worse than ever.
None of his phone calls go through for a long time, and when he finally hears from his brother's panic-struck voice talking to him about the military takeover and unrest in the nation, Iwegbuna is present there with them, just the way they would be every time he heard their voice on tape.
To his despair, they ask him not to return home as there's nothing to build in Nigeria anymore — something that takes a toll on him and his dreams of earning money to visit home.
So Iwegbuna does what anybody in his position can do best and takes the tape recorder to the ranch to record a message for his family. Once again, we see his mother and brother present in the scene, cheering at him prospering as a professor's teaching assistant, and how he has rediscovered his identity as a cowboy.
He talks about the hard life of cowboys which is just like their life back home and tells them everything will be fine, allowing them to hear the noises from the animals in the farm the way they would make him hear recording of goats and horses back from home.
With his first allowance, the great Nigerian cowboy buys a motorbike and drives off to sunset in a life that finally feels like his own. 'Little America' premieres with all eight episodes on Friday, January 17, only on Apple TV+.