reflections on the world
There were about six recent past issues of The Economist outside my door when I opened the door this evening. My supervisor and mentor had left them there. And although I’d read many of the stories in them online already, holding the glossy prints still left a mixed feeling of the times. As with books I had bought (and been given) sometimes reluctantly, one big problem will be where to put all of these when it’s time again to move.
Considering how much you beat the living shit out of me while we were growing up, even for the filmsiest reasons, 
please consider this form of public greeting a mild recompense for all those fun times. Sorry, the plane ticket to Britain is beyond me at this moment, or I’d have come over to deliver these cards myself* 
. You’re my only brother after all – as far as I know (haha), and it would have been fun to catch up. But heck, have a blast with your family. I wish you the very best on this your special day. May the rest of your days be the best of your days!
* Besides, even if I somehow make it through to Heathrow Airport, those buggers at the airport entry points would still take one look at my Nigerian passport as they did the last time I had ambitiously marched towards them (on landing after my connecting flight from Lagos in August) and told them that I wanted to spend my five idle hours on the streets of London shopping, looking at stores, parks, red phone booths and double decked buses , and tell me with the stiffest upper lip I’ve ever seen, that “You hold a Nigerian Passport. We cannot let you in… Yes I see that you have an American visa on it, and a ticket that says you’d be moving from here in five hours, but that’s the law here, thank you… Anything else I can do for you?” Damn them! I wonder how you survive. Here’s what my friend George Orwell the British had to say: “Soon or late the day is coming… (that) the fruitful fields of England shall be trod by beasts alone.” Ah-ha, there you have it. I wish you the best of luck. Happy Birthday Brother!
My editorial commentary in the current issue of Nigerianstalk Litmag briefly touched on the passing of children’s writer Maurice Sendak. Like Dr. Seus, I didn’t know much about Mr. Sendak until I came to the United States, and one of my most remarkable contact with him was through Stephen Colbert in a very recent, every affecting interview (as if either of them knew how short a time the writer had left. He died at 83 on Tuesday). Maurice is the author of the popular children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. He admitted to Colbert that he didn’t see himself much as a “children’s” writer but as someone whose work has been accepted as appealing to children. The second part of that interview is here.
Listening to his other very remarkable, emotional interview with Terry Gross of NPR, it is hard to see him as anything but remarkable a human being – much more than the brilliant writer and illustrator that he was. Ending the interview with an advice to “live your life, live your life,” it appears that one of his most enduring legacy will be his ability to defy all odds of negativity and skepticism in order to achieve immortality. As Colbert himself will now acknowledge after receiving the boost of approval from Mr. Sendak for his own new book for children I’m a Pole (and So Can You), genius loves company.
These are some of the last words on that NPR interview, a commentary on his life: ”I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more. … What I dread is the isolation. … There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.”
RIP Maurice (Obituary in the NY Times).
One of the biggest victories for the new media is the relegation of language as performance to language purely as thought, purely as an abstract medium. Maybe it’s not a total progress if we look at where we came from (in fact, it could be a form of regression), but the result is a total transformation of old systems into even older ones (in the garb of new shiny ones) where language becomes relevant only as a tool, and no longer as an activity.
I’ll break it down.
Prehistoric man as I imagine him lived only on grunts, brute behaviour, and the subliminal expectation that those around him understood every of his actions as relating to certain demands or requests, as many who ended up on the blunt side of his club found out. Language however brought clarity, and thus sophistication, and a need for a more active set of rules with which everyone negotiated the rote of existence. Our tongues adapted to the needs of our mind, and the mouth became not just a hole for food consumption but for actual articulation of speech. It has been a long time since then.
Justine Bieber and his girlfriend, on vacation
I’ve been thinking about the benefits of new media – technology, mostly – if you could call them benefits, and how it has returned us to silence and the rote of hand movements. The image here is of a couch in a public park on which two teenagers sit, each using an iPhone and texting (either each other, or others. It doesn’t matter). An alien looking at them might – if s/he is aware of our earlier methods of communication – conclude that humans have finally given up on talking to each other, in favour of more effortless means of interaction: sitting side-by-side. A more discerning alien may however find out that our new means of communication includes hand gestures – not of the usual, traditional kind that you’d find between two deaf humans, but those between the thumb and a mobile touchscreen. All around the globe as I convey these thoughts to you using the same means of mute finger-based thought transmission processes, millions of other people are doing the same, some – like me – while also staring at a live picture of another human being located thousands of miles away in another continent. None of us is “talking”, at least not to each other at the moment, yet our fingers keep moving, and thoughts move between us.
It is not inconceivable that when man discovered language and found that it was much easier to talk one’s way out of a threatening gesture of a spiked club pointed by a bigger man with a menacing eye than simply running away or bending in obeisance, he never thought that evolving into more sophisticated means of communication will one day lead back to a different culture of silence. On the bright side, the process evolved through a fascinating period that showed us (from Alexander Bell’s telephone to the telex, fax and then email), the many creative ways of staying far away from each other and still get our points across. As for the fallout of our evolution, we may not end up being physically fitter for it – not needing to move our jaws as much anymore except for eating – but we can at least fool all earth-bound aliens that we’re not communicating to each other whenever we sit idly at our desks and stare at the screens.
Maybe that’s how ants and other lower animals have managed to fool us all these years.
In the summer of 2010 when I made a trip to parts of Northern Nigeria, I did first to re-acquaint myself with the security situation of Jos where I had lived for one year and which had descended into chaos where northern hegemons with the backing of shadowy political powers have taken laws into their hands, killing residents of the town to make it ungovernable. I also visited Kaduna – for the very first time – and found, in spite of a normalized environment that reminded me of some parts of Ibadan where I grew up, a certain sense of unease. After all, the whole of the northern section of the country had a notorious reputation of being a flashpoint for ethnic and religious crises that disproportionately targets “non-indigenes” and Christians.
The situation in Northern Nigeria has greatly deteriorated since that time. (It also sadly seems that the last time I talked about Nigeria on this blog, was also to complain of another series of crises based in that part of the country, and the threat it posed to the future of the nation). In the last couple of days, the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram has graduated from small sporadic attacks on police stations to more sinister strategic attacks on other parts of the country’s civil society. They have attacked the UN building, and churches, markets, and as at last weekend, a national newspaper house, and a University. They have promised more attacks on many more media houses around the country and other symbols of pro-government or pro-Western ideas. Beyond depraved, this is despicable, and sad.
It’s important for context that westerners watching the situation now realize how worse this has become over the years. I remember in December 2009 when the news of the underwear bomber socialized in that same extremist environment in Katsina (and later London) almost blew up a plane all over Detroit. We all agreed that although it was a lone case of international terrorism never before associated with Nigeria, it was also worth watching. I can’t make that same case of “lone wolf” anymore. From the extent of alien infiltration of the Northern part of the country from larger terrorist networks from Yemen, Niger, and other places as evidenced in the sophistication of a hitherto local amateur extremist group that now makes car bombs and are able to detonate them in cities, it is clear that it has clearly got out of hand. Where next would we see them? In airplanes making local flights? Obviously, the federal government’s security forces can’t handle it either.
I don’t know what to think or what to say now that is new, but news from my home country now only makes me sad and depressed. Am I really going back to that place? And what will the value of my life be while I’m there, watching my back every time I walk out of my house into the larger world. The roads are not safe due to robbers and accidents. Now, neither are buildings and religious worship places. I only have two questions: 1. How do I file for asylum anywhere else in the world now that I’m done with school? And 2. Why is the world (especially the other Islamic nations of the world who have claimed all along that their religion is peaceful and should not be unfairly targeted for discrimination) now remarkably silent at this evil turn of events?
One year ago, the leader of Al-Qaeda was killed in Pakistan. From the look of things in these other little corners of the world as Northern Nigeria, it is clear that the terrible seeds of his hateful reign has grown to be equally pernicious, and will only get worse without adequate attention.
An insightful talk from Australia featuring Professor Leanne Hinton on language documentation and revitalization workshops.
h/t Laila & http://australianlanguages.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/professor-leanne-hinton-at-anu-on-reclaiming-indigenous-languages/
Whenever I’ve told people that my thesis is on L2 tonal acquisition, except for folks with sufficient familiarity with the field, the first question usually is – “what is tone?” or “what is a tone language?”, followed by “so what exactly are you trying to find?” I therefore spend the first five minutes explaining to them what tone languages are (and that about 70% of all world languages are tone languages), and then tell them a few more details of the direction of my work. I found myself in this direction by chance – though I don’t tell them that – but after taking the patience to explain why in the absence of sufficient research materials on the process of L2 tonal acquisition I find it fascinating to be involved in discovering all that can be found there, they usually look enlightened suddenly, and then give me a look of “well done.” I feel better, although I know that a good number of them are just happy to be done with the conversation.
Having taught Yoruba at the university level for a while here in the States, it was natural to be interested in phonological and pedagogical dimensions of the language acquisition. Then I took a course on Second Language Acquisition with all its arguments on the critical period hypothesis that implies that language learning becomes difficult or impossible after a certain age. It all coalesced at some point in my head, and here I am. The data gathering part of the work itself is almost done, and the writing is halfway done already. I have discovered very many fascinating things, and encountered enough data to advance into a few more research directions in the future. One of the main things, of course, is that nothing at all prevents anyone from learning and acquiring tone or any language at any age whatsoever. There are influences of first language, to be sure, but they don’t pose enough challenge to prevent a subject (even those above the so-called critical period) from acquiring the form.
Just last week, I helped another colleague conduct a shorter research than mine on the questions of tonal perception among American English speakers. The results were equally interesting regarding which tones were easier to learn in isolation and in context, and whether tones are generally easier to learn in context or in isolation. I have been busy. In a few weeks, all of this should be over, and I should have some time off to myself. What to do with that time is another matter. There seems to always be something. What I will take away from this research (and the whole Masters experience) would be the fascinating unpredictability of results, along with a few frustrations of disobedient subjects and other constraints of time, space, and materials. Somewhere in there will also be an appreciation for the Graduate School here – along with my ever patient supervisors – for the small research grant that has made the whole exercise worthwhile and less exacting, and my supportive family and friends.
The commencement is on May the 5th. I shall have become a master in something (else).
I have taken the tumblr bug (on the same day when Facebook acquired Instagram – if this means anything). I will now share more of my favourite photographs there, so follow if you have a tumblr account, or not. Prints of photographs (with frames, if requested) will be available on request at reasonable price. They make for good wallpaper art.
(Kenya, 2005)
Kitengela nights, a freedom flight.
Dry wisps of grass fly by, breaking
with the cold wind of a pregnant night
as harmattan singes the flesh and mind,
lungs dotted with dust and rust.
Nairobi evening. Lights, cold,
And love – ugali and roasted meat,
Nyama choma, in the walled hub
Of a distant home from home:
Then, warmth in the eastern country.
April winds break across my face
in the bust of a fast-moving beast.
We were four – and a few more,
Strangers in a foreign land, alone.
Only love moved, hosted, filled us.
Now, the mind journeys back
In soft bytes of soothing moods:
dark, homely evening, Kenyan tropics.
Rain and home in a distant place.
Kitengela, you live across from me.
Alton, IL
Kitengela hopes to see you again…
