reflections on the world
Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for May, 2010.
10. Mud and puddles
9. Heat
8. Noise
7. Mosquitoes
6. Elephant grass
5. Houseflies
4. NTA news (cheeky cheeky) 
3. NEPA
2. Expired imported apples
1. Dust
PS: This is the 460th post on this blog. Yay!
PPS: Voting has begun in the Nigerian Blog Awards 2010. We’re up for eleven categories. Click here to vote.
I remember, no have forgotten, the evenings when night fell at 3pm. A lonely child on the streets of America squinting at his watch and wondering where all the daylight went. Then there were days of killing cold at lonely bus stations, while waiting for the scheduled bus. Dull summer evenings. Bright afternoons in the face of a deceptively bright sun. What happened? It all seemed like a dream. Did it ever happen? Was I, a few months ago, a curious face in the jungle of shops, brands and malls? I pour water on my face. No, it didn’t happen. It must have been a dream. Did I really fly for almost twenty-four hours over a dozen countries last fall, and returned again via the same route the cool harmattan evenings? My new iPod says yes. My old Dell says no.
It’s cool here, like the temperature of a cool spring, and I dreamt. I arrived in Edwardsville again and started looking for familiar spots. I looked at my phone and there were two time zones. Darn! That always happened. There was no one else to speak to so I called yarinya and she too was not available. She was in a different time zone. Am I in America? I ask. No, I’m here dreaming out the malaria in my flesh. I’m drenched in sweat, on a bed with yellow covering. There is no fan to provide the desired utopia. Nepa! And it’s May, in Ibadan, the breeze wheezing along with the soft clouds and burnt wisps of grass from a faraway place. What manner of dream!
I’m up now to put on the generator. Time to blog.
An affecting story: Review by Ikhide Ikheloa
Suspenseful: Review by Fredua Agyeman
Review by Zeblon Nsingo
No return visit to the old hall of residence would be complete without a visit to the old rooms that played host to my errant self during those five gruelling years.
So when I went there during the week, I stopped by room A41 where I spent my first year, meeting new people, learning to play chess, and discovering Don Williams.
Then I went to room A52 where I met even more people, ate more food, listened to more music and read more books. The walls of that room is witness to so much history. My last room was D20, and I went there too. I did not go in because the current occupants do not know me and I was not in the mood for introductions.
I also visited the reading rooms, the toilets, the cafeteria and the new basketball court behind the warden’s office. In some way, it was as if I never left. In other ways, it looked like an old prison cell housing a bunch of inmates just waiting to burst loose. There are no monuments to my stay in the hall, fortunately, and I slipped out just as I slipped in, anonymously, taking the memory again with me as I left.
My short story – Behind the Door – appeared as one of the eleven short stories in the premier anthology of fictions from Africa titled African Roar. That’s no news anymore, right?
What you didn’t know is that I wrote the story in about two hours after a moving experience in a local hospital. The events in the story, though fictionalized, were derived from a real life experience.
So what’s the reason for this post? I want to share with you a few of the reviews of African Roar, especially those that focused on my short story “Behind the Door.” Enjoy.
Powerful in its simlicity: Review by blogger Solomon Sydelle
Humorous without being frivolous: Review by Elinore Morris
Controlled and well-handled characters: Review by Novuyo-Rosa
The book can now be bought on Amazon, Lion Press, Barnes and Noble, and on the Kindle. Soon enough, we would be able to have them in physical bookshops all around. Until then, what are you waiting for to get an anthology of eleven powerful stories written from all across the continent?
The Nigerian Blog Awards 2010 have been giving me sleepless nights. Seriously! 
I try to think of what else to blog about, and I can’t get it out of my head that I’ve been nominated for the most number of categories in this year’s awards. This is too emotional for me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not averse to awards or honours. I welcome all that they represent and all the responsibility they bestow on the nominee/winners to behave in a particular way worthy of the trust. Still, I was awed, humbled, sometimes swollen-headed, and then humbled again by the what it must mean to be considered worthy of those nominations. Give me the tissue, someone!
So I’ve thanked all the (invisible) people who nominated my blog, but it doesn’t seem enough. I want to go out on a tall building and shout out my appreciation, just go get the point across. Let me do so again here. I appreciate the love. Very much. Thank you. This blog – my own social network, my sounding board, my blackboard, my confession box, and all that it has been over the last ten months – won’t be what it is without the committed readers, commenters, guest-bloggers, fans and friends. It is you for that the drums roll.
KTravula.com was nominated for these categories:
- Best Daily Read
- Best New Blog
- Best Personal Blog
- Best Photography Blog
- Best Poetry Blog
- Best Student Blog
- Best Travel Blog
- Best Use of Media, Including Social Media
- Best Use of Theme
- Most Intellectual Blog
- Nigerian Blog of the Year
Now I can’t wait for the voting season to come and go (voting starts on 31st and ends on the 6th), so that I can get on with my life and resume the pattern of a sound sleep. This suspense is killing.
In the next couple of days, I hope to try to show you a few of my old posts that I often find myself reading all over again, for different reasons. For visitors coming to this blog for the first time because of the mention in the Award Nominations, the posts might give you an insight into why the blog might actually have possibly deserved those nominations. For old readers, they might refresh your memories. But tell me, what are some of your favourite posts, and why?
PS: Today I took a long overdue tour of my old Hall of Residence in the University of Ibadan. The structures are old but there are traces of renovations. There is also a new basketball court behind the Warden’s office. I took pictures. I will share them shortly.
SOPA breaks our internet freedom!
Any site can be shut down whether or not we've done anything wrong.
