ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for the day Tuesday, October 5th, 2010.

Lagos in the Office

After making the large prints of three of those photos I told you about a few weeks ago, I walked up to Amie at the office this morning and asked her which ones she liked the most. Her answer was unequivocal, she chose the one showing the Lagos traffic at night. When I asked her why, she said it was because she loved (big) cities. Sigh. A few minutes later, I asked James the same question and he chose the same picture. His reason was that it was more lively than the pictures of glowing lamps and a church window. In any case, I immediately began to rethink my earlier decision to take the photo home to install on my wall. As a third person suggested much later, I could actually put it right there in the office and let people admire it whenever they come in.

I tried that today, and it has thankfully failed as an experiment.

First of all, there’s not much space on the wall of the office to fit a 16 x 20 inches drawing without causing some aesthetic discomfort to some of the other cultural photos already there much of them smaller. Second of all, much as I gave it a chance to stay on my table where I can see it, I have painfully realized that I can’t stand the sight of that long energetic Lagos traffic for eight hours non-stop every day. Better to put one that shows more of a world at peace with itself, even if through the little light entering through a church window. I’m afraid of how agitated my days might be if I keep the Lagos traffic in front of me for much of the day. I have therefore taken it off, and now I’m taking it home to hang on the living room wall where I don’t spend much time anyway. All those in awe of (big) cities will gape at it and find their rhythm. And when I want to study, maybe it will help me to focus, or give me the needed spunk when I need the energy. And maybe not. In all, I have come to agree that it is a beautiful piece of photo that captures some of the fundamental elements of the Lagos evening: traffic.

I had taken it one late evening on my way from the Lagos Island, and it shows traffic on only one side of the road. A candid colourful shot of daily experience.

Lagos in the Office was published on October 5th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Observations category. There are currently 6 comments on this article so far.

Monday at the Institute

Yesterday I returned to the Institute at St. Louis to continue my work as a volunteer in adult literacy teaching. Getting to the place was a little easier this time, and the music from the radio helped. Oh, there was this awesome show on the NPR about how the economy of Brazil was turned around by two young men who introduced a new (first virtual, and later real) currency, the URV, and helped to turn the tide of the country’s spiral inflation.

My student on Monday was a man from Bhutan of between sixty and sixty-five years old. He had never learnt to read or write in his life and was just beginning. I don’t know his condition of coming into the United States and I’m not interested in asking (nor am I even allowed/supposed to, I think), but I was impressed by his interest and a physical joy he expresses in his attitude to learning. Much of what we did on Monday were reading through images, repetition and demonstration. Then later we moved to dictation, crossword puzzles and word scrambles. The most interesting thing about each experience is that even when the students are not performing well in class exercises, there is a certain pride that come across in the faces of each tutor because of the efforts students have put in and the excitement on their faces for even having tried.

The students all come to the Institute everyday and will, after a while, learn sufficient literacy to conduct the business of daily living in the language of the society without help. Maybe not enough to read Dante, Shakespeare or Cervantes, but to do what they must to get through every day. If I could go there everyday of the week, I probably would.

Monday at the Institute was published on October 5th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Academic, Opinion, Uncategorized category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

Accents

Watch this:

Accents was published on October 5th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Fun category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.