the Nigerian Ghoul in an American Forest
Browsing the archives for the adventures category.
I got home from school yesterday to find these post-it notes on my door. Ben had left them there.
I wrote my reply in red, and left the sheets on the door so that he can see it whenever he comes back. When I see him, I intend to inform him of how impressed I am at his resourcefulness since, as I know for a fact, I wasn’t the one who taught him pele (the Yoruba word for “I’m sorry/forgive me” ) and there is no other Yoruba person living in this building, or within a mile of our residence.
“Lemp Mansion is a house in St. Louis, Missouri. The ghosts of several Lemp family members are said to haunt the mansion.” – Wikipedia
“There is no place in the city of St. Louis with a reputation that is quite as ghostly as the Lemp Mansion. It has served as many things over the years from stately home to boarding house to restaurant…but it has never lost the fame of being the most haunted place in the city. In fact, in 1980, Life Magazine called the Lemp Mansion “one of the ten most haunted places in America”. – http://www.prairieghosts.com/lemp.html
“The Lemp Mansion is located in St. Louis, Missouri, a short distance away from the Mississippi River. Take Broadway from Interstate 55 and follow that to Cherokee Street. Go west on Cherokee and turn right onto De Menil Place. The address of the mansion is 3322. The Pointer Family has owned and operated the Lemp Mansion since 1975. The Lemp family line died out with him and the family’s resting place can now be found in beautiful Bellefontaine Cemetery.” – http://www.hauntedamericatours.com/hauntedhouses/LempMansion/
Now that we know (almost) all about this building, where it is located, and what makes it so remarkable, could someone tell me why this traveller is now thinking of actually going to spend a night there?
This is a guest post by one of my “veteran” readers and commenters from Lagos, Nigeria now living in Birmingham, UK. Adeleke Adesanya is a literary spirit in an accountant’s/economist’s bottle, and I am not sure that he has successfully resolved the conflict that those almost opposite preoccupations of money and literature must pose to the stability of his mind. Along with his beautiful wife and daughter, he runs the shoes, bags and clothing outfit in Lagos called Laurensonline and has been a supporter of this blog and blogger for a long time. Now a student in the United Kingdom, he has sent this beautifully written reaction to the weather, environment, language and people of Birmingham. I hope you enjoy this as I did.
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I have often found that when I put pen to paper, it is easier to express my feelings and thoughts than the sight and sounds around me. Perhaps, this is because I am often so lost in thought, and I don’t look around so much, and this is why, I find, I keep my losing my way. Perhaps this also allows me to say a lot about the environment in a way a visual description would not allow. Nothing expresses better the warm welcome I received on arrival in Birmingham than how my mind related to its cold weather.
Getting lost in Lagos was no big deal. I confess my propensity to get lost, in the marketplace of my mind, is an old habit. Many a times I had driven straight ahead to Ojota, on the way to Victoria Island, because at that split second when I should have turned right towards the Third Mainland Bridge, I was lost in thought, pondering perhaps the similarities between Buddhism’s belief in reincarnation and that of Yoruba native beliefs. I would find this ironic and maybe funny, considering I had, un-Buddha-like, been unable to drive “in the moment”.
But getting lost in Lagos is a piece of cake. You might have to drive against traffic, “one way” in local parlance, to get back in track. Or you could hail an Okada, the commercial motorcyclist, to take you through back roads, back to your destination. And then, as a Yoruba proverb hints, you aren’t yet really lost in Lagos if you do ask around for directions.Getting lost in Brume is a different pot of stew. I am not so crazy as to attempt driving myself; they drive on the wrong side of the road, you see. My right to travel is entirely dependent on route schedules determined by local transport companies.
As soon as I find a seat on a bus and look through the pane onto those cold, snow covered streets, my mind retreats into its marketplace, ruminating over morbid thoughts like, if one was to die of exposure and is buried in this cold, frozen land, would the cadaver ever know corruption? It is not entirely strange that over and over again, I miss my bus stop and get driven around the outer circle of the town. Once I made a mistake of coming down from the bus. Picture me, unwisely clad in a suit, fending off snowflakes with bare freezing fingers. I tried to cheer myself up by singing lustily the chorus of Don Mclean’s American Pie with extra emphasis on “this would be the day that I die!”
And then I start asking for directions, which is not as simple as it appears. For one, the aborigines (whether white, Indian or Jamaican), I find, do not speak the English Language. Their accents are so thick; it is virtually another dialect, nay, language. It sometimes makes more sense to acknowledge the verbal challenges and try to communicate via sign language. Now they, I mean the natives, would politely go through detailed explanations of buses I should take and changes I must make, while I put on my best Nigerian smile. But in the end, I am in no wit wiser.
A few times, when the bus driver appeared African, I wrongly assume that linguistic challenges would easily be resolved if not eliminated. Alas, this clan is mostly of taciturn types, more eloquent in communicating by nods and grunts. I once wondered whether they had signed a pact not to speak in complete sentences in order not to betray their Nigerian accent. As if that is a bad thing…
In the end, I learnt to cope by using the internet to research my route and printing detailed maps. I also avoid travelling at night, when visibility may not be as clear. On the bright side, getting lost has its benefits. It is the perfect alibi for lateness. It makes for humorous jokes when with good company. And if you are a stranger and you really want to know the town, you really should get lost sometime. It is wonderful, the things you find and the people you meet, when you get lost, sometimes.
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He used to blog as Kiibaati, Adeleke can now be found on Twitter @adelekeadesanya.
Today’s even in the Discover Languages Month was a talk by Elizabeth Killingbeck, a student of my department who had gone to Saint-Louis in Senegal in West Africa for a three month Rotary community project and a French-abroad experience. Elizabeth had come back with stories of said experience and was at the Plasma Lounge again to share it with members of the department, faculty and students who had come to listen. From a little after three pm when the talk started, and a little after four o clock when it ended, Elizabeth took us on a journey of her experiences, good and bad, in the West African country. It was worth it listening to.
Her trip to Senegal was doubly memorable for her and for us because Elizabeth had never lived within any community of totally French-speaking people, nor has she ever been to Africa (or for that matter lived within a community of mainly moslems). And on top of that, she is someone of not so large a stature that must have gone through so much to survive (even in the US) within a group of bigger framed folks, and here she was in French and Wolof-speaking West Africa in the blazing sun. Now don’t get me wrong, Elizabeth is only soft-spoken, she is neither timid nor shy when speaking about what she finds fascinating.
Wearing a green guinea attire that she bought while there in Abdoulaye Wade’s country, she talked about drinking water, flies, art, classrooms, children, vehicle art, street kids, food, family, language, camels, religion, literacy among many others. There were also pictures to show for it. Talking about water supply, Elizabeth talked about the problem of accessing good water where she lived. They drank from the well while she bought and drank bottled water. “Should she have drunk the well water?” Belinda asked me. “Definitely not,” I replied.
Present at the talk were the departmental head Belinda Carstens, the Chinese Professor Tom Lavalle, Prof Doug Simms, Prof Olga Bezhanova, departmental secretary Sherry Venturelli, the lab manager Catherine Xavier and many other members of the department. It was a nice talk over all.
Like in all of the previous talks in the Plasma Lounge, this one also had refreshments and drinks. The snacks was plantain chips – which I welcomed with all my appetite. Then there were marshmallows which Dr. Lavalle had brought just for my sake. See, this is one of the advantages of blogging. Somebody nice might read about your appreciation of the taste of marshmallows so much that he would actually go out of his way to buy you some more. I guess here is the time to express my appreciation for pineapple and chicken topped Papa John’s pizza. Not for everyday though. Just for Wednesdays. 
I think this concludes the Discover Languages Month events in the department. It has been a very good month for learning and sharing. I thank the organizers for the initiative.
I realize that this is a bit late, but I did make a short video of my visit to the Mardi Gras at the Soulard in St. Louis. Find it below so that you can appreciate the crowd. And the crowd you can see here is not even almost a tenth of the whole population of visitors on that day. I wonder how wild it would have been had it taken place in the summer.
My report of the event appeared in the Nigerian newspaper 234Next last week Friday. Find it here. This was my first time of being published in that newspaper.
Alton, IL
