ktravula – a travelogue!

teaching. lanugage. travel

Browsing the archives for the News category.

This Weekend: A Blood Intervention

A couple of years ago, December 4, 2009, precisely, I wrote a blogpost in which I lamented a discriminatory practice in the blood donation system on the American campus where I was working then a visiting scholar. Because I was a Nigerian and for no other reason, I had been turned back from giving blood. Two years later, this time as a Masters student in the same university, I wrote a second report, acknowledging a change I noticed in the policy.

Since that first encounter, through the second one, the availability of blood (and the policies behind blood donation drives around the country) had remained on my mind as an abiding interest. So when, back in Nigeria, I was called into the founding of the One Percent Project and the Ten Thousand Donor project which both aim to make access to safe and healthy blood affordable and available through the means of information technology-driven applications, I jumped into it.

IMG_0178It had been fun, and enlightening, and rewarding. Since the founding of the organization in May 2012, the One Percent Project has helped facilitate the collection of about 754 pints of blood from young professionals from around the country, through the Nigerian National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) who then give it to hospitals where they are needed, thus potentially saving about 2262 lives (since a pint of blood is reputed to be able to save about three human lives).

But that was just the beginning. So, starting from tomorrow June 14, the best tech volunteers, programmers and hackers from around Nigeria are gathering in Yaba and Lekki to collaborate with the One Percent Project to create an app that can make it easier for potential donors to link up with blood donation centres around the country, and especially for patients needing blood to connect with willing donors who have signed up to be called whenever the situation arises.

Tomorrow is also the 2013 World Blood Donor Day

I will be part of the event, tweeting nuggets, pictures, and thoughts via my twitter feed @baroka. At 4pm on Sunday, at the Audax Solutions Office (at Plot 24, Block 113, Adebisi Ogunniyi Crescent, Lekki Phase 1, Lagos‎),  the app, called the LifeBank App, will be publicly launched. There will be bloggers, social media personalities, print media practitioners, and other trustees present. If you can make it, it would be nice to see you there too. It would be nice to introduce you to the advances this new generation of Nigerian youths are making to make the future much better than the present.

The LifeApp Facebook page has been set up, as well as a twitter page. Conversations on the hackaton and the app launch will be on twitter under the hashtags #hack4health and #LifeBank.

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 10.0/10 (2 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

This Weekend: A Blood Intervention was published on June 13th, 2013, with the tags , , , , , under the Fun, News, technology category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Calls for Audio Poetry

The following is a mail I received from my friend and publisher Maurice Oliver. Please send him an email if you have an audio poem he might be able to use.
____________________
Hope all goes well.
You probably already know that Lip-Service Journal will be replacing Eye Socket Journal on the first of next month!
I love poetry and I think I can reach a larger audience with the audio poetry approach. The trial-run of the 1st issue has already had nearly 200 hits in 3 weeks. But I need your help.
 
I was wondering whether to could connect me with some African poets who have audio tracks of their poetry on Sound Cloud. I need their Sound Cloud homepages and their permission for a one-time publication of 3 tracks that would be featured in an upcoming issue of Lip-Service Journal. The tracks should be recorded separately with the title of each poem indicated in the recording. The homepage should include their name and the city/country where they live. 
 
I would very much like to include your audio poetry in an issue too! I would enjoy hearing your voice reading your work.
 
Take a look at the brand new Lip-Service Journal here:
 
You do have the sign-up for Sound Cloud but the first 60 minutes of recording is free (must upgrade after that).
While you’re in Tumblr take a look at my own personal daily poetry blog at:
I started it back in Sept. and have nearly 800 hits with 14 followers. I’m so proud:-)
Anyway, please help me if you can. I want to start building up a backload of poets for the new literary monthly, this time all audio!
___________________________
Send to maurice.oliverATymail.com
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Calls for Audio Poetry was published on May 6th, 2013, with the tags , , , under the Literature, News category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Fueling Poverty – The Video!

This short documentary on Nigeria, said to “address the serious issue of corruption in governance” just made news by being banned by the Nigerian Film and Censors Board. I’d never heard of it until today, but since it concerned the government so much as to attempt to put a muzzle on it, then it must have some value for the enlightenment of the citizenry. According to news reports, the documentary was “released late in 2012, was produced by young filmmaker, Ishaya Bako, in partnership with the Open Society for West Africa [OSIWA].“

Watch with me!


What do you think after watching it?

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 10.0/10 (3 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: +3 (from 3 votes)

Fueling Poverty – The Video! was published on April 13th, 2013, with the tags , , , , , under the Art, News, Observations, Opinion category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Check Yourself! Introducing a Homophone Checker

My friend, Jason Braun, has launched the world’s first free Homophone Checker app at  Homophonecheck.com!

According to the press release, it is a free web app that allows writers to quickly proofread for errors that word-processing software typically skips over.

homophone-2

“Writers copy text and paste it into the homophone checker. Then 40 of the most commonly confused homophones–words that sound the same but are spelled differently– are highlighted automatically. When writers move their cursor over the highlighted homophones, a box pops up showing each possible word, its part of speech, and a grammatically correct example sentence.”

Blogger’s comment: So far, the software only checks 40 commonly misspelt English homophones, which makes the app targeted mostly at a specific level of writing. It is a wonderful start. Also, rather than bemoan the problems of English language usage nowadays that makes this software inevitable and invaluable, I’ll celebrate its presence and its ability to makes essay writing easier (especially for high school or undergraduate students too distracted by other things to proofread their work right). Of course it will eventually take a smart writer to properly use a software that merely points one to where one might want to take a second look in an essay. Like every spell-checker, the work will still come back to the writer to be sure of exactly what they intend to write. As a piece of utility however, it is a brilliant invention and a good start. I love it. 

378172_4306321257743_1262440586_nJason Braun currently teaches English and is the Associate Editor of Sou’wester at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He hosts “Literature for the Halibut” a weekly hour-long literary program on KDHX 88.1. He has published fiction, poetry, reported or been featured in The Riverfont Times, Prime Number, ESPN.com, Big Bridge, Sou’wester, The Evergreen Review, SOFTBLOW, The Nashville City Paper, Jane Freidman’s blog, and many more. His Paradise Lost Office App contextualizes John Milton’s epic poem for the cubicle crowd and is available at iTunes. He releases music under the moniker Jason and the Beast. He is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Learning Disability Association of America (LDA).

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 10.0/10 (4 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: +2 (from 2 votes)

Check Yourself! Introducing a Homophone Checker was published on March 30th, 2013, with the tags , , , , under the Academic, Linguistics, News category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)

If what has been reported in various places online, and comments from close family members and colleagues are anything to go by, Africa’s foremost novelist and author of the famous Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe, has passed on, at 82.

Chinua Achebe 2002

The author whose magnum opus, a novel detailing a class of the Igbo traditional culture with an invading European one, has been translated into 50 languages, selling about 8 million copies to become “the most widely read book in modern African literature” (Wikipedia), was a distinguished professor at Brown University. His famous intervention in the debate on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is a stuff of legends and has spawned essays after essay about the portrayal of Africa, the rise of African literature and outlook, and the need of more than just a single story. He was often called “The Father of African Literature.”

Achebe’s latest book, There Was a Country, describes in his characteristic lucid prose a flattering ideal country in Nigeria and Biafra before and during the Nigerian Civil War of the 60s. Its characteristically blunt references to political players in Nigeria from the different sides of the warring divide made the book an instant classic and one that generated conversations and re-opened old wounds about the civil war and the pogroms that came with it.

I read his children’s book Chike and the River as a young boy in Ibadan, and a number of scenes in it have remained with me since. His famous work is, of course, Things Fall Apart, which is beyond the scope of my words to describe. Reading the killing of Ikemefuna was one of the most traumatizing experiences of my childhood. The image remained for very many years, raising questions in my young man’s mind about the real cost of becoming an adult.

I never met him. The closest I got was the about four weeks interval that separated my leaving Brown University for Southern Illinois University in September 2009 when it was announced that the legendary author had in fact taken up a position there. I blogged about my disappointment here. His words however, and stature, work, and engagement in public life has been a shining example. If he truly is gone as being reported, it is a terrible loss, but a glorious exit for a man who held our attention and admiration for so long, kept it focused on what is important and noble, and whose example of dignity and grace is one that will be remembered for a long time to come.

Read more in my tribute to/obituary of the father of African literature on NigeriansTalk

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 10.0/10 (4 votes cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: +5 (from 5 votes)

Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) was published on March 22nd, 2013, with the tags , , , under the Literature, News, Opinion category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

.