ktravula - a travelogue! » Travelling

The Lovejoy Connection (2)

Kola — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 00:34:26 +0000

Elijah Lovejoy (after whom the Library at the Southern Illinois University was named) became the first (white) victim of the American Civil War when he was killed by a mob in Alton in 1937.

He was thirty-five years old, a Presbyterian minister, publisher and activist.

These are pictures from a visit to the Elijah Lovejoy monument (and city cemetery), about twenty minutes away from here.

The cemetery had some of the most peculiar European names we had ever seen, some long, some short. Many of them are most likely no longer used. It also boasts of a certain serenity guarded by a few commemorative plinths overlooking the cemetery and the Mississippi river down below.

Occupied. Now What?

Kola — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:06:20 +0000

From snippets I get on social media (more than a handful of pictures from Facebook and Twitter), Nigeria is effectively grounded. People occupied (that word again) the streets demanding change. I’d been bothered about one thing all along – having been incapable of joining the protest because of inevitable distance: the capacity of public protests (with tendency to turn violent and take innocent lives) to make a significant difference. At the last count, more than six people have now been shot dead by overzealous policemen sent to the streets to “restore order”.

The case for oil in Nigeria has become much of a curse nowadays, with total government reliance on exports to get revenue. Underneath that over-reliance however is a corrupt establishment that has used the country’s status as a global oil player to enrich themselves. Just today, I realized that the subsidy now suddenly removed by the government has actually been the cash cow of an addicted group of greedy middlemen in whose interest it has continued to be that the state subsidized the importing of fuel. I can’t think of any other country that produces so much as we do, yet has this much retarded development.

There is a sad, lingering realization, that this revolution will not solve all the nation’s problems. (It didn’t solve all of the problems in Libya, Syria, Iran, America, Tunisia and Egypt either). If the government subsidy removal would be beneficial to the citizenry, government would have begun to put structures in place for people to see and feel BEFORE removing the only benefit that many enjoy as citizens of such naturally endowed country. Now here is a better thought: LET US ERADICATE CORRUPTION. Where are the new ideas for a different country to arise when this revolution dies? Where is the new direction? Where is the new leadership that will take us from here? In ten to twenty years from now, most of the visionaries and pioneers of Nigerian independence would most likely be dead and gone. Who would take their place? What new ideas would they bring to the table?

I had a long discussion this afternoon with a family member about the progress now celebrated in Rwanda. After a brutal civil war that tore the country into pieces in 1994, bold new steps have been taken (including adopting English, abolishing “tribe” and instituting a host of reforms that has now made the little African country one of the best places to live on the continent). We had our chance in Nigeria (and much of West Africa) after “independence” from the British, it was squandered. We had a different chance after military rule in 1999, some progress was made, and then slowly foundered. Is this another chance? What emerges from here when the tyre bonfires are well burnt out and things return to normal? What will that normal be, and will it be good enough?

It should never be. The world is evolving. So should we. For the better.

Minneapolis

Kola — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:07:01 +0000

I visited my third other mid-western state this weekend. (The first two were Kansas and Missouri.)

Minnesota is the last state on the northern border before Canada. It is bordered on the south by Iowa (where the Republican folks are now playing for nomination), on the east by Wisconsin and Illinois, and on the West by the Dakotas. Minnesota is known for its “10,000″ lakes as for its very long winter, the Metrodome, and the Mall of America (the biggest mall in the country). There seem to be a lake on every street – as you’d see from one of those pictures above.

This was a very short, family visit, so here are a few shots. As you’d see, they already have an early winter that will probably last until May. This is the first post of the year, so I wish you a happy new year.

Rights, and Overland Journeys

E Iduma — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 10:29:16 +0000

Put yourself right in, and you’ll never get in; so it seems with Lagos. I am tired, you see, about writing this city – although I have practically written nothing – but there is a lot that have been written about here, so much that it becomes Here, gathering too much attention. This is Lagos, you’re told, a ’!’ beside the words; this is the city that must be written about because of its avalanche of imperial novelty, calcification, and feverish opacity.

Let’s imagine, assume, or consider that we can speak sincerely about Lagos if we – or I – tackle things more imperceptibly, and agree that we – or I – cannot see clearly. This is true about many facets of this city’s life, especially its mobility. Overland mobility is, I believe, this city’s favourite means of dealing with itself – and I think, in using ‘it,’ that I speak not merely about a place, but a Place, an accreted multiple persona, such that in one word I speak of people, idiosyncrasies, language, colour, and existence.

You see, I am interested in overland because I worry too much, each day, about travelling overland. Travel, in my experience – two months or so in Lagos – has become a word that is as intra as inter; prior to now travel held the promise of moving across cities, now it is the very act of moving within a city. It’s travel because I move, and because I See. It’s travel because it accommodates more than just movement; I gain newer colours each day I move between Ikeja and Yaba, or vice versa. And colour is hard to define.

Yet, I will try. Let me presume that there is even logic to moving within Lagos, and attempt to chart this logic. You will, of course, expect that I will present no logic.

It begins with ‘loading.’ There are shrill cries of this or that (Yaba-Maryland-Opebi), then waiting. People come aboard, carrying with their respective entries their respective smells, no-smells, fashion, aura, no-aura. They sit either out of choice or compulsion. If out of choice, you sit because there’re empty spaces in the bus – you sit, with impatient patience, knowing you have no option, cursing and blessing time, saying a prayer to Time that you know will not be heard. And if out of compulsion (perhaps the bus has picked you on the roadside, coming at top speed you had thought you would not join it) you will sit beside an obese passenger, or on a seat without a backrest. The general rule is to redefine what is Time, and what is Not Time, because an overland movement always commands the propriety of a blur.

Then, there’s ‘collection.’ It’s really an art (and act) of your-money-for-back. This asking-for, this demand-for, is a direct assault on have-nots, which is to say you cannot move for nothing, you must part with something to have moved. Of course, there are other interesting features of the process – the bus conductor, after your-money-for-back, announces (almost often) that there’s no change. E wole pelu change yin o! There’s, he’s saying, zero tolerance for incompatibility – this is movement on a basic level, which can be afforded by Anyone, there’s no need to tell us you’re as rich as a 1,000 Naira note, e wole pelu change!

Let me tell you a story of how change (change mi da?) became a fundamental passenger right. This guy is sitting beside the man beside me. He’s holding a church bulletin, he’s just returning from church. It’s a Sunday. The driver is standing outside the bus, asking for his money. One passenger, behind this-guy, passes his 200 Naira (consisting of 2 hundred naira notes) through this-guy to the driver. But, this-guy intercepts the 200 naira. He is being owed 300 naira as change. The driver is beside himself with fury. You don’t do this in my bus, see this devil intercepting my money, give me the 200 I will give you 200 naira note, please, you people look at this devil, oya get down from my bus, I am not carrying you again. This-guy says something like, I am just coming from church, I will say nothing to you, you’re just insulting yourself. And there’s this exchange between both men – other passengers interfere, begging This-guy to relinquish his right, somewhat, so that we can move in peace, on time. He relinquishes a 100 naira note, holding on to the other.

Change mi da is a declaration of a passenger’s right, an affirmation that every passenger who responds must be responded to. There’s no trivializing of any amount – not even ten naira is small enough, ten naira can be the basis of a fight. There’s another story, of this-guy who’s reading David Abioye’s book beside me (if you know David Oyedepo you’ll know the other David). He’s to stop at a point, but for some reason or the other, the driver stops him elsewhere. He asks for a refund of his ten naira. You see, this-guy is wearing a suit, he’s dressed middle-class. But when the conductor and his compadre the driver refuses him the entitlement he has declared, he starts a fight, dragging the errant conductor by the belt. You see, then, that it’s really not about the amount. It is something else; I am thinking there’s a You Can’t Take Me for Granted, This Is My Money, and all other screams that point to affirmation, entitlement, and possession.

And let’s consider another story. This-man is given a certain amount as change; he rejects, vehemently, saying he does not want dirty money. He has a heated argument with the driver, who’s quite famous for his impregnable insistence. Passengers, as onlookers, the audience in the unfolding (free to watch) drama, throw themselves onstage, arguing about dirty money. One says no one should reject it. The other says you can reject it if you know you are not guilty of making it dirty. The first contributor goes further to posit that women are most guilty of making Nigerian money dirty – squeezing and hiding cash in such-and-such places. There is protest from the womenfolk, which is not coherent, and the argument goes back and forth. This-man keeps demanding for a cleaner currency, the driver keeps refusing, until he drives into a filling station, paying the attendant with the money that had been rejected, and making a sarcastic comment, saying to the attendant that this is the money that was rejected and it is being used to pay you.

If I speak of overlanders’ rights I must not fail to speak of filling stations and vulcanizers. You would never get used to this, never. Every time the driver drives into a filling station after takeoff, you’d scream at his insensitivity, how na only himself ‘im dey think of, why you no buy fuel since, na now you know say you go pump your tyre, foolish man.

But these rants and declamations pass too quickly, and that is my grouse. I am not interested – do not get me wrong – in the longevity of insults and ravings. I prefer, however, that drivers take their passengers seriously. Well, not seriously. More fraternally. In short, I wish drivers could be more human with their passengers. But, you see, the word that is used is ero, which is translated ‘load.’ You see, further, that there’s every attempt to detoxicate the relationship of its humanity, or to lessen the severity of a tangible human interaction. All conversations, all exchange, is premised on the rites of passage, the constancy of movement, the fact that what’s seen (who’s seen) may never, ever, in this world or the next, be seen again.

I use ‘detoxicate’ because that’s what it is. Being too kind is, as it seems, reprehensible. In the ethics of molue-driving, one must refrain from too much affinity, warmth, and kinship. The driver cares less if he stops the bus (the conductor screams final bus stop!) in an inappropriate spot, two hundred yards or so away from the right bus stop. You are not a person; you are load, a product; you are not being rendered a service you paid for; a driver is simply making ends meet, this one that has had life so hard he had to resort to this means of livelihood (one driver says, ‘You think you are more educated than I am, because you see me driving? I have children your age in the university!’)

Is it preposterous to think that this driver who shuttles between Ogba and Yaba would have commuted 60% of Ogba’s residents? Or perhaps that’s not even statistically correct. It might be easier to say he has commuted 50% of all those who know those that make up the other 50%. Please, do not take me serious. I am simply trying to prove ‘coming and going, these several seasons.’ Our overland vessels have become a contemporary repository of abikuism, a state of come-go and waka-about and Ajala-travel.

And what if there is no end to this?

- Emmanuel Iduma

How I Earned the Right to Speak about Anything

E Iduma — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:08:27 +0000

By Emannuel Iduma (Also published on Blacklooks)

It is hard, as I am sure most writers know, to efface the person, render it impotent in the face of the writing life. Who I am always haunts my writing; and this is why and how I argue that I have earned the right to speak about anything – and you might want to consider this word ‘right’ as encompassing as it is in the legal regime. To make this process easier (this essay is a process, every word builds into revelation), I have charted two layers: Identity and Ethnicity. You might have to be dishonest with me – you might have to forgive how I render myself so bare; all writers eventually do this, pushing themselves, in fiction, in poetry, to the place where there’s no telling what is reality and what is not, because everything is reality, everything written is real. Helene Cixous says this ofClarice Lispector, for instance.

I should give a background. I was born to an itinerant preacher – when I was born my Daddy was an employee of the Scripture Union, an interdenominational organization with offices around the world. His job description was ‘Travelling Secretary’; clearly, he ‘traveled.’ So, I begin my questioning from this point – I was born fluid; I was not to stay too long in one place, my Present was always in motion.

Of identity, I ask myself: Am I or aren’t I? How do I begin to define myself? What is the crack in the surface in which Me leaps into visibility? You should know that I do not feel Ibo enough, because I can’t speak the language well, because I respond in English when my Daddy speaks to me in Ibo. So, I am not keen to identify myself as This or That. In my case, there is no This, and no That. Perhaps it’s a This-That.

Which is why, in December 2009, when we were moving again, I wrote: ‘Who am I, after this transition?’ I cannot think this irrelevant – I am a borderline person. I have transited too much to be just one person. It is simply a question of identifying myself. What I want is to be able to say, This is Me, when a million others stand beside me, with me, in a crowd. So far, I should tell you, it has been difficult.

The antonym of ‘easy’, Anne Berger says, is not ‘difficult’. It is ‘impossible.’ If then it is not easy to define myself, is it perhaps impossible? Will I, as I remain on the border of who I am and who I can be and who I am meant to be, never identify myself in the crowd? I cannot tell if this is a shared feeling – but when I am in Ile-Ife I am not Yoruba, and when I am in Umuahia, I am not Ibo. I am simply, perhaps, Emmanuel, a person, but not the kind of person who feels ‘Emmanuel’ enough. Not inferiority, of course. It has never been a question of being less; perhaps it is that I am not ‘more’ enough, that I have ascribed too much to Being, and I am yet to meet up with that definition.

Speaking of Ethnicity might make this clearer. You see, I am an English-only onye Ibo who can comprehend Ibo spoken at any speed but is reluctant to utter any word of it, for fear of sounding incorrect. In fact I can comprehend Ehugbo, the language of Afikpo, which Ibos from other parts cannot comprehend. My Daddy wanted us to speak English first, in Akure, because he feared that we might become mischievous urchins, too ‘local’ in an urban space. So, we lapsed into an Anglo-consciousness. I do not blame him; I should not blame him. You want to blame him? English is a ‘lingua franca’, isn’t it? He remembers being mocked when he was a little boy of his inability to speak English – he remembers desiring to speak English like his brother.

But I realize that no matter how loaded, conflicted and difficult the word may seem to me, I am Ibo. By heritage. Perhaps there is some new meaning I can confer to it. I am, like, Carmen Wong, “A mishmash and hodgepodge of conundrums and contradictions.” I am ready to stay hyphenated, to add a dash to my personality, something like ‘English-only-onye-Ibo.’

Let’s imagine that there are others like me. Let’s further imagine that these others are – because this is the occupation dearest to my heart – writers. What will happen to their writing? Will it embody the same mishmash of their borderline personalities? How will they speak true to their sense of ethnicity? What home could they define for themselves, what sense of place?

Yes, I speak about myself, asking questions that bother my art. And there’s a sense of urgency, too. There is, for instance, a Facebook identity, a Twitter narrative, the acculturation that comes from being an internet user. Should we only consider the internet as utility, not as lifestyle? Isn’t the internet a border, a separate identity, part of the dashes I’ve acquired?

I’ve decided to be a writer, which in itself is an acceptance of the Borderline, an acceptance of staying a hybrid, remaining fluid, accepting that one word cannot define your process, your heritage. How do I come to the point where I am not simply termed as an ‘African writer’? I do not fear this label because I am not from Africa, or not black, or because Africa has been derogatorily called blah blah blah. I fear it because it is, somewhat, a closed parenthesis. I want to work within an open parenthesis. I want my definition to start from ‘an English-only-learning to speak Ibo-onye Ibo-internet-using writer’ with a […] around the term, leaving space for more dashes. Because I am always more; and my writing will always be bothered with this More-ness.

Hence, it is this fact that gives me the right to plunge into uncharted courses, to use unused language, to speak about anything, because there is nothing like This or That in my head. There is the possibility of everything and anything.

But this is not, cannot be, the subject of a single post. I’ll publish a Kindle e-book with the same title in January 2012. I hope my ranting is heard.

I Am Confident…

Kola — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 06:32:18 +0000

…that one other positive thing about the regime change in Libya is that there will now be new Fulbright FLTAs from that country from now on. The year 2009/10 was the first time that anyone from Afghanistan was admitted into the FLTA program in a long time. A new day will hopefully lead to more understanding and better relation with these parts of the world.

Dancing Through Brazil

Kola — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 06:06:51 +0000

Guest post by Luciene Souza Farias

Traveling has always been one of the great pleasures of my life. I have been to several different places, met incredible people, tasted awesome and terrible food… Oh, well, I guess life has been good! When asked to write about my traveling experiences, I felt very honored and worried at the same time. So, after some time deliberating, I decided to quickly write about three experiences I’ve had so far.

My first nice recollection of traveling to a place far from my hometown is from the age of six. My parents moved from the Northeast area of Brazil to the Southern area in search of a better life before I was born. For the first time, we would visit my relatives in the Northeast area and you can imagine by that how important this trip was. Three days by bus! Yes, three days! By the time, we lived in a slum and, as a consequence, money to travel was very short. Well, maybe that’s the reason this trip was so fantastic. As the bus crossed the country, I could realize for the first time how people had different accents, appearance, attitudes… Everything seemed impressive: The nauseating smell of sugar cane being burned and the gentle smell of wet dust after a soft rain; how the bus window was mildly warm because of the hot sun; how the moon seemed to follow the bus as it crossed the country. Oh, the ocean… I could never forget how crystal clear the water was and the sand… the sand was colorful when looked closer and white when observed at a distance. Wow! What an amazing mystery for a kid.

My second really cool trip happened when I was sixteen. I used to study in a public school in Sao Paulo and, because I was a good student (namely, a nerd), I won a trip to the South area of Brazil. Because this area is mainly occupied by German and Italian descendants, the whole place has a European aspect. Tudor houses, innovative public transportation, perfect gardens, and, yes, incredible traditional Italian food! Oh, well! What can I tell? Great days!

My third and last trip that I will share with you occurred this year at the age of twenty-six. After being selected to present a paper in a conference and received travel grants, I flew to Iowa City. What a neat place! While taking a walk, I saw sculpted animals on top of the buildings that made me remember of all the historical symbolisms men had given to each one of those animals: wisdom, strength, persistence… One word maybe the perfect one to express all I could see: lovely!

The other interesting thing I noticed is that the city merged with the university. People all over the place acted like if they were unified by one purpose: to discover; they breathed knowledge. I had a very distinctive kind of feeling while there. I was free and confined at the same time. Free to get to know everything I wanted and confined to walls made not only of old bricks, but also books and accusing minds. Oh, well! Everything smelled like knowledge. So exciting! Well, I am not a great writer, so I hope you were not bored to death! One last thought that it’s actually not mine but explains exactly why I like to travel is: “I think that travel comes from some deep urge to see the world, like the urge that brings up a worm in an Irish bog to see the moon when it is full” by Lord Dunsany.

Lucie is a friend and colleague from Brazil with an unexplainable craving for the ability to dance, and – obviously now – to travel as well. She also speaks Portuguese. Thank you Lucie!

Save Your Life Using Fear As You Go!

E Iduma — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:09:47 +0000

It is not new gist that Nigeria is an empire of paranoia. Well, ‘paranoia’ is not exactly the word; fear is better suited to what I speak about. This is the feeling that danger is looming, even close as breath. Although this is not exclusive to Nigeria, I am perturbed that here security is sort of a fool’s paradise, as government is probably a faceless, nameless being. I will tell a story to illustrate this.

A friend’s friend was given a house by her friend. This friend’s friend accommodated another friend in the house that had been given to her by her friend. So, we have Friend A (my friend), Friend B (my friend’s friend), Friend C (my friend’s friend’s friend who gave her a house), and Friend D (my friend’s friend’s friend who is accommodated in Friend C’s house).

Friend D is alone in the house one night, a few weeks ago, when the door, which she left locked, opens. She is greatly surprised, and when she goes to the door, it is a certain guy who asks for Friend C. He is told that she is not in, as she is not in Lagos at the moment. He claimed he was his girlfriend, but Friend D only saw two guys at the door with him, which left her wondering if he was gay, and all three of them exited together. Already Friend D is confused, as she has never seen any of the guys or the girl (whom she later saw in the vehicle they drove off in) before then. She shuts the door after their exit. A couple of minutes later, two guys knock. She opens for them, and her nightmare begins, as they were the two guys with the guy that had access into the house earlier.

In sum, they try to rape her. She is forced to the room and kept under the bed, which muffles her shouts. An argument ensues between the pre-rapists, and Friend D finds a way to escape. It is her mode of escape that baffles me, that tugs at my dignity, starts a question in my head.

She jumps down from a height of close to 12 feet, escaping her assailants.

What she did, in my thinking, was to compare a post-rape feeling with the danger of falling from a height of 12 feet. She considered the latter preferable, more dignifying. This is akin to a story of a group of Mozambican women who, during the civil war of the ‘80s, huddled together and threw themselves into a river. They had been raped.

Yet, I am concerned that Friend D, aside the obvious consideration of her dignity (the face she would see in the mirror if she is raped), used a method most Lagosians are used to – Fear As You Go! This method suggests that one acts because of fear, ensuring salvation on the grounds of what has not happened, and what should be prevented from happening. So, we have those who will scamper out of their offices because some Policemen have alleged that a bomb is in the premises (this happened about two weeks ago, in the Secretariat of a Local Government, where I had gone to see a friend). And because I have been infected with this method, a policeman asks me why my hands are shaking, when I am showing him the contents of my bag, which had my laptop.

It is a dangerous world, agreed, and I refuse to consider Lagos the most dangerous city in the world (I do not even think it is, or that there is safety anywhere). But what baffles me, and what I am concerned about, is how our Lagos-life is one that is established on the possibility of danger, of unwanted experiences, rapes, stabs, arrests, thefts. There are everyday instances I have witnessed – I was accosted by my friend’s (who I live with) landlord (or son of the landlord), and with a raised voice he said he didn’t know who I was, and therefore was not the right person to open the gate for me. I was amazed at his defensiveness, not to speak of his perceivable readiness to strike, especially if I gave away any hint of thuggery.

The wise thing, I suppose, is to continually live on the edge – after all, isn’t the world scheduled to end in 2012? With the close of the age upon us (thank you Mayans!), our collective persona should be one of effective trepidation – effective because we have to save our lives, we have to survive, and because Lagos seems to be at war against us.

I suppose this is not a peculiar Lagos model. Our world calls to us, as in an advert, saying, ‘Save Your Life using Fear As You Go!’

By Emmanuel Iduma

Bling Bling Panda

E Iduma — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 04:50:42 +0000

By Emmanuel Iduma

Lagos is a curious and endless space. I will account for this, albeit briefly, in what I call the reality of the bling bling panda. Bling bling panda is a simple coinage that mocks as it accommodates – ‘bling’ being a synonym for ‘shiny’ as influenced by rap culture, especially with regards to the paraphernalia that surrounds rappers. And then ‘panda’ is a Yoruba term for fake jewellery (what is called ‘gold’). So, put am together (as Fela sings), you have the idea of shiny fake jewellery.

Lagbaja has a song titled Bling Bling Panda. The first words of the song are: Because of panda, wey I no dey wear, they say I no dey bling, ordinary panda…eeh, panda. Then, few verses later, he asks, Shey everything from abroad we must copy, which defines his objective for the song – a calculated and satirized swipe on the business of ‘copying’ Western fashion by Africans. Lagabaja reminds me of the word ‘Africanist’ which seeks to confer on some the temerity of being African spokespersons, the voices of African heritage, expressionists of everything that is desirable about a utopian African heritage. I admire his zeal, the dexterous wit and humour he employs in his music – but I also like to think that it might be necessary to sustain the tension; some of us might need to keep ‘copying’ because we are used to copying. The only way, sometimes, to survive, to discover and question identity, might be to remain involved with a westernized version of modernity. We might change this, but right now it is still with us, like it or not.

Ah, I get carried away easily. I am thinking today about Lagos, where I have now lived for a week. I do not fear that a lot has been written and imag(in)ed about this city. I have a personal testimony, representations that I believe are peculiar. It is because of Lagos that bling bling panda took a different twist, for me, and because of Lagos that I assert that superficiality is a major component and requirement of being in Lagos. For instance, I noticed that there are a lot of cloth stores – boutiques, road-side retailers, cloth hawkers, etc. etc.

When I speak of superficiality, I do not speak in derogatory terms. I even speak of essentiality. The Lagos life, as I have discovered, is one that demands a certain level of conformity with the scheme of things – you pay a lot for transportation because Lagos cannot be grasped in one location, everything is not everywhere, and there is no rail transportation in the megacity. But this is superficial because it only feeds our needs; it does not accommodate our need. A trip does not necessarily mean a destination; a job interview is not a job.

What is necessary then, is a system that accommodates the need of Lagos-haters, like me. I find that most are drawn to Lagos for the promise of opportunities – which is why I am here, in the first place. There is a truth in the Lagos meal being garnished with parsley that cannot be found elsewhere. But it is a lie to believe that one can be satisfied with the Lagos Meal – when eaten, it seems to create bottomless holes; ask those with 9-5 shifts, who leave home at 5.30am and returns at 10.00pm. And for some of us who work less, who even work from their home, Lagos stipulates a glamour that should be attained, so that we fear for the day of want, of homelessness, of trendless dressing.

These are random thoughts on this city. I hope to add a few more paragraphs in future posts. I have set myself to the task of questioning normalcy. And hopefully in the next post I will make a list of what is normal about life in Lagos, however amazing or despicable I find it to be. After all, I have taken a liking for everything that represents bling bling panda, life in Lagos inclusive.

ktravula - a travelogue! » Travelling

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