ktravula - a travelogue! » Uncategorized

“Waka!”

Kola — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 20:34:14 +0000

Image of the day: Protesters in Lagos, Nigeria, gesturing their displeasure at patrolling police helicopter.

How to be a Culture Tourist

Kola — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:41:48 +0000

Being a culture tourist is a fabulous way to see the sights and discover more about the country you’re visiting. Language learning trips offer traditional holiday experiences with the added benefit of gaining cultural insights. By immersing yourself in another culture you will find it easier to pick up the lingo. This guide suggests how you can make the most of your time abroad.

Learn new vocabulary at galleries

One of the best things about learning a language in the country itself is that you’re surrounded by it! Everywhere you look you’ll see words you don’t recognise. Although this may seem daunting, it is actually a fantastic opportunity to expand your vocabulary. You will learn new phrases at every turn, but you can also focus your studies by visiting cultural centres like galleries.

Paintings usually have notes next to them, explaining what is being shown. Even if there isn’t an English translation, you will have the picture itself to refer to. As art includes representations of so many things, you can pick up all kinds of new words. Jot down those that are of particular interest, then research them in your dictionary or online.

Eat with the locals

Local restaurants allow you to sample great food whilst extending your language skills. Eateries in tourist traps tend to cater to those who can’t speak the language. The staff will speak English to you, and there will be English translations on the menu. This can be handy for a beginner, but to really immerse yourself in the culture you’d be better off in an out-of-the-way eatery.

The staff will usually speak in their native tongue and the menu might only be presented in the local lingo. This will test your abilities in comprehension and communication. You can also practise your skills by chatting with other diners and asking for recommendations. Unusual local specialities might be served in these hidden gems, so you will also discover more about the real cuisine of a region.

Pick up slang at a sports match

Learning a language from a book is great for giving you the basics. To really get under the skin of a culture, however, you need to get amongst the locals and hear how they use their language. Pick up slang words and you’ll get a deeper understanding of how local people communicate informally with one another.

Sports matches are great for this. The informal atmosphere and passionate crowds encourage all sorts of words you wouldn’t read in a textbook! Their chants of repeated phrases will help you get familiar with new vocabulary. You will also understand more about how ordinary people express themselves.

Take advantage of technology

When you’re learning a language in another country you can take advantage of being immersed in the culture by tuning in to technology. Watch TV shows, listen to the radio and visit the cinema. You will be able to ask your teacher about words or phrases you don’t understand. The great thing about learning from a native speaker in their own country is that they’ll be familiar with all the cultural nuances. You can also take advantage of podcasts and other language technology aids.

Keep up the good work at home

Once you’ve been on a language learning holiday it is a good idea to keep using your new skills. The best way to do this is to enrol in language courses locally. Whether you’re interested in Russian, Chinese or Italian courses London in particular has a huge range of options, but other UK towns do too. If you’re after German, Spanish or French lessons London, Manchester, Bristol and many more cities offer courses to help you keep improving.

The Light in Double Equivalents

Kola — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:50:05 +0000

The outrage that greeted Republican front-runner Newt Gingrich’s recent comment about poor people stemmed mostly from his condescension, and not from the fact of his assertion. Speaking at a campaign in Iowa last week, two weeks after he had called the labour laws in America “truly stupid”, Mr. Gingrich said:

Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So, they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.

Coming from a middle-class background and growing up in Nigeria’s lousy economy of the 90s, I relate with much of what he said with regards to the habit of working. The disingenuity of the argument he makes, however, is in the way it casually omits the truth in a similar argument for the other side. Read below:

“Really rich children in really affluent neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So, they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s for partying.”

Did you see what I did there? I substituted the words “poor” for “rich” and other “negative” equivalents for “positive” ones. Does that little trick change the truth in the assertion of Mr. Gingrich? No. The problem however is that he did not make this balanced claim. By focusing only one side and demonizing poor children, he pits himself on one side of the argument, and thus muddles the issue he was supposed to be solving. If the focus of his comment was to breed a culture of working, is there a particular reason why it should focus only on poor children?

Let me make a second example, also from Mr. Gingrich’s attempt at political commentary. While speaking with a Jewish television last week, Mr. Gingrich said that Palestinians are, after all, “an invented people” who didn’t exist as a nation until after the exit of the Ottoman empire. Of course, he was right. The people now referred to as the Palestinian people, now craving for a state of their own, are just Arab people living in the middle east. However, so are the Jewish people as well! The Jewish State of Israel (at least as we know it today) was just as well “invented” in self-determination after the Second World War. So why did Newt Gingrich not state the second equivalent truth of his assertion? Because it is not politically expedient, and – like other Republican candidates – all he wanted to do was to sound Pro-Israel than the incumbent president whose job he seeks.

Now, to my final two examples on this matter, this time on race. I found out to my chagrin that the most popular post on my earlier wordpress blog (before moving to this domain) has remained this one where I wondered if oyinbo - a Yoruba word for “white person” was a racist word. I knew it wasn’t, but I was interested in reader perspectives on the way a word conditions the way we look at the world and other people. I got feisty, energetic responses. But what struck me earlier this morning however is a fact that I had overlooked for too long: that more than half of what is considered racist – even here in the United States – were anything but. Here are two quotes, the first by Donald Trump: “I have a great relationship with the blacks,” said a few months ago to public outrage, and Ann Coulter’s “Our blacks are so much better than their blacks” – a reference to African-Americans in the Republican party as opposed to those in the Democratic party.

It is easy for me as an African to take umbrage at each of these statements (as I undoubtedly did for a few days without being able to lay my hands on why the statements seemed so jarring). A few months removed from the uttering of those words however, I finally got it. It took a short memory trip back to the sociopolitical environment of my home country. “I have a great relationship with the whites” would not have elicited such a public umbrage in Nigeria but it would have raised eyebrows of social awkwardness. There is a consensus that there is something awkward with a citizen who felt the need to associate himself with a particular race for political advantage. “Our whites are so much better than their whites” would have elicited a similar response of awkwardness, albeit with a heavy dose of scorn and derision. It definitely would take some self-loathing and inferiority complex to make such a public proclamation. Implicit in these statements however is the acceptance of the “otherness”, and thus the problem. In Nigeria, this “otherness” is accepted, considering our colonial history The “whites” are not one of us. In America, it is not, because of the country’s history of slavery and civil rights. The “blacks” are also Americans, and undeserving of such “otherization,” thus the outrage. If Mr. Trump had said “I have a great relationship with the Nigerians”, or Ann Coulter, “our Nigerians are better than their Nigerians,” no one would have taken notice.

There is something to be said for double equivalents. Some things don’t make much sense until we put them in front of a mirror of polar equivalents. Some don’t make sense at all, eventually, of course, but it sometimes helps to pare them off all their political overtones. Mister Trump and Miss Coulter get a pass from racism but not from bigotry, and Speaker Gingrich gets all the blame he very well deserves.

Occupy!

Kola — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 16:36:00 +0000

Every time I have to think about the “Occupy” protests which, although initially aimed at Wall Street, has now spread to many cities in the world, I inevitably think of the streets of Nigeria and wonder how this kind of protest would play out were it to be tried. And I have no doubt that it would eventually be tried. Having witnessed a number of public insurrections while growing up, I know the tendency of such protests to turn violent before anyone pays any major attention to it. We were socialized under a very repressive, military government, and it has become an unwritten rule of public protests that for it to have any impact – if only to capture public attention and sympathy – it must have an element of tension.

Here is a guide however, culled from one of my favourite texts of all time: Martin Luther King Jnr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. For everyone considering a public reaction to systematic oppression:

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

I’d recommend replacing the racial references in the text to economic/social or whatever the situation is wherever oppressed people live, and the message works just as perfectly. The full text of the letter is here. Protests like the present Occupy are usually a watershed/crossroads of a new era. I can not imagine a better place to stand than on the right side of history.

I write this in response to the high-handedness of NYPD cops arresting peaceful demonstrators who had occupied Citibank premises to close their bank accounts in protest. It would seem that the agents of state have learnt nothing at all from the lessons of history.

The American Spring?

Kola — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 20:26:59 +0000

The Occupy Wall Street protests began like a joke. I remember the folks at The Five on Fox News deriding them for seeking just an avenue to party (since the first day of their protest happened to be a weekend when there wasn’t going to be plenty activity). A few days later, it has become a movement now too large to ignore. A version of the protests is now taking place in almost every major city. The nearest one to me is called “Occupy St. Louis”.

Louder now than the lack of cohesion in the list of demands that the protesters want however is the fact that there has been a substantial police crackdown on protesters. They have been maced and pepper-sprayed while many have been arrested, and some eventually released for breaking laws regarding public protests. The Tea Party protests started like this, albeit with older and well-to-do people in funny clothes. While the Tea Party however evolved eventually into a political force, it has been suggested that this might be the exact Liberal equivalent.

And while it is unlikely that a sitting president is removed through these public protests as it happened in Egypt, it is inspiring to see people get out and demand for change, especially as regards Wall Street and the people who led the nation’s financial system to disaster. It is equally impressive to see how much stronger the movement is getting in spite of a media bias especially on the political right. I look forward to a day when one thing as simple as a public protest can be seen as the same thing by all parts of the country: as a genuine response to frustration and a demand for change and accountability.

A Question: Will I be arrested if I go see the protests in St. Louis if only to take pictures and speak with the protesters?

With Love from Toto

Kola — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 08:34:09 +0000

With Love from my Toto*

Did they not chook** me with their cacti

and fill me with bilious waste – those

whose scrota should be jaundiced with

stings from wayward bees?

Did they not claw me with callous talons

and grip my vexing veins – those

whose hands will remain guests

to rheumatoid rust?

Did they not mock my wailings

and cause my teeth to gnash – those

whose nights should witness

harmonies of terrors and bitterness?

Did they not defile my thighs

and maul my breasts – those

whose paths will forever

quake with anguish?

Did they not tear me apart

and watch my navel suffocate – those

who should be bobittised with blunt scalpels?

Some pricks should be snacks for hungry hyenas.

poem by Chris Ogunlowo ***

_____________________

* Nigerian Pidgin for vagina.

* * The equivalent of fuck in Nigerian Pidgin English, usually used to exaggerate coital thrust.

*** Written in response to the recent infamous rape case that went viral in Nigeria last week. Chris is a Nigerian blogger and copywriter.

Halfway to Sixty

Kola — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:54:04 +0000

Seeking time comes often to a rote around edges of reason, my friend,

when tomorrow moves away from reach into the lengths of a near past.

It is not just the distance of time and space, or memory, but what portends

In-between the fast changing chords of our once rhyming flat bombasts.

Look at it here: movements, shapes, forms, people, hope, desires, and lusts,

And pleasing exuberance circling within one spot of deferred dreams.

So we wonder restlessly where all the time went. We trade masks that must

Hold fears within claypots of growth. We howl our tears into the stream.

We don’t own then, it seems, balms that soothe with scents of silent mimesis,

Else we would sway with wine bags in reclined poses, seconds spent to please,

Which held us then when time favoured the pockets of our scant playfulnesses.

We would not wonder where they went, days spent sprawled in the shades of ease.

It could be only relief that mischief remains, and love’s comfort in the end,

To sew a new tapestry, and to daily, patiently mend. It was never ours to rend.

___________________________

Being too lazy to write a new pre-birthday poem, this will have to do it for the last day of my twenties.

Edited, from Dec 2009.

Will the World End this Week?

Kola — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 09:36:26 +0000

There are a flurry of diplomatic activities in Washington this week in an attempt to prevent the Palestinian authorities from seeking recognition at the United Nations later in the week, or to deal with the fall-out that must surely come therefrom. It is one of the major issues on television and the internet these days. However, as Greg Gutfeld said on last week on The Five, if you turned on the television today and you didn’t know what year it is, you would still not feel any sense of disorientation. The issue of the middle eastern conflict seems to follow us wherever we turn. Has been so for centuries. Will remain so till the end of time. Or so Greg says.

I’m mostly worried about how the United States managed to get itself into a position where it would have to veto the genuine aspiration to statehood of a victimized people. Under Nobel Peace Laureate Obama’s leadership, no less.

On Vain Newspeaks

Kola — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 07:56:20 +0000

One of the few things that irk me the most about comments by American government officials from the Bush administration reflecting on their role in the post 9/11 America is the claim that they had kept America safe ever since. Watching an interview with Vice-President Dick Cheney with Chris Wallace on Fox today, I kept wondering whether the interviewers who endure this kind of response merely never think about it, are equally as blind, or just don’t care. The fact that such responses come when asked about the justification of heinous interrogation practices makes it even more disgusting. Let us see how the argument holds up.

Before 9/11, there was only one attack on American soil for fifty years, and that was the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Since 1945, there was no other attack on American soil until the World Trade Centre bombing in 1993. By that stupid logic of claiming to be a grand protector of the country just because the days of danger are far between one another, the Clinton Administration could have made a badge for itself for not having endured another attack between 1993 and 2001. But what sense would that have made? I have found it as laughable (if not naively tragic, and a stupid political gimmick) that the right wing commentators, particularly the administrative officials of the Bush administration, would claim this as their legacy: “After all, we have never had any other attack. We kept the country safe since then.” What kind of an excuse is that? Oh yes I let the house burn once, but look I have made sure that it hasn’t happened again since seven years ago. Don’t I deserve a cookie? Or like the man in Yoruba fables who had just returned from a witch doctor and then claiming that he is now invincible from all bullets simply because he is wearing a juju amulet. The witch doctor may take credit for this “safety” from now till eternity and get paid handsomely for it too, but he would do well to warn the man to stay away from a shooting range!

I feel very strongly about 9/11. I never lost anyone there (a family friend was in one of the building earlier in the morning and left before the planes hit) but the enormity of the attack, the scope of the damage and the terrible fall-out from that heinous act changed me totally and the way I look at the world. The sight of brave firefighters going up the stairs as wounded and panicking people came down to safety is one that I would never forget. I watched the movie 9/11 some time in 2002 and was heartbroken. The movie examines the bravery and sacrifice of the firefighters from one of the fire stations in Manhattan and the way they gave themselves to save the lives of others. I have never been able to digest the magnitude of their brave sacrifice and commitment. And to think that some politicians in Washington almost totally dismissed the even braver commitment of living first responders by refusing to give them adequate medical care, one wonders where humanity is sometimes headed.

In any case, politicians never kept America safe. Former Vice-President Cheney certainly never did with his enhanced interrogation techniques that has put the country’s soldiers in more harm than ever before. (And he did manage to get an arrest warrant for himself in Nigeria albeit for a different reason). Ten years after the fatal negligence that caused the death of over 5,000 people, we would do well to work for a safer world than celebrate the mediocrity of vain chest-thumping. Mark Twain has one appropriate quote about keeping quiet when speaking would have an adverse effect on the perception of one’s wisdom. I’ll also add “a sense of shame”, and “humanity”.

I’m pissed. Can you tell?

Welcome New Contributors

Kola — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 07:24:09 +0000

This month is the third September in the life span of this blog and thus the beginning of another season. As from this month therefore and in the coming days, you will be reading from new writers who are joining us from different parts of the world to share thoughts, ideas, opinions and creativity, as regular and irregular contributors.

There will be Emmanuel Iduma who co-edits a literary magazine Saraba, and Hilal Ergul a fellow FLTA from 2009 who now lives and travels around Turkey. Benson Eluma will also be joining us from the University of Ibadan, and a few more folks I’m still trying to convince that it always helps to complain and reflect publicly than grumble in private all day long. Where are those in Mexico, Kuwait, Uganda, Birmingham, Tahrir, Casablanca, Benghazi?

I look forward to more contributors and a series of new experiences and viewpoints from around the world. Give them some love.

ktravula - a travelogue! » Uncategorized

“Waka!”

Related Posts

How to be a Culture Tourist

Related Posts

The Light in Double Equivalents

Related Posts

Occupy!

Related Posts

The American Spring?

Related Posts

With Love from Toto

Related Posts

Halfway to Sixty

Related Posts

Will the World End this Week?

Related Posts

On Vain Newspeaks

Related Posts

Welcome New Contributors

Related Posts