ktravula – a travelogue!

So, some time ago we asked readers to share some of their words. Here are the links to some of their responses:

• Barking In A Foreign Language (February 9, 2010) Prompted by two related observations in my mind at the moment… One was the search term in my blog statistics today. Some random person had apparently been directed to my blog by searching for the term “barking in a foreign language”. This is not so strange when I realize that I had once made a blog post about the cartoon that I found on the glass entrance to my department. The second was this very comprehensive article, and discussion, in the New York times about why, or whether Americans will really, learn Chinese… Read up my guest post on Clarissabox on the attraction of foreign languages to the United States.
• Culture Shock (February 10, 2010) - a guest post by my cool and brilliant colleague Professor of Spanish language and literature who also blogs as Clarissa on issues of feminism, literature, journalism , immigration, politics, and her love for the Kindle. Originally from Ukraine, she migrated to Canada, and she got her PhD at Yale University in the United States. She has recently taught at Cornell University before coming over to our prestigious SI University. Hers was the first in a series of guest blogposts on this blog.
• Old Man’s Winter Guide To Beating The Snowpocalypse Blues (February 16, 2010) This is a guest-post by the blogger Rayo from Washington DC. All I know about her is that she is Yoruba, from Nigeria, and that she once attended Howard University. She also takes some very nice pictures. You can check her blog here. I featured this post because for the first time in a long time according to the news, there was snow in all the states of the United States, except Hawaii. The people in the Washington DC and East Coast area were the worst hit with many feet of snow. Rayo has humorously captured her reaction to the season in twelve short nuggets. Enjoy.
• Haggling – A Guest Post (February 24, 2010) Here is a guest post by my friend Akin, a professional photographer in the UK who tweets as Pixgremlin. His website is www.aworan.com. Asking him to write a guest-post, I had thought that I would get something along the lines of his interests in photography because – believe me – he takes some really good pictures. He didn’t. I get something along the lines of haggling – an old yet relevant cultural phenomenon among Nigerians and other Africans. By the time you finish this post, you will see why he’s not just a photographer, but a good writer too. Enjoy.
• Twurai Undercover (February 25, 2010) There is much to cope with when you are the wife of a sick and/or dying president. There is even more to cope with if said husband has now been evicted from a better working hospital in Saudi Arabia and is now back in the government house, causing commotion and/or being some sort of nuisance to the rule of law that has vested political authority albeit in acting capacity in the Vice-President for the time being. As a woman in the unenviable position of balancing loyalty to a dying man, taking care of said man and his political capital, and keeping sane within a barrage of flak from the citizenry, there must be much to cope with. If we could step back a little from personal disagreement with her personality (which we don’t know much about, except hearsay) and what the government represents, could we perhaps find in Turai Yar’adua a woman of substance who’s just being a loyal wife to a dying husband? I wondered. Read up the full text of my guest-post on Nigerianstalk.org. It was enlightening even for me.
• Lost in Birmingham (March 1, 2010) 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 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.
• Ukraine’s Got Talent! (March 2, 2010) In response to my 10 Reasons post about Nigeria, I have got this guest-post from Clarissa as well as a video from Jacqueline Mackay. The video shows one of the amazing talents from Ukraine where a young woman makes amazing art with sand live on stage to tell a story. I do not know much about the history of Ukraine to decode the story, but I’m sure that Clarissa will be here soon enough to enlighten us. Meanwhile, enjoy these facts about Ukraine by Clarissa, and the video courtesy of Jackie.
• Her First Story (March 05, 2010) Guest post by Jolaade Adesanya, as narrated by Yemi: She was extremely excited at the first mention of the request from uncle Kola, to write something for his blog. Then the big question came when it was time to settle down to it “why does he want me to write, mummy?”. “I think he wants to know what you think about different things.” “OK!”. She then began to tell me the different things she’d like him to know about – she loves babies (a neighbor has just delivered a baby girl, she is not a regular visitor to their home), she doesn’t like the school bus (mum/dad should take her to school instead), she doesn’t like yellow buses, they are always driving rough, she loves her daddy and mummy!, and yes she loves herself, because she loves babies!
• Just Wondering, Just Wandering or Astral Travel in 600 words.(March 8, 2010) The Nigerian writer and critic Ikhide Ikheloa is disillusioned about many things, and does not shy away from saying them in his frank and often witty essays at the Nigeria Village Square, African Writer.com or in the Nigerian Newspaper, NEXT – the wasted opportunity of Nigerian Pro-Democracy Activists to right the wrongs of the country when it eventually got into their hands after decades of military rule, and the portrayal of Africans by Africans themselves in movies, novels and plays written for the Western market. He has written this guest post about his positive perception of technology as the new reality – the new weapons of navigating the labyrinths of the world.
• A Son of the Rocks or Narratives Around My Childhood (March 12, 2010), is a guest-post by Ibukun Babarinde, a Nigerian published poet, and friend. His first collection of poems is titled Running Splash of Rust, a sort of journeying around Ibadan and its human landscape. He sends this from Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, and he can be found on Facebook. Enjoy.
• My Mum and I (March 14, 2010) is a guest-post by Temitayo Olofinlua, who recently won the WLP essay competition in NY. She is also a co-administrator of the Bookaholic Blog, and she sends this from Lagos, Nigeria. Today is Mother’s Day in every other part of the world except the United States, I think, so this piece is just as apt. I can relate to much of what she says. How many of us have mothers like that? Also for one more thing: tomorrow is my mum’s birthday. Enjoy the piece.
• Measuring Blackness (April 2, 2010) is a guest-post by the brilliant Nneoma Nwachuckwu of Pyoo Wata Blog. She is an American of Nigerian origin, and in this article she explores the very many dimensions of being African American even though none of her ancestors was brought to the United States as a slave. Race obviously is still a very interesting issue. The last time I checked, being African itself is not limited to being black, except we intend to exclude fair skinned Arab North Africans in Egypt, Sudan and Northern Nigeria; White, Jewish and Indian South Africans; and the now indigenous White residents of Zimbabwe. Enjoy the interesting piece.
• Knowing the Granite City (April 13, 2010) My first intimation with Scotland beyond the picture of men in skirts must be in the movie Rundown where a Scottish pilot kept saying “There are bills on the grind” when he meant that there were bulls on the ground. And then there was Craig Fergusson and a few other guys whose accents just keep you glued to the television because you can’t get enough. In this guest post, my friend and blog commenter Bukola Olawuwo writes about her experience in Aberdeen, Scotland’s third most populous city. It has an estimated population of 210,400 citizens. Enjoy.
• Abayomi and I (April 21, 2010) In this guest post, children’s story writer Ayodele Olofintuade writes an autobiographical account of growing up with her brother in Nigeria. It’s reproduced here as cross posted on her blog totallyhawaya-haywire.blogspot.com. Ayo is the author of a forthcoming socially-conscious children’s storybook titled Eno’s Story scheduled to be published by Cassava Republic in 2010.
• My Feminism (April 25, 2010) In this guest post, Nigerian blogger and student Temie Giwa writes of her thoughts on and conflicts with Feminism. It’s really not my forte so I don’t have any thoughts. Or maybe I’m confused. Agree or disagree however, it perhaps raises the right questions about identity in today’s -ism world. Or does it? Read for yourself to decide. The world sometimes moves too fast for me to catch up. What are your thoughts?
• India – Gender and Human Dignity (May 10, 2010). Here’s a guest post by a friend and colleague Catherine Xavier. In this write-up, she talks about the less talked-about “third gender” in India – a class of people maltreated and discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation. Read it up to see why they do not fall into the class of homosexuals or lesbians or transgenders, but a different category of men raised or conditioned from birth to behave like women. There is a Youtube video interview with one of them here, for anyone interested in further information on the matter.
• My Dad and I (June 10, 2010) I met Rani in Edwardsville, Illinois at a get-together for the Rotary visitors from Nigeria in April (I think). She’s one of the most fun adults I’ve met in my life. I hope you enjoyed reading the story of her life which she managed to write impromptu immediately after I asked her today. I hear that Rani also means “queen” in Hindi. She could as well be an author, don’t you agree?
• What is Art? (June 14, 2010) by Zainab Shelley. “What is art? That was the question that came to me when I visited the Metropolitan Art Museum some weeks ago where the twin artists Mike and Doug Starn are creating “Big Bambu” which is a combination of architecture, sculpture and performance and it is all made with bamboo…”

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Interested in writing for us, send an email at kt@ktravula.com