There is a reason why I usually never leave the kitchen whenever I am cooking there: I do not want to burn down the house by forgetting a pot of food on the hot cooking gas while I’m in my room reading or writing. I know myself. I think I have a very short attention span when it doesn’t have to do with something mentally stimulating. Food tops that list, and I have had to go hungry so many times because I would rather watch a movie, read an article or just stay in one spot thinking of the next mischief.
So on getting back from a long day of school yesterday, I didn’t bother to take off my back pack. I just went into the kitchen and started making pasta and soup on two of the four gas cookers there. In twenty minutes, I was done and the food was sizzling hot on the plate. But instead of sitting down in the living room to eat, I headed into my room, but not before putting the almost empty pot back on the gas cooker, and turning the knob to be sure that I had put off the fire and the gas.
Two minutes later, while in my room, and about to settle into my comfort zone of work, I became uncomfortable because I wasn’t sure whether or not I had refilled the water bottle in the fridge, so I dropped my food and the laptop, and went there just to be sure, only to find that the half empty pot of pasta was still on a burning hot cooker, almost burning itself out from excessive heat. What? I thought I switched this off. Apparently, I had turned it the wrong way, and instead of shutting off the fire, had only turned it up. Sigh. I then switched it off for good, refilled my water bottle, and went back indoors to enjoy my meal and work. It would have been a very fiery day in Cougar Village, and I can already imagine the headline: “Curious Foreign Language SKolar Roasts Self in Building Fire.”
That didn’t happen, and thus my testimony. Praise the Lord! Halleluyah! Amen!.
Offering time…!
But I can’t. Or so I think. Physically, I’ve now been to Providence RI, Washington DC, Boston MA, St. Louis MI, Edwardsville IL, Cahokia IL, Principia IL, Chicago IL and Olney MD, among a few other small places. But virtually, I’ve been in many more places I probably would never see. Here’s the plan, as time permits, I will go around the world from here. The traveller is coming to a location near you. 
) In any case, I believe(d) him and stayed indoors since Ben also had suddenly disappeared earlier in the day to go to his folks at St. Louis. I fell asleep at nine, and woke up barely at a quarter to twelve, so I slept again, hoping my some miracle to wake up before twelve. The next time I opened those eyes, it was 1pm and I had two messages on my cell phone, from Nigeria. Happy New Year, they said. There were no fireworks like it would have been at New York’s Times Square, or back home in Nigeria (yes, we use fireworks too. Note to Chris: They are festive fireworks, not explosive firecrackers). I went back to sleep a few hours later, consoling myself that in some other parts of the world – in California, for example – they were still in 2009 by a few minutes.
The heaviness on my person since I returned from Washington DC on Monday, I have realized, has to do with more than just my delirious nostalgia for the taste of a certain thrill and an unexplainable positive strangeness that dominated that trip to the East. It could easily have been because of the food, because it was the one thing that almost equally matched the large number of workshop sessions that followed each other one after the other, sometimes without much of a breathing space. We got out of one conference workshop session and we hopped right into another. It was mostly worth it, but it will take the whole of my holiday to truly catch up with the details of all that we were taught. The food however was a different matter. They were diverse as they were elaborate, and I left that hotel on Sunday feeling that I’d committed an unforgivable sin of indulgence – as my mum would have called it. In any case, it was scarcely two hours after then before I entered another cycle of feeding, this time in the neighbouring state of Maryland, and the foods (most of it) were Nigerian for a change.
It was just as well a case of serendipity, because when I went out 
It was serendipity because just last week, the class consensus was an almost riotous but endearing request for Nigerian food before the end of the course. And as much as I tried to dodge the issue citing inability to get the foodstuff as well as the problem of conveying it to class in hot condition, I still wanted to give them an experience of the taste of Nigerian food and I despaired in me about how impossible it was going to be, especially since I feared a possible lawsuit from anyone that might find discomfort after a meal, and hold the teacher – me – responsible. But they made it clear that they wanted it too, so I spoke with Tola – a former FLTA (now a graduate student in the University) who said that we could work something out only if I could find the foodstuffs, and perhaps obtain a written consent from them absolving us of liability. It would prove not to be necessary in the end, as I luckily got sufficient plantain from the African shop, and woke up early enough today to prepare it to the best of ktravula‘s kitchen standards.
With this, my teaching class for this semester has now come to an end. The class that 
Here’s one of the most interesting displays of democratic ideals in the United States of America: a set of turkeys – yes the animals and not the humans from the country of Turkey – are 
In any case, there was no such presidential decree, ceremonial or otherwise, in Edwardsville today as I stepped out of the house to my host’s Thanksgiving get-together. And God bless them too. Even if I was a vegetarian, today was one of those days when it was better to renounce the faith for the good of all humanity, and peace on earth. Well, maybe I exaggerate. In short, I had a very nice day. The food included turkey, of course, turnips, smoked bacon, bread, crab and sausage stuffing, green beans, potato pie (the real sweet potato), chocolates, whipped cream, ice cream of different flavours, sweet corn, cranberry sauce, salad and other fruits and drinks (sparkling wine, white wine, red wine, mojito and margaritas) – a very traditional American meal.
The get-together also included a diverse mix of people: My hosts, their beautiful daughter and her partner both from the state of Utah, their friends, neighbours white and black, acquaintances, a few elderly women looking gorgeous and us – the Africans. We had gone there with a Thanksgiving card, one of the ones that I bought since a few weeks ago, as well as a copy of Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun as a kind of present, which they both greatly appreciated. The repercussion of that thoughtless decision is now that I had to leave the house when the gathering eventually dispersed with a huge paper sack of very many great used books of fiction, history, non-fiction and poetry which, according to my host were already slated for giving away before we showed up. He loves us, that man, and he has asked us to come back for as many more books as we want, for his giving away. One of the things that North America is full of, if I may assume, is plenty great books to which I would never say no.
And so tonight after a drought of three months and more, I arrived home, and in heaven, with all but the seventy welcoming virgins, of course. It started as a jest and mild daring that we would drive down to St. Louis to check out the “African” restaurants. I had had a few apples and was just hoping to go to bed but the trip proved a little too tempting to pass, so we – Mafoya the Beninoise, Ben the American and I the traveller hopped in the car and drove to St. Louis, seeking a place called “Nubia Cafe.” The name did not suggest anything other than African so believed that I was going to at least find something to my taste, just like I did in the Indian restaurant in Chicago. At least it was peppery (read spicy) enough to my African tongue.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN HERE?
There is a little board sign beside the counter bearing his name. “I contested in the last election for a council seat.” He said. “I didn’t win, but I got some votes.”
DO YOU SERVE PALM WINE?
Drinks: Tusker beer from Kenya (Comments: none)
The other woman who had welcomed us in with a smile turned out to be from Tennessee, and she found the whole show we had put up to be very amusing. She was going to find it a lot more amusing when, as it was time for us to pay and head back to Edwardsville, I looked at the bill and had a very bright idea. Since I’ve been in the US, I’ve been gradually initiated into the tipping culture and found a certain joy in leaving little change for the people who had made effort (don’t tell me it’s their job) to provide good quality service. So to show my appreciation tonight, I looked into my purse and brought out the crispiest – well, not necessarily the crispiest – of my Nigerian currency notes. It was a two hundred. I had brought the Nigerian currency notes along to the States only to show my students (and some of them have actually “won” a few of them for keeps while answering questions in class), and for other unexplainable reasons, but as I looked at the space for tips on the bill, I could think of nothing more appropriate to give back to this long range traveller like me than a small piece of home.
10. Food. There is a certain pain in hearing the words fufu, amala, iyan, gbegiri, ewédú or egúsí from this distance. And no, I will not go into St. Louis just because of them, although once in a while it might be worth it. From now on, I forbid anyone to mention the following words to me in online chats: snail, okú ekó, panla or ponmo. Or akpu, ogbono and afang. All the defaulters will take turns to host me in their houses as soon as I return home.
These are a few from the pictures I took today on the way to Carbondale and back. I had gone with Reham and a few other student friends for the regional Fulbright get-together/ barbeque and a visit to the African-American Museum on the campus of the Southern Illinois University in the town.
