ktravula – a travelogue!

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Ibadan Memories

In advance of a live twitter interview with the folks at @thinkoyo on my memories and opinion of Ibadan at 8pm (Lagos Time) this evening, let me list a few things I remember from growing up:

A serene quasi-communal neighbourhood in Akobo. A sprawling house in the middle of a bustling neighbourhood, we lived with everyone in the area in mutual respect and love for family. We played ball on the dust fields, played ping-pong at evenings, and did all normal young people did during idle, hot, afternoons. I remember crafting a Christmas firework at some point out of the cap of a motor plug, a small nail, and a piece of wood. You added crumbs of fire powder from the tip of a match, hit it against a wall, and heard the loudest sound you can ever make.

IMG_9696A pretty moderate traffic situation on the city’s many roads. Today, there are more roads (due to increase in population) but the traffic situation on major roads have got far worse. I went back to Akobo a few months ago, and I was shocked at how many people now live there. The distance from IDC to Anifalaje used to disappear in minutes under the small steps of my rubber sandals. Now it looks farther than I remember, and the last time I walked it (just a few months ago), I returned home panting for air. And yet, I may have got a better deal than the people who remained on the road, in their cars – to slightly exaggerate the congestion that the place now faces because of traffic.

Things that have not changed: rickety buses. Many of them are now more beautifully painted in the colours of the state, but the terrible state of the automobiles that provide commercial transport services is heartbreaking. (And maybe that would explain the reason for more private cars). More things that haven’t changed: Orita Bashorun. Slightly changed in outward appearance for reason of season, the basic layout remains the same. The radio/tv complex (where I once worked as a teenage broadcaster) still lay sprawled across the centre, while a tiny shopping “mall” flanks it on the right, and then a few more blocks until we get to the main Bashorun Market itself. None of it seems to have changed. St. Patrick’s church and school are on the other side of the road. At Christmastime, all the premises of the broadcasting corporation becomes a large trade fair grotto for holiday fun lovers.

A few names I remember: Dele Tomori (who eventually went to Osogbo as a radio presenter), Bade Ojuade, Sade Ogedegbe (my producer), Folusho Taiwo, Femi Daniels Obong, or FDO as he used to be called then (now a Lagos sports broadcaster), Sola Kayode, Prof (from a popular tv soap shot at BCOS), Folake Ladiipo, Papa Demmy, DeeJay Big El, DeeJay Freeze, Dapo Aderogba (who died), Dapo Adelugba (from the University), Kola Olawuyi (at Radio Nigeria, before he moved to Lagos), Larinde Akinleye (at the University, and his house in Sango), Lawuyi Ogunniran (a constant presence around the house), Yinka Ayefele (a lanky figure before his first hit album), Subuola Gandhi, Bamiji Ojo (and his crew on that Ombudsman show on Sundays), Yemi Ogunyemi, and a number of others whose names and faces have now become a blur. If I ever get to write a book about what I remember, I must title it Name Droppings.

UPDATE: The interview, storified, is here.

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Ibadan Memories was published on January 13th, 2013, with the tags , , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 5 comments on this article so far.

Here Comes Trouble

Michael Moore’s new autobiography follows the sometimes ordinary, sometimes extraordinary, life of one of America’s most controversial commentators. His movie Fahrenheit 9/11 is the highest grossing documentary of all time. Aptly titled Here Comes Trouble because of the perception of the author and movie maker during the first few years of the George W. Bush administration and his war in Iraq. He describes in great detail and with sufficient personal reflection what it felt like to criticize the administration on live television during his first Oscar win acceptance speech, and the turbulence of his life after he became public enemy number one.

The memoir-writing style of American writers (mostly public figures) has often amazed me in their ordinariness. No attempt at lyricism or any special verbal sophistication. Just facts, told sometimes with a flourish, and with humour. Not much with any real attempt at literary brilliance. This commentary of mine is ironic, of course, because the straight-forwardness of the narrative makes it a fun and light-hearted read. But it ends there. I’ll remember the facts in the book more than the beauty of how the facts were told. In short, it doesn’t challenge me even though the recollection surely delights. I’m sure this makes some sense.

Michael Moore is a controversial figure, and holding his book with me around campus has already got me a few stares. We no longer live in a George Bush America but it is still fascinating the kind of response his name elicits. A few minutes ago, a student saw it on my desk and asks what I thought could be a tricky question: “So you like Michael Moore, eh?” “I like his work,” I replied. It seems like the safest answer to give given the circumstance. As the book shows, he is however a man bold enough to take risks, and who because of those risks – and some other coincidences in life – has lived a truly remarkable life.

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Here Comes Trouble was published on September 15th, 2011, with the tags , , , , , under the Observations category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Secondary School Days

It was always cold and dry in November towards the end of the school year, and the season always came with a certain bubbling feeling and restless feet. School was at Agodi, a stone throw from the governor’s office, and the state prisons. It was bordered by a military housing project/barrack which had some of the best eating shacks we had ever encountered. It was also the only place where we could go have burukutu in the after hours with the little money we could save. Fufu at Barracks was the best, for some reason. It was rock solid, and filling. It was just as well since the majority of the customers of the eating joints were military people expected to be tough, filled, and healthy.

The broadcasting corporation was about two miles away. It had a very large fenced compound where at this time of the year an exhibition was held. It was called an exhibition because it was conceived as a carnival for the Christmas season. In time, it became a spot for gaming, alcohol and peppersoup and not much else. It was the ultimate taboo spot of escape from school, and we took the liberties many times daring the always looming risk of being apprehended by state law enforcements sent out to find school children loitering the streets during school hours. The best way to get to the broadcasting corporation from the school without getting caught was to walk through a winding short-cut road that went through the Officer’s Mess of the Second Mechanized Division located just across the road. I see it now, a quiet living estate with fancy houses and barking dogs. Three, and sometimes four, young school boys in blue checkered shirts trekking across the land under a sometimes scorching sun. In their pockets are a few coins each, and some roasted groundnuts tied in transparent nylons.

The excitement at the exhibition grounds never always justified its anticipation, but it almost always compensated for gloom of confinement that the walls of our school represented. Dry harmattan Novembers on the streets of Bashorun as pesky loose cannon truants from a faraway place looking for a lost piece of their precocious childhoods… were good times. They also featured really dusty feet in rubber sandals.

 

 

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Secondary School Days was published on July 18th, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy, Uncategorized category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

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