ktravula - a travelogue! » Presentation

Be Like the Road

Kola — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:11:42 +0000

Another excerpt from the reading presentation on campus last month. The poem is “Be Like the Road“, along with a short background story already familiar to regular readers of the blog.

Enjoy

America Tonight (visuals)

Kola — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:02:48 +0000

As a guest of the S.P.E.A.C (Students/Professors Exploring All Cultures) club at SIUE last month, I read a couple of (in-progress as well as already published) works to a small but diverse audience in the Willows Room. Here’s me reading America Tonight and sharing a little background story.

The poem itself was first blogged here, and later published here. Enjoy

In the Alestle

Kola — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:15:12 +0000

There was this article about me in the campus paper, the Alestle, a couple of weeks ago. Remember when the journalist had come to the class’s final performance? I didn’t put up the link here because I had forgotten about it, but mostly because it didn’t turn out to be about my students as had been initially planned. What happened to all those pictures of student performances that the photographer took?

Read it here.

The Class Project

Kola — Sat, 01 May 2010 15:52:21 +0000

Last year, at the end of the semester, my students all had to write short stories in English with Yoruba characters and sensibilities. It was a way for me to have a peek into their knowledge of the language and cultures so far and see what they’ve gained from the class and from their own research. Their stories all surprised and impressed me, individually and I will cherish the scripts for as long as I live.

This semester was different. The class project this time was that they had to pick particular songs in Yoruba and learn to sing it within three weeks. To do this, they had to work with a student tutor who is also a from Nigeria who came to train them every Wednesday. He also found them costumes. I had told them the meaning of the songs in class before handing them over to the tutor, so all I had to do next was just to wait for the final presentation which was set for the final day of class. I invited the head of department and a journalist from the Alestle to come on that day to share in the surprise. I had only heard of their progress and how much fun they had rehearsing for the day. I had not seen them sing before, and I had a feeling that some of them were nervous. At the end of the day, this happened: I was very impressed. From the following video made of their presentation, you will see why the class presentation was the best final class I could ever have hoped for, as a goodbye to a great teaching year.

India and its Plethora of Languages

Kola — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:37:27 +0000

Updated

The third event in my department marking the “Discover Languages Month” took place on Wednesday and it was a talk by a graduate student of the department Catherine Xavier who spoke about India and its “Plethora of Language and Culture.”

I learnt some new things about India at this talk, one of which was that the country – as large as it is in population and land area – had only about twenty-two languages spoken in official capacity. The biggest of them was Hindi which everyone spoke and understood, but there were so many others. Much of the talk was along the lines of mine: i.e a comparison of Indian and American cultures, their similarities and differences. And from the presentation, I found that India is not much different from Nigeria as I previously thought.

One of the things she skipped however was the subject of the Karma Sutra which I believe is one of India’s biggest export to the world, and the influences of the literatures of Salman Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul – the two biggest and perhaps controversial names in Indian/English literature. According to Catherine, they were names that always stirred emotions and she had left them out in order not to make people uncomfortable or be polarizing. I do not take it against her because it doesn’t remove from the breadth of the talk, which lasted an hour and dealt with so many other things including economy, taxes, eve teasing, transportation, speech patterns, greetings and interpersonal relationship of Indians in foreign lands, and many more. As conservative as the culture in India is, it still managed to have produced a deep and colourful legacy of sensual exploration of the human body and I’d have loved to have been able to ask about it during the event. I couldn’t. It was a nice presentation over all with many laugh-out-loud moments during the talk and during some of the video clips that she played.

I love it because it was a balanced presentation of the positives and negatives of the country, unlike mine of two weeks ago which was mainly a positive representation of myself and culture. Clarissa has already accused me of being too positive about everything I observe, so it is just as well. Many of Catherine’s points reminded of me of what Nigeria and India have in common as a society. Famous Indian people in the presentation were Mother Theresa and Mohandas Gandhi.

“Exploring Yoruba through American Eyes”

Kola — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:06:47 +0000

I don’t usually write the word “Programme” as “Program.”

The long process that became today’s presentation began a little over a week ago when Prof Tom Lavalle, a professor of Chinese language and literature sent me a mail asking if I would be willing to kick off the “Discover Languages Month” with a public presentation. I said yes. He asked me to suggest a title, and I did. He liked it. I didn’t have too much time to plan for it however, which would explain why I had spent a few nights sleepless putting everything in form. For this, I also owe credits to the pictures on my room wall who listened to my mock pre-presentation, and to Deola, Zainab, Tayo and Chris who offered valuable suggestions after previewing the presentation. I also thank Clarissa who sat gently and almost anonymously at the back, smiling at almost everything I said, and blogging but whose presence along with that of other colleagues and friends gave me the needed encouragement; and Belinda Carstens, my head of department who barraged me with questions when necessary, thus inevitably pointing me to a few things I seemed to have been taking for granted talking to a people from a different background.

My undergraduate project in the University was called “The Multimedia Dictionary of Yoruba Names.”

One of the most intriguing discussion from the talk came during the realization by a few members of the audience that we still had kings in Nigeria, within Yoruba kingdoms. “Are they all monarchies?” Someone asked. “No,” I said, and went into a long explanation about the peculiar (and prehistoric) republican nature of the kingship system in Ibadan in sharp contrast with the rest of Yoruba kingdoms in Oyo, Ife and elsewhere. Even to me, that was a moment of personal reflection and pride in the accomplishment of Ibadan ancestors who broke with tradition long before the British came, and did away with a succession system of government that is based on heredity like is practised in Oyo or Ife for a more meritocratic system based on long-standing and verifiable contribution to the society. Even at the end of the talk, a few more scholars came over to talk to me and ask questions about the kingship system. The kings, we discussed, do not have political powers as such in the country, but do occupy a status of responsibility that makes them indispensable in the proper governance of the country. There was also a question about spirituality. This elicited a response in reaffirmation of the Yoruba worldview: that which has never sought to impose its belief system on any other group of people for any reason. We had fought wars for women, for land, but never ever to spread a system of belief or to proselytize to our own way of life.

Do you have Six Flags in “Yorubaland”?

So there was food, plantain chips. There were over forty people in the audience, many of them standing. I saw a few old students in the audience, and a few current ones as well. How the old students knew about the event, I have no idea. Professor (Papa) Rudy showed up as well. It was my first time of seeing him this year. Also present was Prof Schaefer, professor of Linguistics, and SIUE Director of International Programmes who is no stranger to Nigeria himself, having taught at UNIBEN for many years and worked on the Edo language of Emai for a long time. I spoke about the mark on my face. I also spoke about the noted similarities between the Opa Oranmiyan and the Washington Monument; and about why I wear the cap in the United States even though I never did while I was in Nigeria; and about the meaning of names; and about masquerades, Lagbaja and the KKK (a little uncomfortable for me to broach); about Wole Soyinka and the many things he wrote about; among other topics. And then read a translated poem about The Owner of Yam and his Neighbour, which everyone seemed to have loved.

Is “Yorubaland” like Disneyland?

It was nice. I had fun. I’m guessing that from the response there will be more students next year registering for the Yoruba if the Fulbright commission decides to send more Yoruba teachers to this institution. I have also been told by professors whose students came to listen that they would be discussing what they learnt from the talk in their subsequent classes, and on Facebook groups created for the discussion of language ideas. I look forward to getting feedbacks from there. I enjoyed the talk. It was a nice but busy day. And oh, I also got the side pocket of my dress badly torn by a loose metal during the first jittery moments of sitting alone in front of the so large audience. Now I’ll need to find a good tailor to mend it, or leave it as a marker of this interesting speech-giving experience. Sigh. It is for a good reason that I have not always been dressing like this. Well, there’s the report. I am glad to be here at this department of foreign langauges at this point in time. You too should have been there.

Q: Why learn a new language? Why learn about a new culture? A: The same reason why we learn anything new… to acquire new ways of interacting with the world around us.

ktravula - a travelogue! » Presentation

Be Like the Road

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