ktravula – a travelogue!

reflections on the world

Where Am I?

Contrary to what you might think, I’m not lost. I know exactly where I am. I think.

I am in the United States of America, the land of the free… the place where your rights end right where mine begins.

Or not.

You are free to do anything as long as nobody (else) gets hurt. It is a land of rights as well as responsibilities.

This land does not run itself however. It is not on auto-pilot. It is made to work by people who spend their waking hours doing their part of the national chore.

“If everyone sweeps their front yard, the whole city will be clean.”

That is one quote that I’ve always liked, because it takes responsibility of making a society function properly away from the removed distance of “the other”, the government, and places it in the hands of the citizens who must either make it work or not.

The trash cans do not empty themselves. I have seen the guys who move them.

Neither does the snow magically disappear from the roads after a major fall. The woman who drives the snow mobile does so promptly and without fail. Or else how would I be able to ride my bike to school after a major snow fall?

The floor of Peck Hall is not magically clean, nor are its walls, corridors and classroom boards all fine and good looking all by themselves. The men and women who work every day to keep them as they should be also happened not to have more than just two hands. I have seen them.

This expanse of land inherited/taken over by a generation of immigrants is an interesting study. If I were to have won a great expanse of land estate such as this, I would be quite justified to fight for its defense with everything I have. I would be justified to jealously guard it as mine. I would never take it for granted. I would live everyday in the joy of the liberty afforded by such a gift. I would be an American, spending each day in gratitude and in the knowledge of the fragility of such great present, and in the joy of company. Life would be good. I would contribute to make it what it is – a land of order and contentment, if possible. I would not kill fellow citizens because they speak a different language or live in a different part of the nation.

I have seen the bus driver. She smiles at me every time I get on the bus, and we talk back and forth either about the book she is reading at the moment, or about the latest news about Nigeria and my American experiences. The bus comes on schedule. On time, most times. I do not get shoved when I go in, and neither is there noise of horns and a lousy conductor.

I’m not crazy yet, interestingly, within the silence of order and propriety. I am surprised by this. Cacophony beckons within the memories of heat and sweat in a distant city in Western Nigeria, and I sigh. I am still in the United States of America.

Alright, I’m in the Midwest of the USA, but it’s still the same. And sometimes, the calm and order unnerves me! :)

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Where Am I? was published on February 10th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , under the Soliloquy, Uncategorized category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Talking to Myself

I am Nigerian. What exactly does that mean right now? What has it always meant? What has it ever meant? What do I mean to the world? I come from a country that has produced one of the inventors of the supercomputer Phillip Emeagwali, a Nobel Literature Prize winner Wole Soyinka and countless entertainers on the world stage. If there ceases to be an entity called Nigeria in its current political form, what would I be? What would I mean to the world? What would be my identity?

I’ve never been a fan of division, of separation, for a simple reason that even if we change the current political structure of the country, we would still not be able to do anything about our geographical contiguity. We are in fact still a bunch of different peoples living around each other. The British creation called Nigeria never really made us one, so removing the “Nigerianness” would not make us any different, or separate, than we already are. We still all live around the Niger River. The North is still the north, with its attendant conservatism, and the South still the south with its liberalism. If we wake up tomorrow and have ten nation states in that region instead of this large one called Nigeria, our problems would not immediately disappear, if they will at all. We would still be the same different people, still fighting ourselves, this time with our sovereign mights and alliances.

It is three days before a new year, and I am worried, very worried, that there is going to be crises in Nigeria. I hope not. I am praying against it because my friends and relatives are there. Selfish, I know. Right now, there is a shortage of fuel (gas) even though we are the 6th largest producer of crude oil in the world. The president of the country is in a hospital, and his state of health is uncertain. I’d joked around last week that I’m afraid that the customary new year’s message from the nation’s president will be delivered this time with a Morse code. Now, I’m beginning to fear that I may be right. It has been thirty-eight days and we have not heard a single word from the country’s leader. Is he alive? Is he conscious? If he can’t speak, can he write? Can he at least tap out his messages on a board? By December 31st, the Chief Justice of the nation will be ending his term, and ONLY the president can sign his tenure extension or his replacement. If the president is unconscious in a hospital as it now seems, and the National Assembly can’t remove him, as it now seems, come January the 1st, there will not only be a vacuum in the Executive, there will be one in the Judiciary as well. Just what the country needs.

I am Nigerian. I want to remain Nigerian, but what exactly does that mean right now? What has it always meant? What has it ever meant beyond the negative? What do I mean to the world? I come from a country that has produced great brains in various fields. So what? If there ceases to be an entity called Nigeria, what would I be? What would that mean to me? What would be my identity besides being the man from that country that is now no more? Who am I? Where are my people? Who are they? And what do we mean to the world?

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Talking to Myself was published on December 28th, 2009, with the tags , , , , under the Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently 7 comments on this article so far.

Notes to Self

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#1. There is nothing sinister about the fact that there was power outage, and a serious fire outbreak in house #529 of Cougar Village, on the same day of your arrival in house #431. Cast the superstitious devil out of your dirty mind, all your friends’.

#2. Stop worrying about the absence of bones in the American fried chickens. See, you’re no more in Nigeria, and there’s nothing wrong in eating a boneless fried chicken. Seek calcium from some other sources. By some miracle of cooking, Americans have long devised their way to prepare their fried chicken without its bones. Their dogs must eat something, after all.

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#3. There must be a special reason why this post, and this one, are the most read on this blog. Your Nigerian readers must be fascinated by the fact that their biggest assumptions could as well be wrong. But why did they not read much of this one? Could it be that they care much less about foreign food, considering that they have become insular in their culinary preferences?

#4. Do your winter shopping for hats, gloves, boots, mufflers, shawls and overcoats latest by the middle of September. You don’t want to have your toes fall off when it gets as cold as the inside of a Fan Ice freezer. Prepare a good part of your savings for buying hot Starbucks coffee. Don’t forget to buy some ogogoro as well. Nothing is too small to fight against the midwestern cold when it comes. Don’t leave anything to chance.

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#5. You are a teacher here, and not a student like everybody else. Hold yourself high. Be disciplined. Put all your enthusiasm to work, and you just might pull this off nicely. All you have is this one year to make a good first impression. It’s just like the NYSC. You survived that one, right? And in that particular case, it was in a mixed secondary boarding school without internet, cafeteria, school bus, to-borrow bookstores, warm bath, pretty lake and an attractive stipend, situated in the middle of nowhere, and where students spoke a combination of Hausa, Berom and crooked pidgin slang.

#6. Buy a bicycle, preferably not at Wal-mart. Buy a basketball. Like many people say, don’t waste your talent. See if you can make a college career in basketball, if only for the fun feeling you get from the company of other players. Put your height to advantage, but don’t beat them too much. They might get jealous.

#7. Stop expecting your roommate to know who Halle Berry is when you tell him about the movie “Monster’s Ball”. He is an undergraduate of Pharmacy, not Theatre. And he’s from Illinois, not California. After all, not all Nigerians know who Fathia Balogun or Lola Idije are.

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#8. Deal with time zones already. When you were in Providence, you were five hours away from home. Now at Edwardsville, it is a six hours gap, and you may not call home thinking you still exist in the same longitude.

#9. Get used to seeing women drive the buses that take you to and from campus everyday. You are no longer in Nigeria.

#10. Enjoy yourself. Visit that lake more often. Go to town more often. Take long walks. Ride around town. Ride to St. Louis. Get lost, wander around, and find your way back when it’s dark, with sweat marks on your brow and a very exhilarating feeling in your belly. Visit Boston again, this time not just the airport. Visit New York, Broadway. Take pictures at the National Mall when you’re in Washington DC in December. And at the Lincoln Memorial. Fall in love. Tease. Rock the silent woods in your own little way, and let it fill you with its bubbling life. You are in the United States of America.

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Notes to Self was published on August 19th, 2009, with the tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 7 comments on this article so far.

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