ktravula – a travelogue!

the Nigerian Ghoul in an American Forest

African Film Festival

from March 26 – March 28, 2010

Venue: Washington University, St. Louis.

Friday, March 26 at 7 p.m.
Friday’s films are co-presented by the Saint Louis Metropolitan Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

BRONX PRINCESS
Yoni Brook and Musa Syeed, Ghana/USA, 2008, 29 minutes
Follow headstrong 17-year-old Rocky as she leaves behind her mother in New York City to reunite with her father, a chief in Ghana. By confronting her parents’ ideas during her tumultuous summer between high school and college, Rocky must reconcile her African heritage with her dream of independence.

Sunday, March 28 at 7 p.m.
Sunday’s feature is co-presented by Saint Louis, Missouri-Senegal Sister Cities Program

AREA BOYS
Omelihu Nwanguma, Nigeria, 2008, 25 minutes

Area Boys is the name given to groups of youth who make their life on the Lagos streets. Two lifelong friends decide to repent from their corrupt ways by cutting ties with their megalomaniac boss. Life as “good” citizens proves difficult, so they plan one last job to fund their transition… and are faced with a life or death situation, testing their friendship.

Sponsored by African and African American Studies and Film and Media Studies in Arts & Sciences, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, African Students Association of Washington University and the St. Louis Art Museum. It is funded in part by a grant from the Women’s Society of Washington University.

More information on this website.

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African Film Festival was published on March 13th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Art, Fun, News category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

The Lemp Mansion

“Lemp Mansion is a house in St. Louis, Missouri. The ghosts of several Lemp family members are said to haunt the mansion.” – Wikipedia

“There is no place in the city of St. Louis with a reputation that is quite as ghostly as the Lemp Mansion. It has served as many things over the years from stately home to boarding house to restaurant…but it has never lost the fame of being the most haunted place in the city. In fact, in 1980, Life Magazine called the Lemp Mansion “one of the ten most haunted places in America”. – http://www.prairieghosts.com/lemp.html

“The Lemp Mansion is located in St. Louis, Missouri, a short distance away from the Mississippi River. Take Broadway from Interstate 55 and follow that to Cherokee Street. Go west on Cherokee and turn right onto De Menil Place. The address of the mansion is 3322. The Pointer Family has owned and operated the Lemp Mansion since 1975. The Lemp family line died out with him and the family’s resting place can now be found in beautiful Bellefontaine Cemetery.” – http://www.hauntedamericatours.com/hauntedhouses/LempMansion/

Now that we know (almost) all about this building, where it is located, and what makes it so remarkable, could someone tell me why this traveller is now thinking of actually going to spend a night there?

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The Lemp Mansion was published on March 4th, 2010, with the tags , , under the Soliloquy, adventures category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

St. Louis to Saint-Louis

Today’s even in the Discover Languages Month was a talk by Elizabeth Killingbeck, a student of my department who had gone to Saint-Louis in Senegal in West Africa for a three month Rotary community project and a French-abroad experience. Elizabeth had come back with stories of said experience and was at the Plasma Lounge again to share it with members of the department, faculty and students who had come to listen. From a little after three pm when the talk started, and a little after four o clock when it ended, Elizabeth took us on a journey of her experiences, good and bad, in the West African country. It was worth it listening to.

Her trip to Senegal was doubly memorable for her and for us because Elizabeth had never lived within any community of totally French-speaking people, nor has she ever been to Africa (or for that matter lived within a community of mainly moslems). And on top of that, she is someone of not so large a stature that must have gone through so much to survive (even in the US) within a group of bigger framed folks, and here she was in French and Wolof-speaking West Africa in the blazing sun. Now don’t get me wrong, Elizabeth is only soft-spoken, she is neither timid nor shy when speaking about what she finds fascinating.

Wearing a green guinea attire that she bought while there in Abdoulaye Wade’s country, she talked about drinking water, flies, art, classrooms, children, vehicle art, street kids, food, family, language, camels, religion, literacy among many others. There were also pictures to show for it. Talking about water supply, Elizabeth talked about the problem of accessing good water where she lived. They drank from the well while she bought and drank bottled water. “Should she have drunk the well water?” Belinda asked me. “Definitely not,” I replied.

Present at the talk were the departmental head Belinda Carstens, the Chinese Professor Tom Lavalle, Prof Doug Simms, Prof Olga Bezhanova, departmental secretary Sherry Venturelli, the lab manager Catherine Xavier and many other members of the department. It was a nice talk over all.

Like in all of the previous talks in the Plasma Lounge, this one also had refreshments and drinks. The snacks was plantain chips – which I welcomed with all my appetite. Then there were marshmallows which Dr. Lavalle had brought just for my sake. See, this is one of the advantages of blogging. Somebody nice might read about your appreciation of the taste of marshmallows so much that he would actually go out of his way to buy you some more. I guess here is the time to express my appreciation for pineapple and chicken topped Papa John’s pizza. Not for everyday though. Just for Wednesdays. ;)

I think this concludes the Discover Languages Month events in the department. It has been a very good month for learning and sharing. I thank the organizers for the initiative.

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St. Louis to Saint-Louis was published on February 25th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Academic, Fun, Travelling, adventures category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

More from the Mardi Gras

Here are some more pictures from the Mardi Gras, St. Louis that ended on Tuesday. Here’re are also a few of my observations from the event.

A disorientatingly large crowd.
Unexplainably expensive drinks.
(Eventually) drunk boys and girls from all over the world.
ATM machines that charged $8 on every transaction. Absence of any topless black girls. A heavy police presence, most of who came out of the state of Missouri. One of the cops we spoke to said he had come from Chicago. A confusing labyrinth of alleys at the Soulard Street where the event took place.
Rude, drunk and aggressive boys.
Liberal Brazilian girls with names written on all part of their clothing.
Colourful beautiful  costumes, and beads.
Delicious turkey legs.
Somebody that looked so much like Prof Wole Soyinka.
Loud music. A long unending carnival of different kinds.
ID required for all drinks bought even if said ID belonged to someone else. Patriotism: the crowd yelled “USA. USA!”  when the parade of American military men marched past.
A lively carnival atmosphere. Thousands and thousands of beads thrown into the crowd.

In New Orleans, Louisiana where the celebration has its largest following in the United States, as in St. Louis Missouri where on this day private transportation was suspended for reason of order and ease of movement of scheduled large buses and the numerous visitors,  the Mardi Gras is always a colourful carnival featuring a series of activities during the days preceding the so called Fat Tuesday. Before the fasting of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, it is the belief that all indulgence are in order, and that believers (since it started as a religious festival) should eat all they could. This explains the amount of drunkenness and liberal behaviour that has defined the event as a cultural identity for the season, and for the cities in which they take place annually in the United States and all over the world.

Update (Friday February 19th 2010): There is an article in today’s  NEXT newspaper about the event. I wonder who wrote it.

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More from the Mardi Gras was published on February 18th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Art, Fun, Observations, adventures category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

Mardi Gras, St. Louis

I’ll save an article on this first-in-a-lifetime experience for later, but here are a few pictures from over two hundred that I took at the Mardi Gras celebration in St. Louis Missouri yesterday 13th February 2010.

The Mardi Gras, meaning “Fat Tuesday” in French refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after the Epiphany and ending on the day before Ash Wednesday, and was initially a celebration of the last night of eating richer, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season.

Viewer discretion advised. Why this is necessary itself is still beyond me. Alright, enjoy.

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Mardi Gras, St. Louis was published on February 14th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Art, Fun, Travelling, adventures category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

What’s Crackin’

The month of February in the United States is Black History Month, a month where activities are arranged to remind the country of the contributions of the African diaspora to the progress of the United States.

The month has also been tagged the “Discover Languages Month” by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (actfl). It is for this second reason that I will be speaking in the Plasma Lounge of the Foreign Languages Department on Wednesday 3rd February to an audience of staff, students and colleagues on the topic  ”Exploring Yoruba Through American Eyes“.

Nobody knows this yet, but I haven’t finalized my presentation yet. Shhhh. Now you know. So if you don’t see me here in the next couple of days, you know what I’m doing. Wish me luck.

In other news, I got a call from the proprietors of Nubia Cafe who have chanced on this blog and my account of my first visit there to eat pounded yam. What do they want? Having also read what we’re doing on this blog to raise money for Jos and for Haiti, they are extending an invitation to me to come exhibit my photography in the premises of the restaurant in St. Louis during this month, maybe on a weekend. I think it’s a good idea, don’t you?

Besides the above, everything else is fine, and cool. Well, “cold” is more like it. We are getting snow once again.

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What’s Crackin’ was published on February 1st, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Academic category. There are currently 8 comments on this article so far.

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