ktravula - a travelogue! » St. Louis

Open City*

Kola — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 07:40:24 +0000

A lighted street, an alley. A road closed for construction or a botched concert featuring a boy rock band. I have always wondered what makes a city run, what makes it what it is. What makes it tick – the soul and the fabric of its existence and sustenance. An underground tunnel, a monument. Hotels with distinguished butlers and visiting guests. Cars, concrete, curbs. Lights. People walking around with a thousand different motives and stages of contemplation. A gathering of friends at Hooter’s. Fireworks. Sparklers. Fourth of July. The hovering however-you-define-it American Spirit.

There is all humanity represented sometimes within a square mile. The angry driver. An open sewer covered with a wire mesh. Laughing, nervous children chaperoned by parents. A stranger smoking outside a tall building. Stacked rows of mobile bathrooms. Traffic lights. Taxis in city colours. Noise. The reported crime rate that rivals any other across the country. A wrong turn towards an abandoned railway and the occasional hair-raising contemplation of the consequences of abandonment. Old city. New city. Open city. St. Louis, or a thousand others. The beating heart of humanity condensed in one spot in time and history. One minute, and a slice of a much larger story.

*Open City is the title of a new acclaimed book by Nigerian writer Teju Cole about an immigrant in New York City. This post is only a creative anticipation of the novel’s premise.

Walking the City

Kola — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 12:08:13 +0000

It is ancient, it is new. It’s cold, it’s warm. It is windy. It is dry, it is bubbly. It surprises like a carnival. It soothes like a feather. It delights. It surprises. It bores. It hugs. It repels: a beautiful half desert land of strange plants and creatures. Ruins. Concrete. Rust. Trees. Tar. Tall remnants of a history that comes back many times to relive itself. City. Town. Relic. St. Louis.

Is this my land?

Kola — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 06:12:01 +0000

A guest post by Temie Giwa

I often wonder how people go about deciding which country or countries deserves their allegiance. I suppose if you have lived in one country all your life it wouldn’t matter. However, when you have the special fortune of having dual citizenships then it becomes a topic worth exploration. I am Nigerian. I was born there. I also have an interesting relationship with the USA. I live here, and I vote here. I am often told by my Nigerian friends and colleagues how American I am. And anytime I attempt to pronounce “house, hot, and or home”, I am reminded that I am a proud daughter of Oduduwa, and his stamp remains in my syntax.

I had the opportunity of spending last evening with a group of individuals learning English and the American culture at the international Institute in St. Louis Missouri. They hail from as far as Bhutan, a little country in the south of Asia and some were Mexicans, our Southern neighbor. I also had a conversation with a Nigerian woman from Ogun State and another from China. They all were interested in America, eager to learn her history and above all so grateful to their teachers and the country that has given them a second chance. For a moment I was touched and I could not help but sing along with everyone to the song that best illustrates the magic that is America. “This Land”. This land, I hope truly belongs to all of them.

I love Americans, but I never expected to become one, or to like being one. The citizenship was not something I sought nor did I have control over it. My parents gave me a blue passport on my 16th birthday and that was that. I suppose if I had gone through the naturalization process like the men and women in the American citizenship class, I might have felt more comfortable with my American self. Oh I get away with a lot. People already expect me to be loud, obnoxious and fat. So I just shrug away moments when I feel like being loud, obnoxious and fat as my American moments, it suits me well. And whenever I find my self in Nigeria, any rudeness to the elders is automatically forgiven, this I tell you is a major blessing.

The evening started with a tour of the Institute and one thing that arrested my attention was a little poster displaying famous American immigrants. Among them were Albert Einstein, Madeline Albright, and Pulitzer. These individuals like myself immigrated to the United States and were able to create lives that still inspire the world. The evening proceeded predictably. On the main stage was a PowerPoint presentation of flags and snapshots of all countries whose members have migrated to the United States. Turkeys were given out in celebration of thanksgiving and we sang and laughed and clapped. I am especially thankful for a country that invokes hope in the heart of so many. The people who spend their free time teaching others how to make a new life in a new country are the very essence of what makes this country oh so great.

Art At the Pulitzer

Kola — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 04:15:30 +0000

The experience at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Art Centre in St. Louis was interactive, a first for me. The building stands in the sun an artwork in itself, a charming thrill for the eyes and a good haven for some afternoon luxuriating in the sun. I heard it was opened in 2001. The building stands in the centre of a cultural neighbourhood called Washington Boulevard only a few blocks from the famous Fabulous Fox theatre. In this same building, actually separated by nothing but a thin wall of concrete and a self-help desk that offers free soda and snacks, is the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, another great place. This building, an architectural masterpiece was designed by the renowned Tadao Ando, and I was visiting it for the very first time.

There is an ongoing exhibition at the premises titled Stylus by Ann Hamilton. We were advised at the entrance to interact with the art as much as we could: touch, speak to, smell, and do whatever else we could within the bounds of reason. Deep in a corner was a piano playing all by itself which reacted to every sound made in the building. On a series of shelves nearby are hand gloves of different sizes and colour made out of paper. On the first floor is someone on a balcony reading from a play to herself and to all. At the basement is a board metal contraption where the visitor is advised to sit and play, rolling iron pebbles in order to align them in a cosmic circle. The process is also monitored by a microphone that transmits the sounds generated to the piano. On several makeshift ladders in the corridors are small projectors beaming onto the white walls series of random images all overlaid with a pen, a pencil or a stylus in motion. Upstairs, there is a table filled with brown seeds a kind of which I haven’t seen before. They rattled and sizzled on the membrane of the table as if insects moved in them. There were two microphones there too, picking up the sounds into a central broadcasting system. Under that table were birds of different kinds, all dead, all stuffed, all smelling of dust, and the jungle. On the balcony was a set table, and a view of the road outside. Downstairs between two walls and a third made of glass, there stands a shallow pool. The forth wall opens up to the sky and a very relaxing view of the horizon. I sit there for a while, taking pictures and smelling the air.

“At the threshold of the exhibition is a concordance.” There is a publication of a news stories from newspapers around the world arranged in a certain way that puts specific selected words into a spine and every other word as many as the line would take as its wings. The words were “Act, Address, Being, Black, Blue, Body, Call…” among others. By the east exit of the centre is a Mac on which one could make one’s own concordance. I selected my books: Ulyses by James Joyce, A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and To Kill a Mockinbird by Harper Lee. I put in the words: “voice, black, red, hat, heaven” and watch the computer generate a concordance of those words from those books. It was seven pages long. I printed it out, as instructed, and put them in my bag.

In the courtyard of the premises far away from the exhibition is a large rusty brown spiral metal sculpture. Originally titled “Unknown”, it is now called the “Joe” by the Centre, after Joseph Pulitzer himself. The work, made in 2000 and installed in 2001, weighs 25 tonnes and is about ten feet tall standing on its own weight in the centre of the courtyard. From the first floor of the Centre, it looks like a blooming rose (however brown). While walking through its brown corridors, it looks like the passageway to a spooky cave but for the presence of the sun above. At its centre is nothing but space, and rust. According to the curator, it was created in Germany and shipped to the US in parts through New Orleans and then assembled here after the trouble it took to transport it by land (which included temporarily dismantling some traffic lights along the way.)

The final interactive challenge with the exhibition was a phone call. “Call this number when you get out, or whenever you can,” the curator told me, “and you’ll be directed to a voice message system. When you’re prompted, read a poem, a song, or any short creative response to your experience of the work. By the top of the hour, the messages left would be randomly played out into the city from the top of our building. You may say whatever you will, as long as it is appropriate. We thank you for coming here today…” I walked out to the car with my head bubbling up with many ideas and scenarios of poetry recitals not involving a language known to the curators of this project or the residents of the neighbourhood. This, I thought, is the part where Ann Hamilton meets Africa, a Yoruba song or poem into the wind of her consciousness, and to posterity. But when it came a few seconds later, the voice prompt on the phone and the tone that connected the visitor with the artist, leave your poem, song or recital now, all that came out was were the words of Eidelweiss, as mellifluously as one could summon it.

It at least captured the mood of the afternoon as I drove off out of their into the sun with a certain happiness I couldn’t describe.

The exhibition continues until January 22, 2011, and more details can be found here.

At the Cathedral Basilica

Kola — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 08:32:12 +0000

Pictures taken from an inside tour of the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis only a few hours ago. The visit was impressive, the tour guide was nice, knowledgeable and warm. She’s a retired chemist.

The mosaics on the walls and ceilings of the building were nothing short of spectacular, telling stories of the church’s history as well as some key aspects of Christianity as well. There are no painting in the building. None at all. All the drawings on the ceiling and the walls were mosaics all handmade from glass and gold sheets. The St. Louis Cathedral Basilica holds one of the world’s largest collection of mosaic drawings, with over 41 and a half million tiles used for the drawings since the building was completed in 1914. The mosaic drawing was “finished in 1988, uses about 7,000 colors, and covers about 83,000 square feet.” (wiki)

It was only incidental that on this same day, I have got to visit a mosque, and also a synagogue in St. Louis (even participating in a Shabbat service, along with moving songs and readings). More on this later. The experience was worth the journey it took to get there.

Life of a Volunteer

Kola — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:45:02 +0000

The title of this post is premature, but I’ll leave it as that anyway. Monday was my first time as a volunteer teacher of English at the International Institute so I can’t tell you much about the life of a volunteer. The last time I volunteered for something similar was teaching up north in a Nigerian secondary school a lifetime ago. But that was different not only because it was mandatory but because the subject of that experience were young children who already have some exposure to the English language but only needed to improve on it. This time, I’m dealing with those who had never had any exposure to speaking, reading or writing English but are willing to put themselves through the stress of acquiring it, even at advanced age.

The International Institute in St. Louis is set up to cater for refugees, immigrants and new comers into the United States who do not yet have sufficient knowledge of the English language. Some of them were hearing English being spoken for the first time, many of them never opened a book, and most of them were holding a pencil, and learning to write for the very first time. Volunteers come from different parts of the country and I had heard last week that the Institute would be closing down its adult literacy program as well as the citizenship classes for lack of funding from the government. Yesterday it was confirmed that Institute has just received new funding to continue the programmes, particularly adult literacy one, and so it would continue though the citizenship classes may not.

The classes have a very elementary syllabus, as would be expected of a class with such level of student proficiency. The students range in age from thirty to sixty-five and they come from different parts of the world. Our job was to help them read and gain sufficient literacy needed to survive in such a country as this. The books had stories that were easy to read and understand. They also came with pictures, as they should be, and each reading experience was one-on-one, with the students reading along and trying to link text with pictures and ideas. It brought smiles to my face to see grown people show that much enthusiasm to reading. We also did some word scrambling and a few phonic exercises.

What delighted me most is the enthusiasm and confidence of the students at learning. Many of them had been displaced by hard circumstances in their country of birth and had now come to acquire new means of communication in order to survive in a place away from home. They come with their own survival instincts and a rich reservoir of life experiences, but they can’t express them to us because we don’t speak Swahili, Dzongkha/Bhutanese, Spanish, French, Ewe, Gen, Kabiye or any of the languages they speak where they come from. Nor do we want to. It promises to be a rich teaching/learning experience.

On St. Louis!

Kola — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 06:33:50 +0000

Some thoughts occurred to me on the way to St. Louis earlier today that I must have mentioned “St. Louis” more times than I have mentioned the name of the city in which I have lived for the last one year. Here’s why: it’s the closest big city to Edwardsville, even though it is located in a neighbouring. The other big city around here is Chicago, and it is five hours away. I bet that people in Michigan find it easier to get to Chicago than we do in the south of the state. The city of St. Louis is just twenty to thirty minutes away, just by the bank of the Mississippi river, and it offers all that a big city offers.

It occured to me just today how similar to Chicago it actually is, in structures, atmosphere and general attitudes. It’s “South Side” is just as dangerous as the South Side of Chicago depending on the time of the day or night, and everyone had warned me to be careful wherever I went. Chicago, of course, has more museums and monuments, and taller buildings. While St. Louis has the Arch, Chicago has the Bean and many other attractions. And as a point of convergence, the Jazz artist Louis Armstrong has strong ties to both cities. In any case, the contiguity of St. Louis to much of where I live now has made it one city about which you’ll continue to hear so much for some time to come.

The trip to that big city today was uneventful today, contrary to expectations. Maybe it was because I got a GPS at last and had to endure a loud mysterious voice directing me to turn where necessary. I guess the only memorable part of the trip was when I finally got to my destination, and decided around the block that I wanted to buy some plantain chips to have for lunch, the lady at the desk of the African restaurant asked me if I was paying with food stamps or cheque. I knew what food stamps were, but I said I didn’t, and asked her to explain, because I had felt profiled by her assumption and didn’t like it. In retrospect, it was just a random welcome into a different kind of America and I should have embraced it as such. And I did, in the end.

How was your Monday?

Another Monday

Kola — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 06:01:00 +0000

There’s a law that I can’t yet name, but it says that if you had all the time in the world, you most likely won’t do as much as you would if you were very busy and occupied all through the day. For now, let’s call it the KTravulaw of Time Management. It is the truth in that law that has prevented me from blogging as much as I should this month, and it’s just as well. Studies are kicking into full gear. If symptoms persist, I will blog less and less until I would be able to write only one post in a month. And maybe that will be Nirvana.

Before then, I will be busy finishing the autobiography of William Shatner titled Up Till Now. As expected, it has a lot of funny stories of the man’s life, from the time a female gorilla held his balls and wanted to sleep with him to his very many risks taken in life and in his career. And then I can get over my obsession with Fela! the Musical, and the life of those who populate the story, e.g Sandra Iszadore who was the only woman ever to sing lead on a Fela track. Who was she? How did they meet? What was her relationship with Fela like? Was the relationship consummated? And if so, why/how did they separate?

And then I will try to go to St. Louis all by myself for the first time tomorrow with or without a GPS. Thinking about it now, it sounds like an impossible task. But I have signed up as a volunteer at the International Institute where they teach and resettle immigrants and refugees from parts of the world. I would be teaching (very basic and elementary) English, and I look forward to the experience. More than just a chance to see how volunteering works, or how second language speaking adults learn English for the first time, I also need the experience for my pedagogy class. I was at the Institute for the first time last week with a classmate and I was impressed by what they do with little funding from the Government, but now I will have to go there all by myself. If I get lost, I know whom to call. That is if the road police don’t get me first for being confused on the very confusing interstate highways.

Many more things have happened to me since a while, but I can’t tell you right now. I should either be sleeping or reading for the week’s classes. The weekend went by too fast. Have a nice week.

Night, St. Louis.

Kola — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 07:14:01 +0000

Here is a nice view of the downtown St. Louis taken yesterday after an event in the Jesuit Hall in the St. Louis University.

The American presiding reverend father who had spent eighteen years as a presiding priest in a Catholic church in Lagos Nigeria had graciously given us a tour of the Jesuit Hall where the priests lived, and of the view from the top of the fifteen-storied building into the church across the road and the city at large. A great experience.

More Photos from the Festival

Kola — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 02:38:28 +0000

The Festival of Nations St. Louis is organized yearly by the International Institute.

Other attractions at this event includes henna booths, Chinese and Greek calligraphy stands and stands for African Hair braiding.

ktravula - a travelogue! » St. Louis

Open City*

Related Posts

Walking the City

Related Posts

Is this my land?

Related Posts

Art At the Pulitzer

Related Posts

At the Cathedral Basilica

Related Posts

Life of a Volunteer

Related Posts

On St. Louis!

Related Posts

Another Monday

Related Posts

Night, St. Louis.

Related Posts

More Photos from the Festival

Related Posts