“Age is just a number, and mine is unlisted.”
Seen on a vehicle’s throw pillow. Here are some nice photos for your viewing delight.
Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for September, 2009.
I have just received a very pleasant news, that I will be going to Washington DC in December for the annual Fulbr
ight FLTA Conference. It is not a totally unexpected news, but coming today, it is a pleasant beacon of warm hope waiting for me in the city of the Capitol.
Illinois is getting really cold, as we approach the last days of the fall season. Today in class my students kindly informed me that I should start doing my shopping for leather boots and hats as it might drop up to 30degrees totally unexpectedly anytime soon. I thank them. My nice leather gift shoes from Laurensonline in Lagos will now have to give way to really heavy stuff that reach up to the ankle and can withstand snow and ice rain.
Speaking of Washington DC and the East Coast, I made another interesting discovery today, that someone in the State Department has been reading my blog, or at least has discovered it. It was a pleasant surprise to get some commendation on content and design, and a mild admonition that I had forgotten to state clearly in my about page that this blog is NOT an official Fulbright FLTA site. Of course it’s not. It just one man’s head split open publicly. That man just happened to have been young, Yoruba and loquacious, grateful to have been chosen to go on a Fulbright FLTA programme in the United States. Let this be another disclaimer that the thoughts are solely mine. It is the random thoughts of a Nigerian soul in an America space. That said, let me look forward to meeting the Secretary of State in December, shaking her hands and taking pictures with her. Now what are the odds of that far-fetched eventuality? But if my dealings with serendipity is anything to go by, I won’t be surprised if this ever comes to pass.
I have seen the picture of the hotel in which I will be lodged in December along with the other Fulbright FLTA students. It is beautiful. And guess what, it is just a stone-throw from the Capitol. I will sleep well tonight, just thinking about it.
Q: How does it feel teaching young Whites (students) Yoruba language?
A: It feels great. It’s challenging to me as it is to them and I like the experience. I could connect with them more because they are young people like me, and they are quite eager to learn and discover new things. The experience also gives me a chance to see myself through the stranger’s eyes. I’ve recently asked them to read up a particular short story on Yoruba culture and write what they find strange and different about the people, and what they find equally similar with their culture. These exercises give me an insight into what they see when they look at me. But over all, it is a very fulfilling experience.
In response to an interview question on Bookaholic Blog two days ago. The full interview is here.
Unlike my Nigerian folks, I did not have any holidays on Monday and Tuesday to celebrate the end of the Moslem fast. If I was back home in Nigeria, I’d be home resting on Monday while I ran late trying to meet up with a class. Reham the Egyptian celebrated her Eid festival in the quiet of her flat while all her folks at home stayed back from work to rest and feast. In Nigeria, there is a public holiday for every religious holiday from Christmas, Easter to the two Moslem Eid festivals in the year. On a curios but worrying note, there is no public holiday (yet) for any African traditional religion!
There are no Eid holidays in the United States for obvious reasons: it is regarded more as a Christian state when it’s not being seen as secular. The actual reason is that there are too many holidays every year in the country, and none of them have to do with religion. That’s what I think at least, because Christmas is all about the festival, the movies and Santa Claus, and less of the birth of Jesus Christ. No one knew when Jesus was born precisely anyway. The December 25 date was only arbitrarily picked by one dead pope to signify a day of the year for followers to remember. Neither is Thanksgiving any more than a celebration of life, health and family. The formerly large purpose of gathering to praise God for a bountiful harvest must have been overtaken by the fact of growing skepticism in religion and belief in God, and the decline of subsistence or commercial farming based solely on the variables of nature. Science has ultimately come to the rescue, and I have a feeling that the God of thanksgiving may not be as large a guest at the dinner table as he used to be.
Now, let me say here that I haven’t had my first Thanksgiving in the US, and I’m looking forward to it, especially the holiday it provides. The above thoughts are merely random, perhaps reflective of the state of belief, religion and God in today’s America. Ben, my flatmate, doesn’t know whether an afterlife exists, nor does he put much thought to its existence, or that of God, because to him, it will be worse if one does good only because of a selfish desire to be accepted in the afterlife than a genuine willingness to help other people. I find this reasonable.
In my country Nigeria on Monday and Tuesday, there were days of rest from work. I like to see it as a much deserved holiday for the hardworking citizens, and not just a sacrifice to some God after a thirty days ritual of fasting. But if it makes people happier to believe it to be just so, I possess no right to deny them the privilege. When Christmas comes in December, there will also be a holiday season for the Nigerian Christians to have their own moments of feasting and sharing, which is another component of religious holidays in Nigeria. Will America learn anything from the demarcation of holiday days for religious breaks in Nigeria? I doubt it. I seriously doubt also that it ever needs to. If permitted in America, every known and registered religion will sue for its own holidays and there’d be no days left to work. Let us do with Martin Luther King Holidays, Halloween fun shows, July 4th holiday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Labour day, and a few other distinctly American holidays, and we can all go our ways. Problem is, once in a while, a yet unadapted foreigner from a multi religious country like Nigeria will show up in America, and come late to class on a normal American Monday, thinking all the while that because his folks at home are on break, he should also be too.
Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it. —-Christopher Morley
The trouble with life is that there are so many beautiful women and so little time. – John Barrymore
Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened. – Cora Harvey Armstrong