ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for February, 2010.

The Year of the Tiger

I’m beginning to consider the possibility that I might have been Chinese in my former life. The more I think about it, the more I remember instances in which the Chinese people, or the Chinese language has revolved around me. One of my favourite FLTAs at our orientation in Providence, Rhode Island was Chinese, and she taught me to write my name and my country in Chinese, and I’d given up of ever having such a chance again.

But today, I had another chance or reunion with my adopted spiritual home in the continuation of the events marking the “Discover Languages Month”. Last week was Yoruba. this week is the celebration of the Chinese new year, called The Year of the Tiger, and the student of Chinese had come out to exhibit their skills and knowledge of the language. Supervising the event was none other than Professor Lavalle, the teacher of Chinese language and literature whom I’d blogged about a few days ago. As special attraction, there were marshmallows and chopsticks, and interested competitors can win one of several Chinese toys and artifacts if they could only hold the chopsticks right and move the marshmallows from one bowl into another.

"My name is Chinese Kola"

I had never had marshmallows before, so it was nice that I showed up. Afterwards, after devouring them all, with my hands – of course, I began to wonder why it was sooo sweet in the mouth. I also had dates, which were nice, and then a fortune cookie which predicted that I was about to become $8 poorer. Tell me what kind of a “fortune” cookie is that? Later, I walked up to the stand where calligraphy was being exhibited, and I had my name written, again, in Chinese. I can’t read it now, but I believe the Chinese guy who wrote it. And Prof Lavalle was there. I believe that he would have told me if it was wrong. More than that, I also confirmed that I had not forgotten the few words of Chinese that I know: Ni hau for “hello” and Shi-shi for “thank you. When next I get free time, I think I will be making a trip to Beijing.

If it helps, Chinese is a tonal language, just like Yoruba. Professor Lavalle had also told me on our first meeting that what he read of my poems reminded him of Chinese poetry, as opposed to the prosy and “confessive” nature of American poems. It is supposed to make me feel better, I guess, that my peripatetic spirit has now has more links to the Orients than I like to acknowledge?

Maybe this is why I like Jackie Chan so much. Blood is so thicker than water. 🙂

The Year of the Tiger was published on February 10th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Academic, adventures, Art, Fun, Observations category. There are currently 6 comments on this article so far.

Culture Shock

This is a guest-post by my cool and brilliant colleague Professor of Spanish language and literature who also blogs as Clarissa on issues of feminism, literature, journalism , immigration, politics, and her love for the Kindle. 🙂 Originally from Ukraine, she migrated to Canada, and she got her PhD at Yale University in the United States. She has recently taught at Cornell University before coming over to our prestigious SI University. Hers is the first in a series of guest blogposts coming on this blog in the coming weeks. Thank you Clarissa for the post. Find her blog here.

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When I was 22, I emigrated from Ukraine to Canada. I was fully prepared to experience a massive culture shock but none came. Sure, it took some time to get used to the idea of a credit card and a check-book, realize that a bus driver doesn’t give out change and there is no need to negotiate the price of a ride with the cab-driver before getting into the cab, and figure out why maple syrup can be poured on bacon and eggs. The process of learning these small things was really fun and caused me no shock whatsoever.
Five years later I decided to go to graduate school in the United States. Having lived in North America for a while, watching American TV and reading American books and newspapers, I expected even less of a culture shock on this change of residence. I was only moving to Connecticut, where the climate and the way of life were supposed to be pretty similar to what I had gotten used to in Canada.

Boy, was I ever wrong. A massive culture shock hit me immediately after crossing the US border and remained with me for years to come. It took time and effort to understand this new reality, learn to like, and eventually even love it.

I the US I discovered a deeply divided society. Glaring class inequalities, the likes of which I never saw back in Canada, racism, religious fanaticism, gender inequalities, economically devastated areas with the kind of poverty I never saw even back in Ukraine, crime, violence, inept governmental strcutures. All this was very different from the US I had seen in movies and TV shows.

But soon I also discovered that yet another US exists. The country of intellectuals, thinkers, artists. The country of hard-working, kind, generous people, who have not abandoned the struggle for the perfect society they inherited from their founders. The country of intellectually curious people. The country of people who hate injustice and inequality. The country that deserves better than the corrupt structures governing them.

When people read the very critical things I write about the US on my blog, they sometimes ask me, “Why do you live in this country if you dislike it so much?”. But I ask, does hating injustice and inequality mean hating America? Or is it just the opposite?

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I love Clarissa’s blog because of the way she looks at the world. Even though she hasn’t called it that, her blog is a travelogue of sorts as well – a response to the American society from the viewpoint of an immigrant. And as expected of someone of her level of brilliance, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and she says what’s in her mind no matter whose ox is gored. I particularly like the way she responds to the people who make foolish or hateful comments on her blog. I wish I could be that quick-witted sometimes. 🙂

Culture Shock was published on February 10th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , under the Academic, adventures, Opinion category. There are currently 11 comments on this article so far.

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! 🙂

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.

Guest Bloggers Welcome

Over the coming weeks, and perhaps for a longer while to come, I will be featuring Guest-Bloggers on this blog. I’ve had the idea for a while now of inviting my favourite bloggers, commenters, or just plain readers to make blog posts here about what concerns them. I like the idea of such interaction of ideas and opinions, and I hope that it will also open up new audiences both for ktravula.com and those bloggers and writers whose writing gets featured. If you are interested in being a guest-blogger on ktravula.com, let me know, send me a mail at kt@ktravula.com and surprise me with your subject of choice. There are no boundaries, I think. 🙂

On the flip side, I am guest-writing for a few blogs I like as well, so all invitations are in order. I would like to write one blogpost for any blogger who asks me to, and the topic would be any of my choice, but mostly along the ideas that I believe the readers of that blog would likely appreciate or respond to. Yesterday was my first guest-writing post, and it is was published on Clarissa’s Blog, entitled “Barking in a Foreign Language”.

Guest Bloggers Welcome was published on February 10th, 2010, with the tags , , under the adventures, Fun category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Barking In A Foreign Language

This post was first published on Clarissa’s Blog today as part of a guest-writing project. Clarissa a cool Professor of Spanish language and literature at my department will also be a guest-blogger on KTravula.com in the coming days. Watch out.

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Prompted by two related observations in my mind at the moment…

One was the search term in my blog statistics today. Some random person had apparently been directed to my blog by searching for the term “barking in a foreign language”. This is not so strange when I realize that I had once made a blog post about the cartoon that I found on the glass entrance to my department.

The second was this very comprehensive article, and discussion, in the New York times about why, or whether Americans will really, learn Chinese. I enjoyed reading it and picked up a few nuggets, one of which was the fact that the interest of many Americans in learning foreign languages came from political and economic expediencies: They learnt Russian during the Cold War, Arabic after 9/11, Spanish because of their neighbours, and now Chinese in the wake of China’s global economic uprising. Thus said the writers of the article. Not me, even though I have learnt also from a few  interactions on the matter that many American students now study Chinese for the purpose of gaining leverage in the emerging economic world.

The article doesn’t mention Yoruba, Swahili, or any of the other minority world languages being learnt in Universities all over America, but that is not the point – I guess. As much as this point in the article could be seen as a generalization of perhaps a genuine interest of students in expanding their worldviews, I believe that there’s something interesting about the said American foreign language fad. For a fact, the govenment of the United States has shown more interest in languages spoken in parts of the world with some economic, political or cultural relevance to its own survival. At the Fulbright conference in December, I had made friends with a guy called Osama from Yemen, a Fulbrighter on a similar programme. That was before the Christmas Day bombing attempt, and its subsequent link to Yemen. After the terror attempt, I asked a friend if she thought that Yemen will now get a lesser slot in subsequent Fulbright programmes because of the terrorism incendent, and she said NO. Quite the opposite, she said. If this all rings true, then Hausa will also soon become another language of interest for Americans in the coming years, because of the failed bombing attempt of Christmas day. This creed can then be summarized somewhat thusly:

“If he has tried to kick your ass, kick his ass too, and then learn his language. You might understand him more, and thus prevent any further aggression.”

Whether this is true, or whether it ever works as planned in the long term, is of course subject to debate.


Barking In A Foreign Language was published on February 9th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , , , under the Academic, Observations, Opinion category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.