ktravula – a travelogue!

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

Many Choices

There has always been more than one choice to make on returning to Lagos. When I left from here ten months ago, I was just an obscure citizen wary of many the propects of distance as I made my first journey out of the continent. Now I seem to have acquired a reputation of staring, and talking about the most random, most obscure details of everywhere I go. Nothing has changed about me, I like to believe, except for that little (just appearing) pot belly :D. Maybe I’ve made more friends, or spoken albeit virtually to more people since the last year. I’m still the same, I like to think. But here are choices tugging at my shirt as I contemplate the next first steps.

The Tourist: Looking at Lagos through the prism of a different country has definitely not helped my first days. Even I feel awkward now whipping out my camera while walking on the streets. These are places where I’ve walked many times before, so they are not totally new to me. I have a choice now of blending in totally as peacefully as I can as a returned son of the land, ignoring all inconsistencies visible to the eyes, or keeping up with the traveller spirit that sees all and tells all. This is not an easy choice to immediately make, and I’m sure that the genius folks who fashioned this travelling exchange programme never considered how hard it might be for one to fit into the new frame of mind of an old society after such a year’s absence. So, I’d just be me then, whatever that is, hoping that someone points out to me when I’m beginning to overstep accepted conventions.

No more culture shock posts, promise :). I’m home after all.

More Lagos – Noise!

This fast city, known for its dirt as for its fast cars, runs on adrenaline. Panting for air in the back of a rickety bus of uneven metals, one wonders where exactly everyone is rushing to. I had this same feeling in Chicago, but not while in a public bus. Compared to my little village in Edwardsville, Lagos feels like hell on steroids. I’ve told you about the noise, right? When you’re not being deafened by the generators from every household that have resorted to using them to supplement electricity supply, you are being hassled on the road by incorrigibly noisy vendors on the road, bus conductors, and bus drivers with lead hands on vehicle horns. Aaaargh! Give me Cougar Village. Or, at least, give me Ibadan for now.

In my room at Cougar Village, I have never put the volume of my computer up higher than 50% of the total volume, and it was always loud enough to be heard at the front door from my room on the other end of the apartment. Right now in my sister’s house, with roaming children, a roaring fan and a rumbling generator, I can barely hear anything even at my Dell Vostro 1510’s loudest volume level.

When we talk about Climate change, we have always incorrectly assumed that the culprits are big oil corporations in the Niger Delta, or big industries in developed countries. Ask me now, and I’ll tell you that fumes from Lagos generators and commuting vans, and so much of this useless noise contribute even more to the degradation of the environment. And we say the Atlantic Ocean is now encroaching on the Lagos Island through the Bar Beach. Why won’t it? The amount of heat generated by these machines should be enough to deplete even more of the ozone layer. And what about the dirt, plastic bags on roadsides that will eventually find their ways into gutters and clog the flow of water when it rains? Well, there are some working trash cans, but are there sufficient implementation of laws regarding proper waste disposals? Are there such laws to begin with? And does anyone obey them?

My suggestions would include more road signs, stop signs, speed limit signs, traffic lights, required speedometer laws for each vehicle, and a ban on all honking throughout the day. As for the generators, there’s no solution yet although I could say let’s scrap them all totally, and force everyone to get solar panels – after all, we have the sun in abundance. The world is moving everyday towards new clean sources of energy: wind, and solar. Not only to reduce pollution, it will also reduce noise, which I believe must account for much of the disruptive behavioural patterns we see manifest in much of our public life.

Pictures coming soon. Apparently I’m not as used to whipping out my camera on the streets as I was a few months ago.

Blending In

Technically, I should be sleeping. I have a debt of more than 24 hours on my body clock. My eyes close by themselves at intervals, yet instead of going to bed, I am here. A few minutes ago, on the way back from a short lunch at one of Lagos’ famous malls, I slept off in the bus and missed my stop. I had to pay something close to a dollar to get back home. Yes, I should sleep now. But not before this short rant of my first culture shock experiences:

1. Private and public vehicles delight in honking their car horns every five seconds, for NO GOOD REASON! I’ve never seen this kind of madness anywhere else. Well, I may not have been to many places, but this must rank as one of the biggest nuisances of Lagos (nay, Nigerian) roads. Gosh!

2. More than half of the trash baskets in the public places are open in the bottom, thus pretty useless. Those that are not are almost full, rendering useless also the concept of a clean and fresh-smelling environment.

3. There is no visible speed limit on the roads. Although I’ve never felt this way before, I suddenly realized that I’m afraid to now commute in Lagos’ public transports anymore. They drive too fast, and too roughly. There is no visible speed limit on the roads. Most of the transport vans don’t have working speedometers, and there are no responsive health workers on the road in case of emergencies.

4. I’ve been prepared for NEPA (the electric power people), but not in this way. I got out of the airplane to discover that the escalator in the airport didn’t work. I had to walk on it like the normal steps. I heard that last week, there was a power outage at the airport, a now regular occurrence, that lasted almost three hours. Question then: how did the captain of my plane successfully land the plane without working satellite guiding devices at the airport that uses electricity?

5. As for the rest, I’ve discovered that the food in restaurants are not as nice as I envisioned them to be. And they’re more expensive than they should be. Heat is unbearable, and I can’t go out topless as I’d have loved to do. They might mistake me for a miscreant. What else is there to do than to come back here and rant?

It’s not really culture shock. It is just seeing things from a better perspective. More sanity can definitely be introduced, especially from the very little things. Welcome to Lagos, traveller. Just wait a few days more, then pack your things and head home to Ibadan. Maybe the heat will abate. And maybe you’ll at least get some sanity in your lush quasi-country/University life. For now, off to bed I go.

Welcome to Lagos

This is the little sign that Jolaade drew to welcome me. Pity I couldn’t recognize it in a crowd of waiting folks at the hot airport arrival point.

Hanging around her and my other young nephews for just a few hours and having to endure their noise and chaos, I’m worried that this blog might soon evolve into a family blog, or at best daily detail of kid complaints. Now I know what our parents endured. Sigh. This is what home is all about, isn’t it?

Photos by Chris Ogunlowo.

The Eagle Has Landed

I arrived in Lagos Yesterday.

Well, I don’t know if it was really “yesterday” or “today” because I’ve had to reset my wristwatch so many times. Right now, it says a quarter past 5am on Sunday. On my laptop whose time still reflects Edwardsville, it says 11.16pm on Saturday. I am sleepless. I have been travelling for 24 hours, but now I don’t even know which of the days I want to occupy. Let me just take Sunday.

I have not eaten anything other than a few fried chicken wings that my sister thought might do me some good. Really? Even with this overweight size of mine? When I left here in August, I was about 176 pounds. Now I’m about 200, and what do I get for that? Some more fried chicken. I’ve danced, and sweated, and hugged my nephews and nieces some of whom I’m meeting for the first time. I’ve now also been bitten by wicked mosquitos as I type this post. Returning from a one-year trip abroad has certainly put some things in perspective. Electricity, area boys, police, stable internet, time zones, and fried chicken.

Let me thank you all faithful blog readers, those who leave and those who don’t leave comments. I thank the wonderful staff of the foreign languages department, SIUE, for a wonderful session. Belinda Carstens-Wickam, Douglas Simms, Tom Lavalle, Olga Bezhanova, Mariana Solares, Debbie Mann, Yvonne Mattson, Joaquim, Heidi, Carolina; and the workers in the language lab: Catherine, John, Rachael, Elizabeth, Heather, Scott, Joey, Elvira and everyone else I may have forgotten to mention. I thank Prof Ron Schaefer, the director of International Programmes, Sandra Tamari who also works in the same office, and every other person in the IP who made my stay very pleasant, even though they don’t read my blog. I thank the students from both semesters for a wonderful time. I also thank my friends in Cougar Village, Mafoya, Chinomso, Ikechukwu, Jocy, Chris, Ben, Mahsa, Iman, Yo, Keshi, and Afua. See you guys soon. I miss you already.

This is not the end, dear blog readers. I am going to tell you about the trip, and some observations from France and New York. Right now, I just want to figure out which of these time zones I want to adjust to.

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