ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Academic category.

Why Fulbright?

The heaviness on my person since I returned from Washington DC on Monday, I have realized, has to do with more than just my delirious nostalgia for the taste of a certain thrill and an unexplainable positive strangeness that dominated that trip to the East. It could easily have been because of the food, because it was the one thing that almost equally matched the large number of workshop sessions that followed each other one after the other, sometimes without much of a breathing space. We got out of one conference workshop session and we hopped right into another. It was mostly worth it, but it will take the whole of my holiday to truly catch up with the details of all that we were taught. The food however was a different matter. They were diverse as they were elaborate, and I left that hotel on Sunday feeling that I’d committed an unforgivable sin of indulgence – as my mum would have called it. In any case, it was scarcely two hours after then before I entered another cycle of feeding, this time in the neighbouring state of Maryland, and the foods (most of it) were Nigerian for a change.

Fried eggs, bread, pringles, mangoes, (green) tea, orange juice…

and then later in the evening: pounded yam, rice, beans (note: not baked beans or anything American, but Naija style cooking), snails, cow leg and other beef parts in pepper sauce, vegetable soup, Hennessey cognac, and finally some red Malbec Argentinian wine…

I should probably confess that I have never ever eaten this much food in one day. On the one hand, it could be some form of indulgence which I immediately justified from previous frustrations with pizza and long queues at pastries food stands. On the other hand, it just was a very convenient acquiescence to the warmth of my Nigerian hosts who were more than happy to have me around. I felt loved.

It is in returning to my base now that the value of those warm connections are making their presence felt on my wandering self. But again, more than just the thrill, I have been very humbled by the responsibilities the Fulbright tag, and slightly worried that I may have been irreparably changed by the week-long indulgence in a way that I might not yet recognize. Oh well, give me another week or two in this now gradually emptying University campus and I will regain my required pungency. Until then, let us drink to life, and to hope for the parts of the world where there is none. And to peace and understanding – no matter how elusive it gets. Yea, it’s still me speaking. I told you that I’ve changed. Where did the old cynical travula go? I too have no idea.

Howard University

This one looks like a shrine I spent the beginning of Sunday on a foot and drive-through sight-seeing tour of the famous Howard University in Washington DC and its major famous spots. The trip was made possible thanks to a Nigerian friend and a student of the University, who drove all the way to pick me up and give me a tour even in the freezing rain.

The buildings in these photos include the iconic Founder’s Hall, the school gate, the school yard with all the fraternity trees and signs, the Arts and Science building, the medical sciences building, the “Founder’s Walk” area and the Howard Place, a building named after the General Oliver Otis Howard who the University itself was named after. He was an American civil war hero who also became the University’s first president.

The University was founded in the year 1866 as a theological seminary for African-American clergymen, but quickly expanded into a full-fledged University. One of its notable Alumni is Edward Brooke, the first African-American to be elected into the US Senate.

D is for Dogma

It began as a mild argument about whether one could precede every sentence with “The bible said…” and where I stood was “Not every part of the bible can be quoted as being representative of Christianity, spirituality, or the mind of God”. The person who immediately became my opponent was none other than (Let’s call him X), my fellow Fulbright colleague (also sometimes known, mostly as “pastor”).

His his first response was “You are wrong! You can start EVERY quote from the bible with “The bible said” because ALL the words in the bible are words from God.” Now this argument is very suspect, and never fails to amaze and amuse me because I am familiar with the bible as a collection of texts that include not only historical accounts, prophesies, fables and inspirational writings, but also poetry and personal letters. As a religious book, it is a document that holds the faith of the followers, but as text, it is also a collection of words on which a certain authority has been stamped by the church as representative of the faith. So I said to him, let me show you a part of the Songs of Solomon, I think it was Chapter 4 vs 5:

“The bible says – to use your word – ‘Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.’ Right?”

“Oh no,” he responds, jumping with all visible agitation, “the Songs of Solomon are not as carnal as you have read it. They are a representative of the love of God to the church.”

What?

“You wouldn’t know,” he continued. “you are not a spiritual person. You are only trying to use your knowledge of books to analyse spiritual things. The Songs of Solomon are God’s message to the church.”

I have heard this argument before, and I like the rationalization given to portray the lyrics of Solomon’s love poems are possessing a higher import beyond their face value. But they are just words. They are seductive lines written by a rich and content king to many of his almost uncountable number of wives and mistresses. They definitely are the least representative of the mind of God to man. I could not imagine Jesus being flattered by reference to women’s breasts as representative of his thoughts towards mankind. No no. So, I told my friend that, and he was really furious. He perspired heavily, shouted, and jumped around so much that with a little push, I feared that he could have fallen down right there.

The argument escalated in pitch and intensity, in the open lobby of the Hyatt Hotel where the four of us stood idling away before our proposed excursion around the city. The more everyone intervened with a point that seemed to punch a hole in our friend’s righteous argument, the more livid he became, shouting this time at anyone “How would you all know? You are not born again. I know because I am. It is a spiritual thing…” And then he added “Everything in the bible is the word of God to us, and I believe them all.”

Here, I asked “Everything in the bible? Even the part that says you shouldn’t eat pork, in the old testament?”

Here he hedges a little, unable to find a right answer, and says that “that’s in the Old Testamant. I will not argue with you. You are not born again. You cannot understand the spiritual things of the bible.” He was livid. The argument took turns and angles, until he eventually stormed out of the hotel to get some air, but mostly to avoid more opportunities to explain why he should be trusted as an authority on a subject that is obviously not mainly spiritual, but practical. We were all supposed to be scholars, free of the clutches of dogma, but it was a moment of enlightenment to discover that we were not all. And it was sad. Here was a particular case of the first ill: “I’m right, you’re wrong” quickly escalating (and degenerating, I should add) to the ignorant condescension of “I’m righteous, you’re dumb.” The last and usually brutal stage of such unchecked arrogance is, as Nigerian Nobel Laureatte Wole Soyinka puts it clearly: “I’m right, you’re dead!” If we had given to it, who knows how physical the argument could have become (between us two friends no less) on that floor of the Hyatt Regency.

No, not money, fanaticism is sometimes the root of all evils.

The Conference

This is my 200th blog post!

Now that I have spent the whole of Thursday holed up in the hotel attending one workshop to the other, I am beginning to think that these photos from my solo walk around the little town yesterday might be the only ones that I have of its interesting sites. Or not. Let me check. Yes, I’m right. This conference is all I have come here to do.

Meanwhile, the conference itself is very warm gathering of 409 Fulbrighters from 49 countries teaching hundreds of languages all over the country. I have met old friends who remember me, and those who don’t. I have also met new ones who had heard about me and those who hadn’t. There will be more conference sessions tomorrow, and more feeding sessions too, until Saturday when the conference officially ends. We have learnt about Social Networking for the Foreign Language Classroom, Writing for Publication in Foreign Language Journals, and Scenarios & Strageties: Addressing Individual Student Concerns. Tomorrow, there will be more… Before this conference ends, we will meet with some representatives from the State Department. No, I don’t think that there is a chance to see the Secretary of State, so that’s that, already crossed out.

But this was my lethargic Thursday put into good and productive use of my time, although now, the only thing that hasn’t changed is the tiredness I feel at the end of the day. I however learnt many things in the conference sessions today. One that stuck with me was a fact that forty Fulbrighters from eleven countries have been awarded the Nobel Prize since 1952. They include Jean-Marie Le Clézio (France, and Nobel Laureate for Literature in 2008), Henry Kissinger (USA, and Nobel Peace Prize 1973) and two time winner Linus Pauling (USA, and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1954).

The Last Notes Were Dodo-Re-Mi

It was just as well a case of serendipity, because when I went out to cut my hair on Friday, I didn’t have it in mind to run into another Nigerian restaurant at Edwardsville. For all I knew, the closest one to me was the one at St. Louis, forty minutes away by car. But I did run into an African market/stall run by a Nigerian, right beside the Barber’s shop. The woman who attended warmly to me was Igbo, from Abia state of Nigeria who also spoke fluent Yoruba and knew just what I would be wanting to buy: Ijebu Garri, Yam tubers, cans of sardine, frozen chicken, ewedu, sugarcane, and a whole lot of Nigerian-themed food items that I couldn’t find anywhere else. Ah yes, and plantain, which was the only thing I eventually bought since I wasn’t in the mood for any of the others at the moment of sudden discovery. She also found me quite amusing a tourist when I brought out my camera and started taking pictures. In any case, it was another very warm home experience. I drank malt, spoke Yoruba – and the little Igbo I could remember – and had a little political discussion about Nigeria, while showing off my new twenty naira notes which they hadn’t seen before. (Note: Nnenna from the shop has already left one comment on my Barber’s Shop post, which goes to shows that she kept her promise to check out my blog. Thanks again Nnenna for the hospitality.)

It was serendipity because just last week, the class consensus was an almost riotous but endearing request for Nigerian food before the end of the course. And as much as I tried to dodge the issue citing inability to get the foodstuff as well as the problem of conveying it to class in hot condition, I still wanted to give them an experience of the taste of Nigerian food and I despaired in me about how impossible it was going to be, especially since I feared a possible lawsuit from anyone that might find discomfort after a meal, and hold the teacher – me – responsible. But they made it clear that they wanted it too, so I spoke with Tola – a former FLTA (now a graduate student in the University) who said that we could work something out only if I could find the foodstuffs, and perhaps obtain a written consent from them absolving us of liability. It would prove not to be necessary in the end, as I luckily got sufficient plantain from the African shop, and woke up early enough today to prepare it to the best of ktravula‘s kitchen standards.

Wash your hands
Put a little vegetable/peanut/corn oil on the frying pan
Open up plantains
Slice them to the right sizes
Add a little salt
Put them in the now hot frying oil
Wait until it’s golden brown
Get them out of the oil into a clean plate
Wait until it cools down a bit, and then put them all into a ziploc plastic bag.

So it was probably a surprise to them today – the last class – for them to find that we were going to eat something after all. It was not the most quintessential Yoruba food, but it was representative of something that we eat and they did not, until today. Many of them hadn’t even seen the plantain before. Of course, the feeding was preceded with a little slide show of the production process, just in case they want to try it out at home as well, but mostly so that they know that it wasn’t such a complicated cooking process. I was glad that everyone had a taste, said they liked it, and showed sufficient curiosity about how we eat it at home. One person wanted to know with which sauce and which other food we would usually eat it with. It was learning in a new way. I also showed them sugarcane, which everyone seemed to be seeing for the very first time, ever. (Thanks again to Nnenna for the sugarcanes.) I was definitely new to me that most of the people I showed the sugarcane to, even before I came to class, didn’t know what it was. Most said it was “bamboo”. Apparently, having eaten sugar is not always a guarantee that one knew just from what it came. Maybe the sugarcane is a tropical plant after all, native to Africa, Asia and some warm parts of South America.

With this, my teaching class for this semester has now come to an end. The class that began with a memorable encounter over thirteen weeks ago seemed to have gone by so fast. And just before an emotional group photo and final dispersal, we shared a few jokes, revisions, small talks (which included my blog information and experiences), and a shared wonder at how fast the time had gone, and how much we have learnt from one another. The individual class essays from student about their class experience are now with me, for grading, and the contents are enlightening. We were dispersing in the flesh, but the shared community of our collective experiences would live with me for a long time to come, surely longer than the taste of dodo in my mouth – the plantain snacks from Yorubaland that was really our first, and last, communal supper.

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