ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the adventures category.

To Carbondale And Back

These are a few from the pictures I took today on the way to Carbondale and back. I had gone with Reham and a few other student friends for the regional Fulbright get-together/ barbeque and a visit to the African-American Museum on the campus of the Southern Illinois University in the town.

The Carbondale campus of SIU is one of the other campuses of the institution, along with the ones at Alton, East St. Louis and Edwardsville (which are the towns that provide the name/acronym for the University’s periodic newspaper, the Alestle).

Beside a very good tour of the photo exhibition of the African American history of the town, especially their contribution to the coal mining that was the highlight of the town’s development, we also had fun gathering for a very hearty meal. For me, another highlight was being able to drive my Professor’s S-Class Benz on the open highway while coming back to Edwardsville, two hours away.

Let me not forget to mention a notable scramble within the gathered Fulbright scholars (of different genders, countries and scholar categories) to take a picture with the real-life looking cardboard cutting of the President Obama which had happened to find itself in the middle of the exhibition room beside an American flag. Trust me, I didn’t pass up that opportunity myself. I guess the only thing that could beat that is a meeting of the man himself in the flesh sometime soon.

It was a nice day, surely.

Testosterone

The first thing you need to know is that I can never spell this word right the first time without looking at the dictionary. I’ve always wondered why something so gender-specific, personal, and so ubiquitous could be so difficult to spell. I have never had any problems spelling ubiquitous, nor pronouncing it. In short, I’ve never had the same problem I have had with the word testosterone with any other problematic long words in the interminable lexicon of the English language ;).

Now, today was a very good day in a way that actually has little to do with the word testosterone, (a word that I have now copied so that I can paste it anywhere in this article where necessary without going back to the dictionary) but with a series of mild coincidences that have again visited me. The day began the exact same way I begin every day: wake up late after getting very little sleep (which comes from staying awake longer than necessary, chatting online, reading, or watching American television), go to my teaching class (where I had the honour today of having a Yoruba professor in the Education Department come over on a courtesy visit), attend my linguistics classes where I never seem to be able to stay through without at least five minutes of struggle with sleep (in a way not related at all to the teacher’s style of teaching but my own sleep deprivation), and grab two boxes of pizza and a medium-sized lemonade at Pizzahut with Chris from class before riding back home.

However, a few minutes before the teaching class, my attention was drawn to one more response to the poll on this blog which had asked readers what they most wanted to read when they come here. I looked up the result of this poll and found an interesting response. A previous user who voted “other” had responded that they wanted to know what my “hopes and dreams from my Edwardsville experience were” while another said s/he wanted “a fusion of the three above,” which I believe referred to the three previous options already given. The last comment today explained what the reader seemed to have always wanted to read on the blog, written in two simple words thus: “his sexcapades.” – and I am sure by “his” s/he meant mine. In case, you’re wondering just like I am, the word sexcapade is not yet a real word in the English dictionary. But, I digress. In most usages, I believe the word means “a report of escapades of sex” (my definition), where escapade itself means “something exciting or adventurous that somebody does or is involved in, especially something showing recklessness or disregard for authority.” (Microsoft Encarta). I have now re-framed the two distinct and interesting requests for, yes, possible future blog topics: “What do I want/wish to do with the experiences I gain from Edwardsville when I return home next year”, and “What are the details of my (I’m sure s/he meant American) sexcapades?” Very interesting indeed. If this were a reality television, this is when the ratings will begin to progressively rise, and in the next few days, this post would be on the top of the Popular Posts List. Let’s wait and see.

My response to the question is the truth in one of the following sentences:

There are no sexcapades.
There are no sexcapades worthy of mention.
There are no sexcapades worthy of mention on this public portal.

Take your pick.

Meanwhile, I will attempt to answer the other questions I’ve received from the poll in a different post. Hopefully, there would be less new questions about sexcapades. Those are already asked and answered, thank goodness. I can say this however, one of the perils of being both a student and Professor in the same institution at once (as I am here, being a Fulbright Scholar) is the impossibility of, the near impossibility of, or the utter danger in being able to change the title and duty caps at will without crossing a delicate line of propriety.

But here is the second coincidence of today: a short faction fragment, a piece that I wrote a few weeks ago on this blog as part of a longer unpublished prose fiction is being featured on the Bookaholic literary blog. Check it out.

I am also falling in love with the new autumn colours on the many campus trees.

New Lessons

A few minutes ago, I concluded a chat with a French student in this University (on a different but similar international programme) who told me that I had done the abominable by putting my red wine in the refrigerator. “If you were in France,” she said, “you’d be thrown out of the country by now!” Oh, the French!

Checking my post mailbox this morning, I found an envelope postmarked from Pennsylvania. Since I wasn’t expecting anything so soon, I was surprised to discover in it Wole Soyinka’s Collected Plays 2. I had indeed ordered it a few days earlier from Amazon alongside books by George Carlin and William Shatner. That was fast delivery! The book wasn’t new, but it was in very good condition. Back in Nigeria, Amazon was never my friend since I didn’t have a credit card, and they won’t ship goods to Nigeria anyway. The book contained The Lion and the Jewel, Kongi’s Harvest, The Trials of Brother Jero, Jero’s Metamorphosis and Madmen and Specialists, that last one being an all-time favourite.

Today we saw the Chimamanda Adichie TED video talk in class for the first time. As I remarked to a Nigerian friend afterwards, the video was lovely, but in the end it wasn’t spectacular. I think I must have expected too much a response from the students, although in the end, I’m sure they were able to understand and appreciate Ms Adichie’s valid points in a way that they found interesting, and in a way to which they could relate. My own initial response to the talk, which was pride and exhilaration the first time I saw it, was – as I realize it now – because I’m Nigerian and, seeing her speak to such an international audience filled me with such pride. Why it did so, I can’t explain now. She hasn’t said anything new, but she has used many new ways to illustrate it. And that’s always a good thing.

Later in class, as I was about to receive a usb flash disk from a student who wanted to submit her Yoruba audio recording assignment, I felt an electric spark when I collected the disk. I was alarmed, until the other students told me it’s normal, calling it a “static” current. (Wikipedia calls it “the buildup of electric charge on the surface of objects” which is either bled “off to ground or are quickly neutralized by a discharge”). A few minutes later when I gave the flash disk back to her, it happened again just as our hands made contact, and I “freaked out”, to use American colloquial expression of shock and disbelief. That was one thing I have never experienced before, but I have no doubt that it exists, perhaps even in Nigeria, and all over the world, but I’ve never heard any personal stories. According to a few more people that I’ve asked, this is a rather common phenomenon in America which comes into play when one of the contact persons has spent much time making bodily friction with the floor with their feet or body, they are indeed capable of conducting electricity. I find that strange. I’m surely not touching anyone again soon. Time to go back to receiving assignments through email.

I miss home!

Yesterday

These are a few random pictures from the Le Claire Festival at Edwardsville Park, yesterday, just by the beautiful fountain lake.

If my computer quits misbehaving, I’d put up some more pictures from the event which included a book fair/cheap book sales, live music, outdoor eating and barbecue, popcorn and exhibition of historical materials, photos and artworks.

Tyto Alba

Tyto Alba. (Picture Source: Wikipedia)

While living in within the compound of a secondary boarding school in Jos Nigeria in 2005, I had discovered a nest of owls living in the roof of our apartment. The discovery was not really by chance since from the first night spent in the bungalow, we knew that something bigger than a large rat was living in the roof, and they would always make loud noise with their steps especially in the middle of the night. The ladies in the apartment freaked out immediately they found out that what lived there was not a large rat as they had previously thought, but (not one, not two) about three or more large owls. A few days after, we caught one of them by spreading a mosquito net at the opening of the roof through where they had always got in while someone went into the house to hit on the ceiling. After a few knocks that disturbed its sleep, the bird flew out right into the net, and we caught and took him down. Napoleon – a fellow resident of the apartment, and a fellow Youth Corp* member – did most of the job of plucking the most prominent of the bird’s wing feathers, and let him go into the living room. Not being able to fly anymore, he just stood there and stared at everyone suspiciously.

By the next morning, news had spread all around the school and neighbourhood that we had caught an “evil bird” and were keeping it right in our apartment. By evening, it was not the Riyom women alone who were throwing tantrums at our “audacity” and “foolishness”, but the residents of the apartment themselves. The two young women (also in the NYSC programme) who lived in the building with us would not understand nor stand the logic of bringing a scary looking “evil” bird into the house at all where it was bound to become a big physical daylight nightmare. In addition to making sure that their rooms were locked at all times from then on, and they began to whisper “the blood of Jesus” every time they inevitably had to come into the living room, right before they go back into their rooms screaming for us to get the “evil looking thing” out into the woods where it belonged. The bird read the mood of the house and refused to eat any of the rodents we brought for it, or do anything else other than just stare sheepishly. After a few days of immense internal and external pressure, not helped by the bird itself which had started looking weak and tired from non-flying, non-eating and too much daylight, and we had to let it go after a while. It took a few slow steps into the woods behind the apartment and went out of sight as fast as possible. I went online to read about them and found that they were called the African Barn Owl, or TytoAlba – very cool, adorable animals of night. Apparently, not everyone was comfortable with having them near. I confess that at times even I also felt a little chilly when I looked into their large dark eyes.

Yesterday at midnight, while taking a walk back from campus where I’d gone to see a free show of the movie The Ugly Truth, I found an owl perched on a wire mesh around the Cougar Village tennis court. It was a little larger than the tyto alba but not any less adorable. Luckily I was able to take two shots before it flew away into the woods, which was just as well, since it was perched so high and far beyond the reach of my hands anyway, and the lighting was not good enough to give me a better shot of it.

* The Nigerian National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is a community service cum paramilitary service mandatory for every fresh university graduate below the age of thirty. It takes each fresh graduate out of their home environment into somewhere else – mostly a farther town within the country, for the period of a year to learn new things, and to serve the community, while living on stipends from the federal government.

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