ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Fun category.

Household

I got home from school yesterday to find these post-it notes on my door. Ben had left them there.

I wrote my reply in red, and left the sheets on the door so that he can see it whenever he comes back. When I see him, I intend to inform him of how impressed I am at his resourcefulness since, as I know for a fact, I wasn’t the one who taught him pele (the Yoruba word for “I’m sorry/forgive me” ) and there is no other Yoruba person living in this building, or within a mile of our residence.

Household was published on March 4th, 2010, with the tags , , under the adventures, Fun category. There are currently 9 comments on this article so far.

Marching On, Counting Down

This month officially begins the last three months or so of my Fulbright year, but not the end of this blog. Yes indeed, by sometimes in May this year I’d be done with teaching my delightful students how to pronounce Gbadamosi and kpangolo; or how to greet an adult they might meet on a dusty road in Surulere, Lagos; how to perform naming ceremonies after eight days of the child’s birth; or how to sing in Yoruba, or dance the bata dance; or how to beat a talking drum. In short, by sometimes in May 2010, I will be taking off these photos from my wall, packing my bags, auctioning my winter jacket and boots, returning my bicycle to my beloved host parent, and getting onto a home-bound plane. I’m excited. Well, not really but that’s not the point. 🙂 My work here will be done by then, and I will be heading home.

In this month of March and beyond therefore, here are a few things I am looking forward to:

  • Re-issuing my first collection of poems Headfirst into the Meddle (first published in 2005) on Amazon. It will be available in both electronic and print editions.
  • Releasing a new book of photography, comprising of some of the best and/or memorable photos I’ve taken in the course of my stay here in the United States. The book – not being a full memoir – will only have some sparse notes beside each picture telling of the experiences that gave birth to the shots, but it will surely contain so many more things that I have never talked about on the blog. It will also be on Amazon and other online booksellers.
  • Getting published in one of the New York Times or The Washington Post. I don’t know why this is even important. Oh, screw it! 😀
  • Wishing my mum a very special happy birthday.
  • Going on Spring break to a very cozy destination in the United States, if possible.
  • Featuring more interesting guest-posts on ktravula.com. I want to spend much of the remaining three months reading from others as much as I write. I think I deserve it too, 🙂 so if you are a writer, or a blogger, or just a passer-by with an opinion, an anecdote or something to share, let’s talk and you could be my next guest-blogger of the week.

Beside that, everything else is fine and as they should be. And oh, there is a new poll on the right side of this blog, to commemorate the coudntdown that has just begun. What do you think I should do with this blog as from May 2010?Close it? End the travelogue but keep it open for reading indefinitely? Keep writing on it even from Nigeria? Or turn it into a book? You can choose more than one options. I appreciate your taking the time to tell me what you think. And don’t despair, May is still so far away. 😀 And, your votes count.

And, one final thing. This post about meeting Paula Varsavsky has been updated to show a few things I learnt from the talk. I was too much in a hurry the last time to post pictures that I left out the essence of the talk. And yes, this blog KTravula.com is now avalable on the Kindle! If you do have a Kindle, you can now subscribe to this blog so that you can read wherever you go. Head over here to check it out, and do leave a few nice words of review about this blog there if you have the time. I will appreciate it. Thank you.

Enjoy, and have a pleasant month.

______________________

Picture taken in class last week at a drum-beating session. Used by permission.

Marching On, Counting Down was published on March 1st, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Art, Fun, Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 6 comments on this article so far.

Nostalgia – A Not So Old Poem

Do men really feel or just believe? In wandering afterthoughts from your sonic alter-ego,
Love, my belly tickles to a distant bell in childhood paces around our childish lusts.
See me there on the streets of dustland, with heels on the playground of luckless rants.
.
Am I supposed to feel this way again, muse? Your voice spins me to a thousand memories.
I do not stir, nor do the droplets in my eye move beyond their range of steam. No. Muse,
I do not control this softness that drives me across a beaten path towards your taken arms.
.
It is the voice of the night, or else a green-eyed beacon that pushes these fingers to work, and
To stalk: “Traveller, your love has not always been without the crawl of blunt senseless drive.”
It is the delirious dope of distance then, or caprice, or a flighty strong wind of love’s nostalgia.

Nostalgia – A Not So Old Poem was published on February 26th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Art, Fun, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Twurai Undercover

There is much to cope with when you are the wife of a sick and/or dying president. There is even more to cope with if said husband has now been evicted from a better working hospital in Saudi Arabia and is now back in the government house, causing commotion and/or being some sort of nuisance to the rule of law that has vested political authority albeit in acting capacity in the Vice-President for the time being. As a woman in the unenviable position of balancing loyalty to a dying man, taking care of said man and his political capital, and keeping sane within a barrage of flak from the citizenry, there must be much to cope with. If we could step back a little from personal disagreement with her personality (which we don’t know much about, except hearsay) and what the government represents, could we perhaps find in Turai Yar’adua a woman of substance who’s just being a loyal wife to a dying husband? I wondered.

Read up the full text of my guest-post on Nigerianstalk.org. It was enlightening even for me.

Twurai Undercover was published on February 25th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Fun, Observations, Opinion category. There are currently 11 comments on this article so far.

An American in England

An American visiting in England asked at the hotel for the elevator.

The portiere looked a bit confused but smiled when he realized what the man wanted.

“You must mean the lift,” he said.

“No,” the American responded. “If I ask for the elevator I mean the elevator.”

“Well,” the portiere answered, “over here we call them lifts”.

“Now you listen”, the American said rather irritated, “someone in America invented the elevator.”

“Oh, right you are sir,” the portiere said in a polite tone, “but someone here in England invented the language.”

An American in England was published on February 25th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Fun category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.