ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Fun category.

I Arrived Home Today

And so tonight after a drought of three months and more, I arrived home, and in heaven, with all but the seventy welcoming virgins, of course. It started as a jest and mild daring that we would drive down to St. Louis to check out the “African” restaurants. I had had a few apples and was just hoping to go to bed but the trip proved a little too tempting to pass, so we – Mafoya the Beninoise, Ben the American and I the traveller hopped in the car and drove to St. Louis, seeking a place called “Nubia Cafe.” The name did not suggest anything other than African so believed that I was going to at least find something to my taste, just like I did in the Indian restaurant in Chicago. At least it was peppery (read spicy) enough to my African tongue.

It was the smile of the woman who welcomed us in that gave a first hint. And then the smell from the kitchen, and then the ambiance. Then finally, as we stood staring at the host – a tall and handsome black man with a goatee standing behind the counter, whose smile and sense of mischief led us on a false trail of his true identity – I heard the concluding part of the song Lele by a Nigerian Igbo musical group Resonance seeping in from the surround speakers in the room, and knew at once that I was home. “You’re Nigerian?” I asked, and he nodded, extending his hands. “My name is Henry Iwenofu. Nice to meet you.” And he indeed was a nice personality, well read, smart and articulate.

From then on, things went smoothly, from the overdrive hyperactivity of finally landing on home soil so far away from home to the mellowness of deep conversations that you’d always find among Africans meeting on a distant land.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN HERE?

“Over twenty-five years”

He should be like forty years himself.

WHEN WERE YOU LAST IN NIGERIA?

“In 1995, briefly.”

I doubt that he remembered much of the June 12 crises, but he has some Youtube videos of the Biafra soldiers’ songs on his phone.

WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS?

“They were here since a few weeks. They stay with me.”

There is a little board sign beside the counter bearing his name. “I contested in the last election for a council seat.” He said. “I didn’t win, but I got some votes.”

DO YOU STILL SPEAK IGBO?

“But of course!”

He also happened to speak a bit of Hausa and Yoruba, and he’s an American graduate of a Political Science equivalent course, with a Master in Law. “I’m a barrister” he jokes, “and that’s why I’m now working in a bar.”

HOW LONG HAS NUBIA CAFE BEEN HERE?

“About eighteen months.”

DO YOU SERVE PALM WINE?

“We used to do so, but since demand slipped, we have discontinued it as well as Edi-kang-i-kong and Star Lager Beer.”

Still unable to believe my ears, the music changed to Asa’s eponymous album and the songs filtered in one after the other while we enjoyed the meals that came in succession after a few minutes of banter.

Appetizer: Suya/peppersoup (Comments: Very very good, but not the best I’ve had. Ben however loved the soup, even though he had to quickly ask for plenty water so that his tongue/throat doesn’t bleed.)

Main course: Pounded yam and egúsí soup. (Comments: OMG! The Nigerian host even had the audacity to provide forks and knives to eat it with. What? Are you kidding?)

Drinks: Tusker beer from Kenya (Comments: none)

After the meal, which was accompanied later by a live band in the corner of the room, we got down to the real African past-time: arguing. It took the whole hour and even though we agreed on little, we shared much, and Ben just looked on, sometimes bored, and sometimes animated. It was his first time in an African restaurant, and it could as well have been his first time seeing two Africans argue, on such an unimportant topic as whether or not we were different, or the same even though we come from different places… This argument must have arisen from a question as to whether he would be going back home. No, he says, but not for reasons I expected (political instability, poverty etc), but because, according to him, “I don’t have the money. I can’t afford to make such trips regularly.”

The other woman who had welcomed us in with a smile turned out to be from Tennessee, and she found the whole show we had put up to be very amusing. She was going to find it a lot more amusing when, as it was time for us to pay and head back to Edwardsville, I looked at the bill and had a very bright idea. Since I’ve been in the US, I’ve been gradually initiated into the tipping culture and found a certain joy in leaving little change for the people who had made effort (don’t tell me it’s their job) to provide good quality service. So to show my appreciation tonight, I looked into my purse and brought out the crispiest – well, not necessarily the crispiest – of my Nigerian currency notes. It was a two hundred. I had brought the Nigerian currency notes along to the States only to show my students (and some of them have actually “won” a few of them for keeps while answering questions in class), and for other unexplainable reasons, but as I looked at the space for tips on the bill, I could think of nothing more appropriate to give back to this long range traveller like me than a small piece of home.

In American currency, it is less than $2, but from one traveller to another – albeit one more temporarily resident than him – I was handing him a touch from his distant past.

“I’ll frame this,” he said, as he posed for a photograph, and the Tennessee woman who sat beside him kept grinning from ear to ear, looking at me with a mixture of thrill and quirky interest. She definitely didn’t see this one coming, and much as she tried to find out from me how much the note was worth in American currency, she failed, to my delight. It was my first experience of home away from home. And from this heaviness of my tummy now as I return from the eating and all the merrying, I feel the warmth of home. Hello Nigeria.

Hear This…

…from an email I just received. I’m giddy. How did they know that I like stuff like this?

****

Dear colleagues,

This is an invitation to participate in a holiday game called “Amigo Secreto”. This is a Hispanic tradition and it is a lot of fun!

This game consists on having a random secret friend for the last two weeks of school. During this time, you should keep in contact with your secret friend without letting him/her know who you are. For this reason, you could leave funny notes, give candy or do anything creative, and deliver it in creative ways.

The game will end Friday December 11^th at a Holiday Lunch, where you will discover who your secret friend is. This day, you should bring a small present of $5-10 labeled with your name and your secret friend’s name (The gift doesn’t have to be something new or bought, again be creative… it’s for fun!).

If you would like to participate in this game, please email H… at h…@siue.edu before Nov. 30. On this day we will put all the names in a hat and randomly choose your “Amigo Secreto”.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

****

Let the games begin! *Drum rolls*

Oh, K-the-Poet

Once upon a time, before I ever learnt to write a single word in any language, I was just a little son of a published poet. He was not always a poet to me however. He was just a man who embodied several characteristics at different times. Most times, he was just a voice on radio every Saturday. Over a period of time, I was known all around the neighbourhood of my upbringing as the son of so-and-so-the-poet-the-broadcaster. Most of those times, it was an annoying tag to have not just because it didn’t say who I was as a person but a reflection of someone else’s shadow, but also because in calling my name that way, they called unnecessary attention to me that I always sought to escape. There was no way I could enjoy the privacy of a harmless gathering of mates in a public gaming centre without being spotted and called out, like a public property: “Oh, K-the-son-of-the-famous-writer-poet-the-broadcaster. How are you today? What are you doing here? Where did you leave your shoes?” In many ways, those kinds of hide-and-seek from known faces defined my childhood, and I always swore to change my name sooner or later, either removing the connection to the-poet-the-broadcaster as a way of proving myself, or modify it in a way that left me the freedom first to be myself. I am sad to say that the scheme has not worked to total perfection, but I sometimes delight in the conceit of its pseudo-ingenuity.

One day then, last year while applying for the Fulbright programme, I included a short anecdote of my father’s bold and brutal intrusion into my private bubble of innocence while I was young and impressionable at about seven years of age, and how that little act of defiance that he exhibited in the presence of us in class that day somewhat defined my attitude to language. What I didn’t know while writing the essay in which I had deliberately refused to mention his name was that it was not just going to be read by the American Fulbright board, but the Professors of Yoruba in the Foreign Languages department of my host institution, whose decision it would be really whether or not they wanted me in their University. Those whose essays were not impressive enough were dropped at that stage of the application. I got wind of this little gist only three weeks ago when I invited Professor A. into my language class to both assess the students, and to share a little of his experience in teaching Americans the language. Big mistake! Along with the knowledge he said he had possessed all along of the content of my Fulbright application essay, he told the whole class of how he was able to decode from what I wrote that I was K-the-son-of-the-famous-writer-poet-the-broadcaster even though he didn’t know me as a person, as well as some other flattering stories of how rich in culture the man’s works are, and how he and many in his (the professor’s) generation had grown up in Nigeria reading my father’s published Yoruba poetry publications, listening to his poetry music albums and reading his books. While the professor spoke, and I listened silently in the corner, the students all looked in awe as if there was a sudden new knowledge being bestowed upon them about the young man who’d been with them all along without having disclosed this crucial part of his person, and once in a while they cast their sights towards where I sat grinning.

From then on of course, they troubled me to come to class with poems both from my father, and some from myself, and I warned them with apologies that if they were to listen to the poetry of this man in original Yoruba, the music would probably be the only thing they’d be able to enjoy, and nothing else. They agreed, and said that I’d been dishonest to have held out on them for so long a time while they told me many things about themselves. I felt guilty, went to my apartment and printed out stuff that I always kept for my own amusement, and we spent the next class listening to me read from some of the poems I had written, some from long ago, and some from recently. I also read for the first time in public, an English translation of my father’s famous love poems which I had done in 2002, and they were thrilled. One person asked if the poems were written for my mother, and I answered in truth that we like to believe so, even though the fact is that they were written long before both of them were supposed to have met. I guess that’s for him to explain.

Today, on the internet – the main reason for this post, my first literary translation effort was rewarded with a publication. I got involved in this project through a tip by friend and poet Uche Peter Umez. Hard and daunting as it looked at first, I had the task of translating a poem, Volta, written in English by Richard Berengarten, into my native Yoruba. I am finding out now that the work was translated simultaneously into seventy-five languages, including Ebira, Pidgin, Igbo, Ibibio and Hausa which, along with Yoruba, are also spoken in Nigeria. I feel quite privileged to have participated in the project because it also offers some encouragement to my reluctant muse about the prospects of literary translation – mostly of thousands of lines of poetry, this time from my native Yoruba tongue into English, for the benefit of a larger world audience. It also gives me the benefit of somehow finally being able to lay claim to being K-the-poet-translator-himself-in-person. But maybe it’s true that a goldfish has no hiding place. Ask me, I’d rather be a hummingbird.

Find the project here.

Art Chicago II

Most of the art works, scruptures and wall reliefs in this collection were shot at the Art Institute of Chicago at South Michigan Avenue. It was our first stop early on Friday morning since the Sears Tower refused to open to visitors on time.

The Art Institute has a collection of world’s most notable

collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. At one million square feet, according to Wikipedia, it is the second largest art museum in the United States behind only the Metropolitan Museum of Artin New York.

“The collection of the Art Institute of Chicago encompasses more than 5,000 years of human expression from cultures around the world and contains more than 260,000 works of art. The art institute holds works of art ranging from as early as the Japanese prints to the most updated American art.”

One of its most famous paintings is this one, best known perhaps to addicts of the ABC tv show, Desperate Housewives.

The Sears Tower

No visit to the city of Chicago is complete until one reaches the pinnacle of this building, standing on the glass ledge that sometimes bobs with the wind, and looking through the floor to the street 1,353 feet (412 m) below.

Well, it’s no more called by that old and adorable name, The Sears Tower. Now it’s just the Willis Tower since March 2009 – a tribute to the new owners. However, the experience of going up the whole flight of floors to the observation deck at the top of America’s current tallest building is never any less exhilarating. The experience includes a historical tour of the city’s architectural, human, historical and cultural landscapes, and before we got to the top, we had learnt so much more about the city and the influences of its most famous citizens and residents including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford, Kanye West, Jeniffer Hudson, Ernerst Hemingway, Louis Armstrong among many many others.

Here’s a new ad campaign that plays on the height of the building in relation to the height of some of the city’s famous figures.

Ask me. “Forget feet, miles or kilometers… the Sears Tower is actually 226 ktravula’s tall.” Go figure.

The trip to the top of the SkyDeck Observatory was not without its thrills, and today I discovered why it was such a thrill to step onto the glass ledge and look down even though we had an illusion of protection from the outside world. Who was the evil genius that came up with the idea of a glass observatory at that kind of height above the ground? We eventually gathered for a few seconds of fright and took the group picture, before we stepped off and headed out through the other way.

Standing on the glass ledge I will remember this visit to the 103rd storey of the world’s fifth tallest building mostly because of the way the city/investors take maximum advantage of the landmark for their own financial gain. According to the displayed statistics, the building receives 25,000 daily visitors, and it only has 149 staff members. Considering that the amount spent by each visiting tourist is about $50 or thereabout, it is definitely a good long-term investment, along with returns from several other similar buildings in the city, one of which is the John Hancock Building. One could only wonder how much of returns these buildings/structures would have brought to Chicago if the rights to host the Olympics had been given to them. Now, at places around the city, one could still see little torn posters of the city’s Olympic bid: Chicago 2010.

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