ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Observations category.

10 Reasons Why I DON’T Miss Home

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This is the flip side of the monthly argument that started here. I suggest that you read it first.

10. Food. When you think about it, there is really nothing so spectacular about Nigerian food that one can’t do without it for a year. Yea, you can call it a case of sour grapes conditioned by inevitability, but this is my story and I’m sticking to it. Give me panini with potato pudding and chicken sauce. On a more serious note, the American continent is filled with a diverse list of amazing cuisines, and I’m glad to share in them.

9. Books. I like the ease with which I can buy books here. It doesn’t make me a fan of paper books over electronic ones, but there are so many paperbacks that are always keepsake materials.

8. People. There is something beautiful in being able to maintain a personal space, individuality, and not worry about a certain crowdiness that is characteristics of so many streets I know. It is a sense of violation from the piercing stares of strangers. I have not had much of that here. There is no pressure to speak to anyone one meets on the road, or share a bus stop with.

7. NEPA. No further comments. #lightupNigeria.

6. Mosquitoes.

5. Family. So many people have gone to great lengths to make me feel so much at home here, and I will definitely miss their warmth and support when it’s time for me to say goodbye.

4. Love. No comments. See #5 above.

3. New Experiences. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine, Winter, Spring, Kwanzaa, Martin Luther King’s Birthday… etc. There are definitely many things to look forward to.

2.  Friends. See 5 above. Plus, it seems that I am closer to many of my Nigerian friends now than when I was back home.

1. Well, it’s called a “home”, not a “house”. Home is in the heart, and it goes where the heart is.

PS: Much of this list is tongue-in-cheek anyway. Next month, I’ll tell you a few hostile experiences that I’ve had in Edwardsville that reminded me of how similar people are all over the world, both in goodness and in not-so-goodness. Happy Halloween. See you in November.

(Picture credits: The Cougar Lake “Lantern”, taken from a photo exhibition of sights of SIUE.)

10 Reasons Why I DON’T Miss Home was published on October 31st, 2009, with the tags , , , , , under the Fun, Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

10 Reasons Why I Miss Home

IMG_046910. Food. There is a certain pain in hearing the words fufu, amala, iyan, gbegiri, ewédú or egúsí from this distance. And no, I will not go into St. Louis just because of them, although once in a while it might be worth it. From now on, I forbid anyone to mention the following words to me in online chats: snail, okú ekó, panla or ponmo. Or akpu, ogbono and afang. All the defaulters will take turns to host me in their houses as soon as I return home.

9. Books. It is very funny to admit that I am now a slow reader. I am surrounded by televisions and internet with twitter beeps, facebook status updates and Skype chats. That is when I’m not busy worrying about class. When will I get the time to complete these great books?

8. People. This is not to say that I was much of a crowd person back home anyway, but let me just say – for the records – that I wish that I could sometimes take a ride in a noisy, old, half-wrecked and incredibly reckless public bus plying an equally bad road on a rainy day, either in Lagos or in Ibadan – just for simple pleasures.

7. NEPA. Or PHCN as they call it now. What is life without occasional and sometimes incessant power outages? The advantages include boredom (necessary to complete books), depression plus high testosterone levels (necessary to write poems), and idleness (necessary for communication and moonlight/candle light stories).

6. Dogs. Eight months seems like a long time to wait before seeing Scotty, Rex, Bobby, Tessie and Snoopy with her new puppies. Do they miss me too?

5. Family. Yea, yea. There is definitely the over rated family experience, but, what can I say. There’s no place like home. This time, I hope the honeymoon will last for more than a month before we get back to the screams: “Kolaaa! Who if not you left the front door open for the dogs to walk in and jump on the couch!?” Aaaaargh. I miss that.

4. Love. Do not ask me for more on this. There is no law against desiring a reconnection with home on a romantic level.

3. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. I have seen a few episodes here in Illinois, and I can also say that the TV programming here is enchanting. However, I can’t wait to be able to see NTA’s version again. How could I explain my hurt that I was not able to see the first time a Nigerian won the top prize of 10 Million Naira?

2.  Friends. Although I expect that many of them would have moved on from their current positions by the time I get back home, and the congenial landscape would have definitely changed in some way, I do hope to see them again.

1. Well, it’s called “home”, and there’s no place like home.

Read the “10 Reasons Why I DON’T Miss Home” here.

10 Reasons Why I Miss Home was published on October 31st, 2009, with the tags , , , , under the Fun, Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Night

Here are a few more photos of the fall (although I think that a little after the fall, we should start referring to the rot season. That’s when all the leaves that have fallen, start getting rotten on the ground. Along with the incessant rain nowadays, the feeling of walking or riding through the numerous leaves is one of the best things of the season. I heard that it’s raining non-stop in Nigeria as well. How do we explain that? I used to think that non-stop rain in a characteristic of the month of July at home. What am I missing? Well, enjoy these photos, especially the ones I took at night yesterday on my ride back from a long day of class and of teaching.

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Night was published on October 29th, 2009, with the tags , , , , , , , , under the Art, Fun, Observations category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Search Engine Terms

Blogging has its perks. Besides the ability to express one’s opinion in anonymity (or at least pseudo anonymity), I’ve found some little pleasures in observing visitor behaviours on this site, especially the words that have brought them here on a first time visit from search engines.

This part of WordPress that allows me to see the search engine terms that bring visitors from search engines began to amaze me when I found that at least two visits to ktravula.com were consequent upon the search for “gay man sex“. I’ve now tried to search for those terms myself on Google and surprisingly I didn’t end up here. So I tried for “gay man sex Illinois“. Still nothing, I’ve tried “gay man sex America“, “gay man sex travula“, and still without luck. Whomever it was who was linked to my website for searching for gay porn must have spent so much time in the search engine before my site would be eventually recommended. I’m not gay, but I’ve now deliberately searched for “gay man sex ktravula” and this site shows up finally on the results. The result was this old post in which I had mentioned the Episcopalian Churches support for homosexual and lesbian rights. I am hugely relieved.

Here are the other terms that have brought people here since this blog began. In brackets are the frequency of such search engine terms. Enjoy.

  • gateway arch(13)
  • www.ktravula.com(4)
  • tyto alba(3)
  • pictures of university of ibadan(1)
  • heathrow airport terminal (3)
  • underground(1)
  • the social gospel movement(1)
  • perspective on slavery(1)
  • all saints church yaba(1)
  • schooling in west africa 16th century(1)
  • edwardsville couger lake (1)
  • uk border patrol agent(1)
  • african traditional religion holydays(1)
  • how do you pronounce bolanle in yoruba(1)
  • fulbright flta comment(1)
  • travelogue about church(1)
  • postsecret at siue(1)
  • sola olorunyomi(1)
  • my computer bitmap(1)
  • blocked head(1)
  • achebe(1)
  • nigerians speak british english with acc(1)
  • kola tubosun travelogue(1)
  • six flags(1)
  • dark skin women(1)
  • a picture of the cameras at six flags(1)
  • “halle berry” imagesize:1280×800(1)
  • gay men in robes(1)
  • social gospel movements(1)
  • mtn extra cool(1)
  • gay man sex(1)
  • gay men sex(1)
  • wal-mart traffic signs(1)
  • slavery times(1)
  • brown university to boston airport(1)
  • american autumn imagesize:1024×768(1)
  • maya angelou(1)
  • virginia lynn bennett(1)
  • ktravula(1)
  • leaving providence(1)
  • mafoya(1)

Many of them amaze me, but the ones I have coloured amaze me the most. And with this post, I’m going to get more homosexual references now for sure. I’m not looking forward to that.

Search Engine Terms was published on October 27th, 2009, with the tags , , , , under the Fun, Observations category. There are currently 3 comments on this article so far.

To Carbondale And Back

IMG_0828IMG_0827IMG_0826IMG_0823IMG_0822IMG_0831IMG_0832IMG_0835IMG_0852IMG_0909IMG_0898IMG_0882IMG_0857IMG_0867These 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.

To Carbondale And Back was published on October 24th, 2009, with the tags , , , , , , , under the adventures, Art, Fun, Observations, Travelling category. There are currently 3 comments on this article so far.