ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Observations category.

Lagos in the Office

After making the large prints of three of those photos I told you about a few weeks ago, I walked up to Amie at the office this morning and asked her which ones she liked the most. Her answer was unequivocal, she chose the one showing the Lagos traffic at night. When I asked her why, she said it was because she loved (big) cities. Sigh. A few minutes later, I asked James the same question and he chose the same picture. His reason was that it was more lively than the pictures of glowing lamps and a church window. In any case, I immediately began to rethink my earlier decision to take the photo home to install on my wall. As a third person suggested much later, I could actually put it right there in the office and let people admire it whenever they come in.

I tried that today, and it has thankfully failed as an experiment.

First of all, there’s not much space on the wall of the office to fit a 16 x 20 inches drawing without causing some aesthetic discomfort to some of the other cultural photos already there much of them smaller. Second of all, much as I gave it a chance to stay on my table where I can see it, I have painfully realized that I can’t stand the sight of that long energetic Lagos traffic for eight hours non-stop every day. Better to put one that shows more of a world at peace with itself, even if through the little light entering through a church window. I’m afraid of how agitated my days might be if I keep the Lagos traffic in front of me for much of the day. I have therefore taken it off, and now I’m taking it home to hang on the living room wall where I don’t spend much time anyway. All those in awe of (big) cities will gape at it and find their rhythm. And when I want to study, maybe it will help me to focus, or give me the needed spunk when I need the energy. And maybe not. In all, I have come to agree that it is a beautiful piece of photo that captures some of the fundamental elements of the Lagos evening: traffic.

I had taken it one late evening on my way from the Lagos Island, and it shows traffic on only one side of the road. A candid colourful shot of daily experience.

Lagos in the Office was published on October 5th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Observations category. There are currently 6 comments on this article so far.

The Best of Missouri Market

Photos taken at the food and products exhibition of the above name taking place at the weekend at the Missouri Botanical Garden on Shaw Blvd, St. Louis. Missouri.

The Best of Missouri Market was published on October 3rd, 2010, with the tags , , under the Art, Fun, Observations, Travelling category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

Random Missouri

I figured that it’s been long since I last put up a photo post, so here – a few random shots mostly taken in our neighbouring state of Missouri.

Random Missouri was published on September 30th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Observations category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Health in the City

My left arm hurts from a TD immunization injection. I’m resolved to blogging about it only because all those darlings I’ve approached for petting the said hand to health have turned it down or have kept quiet and I’ve been left to my own devices: rest, and vulnerability, like a little boy returning from his first hospital visit 🙁 .

The only memorable thing to say was that I paid $6 for said shot, and I have become the last person to do so. As from tomorrow, people approaching the University Health centre to take the shots would pay up to $39. For the first time in over a decade, the State of Illinois is withdrawing subsidies on this service to students and the University Health Centre, as they told me yesterday, will now have to buy the medication by themselves at market value, and sell to students at market price.

It’s the economy, stupid. I’m sure that students won’t be smiling from the Health Centre anytime soon. Not international students at least, many of whom are studying on very limited personal funds. Neither does it help that this mandatory expense is not covered by the $500 per semester compulsory students Health Insurance policies.

Health in the City was published on September 30th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Observations category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.

Ethnicity as a Plus Factor

On reflection on the coming milestone in Nigeria in the coming days, I came to the conclusion that one of the biggest drawbacks in the national progress till date is the poor handling of the country’s diverse ethnicity condition. For many years, I’ve wondered what it would have been like to live in the times of Tafawa Balewa, and Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Obafemi Awolowo, and the many other earlier nationalists that struggled for the nation’s independent many times from ethnic,  but for the most part from nationalistic, standpoints. Eventually, I get to wondering how things could have gone wrong.

Tafawa Balewa remains one of my most admired men of those times not because I knew him, but because I didn’t, and because he was killed for no reason I could easily understand. And because he was one of the brilliant educated northerners who managed to get into the position of authority. And he was a simple man. Yet he was killed. Azikiwe was another one who became the opposition leader in a Western House of assembly in 1952 as a Nigerian and not as an Igbo man. When I think back to how things could have been different if the first coup hasn’t happened, or how things could have been if the coup had been bloodless, or if it had not had an ethnic slant, I sigh and get back to doing something else. Because I wonder if something beautiful and great could have evolved.

On invitation, I have written a post on my reflections on Independent Nigeria at 50 for the Nigerianstalk.org website. There are a few new posts there also by other Nigerian bloggers and I cherish the opportunity to join those distinguished folks in sharing my thoughts with the new generation of Nigerians to whom the future belong. I am not feeling as giddy as the government wants me to feel about these celebrations just yet, not surprisingly. I guess it’s because the country wasn’t born in 1960 anyway, and neither were those who had evolved their different ways of living together even long before any foreign forces stepped foot on the land area we now call our own. If 50 years of independence from the British could still be counted as an achievement, I guess it is a memorable milestone. In any case, check out the Nigeria@50 post series on Nigerianstalk and leave comments when you can.

Ethnicity as a Plus Factor was published on September 29th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Observations category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.