ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Observations category.

Another Monday

There’s a law that I can’t yet name, but it says that if you had all the time in the world, you most likely won’t do as much as you would if you were very busy and occupied all through the day. For now, let’s call it the KTravulaw of Time Management. It is the truth in that law that has prevented me from blogging as much as I should this month, and it’s just as well. Studies are kicking into full gear. If symptoms persist, I will blog less and less until I would be able to write only one post in a month. And maybe that will be Nirvana.

Before then, I will be busy finishing the autobiography of William Shatner titled Up Till Now. As expected, it has a lot of funny stories of the man’s life, from the time a female gorilla held his balls and wanted to sleep with him to his very many risks taken in life and in his career. And then I can get over my obsession with Fela! the Musical, and the life of those who populate the story, e.g Sandra Iszadore who was the only woman ever to sing lead on a Fela track. Who was she? How did they meet? What was her relationship with Fela like? Was the relationship consummated? And if so, why/how did they separate?

And then I will try to go to St. Louis all by myself for the first time tomorrow with or without a GPS. Thinking about it now, it sounds like an impossible task. But I have signed up as a volunteer at the International Institute where they teach and resettle immigrants and refugees from parts of the world. I would be teaching (very basic and elementary) English, and I look forward to the experience. More than just a chance to see how volunteering works, or how second language speaking adults learn English for the first time, I also need the experience for my pedagogy class. I was at the Institute for the first time last week with a classmate and I was impressed by what they do with little funding from the Government, but now I will have to go there all by myself. If I get lost, I know whom to call. That is if the road police don’t get me first for being confused on the very confusing interstate highways.

Many more things have happened to me since a while, but I can’t tell you right now. I should either be sleeping or reading for the week’s classes. The weekend went by too fast. Have a nice week.

Of Ghosts and Cemetries

The conversation at the dinner table last night eventually led to talk about ghosts and cemeteries, only because one of us had expressed her fear of burial grounds. I was asked if I share the same fear and I said no, which is only a half truth. For, as I have discovered, to my own surprise all fear of ghosts and burial grounds always disappeared whenever I set foot on foreign soil.

Throughout last year, while riding back to my apartment at eleven or twelve o clock at night, I get to pass through a dimly lighted bike path with thick woods on its either side. And I’d always wondered to myself where all the trepidation went that I would usually have while walking at a similar place in Ibadan or anywhere in South-Western Nigeria around the same time. The conclusion, of course, was that the fears were only conditioned by familiarity. Perhaps it is impossible to import fear across such a wide ocean as the Atlantic. Note: I noticed a similar trend of artificially acquired confidence while in Northern Nigeria, and in Kenya. Suddenly, it seems that the best way to rid a human of fear is to transport them to a different environment.

Now when I see cemeteries and tombstones, at whatever time of the night, the only thing I want to do is to take pictures of/with them. It must come from watching too much of Michael Jackson. And yes, I’m still going to spend a night at the Lemp Mansion sometime soon.

Twenty-nine and Counting

It’s probably been a while since I last celebrated my birthday in contemplation. Ah, it was just twelve months ago, on the wings of an earlier interesting travel experience. But other birthdays before then manage to fade away in comparison and I tell myself in the mirror as I go out that I’m an adult already. I think the idea has properly sunk in by now. Perhaps the most memorable birthday was that one of whose memory I don’t even possess beyond that which is shown to me in the glossy photos of childhood. I had just turned two years old (or is it three), and was looking good and innocent behind a cake and a horde of neighbours invited to celebrate. I still look at that picture every now and then. All the invited guests of that day are now scattered all over the world in different endeavours.

Starched new clothes, shiny shoes, jollof rice and chicken (or fried fish), and cake (of course) made by mum to make the day feel special, I have fleeting images of birthdays looked forward to with such eagerness and delight. It always helped when the day fell during the week. I would be except from wearing the school uniform. I could show off a new attire and get the whole class to sing me a birthday song. Of course I also had to go to school with sweets and biscuits for those said classmates and teachers. I remember chocomilo, bazooka and sumal chewing gums, and Marie biscuits, and 7up, Crush and Mirinda. And some little solid sweets of many colours we used to call eyin alangba. Birthdays during those years of innocence were one of those days of the year when you get to be king for twenty-four hours and dictate your choice of food and drinks. The other day is whenever you came home with a report card that said you took the first position in the school year.

Gone are those days now. Today I will spend the early part of the evening taking a syntax examination with no singing, and no jollof rice whatsoever.

But in the distance between the pleasant innocence of childhood and the now grown maturity of youth, there has been very much to be thankful for, too many to count. From love of friends and colleagues, the assuring presence of family, to even the reliable permanence of season, every turn has been rendered a blessing not quantifiable by words. And for that will I spend this day in the gratefulness for all things good, happy, cheerful and soothing. I’m a year older again, it seems. It is a prime number, a number divisible only by 1 and itself. Ah, the delight of arithmetic. This is also the last year of my twenties.

This is the oldest I’ve been yet. So maybe it’s time to prepare for all needed rites of real adulthood, in within a mouthful of the best delicacies of this day, thankful in the process for the great gift of life.