ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Observations category.

The Last Cougar Village Night

My eyes are heavy in the forest of ghosts. The traveller – that’s me, actually – reclines on a soft sheetless bed. The sheets have now just arrived from the washing machine. By this time tomorrow, the bed will be empty. So will the wardrobe, living room and kitchen. This room, this building – a sponge of memories, pregnant with the mischiefs of a 10-month internship – will be empty. If it isn’t, at least I know that I won’t be here to enjoy its comforting embrace.

Funny how time flies. One day I was checking in and marvelling at a house designed just for me, when NEPA (or whatever it’s called) took power. Now I’m pulling out the sheets to leave the wonderful apartment just the way I met it – without the grapes, cookies, chocolate bars and wine, of course.

The Village itself has changed, from the brown red leaves of fall to the white wild winds of winter snow. It has evolved from a place where I almost couldn’t find my way around just after five minutes of stepping out of my apartment back in August. Now, it’s just a sprawl of land that I have learnt to call home. The peace of the lake, the mischief of the geese and the craftiness of the ugly menacing raccoon lurking by the trash can. What will I miss about this “village” the most beside the warm people, the police patrols, the bike trails and the basketball courts? Hmm, maybe the sense of safety and security that I get when I walk or sometimes cycle back home after a long day.

Of course, Cougar Village is not a village, except by the smallness of its population. By many standards, it is a small town with enough social amenities and a working government. For the rest – especially the animal population – let us write it down as an icing on an already pleasant living space cake. I think this could actually be the Eden the old folks talked much about. When I get out of here tomorrow evening. I will hope that right behind me at the gate will not be cherubs holding a flaming sword. It shall be goodbye Cougar Village, and its name will resound with me for more than a few mischievous reasons.

Photos by Ikechukwu Ohu.

In the Alestle

There was this article about me in the campus paper, the Alestle, a couple of weeks ago. Remember when the journalist had come to the class’s final performance? I didn’t put up the link here because I had forgotten about it, but mostly because it didn’t turn out to be about my students as had been initially planned. What happened to all those pictures of student performances that the photographer took?

Read it here.

Kindle Love

This is what this blog looks like on the Kindle.

East St. Louis

My visit to the East St. Louis Centre of the University yesterday was memorable although very short. It was preceded with a short trip into the neighbourhood of what used to be one of the most prosperous cities in the Midwest. Now it is littered with decrepit houses and abandoned factory warehouses. Many of the abandoned houses had been tagged with graffiti and street art which reminded me that I was in a neighbourhood that is now home to some of the most impoverished, yet resourceful citizens of the state. For a moment while driving through the government housing projcts, I thought I was in one of those Brooklyn type neighbourhoods I’ve seen so many times in movies, with wall art, basketball, fast trains, and violence. There was no violence here. Only silence, from the passage of time, and migrations.

At the Charter School where we had gone to watch a Portfolio presentation by graduation students (all within the 18-19 age range), we met some of the most talented students. The presentation/performance was like a final year project where they had to face a panel and talk about their ideas, motivations, and achievements. Each one of them, as young as they were, brought a very dynamic angle to their presentation and some of them were very emotional. At such a young age, it made me proud that rather than being distracted or going into bad things common to people of their age in other cities and towns, these children were working hard to secure a good future. One of the students was an eighteen year old boy whose fraternal twin brother was already incarcerated. “People think we’re opposites,” he said, “I am here trying to make a good life for myself while he is there in jail.”

We watched each powerpoint presentation narrated by the student and gave valuable suggestions. We also asked them questions on every aspect of their presentation that wasn’t clear, and they answered.

The Charter School is fully funded by the government and serve as a support system for parents who can’t afford to send their children to private schools. The only thing that runs through these students however is not poverty at all, but ambition, skill, hope, brilliance and confidence.

It just happened yesterday that we were in time for the Portfolio presentations. The University Centre is used for several more things than just the Charter School. It houses the Eugene Redmond Writers club, and they meet there regularly for poetry readings, spoken word performances, dance, drama etc. East St. Louis itself is just a riverside city of over 31,000 people. It’s called East St. Louis because it is the last part of Illinois bordering on the eastern part of the River Mississippi just before the city of St. Louis itself that lay on the other side, in the state of Missouri.

Time-lapse – The Cougar Lake

Check out these time-lapse photos of the Cougar Lake behind my apartment from 2009 and how it has undergone some changes along with the seasons. Enjoy.