ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Soliloquy category.

Secondary School Days

It was always cold and dry in November towards the end of the school year, and the season always came with a certain bubbling feeling and restless feet. School was at Agodi, a stone throw from the governor’s office, and the state prisons. It was bordered by a military housing project/barrack which had some of the best eating shacks we had ever encountered. It was also the only place where we could go have burukutu in the after hours with the little money we could save. Fufu at Barracks was the best, for some reason. It was rock solid, and filling. It was just as well since the majority of the customers of the eating joints were military people expected to be tough, filled, and healthy.

The broadcasting corporation was about two miles away. It had a very large fenced compound where at this time of the year an exhibition was held. It was called an exhibition because it was conceived as a carnival for the Christmas season. In time, it became a spot for gaming, alcohol and peppersoup and not much else. It was the ultimate taboo spot of escape from school, and we took the liberties many times daring the always looming risk of being apprehended by state law enforcements sent out to find school children loitering the streets during school hours. The best way to get to the broadcasting corporation from the school without getting caught was to walk through a winding short-cut road that went through the Officer’s Mess of the Second Mechanized Division located just across the road. I see it now, a quiet living estate with fancy houses and barking dogs. Three, and sometimes four, young school boys in blue checkered shirts trekking across the land under a sometimes scorching sun. In their pockets are a few coins each, and some roasted groundnuts tied in transparent nylons.

The excitement at the exhibition grounds never always justified its anticipation, but it almost always compensated for gloom of confinement that the walls of our school represented. Dry harmattan Novembers on the streets of Bashorun as pesky loose cannon truants from a faraway place looking for a lost piece of their precocious childhoods… were good times. They also featured really dusty feet in rubber sandals.

 

 

Secondary School Days was published on July 18th, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy, Uncategorized category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Open City*

A lighted street, an alley. A road closed for construction or a botched concert featuring a boy rock band. I have always wondered what makes a city run, what makes it what it is. What makes it tick – the soul and the fabric of its existence and sustenance. An underground tunnel, a monument. Hotels with distinguished butlers and visiting guests. Cars, concrete, curbs. Lights. People walking around with a thousand different motives and stages of contemplation. A gathering of friends at Hooter’s. Fireworks. Sparklers. Fourth of July. The hovering however-you-define-it American Spirit.

There is all humanity represented sometimes within a square mile. The angry driver. An open sewer covered with a wire mesh. Laughing, nervous children chaperoned by parents. A stranger smoking outside a tall building. Stacked rows of mobile bathrooms. Traffic lights. Taxis in city colours. Noise. The reported crime rate that rivals any other across the country. A wrong turn towards an abandoned railway and the occasional hair-raising contemplation of the consequences of abandonment. Old city. New city. Open city. St. Louis, or a thousand others. The beating heart of humanity condensed in one spot in time and history. One minute, and a slice of a much larger story.

*Open City is the title of a new acclaimed book by Nigerian writer Teju Cole about an immigrant in New York City. This post is only a creative anticipation of the novel’s premise.

Open City* was published on July 4th, 2011, with the tags , , , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

On Some Observable Contradictions

I’ve always wondered why my Indian friends were usually the most conservative. Growing up on Bollywood movies featuring crooked cops, handsome heroes and beautiful women with delightful voices, I knew that the country – if anything – was just as diverse, as unpredictable, as unique, as anyone else. Finding out that they had given the world karma sutra however prompted the questions of what went wrong between then when women knew and practiced (sometimes only within marriage settings) the secrets of sexuality and now where an imported religion (mostly Catholicism) defines their outlook on life.

One of my most defining perceptions of the American society obtained also through popular media while growing up is sexual liberation. Much more than what obtains in Indian movies, American movies gave us the concept of deep kisses with men to whom a woman wasn’t married, random sexual contact after a few dates, sometimes after a few drinks, infidelity portrayed beautifully as art sometimes eliciting sympathy from the vulnerable audience, and gratuitous violence. A little boy on the streets of Mushin today still assumes that all it takes to get an American girl is to take her to the movies a few times – all conditioned perceptions. The often conservative nature of the American society is thus a source of shock to the immigrant trying to figure out what just happened. The United States exports perhaps the largest number of porn videos to the rest of the world, has nudity and sexual jokes in most of its most famous non-porn movies, yet impeached a sitting president having, or for lying about, oral sex. Explain that to a seven year old. I never quite understood it.

So, there was Weiner the congressman who tweeted his genitals, and Schwarzenegger who fathered a child with the maid, then Edwards, then Gingrich. Sufficient examples in private and public life of the country I live in show just how liberally the most powerful people there take the sanctity of marriage that many of them have sought to define, and “protect”. It is thus always a surprise when a thing such as gay marriage becomes such a big deal that it has to take almost divine intervention to get passed in the country’s third largest state. Not to take anything from the efforts of the legislators and the activists who achieved what they did a few days ago in New York, my immigrant sensibilities took a few moments to process the fact and realize that the America I had envisioned/perceived since a very long time while growing up is just now coming out slowly of its own closet. And that this is why it all seemed so jubilatory (if that’s a word), and not that there was something really extraordinary that happened in the passing of the law by the NY city legislature. The contrast between what already obtains and celebrated in the country’s popular culture and what the society accepts and sanctions in its laws and public behaviour is going to be subject of much rumination for a long time to come – especially in the mind of migrating visitors like me.

Coming up next, who knows, maybe marijuana? Obviously, you haven’t seen The Hangover. At least now I understand why those who watch Nollywood movies outside of Nigeria expect all Nigerians to speak, act, and behave in a particular way. And what about juju. Don’t ask me. It is not recognized by Nigerian law either.


On Some Observable Contradictions was published on June 28th, 2011, with the tags , , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Nominated Again

The blogger would like to thank readers who nominated KTravula.com for the Best Travel Blog category in the on-going Nigerian Blog Awards 2011. You’re wonderful. To vote for this blog, go to this link, and choose KTravula in the Best Travel Blog category.

Nominated Again was published on June 27th, 2011, with the tags , , under the Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

To Joplin and Back

Dear blog,

As you already know I was in Joplin, Missouri, this weekend as a volunteer with the Service International Organization to help give a hand to the reconstruction efforts in a city brutally wrecked by an EF-5 tornado. Service International – a non-profit volunteer organization based in St. Louis – has been in Joplin since after days of the tragedy that killed over 117 people and has been helping homeowners sort through their debris and generally provide manpower to all in need. The other volunteers we met there, like us, came from all parts of the country… from Arkansas, California, Ohio, Oklahoma, Chicago etc and from various fields of endeavour: students, military, professionals, executives etc. I met a Nigerian of Indian origin – an undergrad of a university in Arkansas who speaks Nigerian Pidgin as his only Nigerian language, and English, along with two Indian languages. He grew up in Ikeja.

This weekend, according to the director, had one of the highest turnouts of volunteers in the last couple of weeks. We were almost forty. As the week ended, most of us have now returned to our bases leaving only a handful of people to continue the work. (The centre still needs as many people as possible who want to give their time and energy in service.) Looking around the areas of the disaster, walking amidst the debris, it is hard not to see the helplessness of humanity in the face of tragedy, and life as little moment of grace. Red inkmarks on abandoned buildings show the number of people who died or are missing in there. We saw many of those. A whole expanse of land as far as eyes can see lay spread in ruins as if a big war has just ravaged it. The town got very badly gutted and the heart breaks looking at it.

According to reports, some people were picked out of their houses while some were killed while hiding out in supposed safe spots in their homes. I heard the story of a young boy of nine who was snatched from a moving van from the hands of his father by the storm. The father lost use of both hands but survived. The boy did not. There was another story of the workers of Walmart who went, as instructed, to hide in the freezer until the storm subsided. The freezer was taken up by the tornado and has not been found since, along with its occupants. The witness were two girls who had run towards it but didn’t make it there in time before they were shut out. It cannot be overstated that what pictures show of this wreckage is nothing compared to what it is when actually seen with eyes. It can only be imagined what it must have been like when it happened. And it all lasted barely thirty minutes.

The SI Relief Centre is located in a church premises with feeding and accommodation provided courtesy of donors, volunteers, the US Marines, the Red Cross, and many others. It welcomes as many more people as are interested in giving them a hand from now until their work is done, which won’t be in a while. The accommodation was comfortable and the daily interaction with other volunteers was a delight. On Friday night, we sat around a fire in the courtyard and told stories of what brought us to Joplin after introducing ourselves. Mine was that I was in a similar tornado that nearly got me killed, and I survived.

We spent Saturday on the field, working. The site was a farm owned by a man of about seventy-five whose whole property was leveled by the tornado. He didn’t speak much as he rode his cart around inspecting what we were doing. And what we were doing – simple as it sounds – was to separate wooden planks from the roofing sheets so that it would be easy to destroy or recycle as the case may be. There must have been about four houses torn down in the premises. We worked in groups on the wreckages from around nine when we arrived there until around five when we left. Sunday, after a short church service where we were feted as new comers, we had lunch and set out homewards. Others remained there to continue the afternoon shift until late into the evening. But even at that level of work – fixing one person’s property per day – it would still take years to rebuild all that has been destroyed in the town. Some volunteers have been coming there since the centre was set up. It is an impressive work that is being done there, and it could do with plenty more.

This post is getting long but I’ll tell you how I got that opening at the back of my t-shirt in the picture above. I had a long plank of wood that I had to toss in a pile. And like I did with the others before it, I threw it with two hands like a javelin. It usually would just fly over my head straight into the pile along with the rest. On this one, I had misjudged the length and the weight of the plank and its tail end landed on my then already bent back, grazing me roughly as it went into the pile like a missile. I touched it and saw how lucky I was. It had pierced opened not just my general issue orange shirt but also the black one that I wore underneath it, but my skin was safe. A good thing there was no nail there at the end of the plank. By the time we got home in the evening, we were all tired, yet energized by the fact that we had made someone very happy, and he did not have to pay us.

There are a few more things that I will tell you as soon as I can. For now, I should sleep. But this I know: it was a humbling, moving experience.

Sincerly,

Blogger.

(Photos by Mafoya Dossoumon)

To Joplin and Back was published on June 20th, 2011, with the tags , , , under the Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.