ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Soliloquy category.

By the Way

I just found out that our “Blog Anniversary” was on August 10. That was when I made the first post on the blog this time last year. I’m really not big on this kind of anniversary so I’m letting it pass. Or maybe that passover night has taken out all the steam that this was supposed to have sprouted. There’s nothing special about a blog anniversary, except to appreciate that we’re still breathing, and that we’re still having stuff to say to each other. I find this privilege one of the most precious and enduring.

Thank you for being there, even silently. Yes, I mean you 😉

By the Way was published on August 15th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Arugba

Set against the background of a corrupt society, the story of the votary virgin designated to “carry the calabash” for one last time before settling down into matrimony is enticing on its face. Add to that the intrigues of puberty and University life, the corrupt and often lecherous leaders (many of who have real life equivalents in Nigerian politics), historical figures in short cameos, and a multi-award winning director known for equally engaging films, and you have a winner, right? Yes, if you are a skillful playwright looking for a nice plot to use in writing the next bestselling play. No, if all you want is a screen flick that tries very hard to please everyone (UNICEF, Cultural experts, Movie buffs, Local language activists, suckers for love stories laced with music, and pretty much everyone else).

What I’m trying to say here, of course, is that I wasn’t much impressed with the movie except with the super acting by the seasoned actors (Lere Paimo, Kareem Adepoju, Bukky Wright, Peter Badejo, and the new Bukola Awoyemi), the song Afi fila perin , the major plot (which is the cleansing of a town as tied to the symbolic act of the virgin votary), and the picture quality. Everything else seemed distracting, especially the flashbacks. The sub-plots looked like poorly-handled attempts to situate everything in this quasi-imaginary world in which the events took place in the events of our real life. We see Obasanjo. We see Bola Ige. We see Abiola. We didn’t need to see them, but we did. Nothing else in the overall plot of the movie prepared or compensated us for the distraction. And even the love story which is the major subplot did not always convince. It surely didn’t live up to the standard of Ajani and Asake in O Le Ku handled by the same director.

The flashbacks were the main distraction. I did not see the point in keeping the details kidnapping attempt on Adetutu till the end. It should have been enlightening then, but it wasn’t, because we had already consoled ourselves – having seen her hale and hearty – that she had already survived in one piece; and the minor intrigue of the women who wanted her removed on the rumour that she had been raped did not really impress. What about the king’s inglorious offer to Adetutu earlier in the beginning? We didn’t know much about it until the end, for no justifiable reason. Other distractions included the sub-sub plot of the Islam and Christian adherents at the beginning and the end, Adetutu’s jealous rival (played by Kafat Kafidipe), the Oral Rehydration Therapy that eventually never saved a child from dying, the jealous housewives in the king’s palace, the spirits seen at the beginning and at the end coming out of the (supposed) Osun river to play with Adetutu (when we know for a fact that the story is not science fiction) among many others. I’m an ardent fan of Mainframe, but here, I see only minor resurrections of what we liked about Saworoide, Koseegbe, Campus Queen, and even O Le Ku. But that’s where the love ends. At the end of the movie, I did not stand, smile, ponder and send a text to my friends to go get a copy. I merely rewound it to listen to the song Afi Fila Perin many times again, then go to bed.

Now, this is what I suspect: there were too many consumer constituencies to cater for by this offering. And in the end, it ruined what could have been the best story since Death and the King’s Horseman (which is not even a movie yet, as it should be) – a classic meeting of tradition with “civilization” and the fallouts thereof. So many possibilities… Maybe if Tunde Kelani had written the story himself, or at least passed it through the hands of Akin Ishola, Bamiji Ojo, Wole Soyinka, or Bayo Faleti…

There, my KTrotten Tomatoes! Two stars out of five. Okay, maybe three. Maybe.

Arugba was published on August 15th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Art, Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

I Hate Big Cities

Maybe I should just say I hate cities because Lagos is not such a big city (except by population) yet it has succeeded in riling me up enough to write this while battling headache and fever induced no less by a few days of activities in its rowdy belly. There is always an underlying assumption by residents of cities, I now believe, that they live in a concrete jungle and that the only way to survival is to live by the jungle rules. I talk of noise, of course, and a general rowdiness that always, always disorientate, or at best push one to a resolve never ever to return to that scene of madness except in a cocoon that blots out the noise, the long traffic, and the general lawlessness on the road of stressed office workers trying to get home in time for the latest edition of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

I bet New York is like that too. Darn, count me out for now. I’m going back home to take paracetamol and some malaria drugs, and then to bed.

I Hate Big Cities was published on August 14th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

The End of the World

There are some things I probably shouldn’t be thinking about, especially since they usually don’t lead anywhere beyond the ceilings of my room and the rotating fan. I dose off, wake up again and worry about other things. One of them is the issue of the rapture, or the end of the world, as we were earnestly taught as kids by zealous pentecostal pastors. It is different from the real “End of the World” as prophesied in the book of Revelation where everything is destroyed and “no stone is left on another”. Actually, when I think about it, they are both very different views of the same event, and pretty confusing. The world ends. Time stops. The sun goes dim. In one other account, things get pretty messy and everything is destroyed. In the other, Christ shows up in the sky, and “all eyes (shall) see him.” (Rev. 1.7)

Actually, it is the “all eyes shall see him” part that has often got me pretty confused, and for good reason: The world is not flat. Maybe technically, the bible didn’t mean that all eyes would see him at the same time but the preachers who preached to us before the age of reason made real sure that that was the impression we got. He would come like a thief in the night and he may catch us doing bad, bad things. So we ought to be careful, and clean, and holy at all times. Well, were that possible, there would have been no sinners in the world. No sin, in fact, and no wars, and everywhere would be happy. Unfortunately, we have crushes (which until I was around 18 I thought was a sin), we lust after people, we have affairs, we lie, we steal and we cheat if it suits our purposes. If I’d known that even preachers had crushes, I’d have had a better luck with the first crush of my adult life whom I met in a church. 🙂

So I’ve figured it out, that part about all eyes seeing him. The Lord, if he would come to the world again, would have to deal with the issue of time zones which would really ruin his surprise. If the world were flat, he may appear to all at the same time, and there will be no hitches. But thank providence for CNN and 24 hour cable, as soon as he lands anywhere on this planet, we will begin to have “Jesus spottings” on TV and twitter, and people of the other parts of the world where he has not appeared will have enough time to prepare for him, repenting of their sins, kissing their girlfriends for the last time, or generally being silly in preparation of his coming. In any case, he could turn out to have a better sense of humour than we credit him for. Or maybe he will turn out like the Jehovah’s Witnesses have described him, gentle and wise, come to make peace on earth so we can all live happily ever after. I’d love that, because I’d really really hate the Statue of Liberty to be destroyed by his coming before I have a chance to get to its crown.

PS: The story of the white cross in that picture, and the crate of concrete beside it is an interesting one for another day.

The End of the World was published on August 11th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Observations, Opinion, Soliloquy category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.

Summer is Over. Is It?

I’ve never seen summer. I’ve seen spring, along with beautiful green leaves all around an equally beautiful campus. I have seen winter, and snow whitening the land as if to prove a certain point to all foreign-born residents. I’ve seen fall, with leaves brown and restless, flowing with the cooling wind. But summer? No. What on earth is it?

Is it like hell, with an absolutely unbearable temperature which keeps people mostly indoors and all public parks free of visitors? Or is it like the oven? Is it like Kano, the reputed July heat that causes meningitis or just like a milder version of the microwave. Do the leaves shrivel? Do they sway? Are they beautiful or are they grey?

I’m not here to write poetry, so tell me what it looks like. Did I miss anything in my absence from the scene of action? Well I left that place in the middle of May just when the almighty summer was supposed to have begun. If I return there now, what will I find? Fall, no doubt. Summer would have escaped from my grasp once again. What did I miss?

The highest temperature here was around 29 degrees Celcius. That would be like 84 in America. There was this rumour that temperature in America was up to 90 in some places. Oh my, that would be like the temperature in Maiduguri on a regular afternoon. That means that my American friends could actually come and spend their summer in Nigeria. Go figure. Much of this country is actually cooler than 29 during this period. And it rains too. Oh, the rains! I should be glad I’m here.

Alright, I will return to that place, but not until the famed summer is over. Is it, yet? I like Fall. I like brown leaves that remind me of the leaf covers of eko and moin-moin made by old women in Ibadan villages. I like the way they look in photographs too. Who wants a hot summer when they can spend cool raining seasons in Ibadan, Lagos, and all over Nigeria eating spicy food, playing uncle, buying fuel in jerry cans, making day and night calls, killing mosquitos and generally playing he traveller?

And by the way, when I return to the States, let no one ask me how I spent my summer. I did not. You did.

Summer is Over. Is It? was published on August 9th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Fun, Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 10 comments on this article so far.