ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Soliloquy category.

Thursday!

Today has lived up to it’s blue expectation. It rained almost all day, and the weather was gloomy. It is not the kind of rain that comes down in torrents and lets the sun out afterwards. It is one of those kinds that never stops dripping. The ground was wet all day long and the sun refused to come out. Now, I think I understand more why there is so much weather references in American novels that I have read.

I also got this book in my mail: The World is What It Is by Patrick French. Somehow, it seems that I am always struggling to catch up with literary trends these days. The book was published two years ago, and it is the authorized biography of V.S. Naipaul. Talking of book ordering online, last week when I got my copy of Paula Varsavsky’s No One Said A Word in my mailbox, I found that it had the stamp of a public library in it, and that drove me crazy. Yes to save money, when I buy from Amazon, I sometimes buy used instead of new ones, but I have never expected that I would be sold books that were “borrowed” from a public library. I am surely missing something here, and I don’t know what it is. Can you help? And more, what am I supposed to do? Return it?

To Western Union

Dear Brian/Western Union,

Thank you for your message, and thank you for liking my blog.

While I appreciate your 50% offer that I will no doubt call to collect as soon as we have the first batch of donations to be sent to the Red Cross in Jos, I am writing to express a profound disappointment at your polite response. And while as a private organization you reserve the right of refusal to any proposal that doesn’t bring immediate financial returns or perhaps a photo opportunity with the likes of Wyclef Jean 🙁 , let this be an expression of my consumer’s right of anger and disgust at your nonchalance and insensitivity to a humanitarian cause in a crisis ridden area of a country where you have at least one hundred and forty million potential customers/money receivers.

Listen to it again: a hundred and forty million people live in that country, and over half a million people alone in the region of the country where your help is now urgently needed. Do you care if that number falls into a new category of disenchanted customers who think that Western Union is just another private moneybag organization that cares about people only in times of peace, prosperity and security but desert them in their time of need? Forget the pens and air fresheners that we currently get on receiving money from abroad. I don’t care for those. RIGHT NOW, the people of Jos need support, and as small a step as it is, allowing people to be able to send money to them free of charge from abroad even for a limited period of time already solves half of the problem.

Did you see the pictures of the dead and the wounded women and children from the January and the March crises, or should I send them to you? Believe me, they are not pretty. If you have ever appreciated the value of life, you should be moved for humanity’s sake. More so Nigeria, and the city of Jos, are some of the places in the world where you have agencies and where you have made profit for several years. I myself have received money transfers while I lived in Jos in 2005, so here we are, not pleading as much as calling you to live up to expectation of a socially conscious organization responding to a community of loyal customers in times of need. Believe me, this will be your pleasure as much as the people which you help. And what’s more, you would be doing something right.

As per your concern with language, it is as much a humanitarian crisis as it is a man-made one. I agree, but who are you to judge when people are most in need? Is the child loss in Haiti or Chile from a shifting earth and collapsing rubble any less painful than a child loss in Jos from a sharpened machete and fire? Did your agencies in Jos Plateau not close down for days on account of the massacres? Can you, by lexical classification of causes of disasters thus, measure the pain and the need of the people who have lost houses, limbs, relatives and properties, and to whom every hand of help stretched forward at this moment is another great step towards recovery? CAN YOU QUANTIFY LOSS, OR PAIN, IN WORDS SUCH AS HUMAN OR NATURAL? In my first letters to you, I tried to avoid putting the responsibility of response on your conscience because, indeed, it is a man-made disaster – a result of hate and intolerance for which some misguided compatriots are complicit. But so was the genocide in Rwanda as well as the Jewish holocaust in Europe. I put it on you now because I would hate to think that, if given the chance to help wounded survivors of either crisis in 1994 or in 1944, you would have turned your back as you now do with a polite email response and a one-off discount. The world, I thought, has moved on from days of a blind eye, insensitivity, and a thick-skinned shrug of “Well, let them deal with it. They’ll come back and patronize us again sooner or later.” Am I wrong?

I therefore thank you for your 50% one-off provision which – as I said – I will be calling to redeem. But until you respond more favourably, we will keep writing messages on your Facebook wall and sending you tweets every morning to you to make money transfer free for a limited time to Jos. Sorry Brian, but we just won’t let you off this easily. Western Union is too big a name in this business to bail out on 510,000 people (the current population of Jos) when they need you. And this little effort on your part will not kill you. I promise.

One day when you come over to Nigeria, I might take you on a little trip in Jos to see the sites 😉 but until then, let me await your response with my last remaining optimism.

Thank you.

Regards.

Today…

Was not so boring, because I presented a talk to a group of senior citizens (read grown folks over sixty) along with Reham in an event called Dialogue With Seniors. It was titled “Life in two of Africa’s biggest cities: Ibadan and Cairo.”

I enjoyed it because, contrary to my early apprehensions, they were quite amiable and relaxed. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience of speaking about everything from food to dressing to greeting to customs to religion and to malaria and HIV/AIDS. I showed them a picture of real Nigerian yams, as well as cocoa, both of which they were seeing for the very first time. They had seen Hershey’s, M&Ms and Snickers before, but this was the first time of seeing what cocoa really looked like. They asked questions and I responded. When Reham spoke, I learnt a few new things about Egypt and Arabic as well. It’s funny how much of what we had to say bounced off each other, as well as off the Americans. Cairo is Africa’s largest city while Ibadan is the second largest – by geography. The Nile in Egypt is the longest river in Africa while the Mississippi just close by is the second longest river in the world. (This fact about the Nile has amazed me since I grew up to realize that – contrary to the song we were taught in primary school – the Mississippi was NOT the longest river in the world. I wonder who came up with the song then.)

Yesterday, I participated in a similar seminar, this time for a class of students of English language teaching. Along with visiting scholars from Iran and Azerbaijan, we sat and answered questions about the difference in the University and learning environments in our countries and the United States, where they diverged, and where they were similar, and what we thought each could learn from each other. That was fun too. There were no “high tables”, just chairs. One thing I learnt from that event was that in Iran, since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, boys and girls were separated into same-sex high schools and don’t have any form of social interactions until they gain admissions into the University. According to the Iranian speakers, this causes a lot of frustrations when they eventually get into the University and have to engage in social interactions, it becomes awkward. I could almost say the same for Nigeria of a few generations back as well, but not as a result of a government decision or anything. Most parental restrictions on their children (derived from a claimed divine injunction to “train the child in the way he should go”) often result in poorly sociable human beings unleashed on the society.

In all, it has been a wonderful week so far, except for the ugly news of the loss of my files and all my student’s data and academic scores in my now unrecoverable hard drive. Well, the week is just half gone. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

What Shall I Write About?

Dear Blog,

What shall I write about today?

Western Union’s polite letter to me that they offer aid only to places in the world affected by natural disasters, or

The final crashing of my laptop computer’s hard drive last night so that I have not been able get it on to work from my apartment nor retrieve any one of my yet-to-be-backed-up documents and files still trapped in it? 🙁

Will you give me an answer before I lose my mind, dear blog?

Sauce for the Gander

I have derived a certain pleasure over the past few days shooting the geese on campus. But, unlike what you might be immediately led to believe, I wasn’t shooting to kill, but to save. The weapon was nothing other than my Canon Powershot camera that has always gone with me everywhere I went.

But with these set of geese, there is the story: it is said that in Spring, or as soon as the weather warms up, the birds on campus take a break from their playground of the lake and build nests in cosy places where they can lay their eggs and successfully incubate them for the required period of time. Good so far? Yes. Except that in the case of a couple of these larger than life geese with long strong necks, they had chosen the apartment right in front of mine to build their nest.

Now, the goose family system is very different from humans, or from chickens, for instance. Cocks – like many specimen of humans – will ignore the hen as soon as mating is done and fertilization is over with. But ss soon as the females build their nests and start laying, the gander takes up the unenviable task of defending the region from any intrusion of any kind and size, and they do this with all their energy not caring if they died. The first time I came up a notice on campus that read that I should be careful when walking through the grass areas because geese could be nesting and could attack me, I thought it was a joke. But after two near vicious attacks at my own apartment, I have had a re-think. The male goose (called the gander) doesn’t even give the pedestrian the benefit of a doubt. As long as it gets the impression that you could be walking close to its bride’s nest, it would attack you viciously with its wings and beak. Go figure. What if you didn’t know? Who cares. When you seen a large mass of feathers flying towards you with a menacing sound, you will want to run for it as fast as possible. They have been known to fly at cars and cyclers as well.

So throughout this week – having been lucky to have the nest right across my window – I have been taking pictures of people getting attacked by the birds, and the reactions were usually the same: shock and horror. The students would stand still for a second, waving their hands at the bird in order to send fear into them, and would discover that rather than turn back, the gander was advancing menacingly. They would run, or walk slowly away leaving the bird triumphant. And some times, for good measure, the birds flew right after them. In some way, you could say that it served many of the students right for being silly enough to ignore the notice passed round all apartments in Cougar Village that:

“the wildlife on campus is protected by the Federal Laws… and will be nesting during this season. They can be aggressive, so it’s best to keep off where they might have nests. If a goose attacks you unprovoked, contact University Housing Staff or the University Police.”

On the other hand, like my friend in Dolton insists, I am human and I have a right to walk by anywhere I want without fear of attack by animals. This is why I pay tuition. It shouldn’t be for the University to offer protection to animals and not for humans. Yes indeed, right? Imagine this 911 call: “Hello, is that the police? I have just been attacked by a vicious gander on my way into my apartment. Please come with an ambulance.” Yet you can’t deny that the animals indeed have a right to nest without interference by humans. After all, they have lived in this area all their lives before humans came to erect University and apartment buildings. When does it begin to be ludicrous?

Today in the evening, Ben informed me that he heard that some folks had gone to remove the the geese’s eggs from the nest while the birds were away. I don’t know if this is true, or if it was done by the University in order to move them to a new location. I have however noticed that the two birds have returned to that same position again, perhaps to lay new eggs. But – perhaps to lend credence to Ben’s news – I’ve also noticed that the gander now paces around its usual spot with a dejected gait. Gone clearly are the wild strutting it was known for whenever people walked by. Now it just looks at everyone, sullen, without the slightest interest, or spirit. And I feel pity for him.

« Older Entries Newer Entries »