ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Soliloquy category.

10 Questions for the Traveller

10. Why do you focus on Nigeria a lot these days?

A: Are you kidding? Nigeria has been in the news even before I started talking, but if you prod me a little bit more, I might tell you that it’s because I’m going to return there in less than three months, and I am interested in its success. Staying back in the US is not only not an option, it is escapist and does not really count as progress. There is a stipulation to spend at least two years in my country after this programme before any application for permanent residency in the United States afterwards. That way, beneficiaries of the Fulbright can get to contribute to their countries of birth and residence. The better Nigeria gets then, the better for me.

9. Are you really looking forward to going home?

A: Yes, actually.

8. What will you miss the most about the United States?

A: I’ll miss the friends I’ve made. I’ll miss my host parents, Papa Rudy and Laverne Wilson, I’ll miss Chris and his adventurous spirit. I’ll miss Olga even though we don’t see each other much these days. I’ll miss my students, my office, and my wonderful Professor Mattson who shares the space with me. I’ll miss my department and Belinda, its beautiful head and Sherry its cool and sometimes mischievous secretary, and also my friend Catherine in the language lab for allowing me trouble her many times. I’ll miss the genuine smiles and laughter I get from colleagues, and I’ll miss the days of uninterrupted superfast internet access. There are so many lovely people that will kill me for not mentioning their names here. I’ll mention them in due course.

7. What will you do when you get home?

A: I have a tentative plan, which is to go around my country to places I haven’t been before. I also hope to visit places I’ve been before but which hold a certain interest for me and for friends. I think I have only visited about seven states in Nigeria, out of thirty-six. I have a long way to go. I also hope to return to the University to complete my Master’s programme in Linguistics and/or Language Documentation. Would it not be better if I come over to do it in the United States along with a PhD? Maybe. We’ll see how that goes.

6. I love those your photographic artworks. How can I get one?

A: I am raising money with them for Jos, Haiti and for Chile. If you’re interested in participating in the project, check out the very simple instructions here.

5. Creatively, how have you been keeping yourself occupied?

A: I’ve been reading extensively because I’m afraid that there will be too many books to carry home when I’m done here. I may have bought too many. So it will make more sense to read them now, and give them away. I’m actually worried that my excess luggage will be filled with books. I don’t know if I can handle that. I have also been writing: a memoir, poems, and translations. You’ll be the first to know when they get published.

4. Are there any more places you will definitely visit before you leave?

A: Yes. That will be New York from where I hope to depart to Nigeria.

3. How are your students doing this semester?

A: Never been better. They murmured when I told them that this time the final exams will not be to write a short story like the other folks did last semester. In their own case, they will be presenting a short drama or a Yoruba song for an audience of their mates and former students. I like the idea, and they’re catching up on it too. I’ve finished grading the mid-term exam and I’m happy that they actually know more than I give them credit for. They’re the best students ever. We’ve saw Chimamanda’s TED video again last week. It was the first time of seeing it this semester.

2. I like your blog. I hope you won’t stop writing. I want to contribute in the form of a guest-post. What should I do?

A: All you have to do is to send me an inquiry, or just send in the guest-post and let me look at it. You can find the previous guest-posts here. What kind of guest-post do I prefer? I don’t have preferences. I just want to read other people’s interaction with the world, either in poetry, prose or rants.

1. What do you think of the Libya’s president Colonel Gaddafi’s suggestion that Nigeria be split like India along religious lines so as to bring permanent peace and stability?

A: Not only is the idea sick and repulsive, it is shallow and lacks the right substance needed for any permanent solution. First, organized religion is one of the biggest problems of the world right now, so to make it the basis of state is not only dumb, it is retrogressive. There is no doubt that the North is mainly Moslem and that the south is mainly Christian. However, the northern Nigeria is not totally Moslem, nor is the southern Nigeria totally Christian, and that is one of the causes of the Jos crisis. So this begs the question: where will the boundaries be drawn if such a division were to be made? At the Niger River? Where would Plateau, Kwara, Kogi, and Oyo States fall? And what purpose would it serve to have any part of the country run by a religion that has never been known to hold the elites and the politicians to the same standard expected of the poor uneducated citizenry. If the law is an ass, religious laws at levels of state are even dumber. What the country needs is to live up to its ideals of a true federalism where each component parts are autonomous to the extent of its fiscal responsibility and obligations. Organized religion is the enemy, as is ignorance, arrogance, and complacency.

St. Patrick’s Day

And so today March 17 marks the anual St. Patrick’s Holiday in the United States. St. Patrick (AD 387–461) was the missionary who brought Christianity to Ireland and converted them from their “pagan” ways. The holiday which began as a catholic holiday is now very secular and, like the Mardi Gras, has become a day of revelry and celebration of Irish culture. In Ireland, it is a public holiday. In the United States, it is just a day where people wear green, where the fountain in front of the White House and the Chicago River among many waters in the country are dyed green.

It doesn’t however mean that everyone who wears green or gets drunk on Guinness on this day in the US is of Irish descent or knows anything about Ireland. More often than not, it is just the chance to belong. There was a St. Patrick’s day parade last weekend in Chicago, and I’m sure in many other American cities but I couldn’t attend. I asked one of my students to name five famous Irish citizens. He didn’t know. The ones I can remember are John F. Kennedy, George Carlin, George Bernard Shaw, WB Yeats, Conan O’ Brien, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Swift, among others.

And he was impressed with my ability to come up with those names spontaneously, much to my surprise.

Dear Lord, Wherever You Are

“Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.”

Dear Lord, Take very good care of mum now. She’s sixty today!

So let every day of her life be filled with joy and with peace,

And with contentment, and love of her children, and friends.

And grant her the happiness she deserves, wherever you are.

Dear Lord, grant mum long life, more pleasant days, and prosperity.

(I know I don’t care for too much money, but I am not her, you know.)

Remember how solid a rock she has always been for us. An optimist.

Even within adversities, and days of dark uncertain clouds, she stood firm.

Dear Lord, wherever you are, let me be sixty years old too someday.

And when that day comes, let me still be strong, and happy, and healthy,

and hopeful, like my mother today, in the joy of a bright beautiful day.

And, like her today, let me be able to deserve all the love and warmth.

Amen.

Jos!

“I am Nigerian, not a terrorist. I do not kill people that are not from other parts of my country.” – from Politically Incorrect (January 1st 2010)

When I served the country Nigeria in the mandatory one-year National Youth Service in a little village close to the city of Jos in 2005, the state still had as its motto “The Home of Peace and Tourism” even though there was always a shadow of violence looming in the corner and in every conversation. In September 2001, four years before I arrived there, there was one of the bloodiest bouts of violence between the Hausa-Fulani “settlers” and “indigenes” of the state and when the smoke cleared, there were over a thousand people dead, home and businesses destroyed. In a few months, things always returned to normalcy but there was always the shadow of looming violence. Nobody knew when it would raise its ugly head or what its trigger would be. But it was always there.

Read Jos, a city torn apart a report by the Human Rights Watch in 2001

In May 2004, a few months before I got my deployment papers to travel over 800km from my base to Plateau State, there was another bout of killings in Yelwa, the southern part of the state in which over 700 people died. There is a report of it here. In all of these cases, the failure of government has been the biggest cause of that much carnage. In all cases, the violence has spread and caused irreparable havoc before the agents of state showed up. And in some cases, when they eventually showed up, they took sides and went beyond their call and did some extra-judicial killings of their own. Of all the ills of a badly run government, the biggest most disappointing crime is to be found guilty of taking sides and complicating the already messed up situation and not bringing to justice the perpetrators of previous crimes.

While I was in Riyom, a short distance from the state capital of Jos, I lived in relative shelter from the political realities of the town, but only to the extent of actual violence that eventually took place in some other parts of the state even while I was there. I was not sheltered from the conversations and the anger. For many who lived in my parts of the state, the problem of the state was not only fuelled by religion, but also by a political and economic undertone. Who were the indigenes and who were the settlers. To most who had an opinion, the Hausa-Fulani cattle herders had come from the North to take over the land from the Plateau indigenes of a different tribe and way of life. Plateau state is one of Nigeria’s most linguistically and ethnically pluralized state, yet Hausa is a language spoken by all in addition to local languages. In Riyom where I lived, the language was Berom. Yet, they never saw themselves as Hausa-Fulani and always seemed to be fighting against a perceived dominance of the language and culture of the “settlers”.

In Nigeria today, this issue is sadly one of the biggest threats to survival. Not just religion, but a politics of ethnic domination, mistrust and well, ignorance/arrogance. And because of that, a lush area of the nation that could as well have laid claim to being the best place to live in the country because of its climate, history and people is entangled in a burning fire with over three hundred people dead, mostly women and children in a reprisal attack. In an ideal federation, there should never be a limit on where one wants to live, as long as one can respect the rules of the land which are fair and just. The religious dimension to this crises is just as unfortunate as it is saddening. Yet, THERE IS NO GOD IN THAT VIOLENCE! If He is, then it is high time we removed him from all affairs of state because this is not one of his best public statements of eternal goodness. The case in Plateau state as well as many other volatile regions in the country – including many in the south as well -is the distrust that comes from ethnic affiliations. When it becomes tied to economic and political survival, hell is let loose – especially in the absence of a moderating influence of a trusted agent of state.

Today, I am enraged like everyone else wondering how we got here and wondering where we go from this cycle of violence. More than prayers for the family of victims, we need a more responsible and responsive government just as much as we need better education for all. And as deterrent, all culprits in the killings must be brought to book, and to justice. If international intervention is needed, let us have it. Those who kill fellow citizens do not deserve to live among us if they deserve to live at all. There is nothing that should stop Hausa-Fulani cattle herders from living and prospering in Jos or in any part of Plateau State, and neither should there be a threat to the practice of Christianity, Islam or any religion by any indigene of the state. What we should fight against is the threat of domination or force. The sky is big enough for birds to fly, as the proverb says. For years religions have lived alongside each other without any threat of violence. What has changed? Yes, politicians and the elite have exploited the differences to their own advantages even at the expense of lives and property of innocent women and children. Well, enough is enough!

On March 16, there will be a rally of Nigerian youths to remind the government why it matters that things are done properly. I cannot attend, but will be there in spirit. For once, I wish I could suggest that the rally takes place in Jos Plateau rather than in Abuja, at least in solidarity with the forces of good. In my case, I do intend to go back to the state when I’m back in Nigeria. I still have friends there, many of whom I’m still in touch with. I will be going with a big camera and I intend to visit new places that I didn’t get to see in my first visit. It is not just a huge sense of loss and sadness that moves me so, it is also a sense of disappointment, and such a wasted chance of nationhood as exemplified by Jos, formerly “the home of peace and tourism.” What’s more, there are hundreds of Youths deployed to the state now on the mandatory National Youth Service whose life is being put on the line without adequate security. The last time there was a crisis of this proportion, at least one member of the Youth Corp was killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shame! Shame! Well, that too has to change!

My last bout of this much outrage was at the Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk, and it produced some deprecating politically-incorrect writings in which I had joked darkly: “I am a Nigerian, not a terrorist. I don’t kill people who are not from my part of the country.” Well, here is exactly what I meant at that time. And this is why the world at large needs to respond and direct attention to Jos, Nigeria NOW before it gets even more out of hand and we produce another international terrorist. The culture of impunity must stop and the killers be brought to book.

The Lemp Mansion

“Lemp Mansion is a house in St. Louis, Missouri. The ghosts of several Lemp family members are said to haunt the mansion.” – Wikipedia

“There is no place in the city of St. Louis with a reputation that is quite as ghostly as the Lemp Mansion. It has served as many things over the years from stately home to boarding house to restaurant…but it has never lost the fame of being the most haunted place in the city. In fact, in 1980, Life Magazine called the Lemp Mansion “one of the ten most haunted places in America”. – http://www.prairieghosts.com/lemp.html

“The Lemp Mansion is located in St. Louis, Missouri, a short distance away from the Mississippi River. Take Broadway from Interstate 55 and follow that to Cherokee Street. Go west on Cherokee and turn right onto De Menil Place. The address of the mansion is 3322. The Pointer Family has owned and operated the Lemp Mansion since 1975. The Lemp family line died out with him and the family’s resting place can now be found in beautiful Bellefontaine Cemetery.” – http://www.hauntedamericatours.com/hauntedhouses/LempMansion/

Now that we know (almost) all about this building, where it is located, and what makes it so remarkable, could someone tell me why this traveller is now thinking of actually going to spend a night there?

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