ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Soliloquy category.

On That Nigerian Guy

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a 23 year old man from a comfortable home in Northern Nigeria who attends a university in the United Kingdom. He’s now notorious for trying to denotate an explosive device on a plane. I have tried not to talk about him before now, but who am I kidding? It’s in the news on every station and the word “Nigeria” pops up every time. Even on twitter, the words “Nigeria” and “Nigerians” have now become trending topics. By now we know that his father is a Nigerian banker who had warned the US about three weeks ago about his son’s suspicious affiliations. Well, three weeks ago, the US was busy debating the Tiger Woods story to pay attention to an errant Nigerian…

On a more serious note, that idiot from Katsina state has given the rest of us a bad name, as if we didn’t have enough troubles of our own already. Think of how many people are now subject to more restrictions because of a foolish act by one unthinking idiot. I’m happy that I am not travelling to anywhere soon, but I don’t envy those who are, and who are from Nigeria. I’m disgusted enough with having to remove my shoes, jacket, sweater, and even belt every time I try to board a plane. Now, they’d probably want to search my anus as well for firecrackers since I’m from a country whose name is now popping up now and then beside the word “terrorism”. For many Americans, it must be hard to see us in any other light now, except the people from whose country the terrorist came from. On the bright side, this takes the shine of “Nigerian Internet Scam”, if only for a minute. Heck, it even takes the shine off the death of South Africa’s anti-apatheid writer, Dennis Brutus, who died on the 26th December. Very sad indeed. (Update: another Nigerian passenger was arrested today Sunday the 27th because he spent one hour in the airplane bathroom on a similar flight, and was “verbally disruptive” – read Nigerian “uppity” – when questioned.)

Since the story broke, I’ve been trying to look on the bright side, trying to find the laughable side to it. Yesterday, I started looking for verses in Nostradamus’s predictions that mentioned “Nigerian”, “Christmas” and “terrorism” in the same sentence. No luck. I hope that soon, my search engine will come up with something I could use. For now, my hope is that if or when the suspected “Nigerian terrorist” is eventually convicted, he will be taken straight to Guantanamo to have a taste of the American countryside he so desperately desires. He can do with himself over there whatever he wants. Only for his sake, I will be petitioning the President Obama to keep open that detention facility indefinitely. We do not want the fool in any prison in Illinois like the president is planning for other Guantanamo inmates, and I’m pretty sure that they do not want him in Nigeria any time soon as well. Don’t take my word for it, check out this Facebook Group that has been set up primarily to throw the disgraceful Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab under the bus, virtually, since – the horror of horrors – we are not able to do it physically.

At age 23, I was struggling to get a University degree rather than of playing around with explosive firecrackers. At age 23, I’d never even been on a plane before. Well, there’s a lot you can do if you’re a spoilt kid with a privileged background. Who cares for common sense when you can easily and effortlessly disgrace your family and country with one thoughtless act of jackassery in a foreign country?

I’m Not A Writer, And I know It

I have a problem reading myself for a second time. I can barely read it for the first time at all. I write a piece of work, I try to read it again with an editing eye and I get strangely disgusted. I can barely make it through to the end. When I eventually do, I see only the things in my head, and not the words on the sheet, and I find that I have not edited it at all, but just endured another needless ordeal of re-reading.

I am lazy. With fiction, I fail with imagination but succeed somewhat with memory. I may thrive on details but sag on the fictive dexterity of their expression. I’m not a writer, and I know it. I am only a bearer of stories. With poetry, it becomes a little different. The muse descends, rides me roughly like the spirit in a possessed body, and leaves, leaving something pretty behind that I sometimes like to read again and again, although it scarcely leaves space to take full credit. So I can’t write a poem on the spot to save my life, or so I like to think. I will find out perhaps when there’s a gun to my head and an loud order to “Show me you’re a poet. Write something before I waste your brain on this concrete floor.”

Knowledge is for philosophers. Imagination is for writers. Only one of them changes the world, and -hint, hint- it’s not knowledge. Really. So as soon as I can exchange my junk of knowledge for liberty of imagination, I will be a writer. Until then, let me just be me, the quiet observing traveller in this American wilderness. Perhaps also, a bearer of stories.

(Picture credits: A fridge sticker at the house of Nigerian writer Ikhide Ikheloa, taken in Maryland on the 14th December 2009)

It’s Not Going To Be Easy

There must be more to life than sitting idly in front of a computer waiting for the guy from the Chinese restaurant to make a delivery. I have looked at the date and it is NOT Thursday. It is still Monday. No, I refuse to believe that this holiday is going to be harder to take than I previously thought. I’m going to gain more weight for sure. Maybe. It is definitely not going to be easy to keep my mind functioning without deadlines to meet, students to teach, to grade, and classes to attend. I had considered going with Ben and Mafoya for a Burlesque show in St. Louis two days ago, but I had fallen asleep before it was time to leave, and Ben had refused to wake me up. In any case, I doubt that semi-naked women could have made that much of a lasting impression. Sour grapes, I know. There is always a next time.

My grandmother is dead. The news got to me in a text message on Wednesday the 16th from my sister. I don’t know how old she is, and neither does she, but from the age of her children, I would say that she was over ninety. In some culture in Nigeria, the saying is “Don’t worry about it. You have no more grandmother to lose now.” In my case, it is not totally true. My dead grandmother is actually a step-grandmother. My non-step grandmother is alive but not as strong as she used to be. And she doesn’t know that the other woman, her co-wife, is dead. She mustn’t know or it would be too hard to take, considering how long they’ve both lived together under the same roof with the husband, my last grandfather, who is still alive and strong.

My friend Olumide lost his mother in the same week as I lost my grandmother. But unlike my own (albeit also unexpected) loss, his own was not inevitable, and it came too suddenly. I met her for the first and last time in the University during her son’s convocation ceremony not too long ago, and she was fun, warm and jovial. Her death has made me reflect on the meaning of life, and what it’s all worth when it’s spent and done. I wish Loomnie the strength to bear the loss.

I’m writing a new poem on the theme of loss, distance and changes, but I’ve become stuck after the sixth line.

Why Fulbright?

The heaviness on my person since I returned from Washington DC on Monday, I have realized, has to do with more than just my delirious nostalgia for the taste of a certain thrill and an unexplainable positive strangeness that dominated that trip to the East. It could easily have been because of the food, because it was the one thing that almost equally matched the large number of workshop sessions that followed each other one after the other, sometimes without much of a breathing space. We got out of one conference workshop session and we hopped right into another. It was mostly worth it, but it will take the whole of my holiday to truly catch up with the details of all that we were taught. The food however was a different matter. They were diverse as they were elaborate, and I left that hotel on Sunday feeling that I’d committed an unforgivable sin of indulgence – as my mum would have called it. In any case, it was scarcely two hours after then before I entered another cycle of feeding, this time in the neighbouring state of Maryland, and the foods (most of it) were Nigerian for a change.

Fried eggs, bread, pringles, mangoes, (green) tea, orange juice…

and then later in the evening: pounded yam, rice, beans (note: not baked beans or anything American, but Naija style cooking), snails, cow leg and other beef parts in pepper sauce, vegetable soup, Hennessey cognac, and finally some red Malbec Argentinian wine…

I should probably confess that I have never ever eaten this much food in one day. On the one hand, it could be some form of indulgence which I immediately justified from previous frustrations with pizza and long queues at pastries food stands. On the other hand, it just was a very convenient acquiescence to the warmth of my Nigerian hosts who were more than happy to have me around. I felt loved.

It is in returning to my base now that the value of those warm connections are making their presence felt on my wandering self. But again, more than just the thrill, I have been very humbled by the responsibilities the Fulbright tag, and slightly worried that I may have been irreparably changed by the week-long indulgence in a way that I might not yet recognize. Oh well, give me another week or two in this now gradually emptying University campus and I will regain my required pungency. Until then, let us drink to life, and to hope for the parts of the world where there is none. And to peace and understanding – no matter how elusive it gets. Yea, it’s still me speaking. I told you that I’ve changed. Where did the old cynical travula go? I too have no idea.

At The Airport Again

My trip to the East has brought me great rewards, just like the fortune cookie predicted. I have tried to count my blessings but they were too much to number, so I have stopped.

I’m heading back right now to the Midwest. My flight was cancelled this morning due to the fog that had settled all over the Washington DC area. It was rescheduled to the afternoon, and I’m here once again reading faces and counting time. I hope there is someone waiting for me at St. Louis when I get there. They must have waited too long for me to get in touch with them. All that time, I was here agitated and wondering how to get access to the Airport internet. I have now succeeded, after some payment. I hope the email I just sent to my University has been delivered, and is seen on time.

There’s so much to tell you about the East Coast. I will begin as soon as I find the time to. I am grateful for good times: The Fulbright Organization, The State Department, my fellow FLTAs from Nigeria (Mohammed, Folake, Morakinyo, Shade, Omar, Zainab, Clement and Nanchin), my new and old friends (Diana, Tulika, Maha, Hilal, Osama among many others), my host for the night – the Nigerian writer Ikhide Ikheloa (and his family), and all the other new people I was meeting face-to-face for the first time: Bumight, Vera, Sweet&Sour and Chinny. There was also Tyrone at the hotel parking lot who was very nice. I will remember Maryland, DC, and this experience, because of them.

Till later.

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