I think today is the coldest I’ve experienced so far in Illinois. Looking at the weather temperature gauge, I am horrified by what I see and feel: it’s three degrees Centigrade! America uses the Fahrenheit system, and that would translate to something like forty. In Lagos today, it’s 86 degrees F (or 30 degrees C), yet as far as Illinois temperature is concerned, this is not even cold yet, but just the beginning. We’re still in the fall, heading towards the winter with almost zero degrees Fahrenheit. I still have plenty more days of sunlight before daylight savings time which comes with longer nights and shorter days.
Yesterday while looking through the photo album of a fellow FLTA in Colorado, I saw snow, and wondered aloud how this came to be. A little more inquiry tells me that I should indeed count my blessings. For right now, in October, the rocky mountain state of Colorado is already covered in snow. I can only imagine what it would be like over there in December, and February. Yes, I am counting my blessings even as I lay here freezing within a four-piece clothing that marks me out like a Soviet spy, and with smoke coming out of my mouth as I speak.
Lying in bed, I wonder why I no longer find warmth within its soft embrace. It used to be where to go and hide when everywhere else got cold. Now the cold bites more even from within the folds of the bed spread. One thing is sure now: I’d most likely spend more time in the hot shower now than I’ve done before. And sad but inevitably, the days of my bike riding are coming slowly to an end.
In the begining, there was just me, going to a University in Ibadan, Nigeria. I had gone through all my primary and secondary education in this same city, so it was just as well that I never knew – nor would have given any thought to – the reality, fact or fiction of the phenomenon of “six degrees of separation.” There was no way in the world that a little boy from that ancient town could relate to the likes of Martin Luther King Jnr, Roberta Flack, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Coretta Scott King or Toni Morrison, even if by chance I knew a few of their names back then. The first American I could say I warmed up to was James Hardley Chase, and I didn’t know if we’d have gone along well if the chance ever presented itself for us to meet. Then there was Denise Robbins, whose many novels I read before I completed secondary school. The likes of Mark Twain, and Alex Haley came much much later, as did Toni Morrison, Eugene Redmond and Maya Angelou. I remember seeing Maya the first time while browsing through the now rested Microsoft Encarta Africana CD of 2002, and watching her read her poem, “Still I rise.” I was enchanted immediately, and while reading more about her, I realized that it was impossible not to be, considering how much of stories her life embodies. She was born in St. Louis, grew up in Southern California and Arkansas, then moved over to Ghana with her African Revolutionary husband whom she had met in the United States during the anti-colonial movement of the fifties. She returned to the States after her first son to the African, became a dancer, writer, teacher, public speaker, novelist, poet, film director and movie producer and later Inaugural Poet, the first African-American so honoured to recite for the in-coming president. She read her poem 
Now here I am in Illinois, less than ten years after that memorable introduction, now meeting the icon face to face in a campus auditorium. Looking at a slide show of pictures taken from the Eugene Redmond collection of photos of Maya Angelou on the big screen, I see a shot of her once with Coretta Scott King, the widow of the slain Civil Rights Activist, then another with Toni Morrison, then Oprah Winfrey, Eugene Redmond, Amiri Baraka and very many other famous names in African-American culture, and I remembered the rule of separation. If only because of this enchanting day, this time and this moment of fate, I can say that I may have finally connected my last branch of life’s six degrees, joining imaginary hands with all of the rest of the world, with everyone just six persons – or less – distant from me, no matter where they are. Oh how I like the sound of that!
I have now returned from Dunham Hall, where I had gone to obtain my tickets to the programme, and where I discovered to my amazement that all the tickets have sold out. Completely. The organisers have just made arrangements for a hundred more seats, and I was lucky to get two of those. My hosts at the Office of International Programmes who had promised to get me tickets into the show are now nowhere to be found. If they ever come forward with any more tickets, then maybe I can afford to take someone else along to the show. But a most unfavourable part of this visit of the American Poet Laureate is the news that she might not be staying long after her talk to sign books or take pictures after all. Now this, if true, is just horrible, but I understand. She’s probably too old for all that stress of sitting though signings and photographs. But being young and tenacious, I’m probably too heady as well to let her go without a fight. Come, come Sunday!
“I wanna live. I don’t wanna die. That’s the whole meaning of life: Not dying! I figured that sh*t out by myself in the third grade.”