ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Travelling category.

Visiting Ikogosi

Ikogosi Ekiti is the home of the nation’s only and most famous warm springs, situated on the hills in Ikogosi Ekiti in Ekiti State of Nigeria. The spring itself originates from the top of a rock formation now situated in what the state government calls the Ikogosi Warm Spring Resort. It is a stretch of land fenced and developed with lodgings, entertainment, halls for events, an amphitheatre, and a beautiful view of nature and the famous spring itself. (It never used to be like this, we’re told. The new government has been working).

I had gone visiting, along with my wife, as a guest of the Future Awards Project who had organized a nationwide gathering of Nigerian youths (described as those between 18 and 35) to brainstorm on the nature of their participation in government and in the shaping of their future. She was a panelist on one of the sessions. The three-day symposium that was well attended by young people from all around Ekiti and Lagos (with a few more jetting in from as far away as Kano) had as invited guests former Vice-President of the World Bank (and current Finance Minister) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, governors of Ekiti State (the host, Dr. Kayode Fayemi), Rivers (Rotimi Amechi, who already made news with some of his comments), and a representative of the governor of Delta State. There was also Professor Pat Utomi (one-time presidential aspirant), Tonye Cole, Odia Ofiemun (past president of the Association of Nigerian Authors), and many others in government and in business.

SAM_2104 The symposium turned out a lot of ideas, and bile, and fun, and anger. Peculiar to a gathering of young people, it brimmed with idealism, and questions, and challenges for the present and for the future. I enjoyed it all, the interaction, the camaraderie, the environment, and the food. (I’d never eaten so much yam in three days). The resort was also a fantastic discovery, a treasure hiding in the hills of a faraway city. The cottage we slept in sat on top of the hill, overlooking the source of the warm spring down below. About half of the new lodgings are just recently built while the rest were renovated from their previous deteriorating states. They had been built a long time ago.

SAM_2088

Speaking of architecture, one thought that occupied my mind throughout the event (and which I had so desperately tried to ask the host governor of Ekiti State, without success), was why in this 21st century Nigeria, public facilities like this resort built with state money should not have adequate access for disabled citizens. One of the participants, a young dignified lady on a wheelchair, had to be lifted into the venue over a flight of stairs because of the absence of any other means. It is a terrible, disappointing oversight. (This is not peculiar to Ekiti, however, but it deserves to be part of the conversation going forward).

There were also a number of prominent youth leaders of thought and young professionals around the country present, from IT professional Gbenga Sesan to activist/politician Japhet Omojuwa. Needless to say, I was meeting many of these folks for the very first time. A few of them, I was hearing about for the first time as well. The organizers of the program include the EIE (Enough is Enough) Nigeria group who came into limelight after a successful walk on Abuja in March 2010 to protest the state of things in Nigeria. I blogged about that here. By the end of the third day, I had made new friends, met a few old ones, and connected with those I’d known on twitter, but never met in person. It was a warm, happy – if short – respite to the quotidian rote of the Lagos life.

I returned to Lagos through the same hills that led us to Ikogosi, seven hours later, through the many Ekitis, Ilesha, Ikire, and Ibadan. It was my first time of visiting that part of Ekiti. An accidental admission to one of the young men seated beside me at the newly furnished swimming pool and bar on Saturday night that my immediate ancestors had migrated to Ibadan from Ekiti a few generations ago, and that my father was an Ekiti title-holding chief, has now landed me in hot water of a constant barrage of request to pack my bags away from Lagos as soon as possible, and come back “home”. After all, “a river that forgets its source is in danger of eventual, inevitable drying up.” It’s true.

It was an apt metaphor anyway, since he had said it while we were sitting just a few metres away from the source of the spring that gave the town, and the state, one of its enduring prestigious images.

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Home Never Leaves

I spent the last hour walking through a neigbourhood in Ibadan where I last visited about twenty years ago as a young boy. The memories have almost all faded along with the landscape. New homes and new streets have sprung up where trees and old buildings used to be, and I walked like a stranger that I now am, enjoying the pleasure of the welcome anonymity. None of the relatives I knew who lived around there live there anymore, thankfully. I would have expected shouts of “Kola! Is that you? What are you doing here? And who is this lovely woman walking with you?” Growing up has its perks.

I hope to spend the next hour checking out another part of this town that holds an even deeper memory: the neighbourhood where I spent the first thirteen years of life. The building in which I drew some of my very first breaths now exists in a different neighbourhood than the one I left it in. New neighbours, new ownership, and maybe a new paint job. I don’t know right now. I haven’t seen it in more than ten years. There exists a huge memory of my growing up that lay within the walls of the compound, and has gone with me everywhere I go. There also exists, at some level, a stronger desire to make a reunion with that memory permanent. If I ever become rich, I will pursue the desire. For now, this will become another tour of the long memory lane.

I have my camera ready, and the last image of that building in my head as I saw it through the rear-view mirror of the truck that took us out of there in April 1995.

Written Over Luxembourg

Dawn wafts in at a distance –

a crimson glow amidst the cloud

like mounds of angry smoke.

We float above a cumulus, with

old empires wasting beneath

the loaves of precipitations.

The child in me always

believed that angels lived here

up in the shining layers of the sky.

But now, black heft of crowded soot

hang there in shapes of gnomes

as our wing extends into a distance.

We remain a bump in the sky

trapped in man’s reckless bet

against wind and gravity.

In this cubicle, this window view

into a waking world

there is no silver lining, except us,

far above everyone else.

Defying the sky,

I am here as this daylight begins.

Lagos Again

The state hasn’t changed much since 2010, except for more stringent laws prohibiting so many things. No more eating in traffic. Heavy fines for driving on BRT lanes, or for driving on one-way lanes. The roads haven’t got dirtier, or cleaner. The road cleaning worker service that has been there since a while has remained. There appeared to have been more traffic law enforcement officers on the streets as there should be: Lagos probably has more cars on the road than any other city on the continent.

A part of the 3rd Mainland Bridge has been closed down for repairs, for good reason. It’s better to be safe than sorry. The Silverbird Galleria looks like a ghost of itself, but that could be because 12noon on a Friday may not be the best time for socializing. BRT buses look a little older now, needing either repairs or replacement, or just some makeover. Much of what defines the state have remained mostly in place: the yellow buses, the long traffic jams, and noise.

In all, not a bad re-introduction.

Memories of Iowa

The only mental picture of Iowa that I had before embarking on a road trip last weekend was that of driving through corn fields. All I had heard about it from politicians speaking to campaign crowds on television always included something about “corn fields” or the “hawkeye”. I never quite figured out what the hawkeye refers to, but what impressed me the most about driving through the state was something just as green: windmills.

Much of the midwest is a flat terrain. The view of the sunset out of my window in Southern Illinois at 6 o’ clock in the evening is one of the best I’ve seen anywhere. Being on the road at anytime from five pm anywhere around these parts is – if only for the view of the sun disappearing gently out of sight – one of the most pleasant. The trip however started earlier in the morning so we had a benefit of the sunrise as well. By the time we got to Iowa, after driving past Hannibal, it was already past noon. We had a stopover at Godfather’s Pizza (Herman Cain’s old job), and had our first encounter of a different kind of Midwestern accent.

Back to windmills. Somehow, for some reason, my idea of states with green priorities and dependence on wind energy never quite fit my image of Midwestern states. I thought of places San Francisco, or San Diego, or other parts of California and other mostly blue states: Hawaii, Rhode Island, etc. So when driving for about four hours through Iowa, everywhere we saw on the horizon had dozens of windmills, there was some disorientation. It eventually made sense with the realization that the flatness of the land makes the tapping of wind energy a sensible investment. (A news story about the disenfranchisement of ex-felons in the state eventually punctured my idea of the state as mostly progressive in politics, but that’s the story for another time).

At Cedar Rapids, we stopped by the Czech Village, a small neighbourhood created to celebrate the contribution of Czech and Slovak cultures to the United States. The small art shop which now houses a temporary exhibit of some of its most prized artworks welcomed guests with open arms. In 2008, it became the victim of flooding brought about by rain and the overflowing of the Cedar River. Today, a line runs about seven feet high in the art store showing guests the level of water when the whole neighborhood almost went under. As tall as I am, it took me stretching all my arm to be able to reach the water mark. The National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library itself was just a few blocks away. With contributions from donors from around the country, it has now been rebuilt and refurbished, and would be opened officially on July 14 and 15. (Little trivia: former President Bill Clinton was at the initial opening of the library in 1995, along with the president of Czech Republic and Slovakia.)

There are a few other memories involving Clear Lake, and Des Moines, two different but equally enchanting cities. Clear Lake it was where the three famous rock and roll musicians died in a plane crash in 1959. No coincidence, it was also where, on encountering a surprise traffic buildup on the highway close to Mason City, our vehicle got into a bumper-to-bumper accident involving two other cars. No one was hurt, except two of the cars. Des Moines is the capital of Iowa, with one of the most fascinating capitol buildings I’ve seen so far. Well, the car is still in Iowa, which means that there’s another trip coming up soon to pick it up. This time, we just might be able to spend a few more hours exploring Iowa City, the state’s second largest city, and maybe at Waterloo – the birthplace of John Wayne.

Iowa makes it the fifth Midwestern state I’ve visited so far, after Missouri, Minnesota, Illinois, and Kansas. One day soon, maybe there will be Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. I sense a book of travel stories coming up. Each of the state capitols around the country present unique delights. And like the huge one in Providence (RI), Iowa’s is a gold-plated dome in Des Moines that sits on a massive building. In front of it is a statue of three figures from the state’s history, all facing westwards. Iowa, we also found, is home to one of the oldest mosques in the United States, also with the first National Muslim Cemetery in North America. The things we learn everyday.

I guess that explains why it has remained a swing state for a while.

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