ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Travelling category.

On St. Louis!

Some thoughts occurred to me on the way to St. Louis earlier today that I must have mentioned “St. Louis” more times than I have mentioned the name of the city in which I have lived for the last one year. Here’s why: it’s the closest big city to Edwardsville, even though it is located in a neighbouring. The other big city around here is Chicago, and it is five hours away. I bet that people in Michigan find it easier to get to Chicago than we do in the south of the state. The city of St. Louis is just twenty to thirty minutes away, just by the bank of the Mississippi river, and it offers all that a big city offers.

It occured to me just today how similar to Chicago it actually is, in structures, atmosphere and general attitudes. It’s “South Side” is just as dangerous as the South Side of Chicago depending on the time of the day or night, and everyone had warned me to be careful wherever I went. Chicago, of course, has more museums and monuments, and taller buildings. While St. Louis has the Arch, Chicago has the Bean and many other attractions. And as a point of convergence, the Jazz artist Louis Armstrong has strong ties to both cities. In any case, the contiguity of St. Louis to much of where I live now has made it one city about which you’ll continue to hear so much for some time to come.

The trip to that big city today was uneventful today, contrary to expectations. Maybe it was because I got a GPS at last and had to endure a loud mysterious voice directing me to turn where necessary. I guess the only memorable part of the trip was when I finally got to my destination, and decided around the block that I wanted to buy some plantain chips to have for lunch, the lady at the desk of the African restaurant asked me if I was paying with food stamps or cheque. I knew what food stamps were, but I said I didn’t, and asked her to explain, because I had felt profiled by her assumption and didn’t like it. In retrospect, it was just a random welcome into a different kind of America and I should have embraced it as such. And I did, in the end.

How was your Monday?

Two Plans

There are two plans, each of them going to different directions, with different planning processes, and a different destination. One of the good thing about being in the midwest is the ease of accessing much of everywhere else in the country. In this case, the ktravula radar has picked up signals all around and has developed a very familiar restless feet. This time though, it could be more fun, and who knows, more challenging than the last ones.

Without further ado, here is plan A: St. Louis to Arizona (site of the Grand Canyon, and then later to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and everywhere else.) 23 and a half hours by road. Oooh.

The other option, of course, goes in the other direction, eastwards. For me it’s a less attractive option perhaps because I’ve been there more than once before. However, in this case, I am a minority. It would depend on the cooperation of fellow travellers to select a right site to go. In any case, here’s the other plan, 16 hours 32 minutes:

The “when” is uncertain, as is the “how”, “why” and “with whom”. The only thing certain is the desire, and an otherwise useless longing for new spaces :).

Dotdotdot

This is how writing procrastination works: you tell yourself that you have nothing worth saying, and you wait until such a time when you think you do. Usually that time never comes and you stare day by day at the empty page hoping that something miraculous would happen and fill up the page. You could be lucky to have tonnes of other things to do to take up your space and time, but if you have been notorious in the past for writing even under extreme pressures of work, teaching, classes, events and many things else, you would usually not be forgiven for taking any kind of break. Yes, I know the works.

The evil thing about procrastination however is that it never ends. Like the fabled Sisyphus bound to head to the top of the hill with a ball of garbage only to be sent downhill rolling with no brakes, and to be condemned to repeat the same process for eternity, each day comes and goes, and the readers wait, and wait. In some cases the writer gets a kind of cruel satisfaction from keeping them in that kind of wait. Well, I never promised you to publish my everyday thoughts. I keep some of them for private people, or send some of them to newspaper editors in hope that they find them good enough to publish. And well, I’m such a risk taker myself and I wouldn’t mind to hear news that someone actually placed a bet that I would not write as much this month as I usually do. Wait a minute, why am I talking to myself?

All of this make a kind of sense, doesn’t it, and there is a win at every turn. The other thing that could bring a greater fun would be hours spent talking to people about an intending road trip: twenty-three hours on the road towards Las Vegas and California. Now wouldn’t that be something? Yet, it won’t be sufficient excuse to stay off the blog for that period of time. Well whatever, life goes on. 🙂

Visiting Missouri Again

I drove to Missouri again today, the second time I’m doing so in the last one year. The state border is only twenty minutes away from my location. This time however, unlike the last time where I had to take a sick friend to the Barnes Jewish hospital, I was visiting in order to perfect my driving and adjustment to American road and rule system. For that, I had to drive almost around the state making sure that I tested myself on each type of road and driving conditions. Traveling with a University professor, mentor on and off the wheels, the trip took much of the whole day, going through a few major towns in the state. Missouri is famous not just for the St. Louis Gateway Arch and the Mississippi river but a whole lot of historical hotspots including Mark Twain’s famous residence, the site of the brutal fighting of the American civil war, the famous Route 66 among many others.

One of the places visited today was the Missouri Welcome Centre, a one-stop shop for every tourist destination in the state. Then I visited the city of Manchester where we’d gone to check up a few books at the Borders Bookstore. Borders is one of America’s largest bookstores. The only Nigerian books there were two new reprints of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, a different cover edition of Purple Hibiscus and another one of Half of a Yellow Sun. There was no Soyinka or any of the other contemporary names in Nigerian fiction. Well, I also found Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them, which is only proper since Oprah Winfrey had chosen it once as a Book Club Selection. There were a whole tonne of book on the other aisles though, and I had a good time browsing through a few of them

I was a Clayton, and a few other neighbourhoods in the city. Many of the pubs were closed for Labour Day. A few of them were still open, with considerable patronage. My own assessment of the driving exercise was that I’m now ready to take on the country. The downside is having to be in total control of a moving vehicle on such a busy highway as those around the midwest. Worse than Lagos in a few different ways, and better in a lot more, the main minus to driving is only the letting go of the ability to daydream for a few hours every day.

A Checklist for July

I feel guilty. I neglected this blog for much of the time this month, and that was because of two nagging issues: internet, and internet. I have concluded that Starcomms was actually a wrong choice of connection for me because I’ve been fond of using it at different places. Not having the connection spread of bigger networks like Multilinks and MTN, they charge more, and offer less. In my next life, or as soon as I find someone to buy this one off me, I will make a different choice. Starcomms is more expensive and offers less national coverage than the other connections. I’ve put this to test. In any case, there are still a few nagging things in my mind and I’ll try to say them before the month escapes from my grasp.

Just in case you haven’t noticed, July concludes my first twelve months of blogging on this portal. Alright, if blogs were babies, this one should by now have started mouthing “ba-ba-ba”. It is for this reason that I will also try to complete the pattern that has been the case since that auspicious night in Lagos in August last year when I made the silly decision to begin blogging :). It has been full of ups and downs. I’ve blogged sitting down on the dusty floor of a train station in St. Louis, on a delayed plane in New York, in a crowded bar watching the World Cup final in Ilorin, with a laptop battery on the verge of dying out in the absence of power, and even under the influence of several bottles of Satzenbrau in pleasant company. It’s been good. And let me confess, I have wanted to abandon it many times. But if I did, how would I survive it?

Now if this blog were a book, August 2009 would be the first chapter, titled THE ENTRANCE. The second month of September would be BLENDING IN. October would be IMMERSION while November would be DISCOVERIES. December was ADVENTURES WITH THE COLD and January SIGHTS. February would be tagged BREASTS & CHRIS, a whole dedication to the Mardi Gras in St. Louis and adventures with Chris, March would be CLASSROOMS, April would be LOSING RESISTANCES, May would be A FOOT IN TWO WORLDS, June would be BADAGRY, and July 2010 would be AROUND NIGERIA. Now that I think about it, it might make a thrilling read, if only a self-publication to distribute among friends, and not for the general public, just like that old one Drawing a Straight Line from Hamburng to Ibadan, never before seen by more than a handful of people.

I have not yet completely processed the lessons, the essence and the thrills of my short trip around Nigeria, perhaps particularly because it was so short and I’ve not yet giving myself the right reflecting space. No, no quasi-perfunctory visit would do next time. I may even need up to four to six months to have as much impact as I would have loved. Maybe volunteer in a local secondary school to teach the English language. Maybe teach them to act a play at their end of the year party. Maybe help construct a traffic sign of paint the zebra crossing at one of their community roads. I look forward in the nearest future to a longer immersion exercise in local communities in order to contribute in a more meaningful way to the lives of citizens. Jos is a special case, and as much as I tried, I was not able to reach the Red Cross officials this time. What have they been doing? How could one help?

All in all, it’s been a nice twelve months and I thank you for being there with me. I have just agreed to work with Nokia to promote their new product Nokia C3, so in the next couple of days, you will see Nokia related posts and quizzes one of which will earn one reader of this blog a Nokia C3 prototype to be presented at the launching in Lagos in August. (See this previous post.) From what I hear, this is open only to residents in Nigeria. So if you are interested, and/or you know anyone interested in winning the prototype, stay tuned to this page. All you would need to do is to be the first to answer a set of questions coming up in the next few days.

Well, happy end of month, when it comes. I am hoping that my last post for this month will be a poem rather than (or in addition to) the usual 10 reasons debate, but let’s see how that turns out. Let us look forward to August with peace. And who knows, maybe it will bring all required good.

PS: I’ve submitted two of my photos for a “Democracy Photo Challenge.” You may see them here and here. You may kindly leave a comment there too. Who knows what I may win for audience choice.

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