ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Travelling category.

A Night in Wales: Of Bilingualism in Britain

For a long time, my idea of a British Education, from the safe distance of post-colonial Nigeria, always came through the lens of English language. After all, there is a reason colonialism itself was conducted through the language, and why – over the many years after colonialism – we over here have yet to arrive at any other consensus language with which to conduct government and other communicative business. This changed in one day, last week, which I spent traveling around Cardiff, the Welsh capital, in company of Jeremy Grange, a reporter for the BBC on whose invitation I had arrived at the city to meet with a few people, and understand the development and use of Welsh as not just a medium of instruction and a language of governance, but also a language of education through which the small country has found and is expressing its individual identity in that entity called Great Britain.

From the bilingual signs at the Cardiff Central train station, the visitor is welcomed into the city with a reality that although this is still part of Britain, an old empire that once ran the globe with one language (and plenty boots on the ground), one was entering into another realm where the role of English is at best complementary. And not only were the bilingual signs everywhere, the first language on each sign was always Welsh, followed by English. For a foreigner coming from a place where – even with its over 521 languages – one would be hard pressed to find a bilingual sign on the streets, it was quite easy to be shocked and disoriented. This, as the mind reminds over and over, was part of the Great Britain. Yet one is asked to contemplate bilingualism as a normal fact of life.

Not too long ago, in the eighties Nigeria when I was growing up, it was commonplace to be punished in the schools for speaking in one’s native language within the school premises – a fact I realised, to my surprise, was once the case in Wales too in the 19th and early 20th Century. Referred to as the Welsh Not, wooden signs were placed on the necks of students who used the mother tongue within the school premises. This was transferred among the erring students until the end of the day when the last student with the sign on their neck got punished. In my 80s Nigeria, ALL the students who spoke Yorùbá (in my case) were punished, and this was done with the support of most parents. I’ve mentioned in many write-ups (see Speaking the Machine in this Farafina Issue) about how my father’s dramatic intervention in my classroom one day changed my perception of this policy and set me on this current path. But not many parents pushed back. The result today is a generation of people to whom the mother tongue is at best a tolerable nuisance and at worst a hinderance to their career success.

My day in Wales took me first to the Radio Cymru (and Radio Wales), which both broadcast to mostly Welsh audiences. The former does fully in Welsh, and I was able to meet a producer and some presenters, and to also listen in on a live show. The latter broadcasts in English to the same audience. I then went to a Welsh-medium high school Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf which is one of the largest of such schools in the country. It was a great time interacting with the students, both in classroom environments and at lunch with the principal, learning about their motivations, their experiences with the Welsh medium (especially those from English-speaking homes), and their hopes for the future. It was a wonderful and enlightening experience. In the evening, I had lunch with Jon Gower, a notable writer in the Welsh and English languages whose work and years of experience had a lot to teach me about the role of the mother tongue in asserting a cultural identity. I intend to write more about these experiences, in detail, in coming days.

A Few Nights in Jordan

Guest Post by Asha Kansal

Every other year or so I am lucky enough to have the chance to visit family in India. Traditionally, after our big, fun visits there I extend one of my layovers back to the States in order to take advantage and explore another country. This time around I was determined to visit a friend of mine who had recently moved back home to Jordan. I’ve been to the Middle East only once before (another extended layover) and got to see about 5 hours worth of Dubai. But this visit would be different. In the end I would be there for a little over a week.

My other key motivation to visit was to see for myself what a piece of the Middle East is really like. I’m fed up being told by an ignorant and biased media what to think and believe. Even the term Middle East makes some cringe. The more I interact with Arabic people in the U.S. the more I realize what a diverse, intellectual, and fascinating part of the world they come from! It is becoming increasingly worrisome that the atmosphere in too much of the U.S. is becoming conducive towards hate and racism against a culture that some are too lazy to even try to understand and respect. So I wanted to see for myself what Jordan has to offer, despite a slew of dear friends and family telling me to reconsider because “it’s too risky.”

Before going I had no idea what to expect. I’m an American girl in my late 20s, and I was just thankful that I have this ambiguous brown skin and dark hair which would help me blend in. The first few times that people asked me where I’m from, when they realized I wouldn’t respond back to their Arabic questions, I hesitated to say “America” out of fear that they would have some negative feelings towards our country for some reason I don’t even know. But 100% of the time, Jordanians, young, old, fluent or not in English, taxi driver or acquaintance, would say “welcome” with a smile that was genuine and respectful. Some days I would just meander through the streets alone, taking in the sights, getting lost occasionally, and making small talk with street vendors. Every single interaction with someone there was positive. They see no reason to discriminate!

On nights that we went out, bars would sometimes be swanky enough that I felt underdressed in my expensive jackets and red lipstick. Even their martinis are better than ours.

Cafes on all nights are packed with a mix of people smoking hookah and drinking the biggest variety of delicious non-alcoholic drinks you could imagine. Women in hijabs, women without, friends mingling, old and young, Christians, non-Christians…it was an eclectic mix wherever I went.

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I traveled to Jarash and hiked around the ancient Roman ruins that lie 50 kilometers from Syria. I was so grateful to have such a beautiful experience there. In such a magnificent and breathtaking place, it was completely empty of tourists, due to the unfounded fear that the city is too risky to visit now, due to ISIS’ presence in 2 different countries outside of Jordan.

The Dead Sea was an extraordinary experience. With the high salinity of the water, all you can do is float and bob around in the water; even swimming to the deepest parts is safe as it’s impossible to drown! It’s tradition to get a full-body mud pack from the black, gooey mud straight from the bottom of the sea. It’s chalk full of nutrients for the skin. You can get a lovely and eerily close look at Palestine from the coast as well.

Amman itself offers such a cool mix of things to do. Their shopping malls are like the U.S, except you can sit down and have some hookah in the middle of the mall if you want a break! There are plenty of neat cafes, restaurants, and bars to hang out at, with a surprisingly big number of Westerners enjoying life there. Amman has its own special Roman ruins and amphitheater, part of which impressively sit on top of a hill near the center of the city. Visiting a Hammam and getting the biggest full-body exfoliation and bath of your life by experienced women is another amazing experience! It’s a fascinating city to be in and the people in it make it that much more fun and interesting – good conversation is never hard to find.

I want to share my experience so that people get used to hearing the term “Middle East” and not immediately associate it with “war,” “ISIS,” and “terrorism.” The world is made up of so many different cultures that all we can do is respect one another and even learn a little from each other. There’s no reason to hate. It just doesn’t do any good. And as stupid and common sense as that sounds to me, there are millions of people who do just that towards Arabs.

What an eye-opening experience that I hope to continue to expand upon! Not everything is how we think we understand; we can truly understand that which we actually experience.

———-

Asha Kansal is a graduate of Linguistics/TESL at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, currently working as a full time ESL instructor. She’s an aspiring travel and food blogger.

Fireworks at Ifẹ Grand Resorts

2015-12-06 19.50.33 2015-12-06 19.50.44 2015-12-06 19.50.56 2015-12-06 19.51.16 2015-12-06 19.51.18 2015-12-06 19.54.15-1 2015-12-06 19.54.16-1 2015-12-06 19.54.16-2 2015-12-06 19.54.18 2015-12-06 19.54.20 2015-12-06 19.54.22-2 2015-12-06 19.54.22-3 2015-12-06 19.54.37 2015-12-06 19.54.40-1 2015-12-06 19.54.40-3 2015-12-06 19.54.46 2015-12-06 19.54.50-1 2015-12-06 19.54.54 2015-12-06 19.55.25-2 2015-12-06 19.55.28 2015-12-06 19.58.24 2015-12-06 19.58.36 2015-12-06 19.59.08 2015-12-06 19.59.43 Late Sunday evening (December 6, 2015), after a day of chasing after the new king with known and unknown cues that led us into his new renovated palace at Enuwa, a few minutes drive from the Ilésà Bus Park, I got another tip of his new destination: a location a few minutes’ drive from the Ifẹ̀ toll gate where the construction of the Ifẹ Grand Resorts was about to be flagged off. It is a replica of the Lagos equivalent called Inagbe Grand Resorts.

Already tired from a day of driving and taking in the excitement of the coronation, we demurred a bit, until no longer practicable, and then headed out of the city towards this destination where dignitaries from across the country had come to honour the Ọọ̀ni as he begins this new tourist attraction promised to Ifẹ̀.

As expected, the most conspicuous marker of this location was a pile of hundreds of cars and security convoys parked on either side of the road while their illustrious occupants participated in the flag off events. And luckily for this traveller already done with listening to speeches and other “ceremonial” trappings, we arrived there right at the time when the flag off was completed and the fireworks had begun.

A nice design for the pitch-black evening sky, and a beautiful distraction from the vanity of these visiting dignitaries and their opulent display of luxury, the fireworks and the noise they made as they burst into flames of different colours pleased me for a moment, providing even better satisfaction for the whole weekend. I was able to capture them as much as I could, along with some of the bustle that took place afterwards as the VIPs made their way back into the town, freeing up the highway for travellers to use.

Coronation Colours

2015-12-07 13.38.17 2015-12-07 08.26.45 2015-12-07 08.26.48 2015-12-07 13.45.55-1 The city of Ifẹ̀ and environs wore a festive look all through the weekend. You couldn’t expect less for the coronation of the Ọọ̀ni, the spiritual head of all Yorùbá, Ọba Adéyẹyè Ẹniìtàn Ògúnwùsì (whom we last met here as an energetic tour guide of his expansive resort in Lagos). For one moment on Monday, everyone who was anyone in the Yorùbá nation was going to be around to celebrate one man as he receives his staff of office, officially, from the governor of the state: a mostly ceremonial occasion as the real “coronation” has been performed in the form of rituals and rites over the last couple of weeks.

On the way to Ilé-Ifẹ̀, I pondered the unpredictable creativity of life. I’d visited the town a number of times as a student, as a visitor, as a tourist, and as a passer-by on the way to somewhere else. On this visit, I was visiting as family, to celebrate a man I’d called “Brother Yẹyè” while we grew up in Akóbọ, Ibàdàn, in the eighties, and whose only daughter is my oldest niece. It brought new meaning to serendipity, interconnectedness, and certainly to the dynamics of family. It was also a nice reunion with other friends and family from far and wide who had come to honour he who will now be called our king, Ọba Adéyẹyè Ẹniìtàn Babátúndé Ògúnwùsì, the 51st Ọọ̀ni of Ifẹ, and successor to the throne of Odùduwà.

Late Sunday evening, along with a number of royal guests, the Ọọ̀ni flagged off his new Ifẹ̀ Grand Resorts construction project at a location on the outskirts of town, with loud fireworks and a cultural display. The aim is to replicate the success of the Lagos equivalent, and turning the city into a tourist destination. The resort, according to him, is one of many planned projects to give the ancient town a modern look while also providing employment for the youths.

These are a few photos from the weekend.

Here’s to a long and successful reign for the king over Ifẹ̀ and all of the Yorùbá nation. Here’s also to a subsequent return to the town – for me – at a less crowded time in order to properly appreciate the architecture and expanse of the palace and surrounding areas, and perhaps the thinking of the man himself now tossed into the global spotlight with an enormous crown over an ancient institution.

Visiting Karen

“To be lonely is a state of mind, something completely other than physical solitude; when modern authors rant about the soul’s intolerable loneliness, it is only proof of their own intolerable emptiness.” – Karen Blixen (Out of Africa, 1937)

Last October, during my visit to Nairobi, I convinced a few friends to take me to see the Karen Blixen’s house/museum. But because I’d also indicated that I’d like to see other interesting and “authentically Kenyan” places, whatever it meant, I was invited to visit the famous Giraffe Centre as well which, as it turns out, was in the same vicinity as the house where Karen Blixen stayed during the time recounted in her bestselling book Out of Africa (1937).

For a better report of our trip to the Giraffe Centre, you should read the account of one of my co-travellers, Nyambura Mutanyi, whose memory and attention to detail makes the retelling on her blog a delightful read. The Karen Blixen house and museum was what I had imagined it would look like: a large country house in the middle of a large, somnolent landscape. Ngong Hills, the most notable inanimate character in the novel (and in that area of Nairobi), was visible from afar, prominent for its many curves that reminds spectators of the knuckles on a fist.

Much of the history of the house has been preserved in a walk-through speech that one hears (or endures) from the house guide as one walks through the premises. You can’t take pictures within the house for fear – as the guide insists – of having plagiarists steal the idea and replicate some of its paintings and contents in some other place. Nothing in my insistence that a ban on photography is usually to prevent a damage to the artworks from camera flash impressed the guide. In any case, she had her orders and wouldn’t budge. She however promised to pass my message across to the management of the house in hopes of a policy review.

Karen Blixen, the Danish writer, born Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke, purchased the house with her husband in 1917 (during WW1). The house itself was built five years earlier by the Swedish engineer Åke Sjögren. It was donated to the Danish Government many years after she had left the place and returned to Denmark, and after her global bestseller Out of Africa put the house, Nairobi, and the people who live around Ngong Hills in public consciousness. The Danish Government, in turn, returned the house to the Kenyan Government as an Independence gift in 1964 after her death.

One of the most fascinating discoveries I made about her life is the fact that she was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, which was won by John Steinbeck, and could perhaps have won it later had she not died later that year (of Syphillis-related ilness). The suburb of Nairobi where her coffee farm (and house) were sited has now been named “Karen” in her honour.

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