ktravula – a travelogue!

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How To Survive on a Fulbright Stipend

Someone had searched for the following phrase “fulbright grant stipend how to survive” and have been referred to my blog. Since I’ve never written anything on the subject, I doubt they’d have learnt anything so far. Leaving one’s country and base to go abroad is already a trying experience. Add to that, having to survive on a stipend not figured to encourage extravagance as to guarantee qualitative subsistence could be harrowing at worst, or unsatisfactory at best. So here would be my response – from experience – if I were asked. Most of them are actually commonsense guides to surviving college.

Dear Fulbrighter in the US,

1. Get a Bicycle. Transportation is a bada$$ in any little town. If you are at SIUE, you’ll most likely have the bus shuttle,but then it comes at intervals. If you want to get to where you want to go at your own time without paying for gas or being frustrated by transport, a bicycle it is. I bet this works in every little town. If it is a big town/city. A bicycle might still work, but you’ll need a map and it might take a while getting used to it. Ask friends or faculty members for a ride. They will gladly help get you around. You’re an international exchange student. You’re VIP. Take advantage of it and enjoy every moment. If you ever get lost, you can also ask the police for a ride. They will eagerly help you (although they might have to search you for weapons first).

2. Cook rather than eat out. Papa John’s pizza costs about $20 bucks, and it lasts only for one sitting. A meal at a restaurant costs about $10. Home cooking will cost far less on the long run, and it will be more filling. Shop for groceries at weekends, and spend your time cooking at home. Attend campus events. Many of them come with free food and is open to all. Attend other social events too, and eat to your heart’s desire. In many cases, you are even allowed to take home fruits. Visit people. If you have host parents, visit them when you can. Tell them of memorable events in your life, like your birthday. They might throw a party for you and cook lots of food. Express interest in outdoor events and you’ll get plenty invitations.

3. When you buy books online, buy used books. They’re usually as good as new, and they’re much cheaper than new ones. Watch plenty TV rather than buy DVDs as they come out. You would have too much load to carry home at the end of your grant and may have to pay for excess luggage. All movies eventually come to the TV anyway, so spend your time watching the old ones you may have missed instead of amassing new ones that would chop off your stipend. If you must go to the movies, go in the mornings during weekdays. They usually cost $5 at those times. I wouldn’t say you should download movies or music illegally online, but there are many sites where you can watch movies for free or listen to music for free. Use them. Some will even stream movies going on at the theatres at the moment.

4. Do not get a mobile phone. You really don’t need it. Most campuses give you access to a house phone that you don’t pay for for calls to places on campus. You can also receive calls through them for free. But they’re fixed and not mobile. For mobile phone calls, use many of the cheaper VOIPs online. At the moment Google offers free phone calls on Gtalk to anywhere in America, for free. For international calls, use Skype to Skype conversation with your friends and family. You don’t need to pay for international calls. Mobile phones are a rip off, and you don’t need that. When you think about it, you don’t have that many friends in the US anyway. Those you know are mostly in your campus, and would be able to track you with your office hours. The rest can find you on Facebook. If you have to pay to call home, especially Nigeria, use Rebtel. The value you get from calling with Rebtel is twice that of every other online call services including Skype. Trust me on this. More than that, you can also use it with your mobile phone rather than scratch cards.

5. If you start a blog, don’t get a domain name (like KTravula.com). You get to pay for that. Use the free ones (like ktravula.wordpress.com or igwatala.blogspot.com. WordPress.com and Blogger.com can tell you how to get those. If any telemarketer calls you (you can tell their voice by how polite they sound and how fast they try to tell you all they’ve been paid to say in that little space of time that they have your attention), hang up immediately. They usually start with a question: Are you interested in free grant for your studies? etc. If you need to buy anything in the store, there are usually cheaper versions of that same product. Ask the shop people. Questions will get you out of any panic buying. If you buy any product, ask for warranties. Most places have them. If anything you buy gets bad, even after seven months, take it back. They might take it back from you and give you a replacement.

6. If you want to send money home (since a few cousins or friends or family might need it at some point – depending on how responsible you were before you travelled) – do not use bank wire transfer. It’s damned costly. Do not use Western Union either (Sorry Brian), except you can get them to offer you a discount. (Ask me more about this). So what should you use then? Well, how about take the money home when you’re actually going by yourself? I know it sounds lame, but when you get home, everyone would expect that you’ve become a millionaire, so you might not want to disappoint them. Besides, money is easier to carry in one’s own wallet. Else, you can use it to buy gift items and take them along, but remember that excess luggage charge is no peanut. Airline people are bada$$es.

7. Use Craigslist.com. There are very many things you can buy there for really dirt cheap prices: a good camera, an ipod, a DVD player, and even a bicycle. When you want to travel by road, or by air, book far ahead. By land, Megabus.com offers incredibly cheap rates. A five hour trip from St. Louis to Chicago could cost you just $1 if youbook about two months ahead. Look out for coupons. It’s America’s shopping culture/secret. Coupons will save you a lot of money. When you go to Washington in December, don’t stay back or go visiting friends in other states except those states are close by (Maryland, New York, Boston, Connecticut, Pennsylvania etc). If you have to fly to Texas on your own money, it’s not really worth it. Let your friend who’s inviting you pay half the flight, and then you may go. Else, visit states that you can get to by road, or train.

Here are the few I could come up with right now. You do not have to comply with everything, especially since I haven’t obeyed all of these rules myself faithfully. However, I felt that since you’ve been searching for information, I should be able to help from experience and observation. And now, I’ve run out of points. You may have to make up yours as you go along. Oh, and if this helps, do send me a mail or something. It’s cheaper than a gift card or a postcard. Cheers, and have fun in America.

Weekend Plans and Tunes

I was singing Fela’s Lady as loudly as possible in the shower today for no reason. It’s a phase that comes and goes. A particular song finds its way back into my consciousness and remains there for days until something else knocks it off. Without doubt one of the musician’s most danceable and happiness inducing tunes, Lady has taken over my consciousness; not just the singing part of the track but the nice arrangement of horns, guitars and drums that introduce it. I now have reason to believe that Fela included so much instrumentation time on his tracks and little singing time so that when the listener feels like listening only to the sounds, they can be catered for without having to endure his voice, or politics.

My weekend has begun. It mostly begins on Thursday evenings when all classes are done. What I’ve been doing since then out of class work is scouring the internet for new places to visit. My search has led me to the Scott Joplin’s House in St. Louis and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts Centre also in the city. I have tonight to get much of my course work out of the way then take to the road. I can’t think of something more fun to do this weekend.

Now, those interested in Fela’s ballads should do well to check this out. One of his most famous slow jamz is titled Trouble Sleep Yanga Wake Am as well as Dog Eat Dog and Observation is No Crime. Needless to say, I’m so extremely jealous of those discovering Fela’s music for the very first time. Even for me listening to them again in intervals of weeks, I still get the same thrills of the very first time. Enjoy the weekend, good people.

Note on photo: Seen at the International Institute last week. I never knew that Joseph Pulitzer was an immigrant. He came into the country from Hungary.

The Lessons from Chile

Since yesterday when I stayed up for much of the night following the news of the rescue of mining workers who have been trapped 2230ft underground for 68 days, I’ve been wondering what lessons there might be to learn from the episode. Surely there has to be more to pick out of the diligence and nationalism that overwhelmed the miners, their family, the country and the world in general while the capsule went down into the hold and picked them out one after the other to a jubilant, ecstatic audience. In some way, it exemplified for me the triumph of courage, determination and persistence in the face of odds.

On another level, it shows what humans can do when they put their minds together as one forgetting all differences. As a citizen of a developing country where grumbling is one of the most ubiquitous pastime, I began to wonder whether I would have enough patience to withstand the inevitable comparisons of scenarios that was bound to start as soon as the first miner was rescued. If this were Nigeria, what would have happened? Or, how would it have turned out in the end. I refuse to engage in such whatifs because they inevitably seek to relegate human courage and resilience to a pessimistic viewpoint conditioned by circumstances and cynicism. Fact: human resilience will always thrive in the face of odds wherever it is tested, whether in Apartheid South Africa, impoverished Zimbabwe, repressed China, developing Chile, failing Nigeria or advanced America. It’s simply a triumph of human will.

Monday at the Institute

Yesterday I returned to the Institute at St. Louis to continue my work as a volunteer in adult literacy teaching. Getting to the place was a little easier this time, and the music from the radio helped. Oh, there was this awesome show on the NPR about how the economy of Brazil was turned around by two young men who introduced a new (first virtual, and later real) currency, the URV, and helped to turn the tide of the country’s spiral inflation.

My student on Monday was a man from Bhutan of between sixty and sixty-five years old. He had never learnt to read or write in his life and was just beginning. I don’t know his condition of coming into the United States and I’m not interested in asking (nor am I even allowed/supposed to, I think), but I was impressed by his interest and a physical joy he expresses in his attitude to learning. Much of what we did on Monday were reading through images, repetition and demonstration. Then later we moved to dictation, crossword puzzles and word scrambles. The most interesting thing about each experience is that even when the students are not performing well in class exercises, there is a certain pride that come across in the faces of each tutor because of the efforts students have put in and the excitement on their faces for even having tried.

The students all come to the Institute everyday and will, after a while, learn sufficient literacy to conduct the business of daily living in the language of the society without help. Maybe not enough to read Dante, Shakespeare or Cervantes, but to do what they must to get through every day. If I could go there everyday of the week, I probably would.

What are the holidays of the traditional African religion

Well, well. Here is a question requiring a whole article of its own, and I’ll tell you why. “African traditional religion” doesn’t quite exist. If you meant “Yoruba traditional religion”, I would still have a hard time answering you because the traditional Yorubas believed in so many things. In some cases, there were as many religions as there were family compounds, and each person believed in different things and worshiped them subsequently.

What I can say however is that there were some popular beliefs that have survived colonial intervention and modernity and are still being observed today in form of a system of belief. Their “holidays” are not usually public holidays but are usually marked with fanfare and festivities.

One of them is the Osun Osogbo Festival which is celebrated for about seven days in July/August in Osogbo, Nigeria. The festival is meant to celebrate a season of renewal and rebirth and it include dances, singing, and a ceremonial pilgrimage to the river Osun behind a virgin votary, the Arugba. (See photos from a previous Osun Osogbo festival here).

I also know of the Olojo Festival in Ile-Ife, and the Oke ‘Badan Festival in Ibadan which are also annual events.

Ask me anything

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