And I’ve joined the school’s soccer team!
Well, who am I to tell you not to believe it. Every soccer superstar started from somewhere, after all.
Have a fun April, guys.
Hey dear blog readers, I am seeking short fiction from Nigeria (or around the world) written originally in Yoruba for a short project. Do you know anyone (contemporary or otherwise), upcoming or established, who write/wrote short stories in Yoruba? Do they still write? Are their works accessible online? Where can I find it? Where can I find them?
If the only person(s) you know write only novels and not short fiction, please send me their contact as well, as long as they write in Yoruba. Thank you.
“Unconfirmed reports that forces loyal to Cameron are attacking rebels in Trafalgar square.” – As seen on twitter (@ssafac)
Watching and reading daily news, I am wondering if this is the future we have all been preparing for. (No, not you already above thirty-five, please 🙂 ). First Tunisia, then Algeria, and then Egypt, and Bahrain, and Libya. And Nigeria. And Wisconsin. And now London. Young people all over the world are standing up to define what their generation is going to look like. There is a pleasant bubbling feeling in my gut that goes with thinking about it all. I bet it must feel like this during the Industrial Revolution too.
There are snags though, for me: the still unclear role of the American might in Libya, the Saudi role in suppressing the Bahrain uprising, the silent “educated” population of Zimbabwe still dithering under Mugabe, Lauren Gbagbo’s iron fist over Ivory Coast, Moammar Gadaffi’s very elaborate family connection all over Libya, and the greed and tribalism that sometimes raises their ugly heads in my own homeland, among many others. What is promising however is the prospect of a new world, under which our children will grow, where the pursuit of happiness and the determination of our destiny would be in the hands of a new generation of well informed youths. Here is the beginning, it seems, and it is fuelled by the Information Revolution.
Forty years from now, I look forward to seeing the new kind of world we would have built by that time. In our hands, the youths of today, are the keys to that future in India, China, Mexico, Honduras, Jamaica, Korea, Japan, Haiti, Tibet, Benin, Iraq, and several other places in need of a new direction to the future out of the hands of the old, tired hands. The biggest challenge, of course, is being able to transition into a long period of stability and concrete global direction without a debilitating period of war the type that defined the post Industrial Revolution era. Maybe this Information Revolution will come with it the tools of negotiating world peace without bloodshed that the world has always seen. Again, now I’m mostly curious, yet jubilant that at least the generational hand of the clock is moving, and it is touching all corners of the globe as it must, one after the other. There’s something good about that.
Universal time used to be determined at a village of Greenwich in the United Kingdom, and everything was measured against it. I never could figure it out and I grew up wondering why Nigeria was always one hour ahead of the BBC clock. Later in the Geography class, I figured out why. It had to do with the equator or something like that. Then one day I came to America and found out that there is something called Universal Time (UTC). Again, like the old British hubris, Americans expected everything in the world to be measured in relation to that so called universality. A few weeks ago, I had scheduled a phone interview with Rosetta Stone and it was due to come at 2pm (UTC). All I saw was the 2pm, and I planned my day accordingly. I was sitting by my desk at 1pm when the phone rang. It was the representative of the company, and they were calling for the said interview. Good thing I was not still in the shower at the time. What I didn’t bother to wonder at the time was why I seem always to be one hour away from the standard or universal time.
There are other things that have changed. Yesterday I scrolled through a list of the world ranking of universities. In the 60s and 70s when the now ruling leaders and of the Nigerian society were going to school, schools in the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union among others in Europe were the leading citadels of knowledge in the world. A few people came to the United States to study. Now, according to the list, the first dozen or so universities in the world are universities located in the United States. I scrolled down for a bit before locating my own institution somewhere down on the list, and it was enough to inspire a little urge for schadenfreude at the other ones a little farther down the list. But then, it could be worse, we could be one of the British universities who used to occupy the pride of place in the top list of world class universities. Now, they are somewhere scattered on the list, sometimes even farther lower than Taiwanese, Japanese, Swiss and Swedish institutions. I will not try to hazard a guess as to why.
Chuks is a MacArthur foundation scholar from Nigeria now here in the US. He has his own ideas of why it is a better alternative to go to school in the US in today’s world, beyond the common knowledge that its universities are ranked far higher now more than before. The system of learning and studying are such that the student is built to become independent in thought and research. What is wrong with European schools? “I know of the British schools,” he’d say, “and the system is built in such a way that you get to regard the professor as some repository of knowledge – a person high up there who knows everything and who should not be challenged – rather than a colleague like you who only happens to have read more, and spent more time on the field studying the same things that are available to you if you work just a little bit harder.” Chuks has never studied in the United Kingdom. The system in Nigeria is a mixture of both, with a slant towards the British, naturally, and unfortunately. I have been fortunate to have experienced the impatience with professors in Nigerian class who believe that just by the virtue of their age, experience or qualification, that they were beyond questioning or challenge. I have also been lucky to have met the right ones who would fix appointments with you in a bar so that you could both examine academic ideas over glasses of beer. I have met egoistic teachers who disallowed you from entering their class only because you didn’t scurry into the class when you saw them coming. I have also met those who set their evening classes under a tree just for a change of perspective. The progress in my academic development is mostly due to the inspiration and positive reinforcement of those good ones, and my rebellion against the hubris and negative reinforcement of the bad ones. At least, I survived.
Or so I think. The biggest misconception about the teaching and learning system of the American classroom today – at least from developing countries that I have some experience of – is that the presence of books and the internet makes it easy to get through. Well, it is true only to the extent of the student’s adequate balance of time and responsibilities. This takes me back to my title. American mean time refers not just to the new role of America’s very engaging, individualistic, and absolutely absorbing educational system in the world of academics. I am using it to refer to its absolute mercilessness when a student dares to take up more courses per semester than necessary. (Yes, this post is about me again). I have personally come to see the benefit of a more relaxed, yet ultimately absorbing schedule that allows the student to get all that is needed in, within a realistic time table that puts the least manner of stress on their mind. I do believe that I have become a better student of language due to the work of the past one year. And thanks to that is due to all my teachers, both the brilliant, open-minded ones, and the empty and needlessly hard-assed ones. At least I learnt something. Perseverance will get you through everything. Or almost everything. Brilliance (or modesty) plus an innate curiosity will compensate for the rest.
But maybe a few decades from now, we’d be talking about Chinese/Japanese Mean Time. Who knows?
Two days ago, Edwardsville.
Best enjoyed with this song by Don Williams.
For Shanique Gayon Brown, my friend the moon-gazer.