ktravula – a travelogue!

Mapping the Country

Living in the mid-west has its perks: you’re far enough from the oceans to live a relatively sane life, and close enough to equally pleasant points of interest to get a feel of outdoors once in a while. A few weeks ago, there was an exhibition of proposals on the renovation of the Gateway Arch and its surroundings. The city of St. Louis along with other donors decided to touch up the nation’s tallest monument and make it live up to its potential as a more viable tourist destination for the country and the world. The winners of the bid have been announced and will have up to 2015 to make the area around the Mississippi the mecca they promised.

I’ve been thinking about a few other places nearby: eagle watching at Alton at the confluence of the two great rivers, a long overdue visit to the Lemp Mansion (the continued mention of which keeps bringing hundreds of people to my blog since last year. What exactly is it with people and ghosts?), the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis with its replica of Roman art and paintings, and the famous house of Mark Twain at Hannibal. I remember visiting the tomb of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield and thinking that the city was such a centre of history, and then wondering what I’m going to think when I visit Annapolis and all the spots on the coast where the first slave ships first docked. I’m such a nosy wanderer.

I’m looking for as many pointers as my readers can provide, whether far or near. How much more of this country can I see and learn from in the next couple of months. We are travellers, coming to a city near you.

Becoming Citizens

I did realize today while prancing around the corridors of the International Institute in St. Louis that if I were to apply to become a citizen of the United States, I would be asked several questions that many regular Americans of my age might find very difficult to answer. What the capital of some states are, who was which president and what made them different and great, and what significance some milestones and symbols are in the United States. I was staring at a picture on the wall of some new adult immigrants becoming citizens of the country after going through the citizenship classes that the Institute offers as part of its programmes.

I also thought about what it meant to become the citizen of another country, obtaining such a privilege through rigours of study, diligence and loyalty rather than as a birthright. I don’t remember ever feeling particularly grateful to be Nigerian because it was just an accident of birth, yet some people would queue up in immigration offices in Lagos and Abuja from other countries of the world to obtain that as a privilege. Same for America. The pictures show the immigrants looking rather ordinary, but holding on to their newly acquired flags and papers with pride and hope. A new life, and a new expectation awaits them, along with a new status of being. What does it take to be a citizen, and how do we experience it when it is not handed to us as a privilege of birth.

On Fela Kuti

In within constant replays of Fela’s Don’t make me garan garan and a complete album from the cast recording of Fela! on Broadway on my laptop, my flatmate stopped to wonder what I was listening to that sounded so nice as a mixture of jazz and something he couldn’t place. I told him it was Fela, Nigeria’s famous musical export to the world, and the subject of a coming biopic as well as a multi-award winning play on Broadway.

What I’ve found out within interactions with Americans here so far is not only the ignorance about who Fela was, what he stood for, and how great his influence was, and has now become, but also the depth and greatness of his music and legacy. This is a generalization, I realize. After all, the Broadway play captured the attention of the world and won three Tony awards last year, and has had the participation and support of top Hollywood players including Jay-Z, Patti LaBelle, Jada Pinkett Smith and a few others, and there is a biopic in the making, also by an American film company. It is mainly the young people on campuses that I’d naively expected to have at least got wind of the man’s story in the news enough to be somehow a little interested. Now I know that it is too much to expect that so early (less than two decades) after the man’s death, his name would have become such a household one for young music lovers in the country where he himself was mostly influenced to his style of music.

Fela Kuti would have been 72 on the 15th of this month. A series of events called Felabration are now taking place in Lagos and other spots in the world to celebrate the man, his music and his legacy.

Photo credit: http://www.therealfemioke.com/dbFemi5/?p=189

Fall, Again

Fall, my most favourite season of the year has kicked into full force. It is mostly characterized by a changing, unpredictable weather along with beautiful leaves falling onto the ground. Everything about this season is like a deja vu for me, and every step reminds me of what it was to take them just a year ago. It also presents a problem of writing about it without being unnecessarily repetitive. The leaves are the same, all brown and ever present like dry concrete tears of the dying season. The cold is the same, and the air still smells like harmattan from a faraway place, and all that would it would take to make it similar to an equally stimulating experience in the autumn season in Jos Nigeria would be rain, and total dryness.

The dying here is gradual, and equally beautiful, depending on where one is: driving by the Mississippi river on the way to Principia or riding a bicycle to school through a long path of trees and a charming lake. What can never be said enough is the sweetness that accompanies every breath taken in the cool sun of October, except of course one is standing under a set of trees where hard dry nuts are also falling down in droves.