ktravula – a travelogue!

Summer is Over. Is It?

I’ve never seen summer. I’ve seen spring, along with beautiful green leaves all around an equally beautiful campus. I have seen winter, and snow whitening the land as if to prove a certain point to all foreign-born residents. I’ve seen fall, with leaves brown and restless, flowing with the cooling wind. But summer? No. What on earth is it?

Is it like hell, with an absolutely unbearable temperature which keeps people mostly indoors and all public parks free of visitors? Or is it like the oven? Is it like Kano, the reputed July heat that causes meningitis or just like a milder version of the microwave. Do the leaves shrivel? Do they sway? Are they beautiful or are they grey?

I’m not here to write poetry, so tell me what it looks like. Did I miss anything in my absence from the scene of action? Well I left that place in the middle of May just when the almighty summer was supposed to have begun. If I return there now, what will I find? Fall, no doubt. Summer would have escaped from my grasp once again. What did I miss?

The highest temperature here was around 29 degrees Celcius. That would be like 84 in America. There was this rumour that temperature in America was up to 90 in some places. Oh my, that would be like the temperature in Maiduguri on a regular afternoon. That means that my American friends could actually come and spend their summer in Nigeria. Go figure. Much of this country is actually cooler than 29 during this period. And it rains too. Oh, the rains! I should be glad I’m here.

Alright, I will return to that place, but not until the famed summer is over. Is it, yet? I like Fall. I like brown leaves that remind me of the leaf covers of eko and moin-moin made by old women in Ibadan villages. I like the way they look in photographs too. Who wants a hot summer when they can spend cool raining seasons in Ibadan, Lagos, and all over Nigeria eating spicy food, playing uncle, buying fuel in jerry cans, making day and night calls, killing mosquitos and generally playing he traveller?

And by the way, when I return to the States, let no one ask me how I spent my summer. I did not. You did.

I Believe, I think, Unfortunately!

I believe in development.

But many times, if you would ask me to tell you what exactly would be my indices of development, I might not immediately be able to point at much. (It would depend on where I am, won’t it?) But if you asked me about Nigeria, the first would definitely be a 24 hour power supply and a fast, reliable internet access. Then a repair of local fabric industries in Kaduna, a return of groundnut pyramids in Kano, cocoa farms in Ibadan and coal in Enugu.

But then if we had all of that, plus a higher life expectancy, healthy food for (almost) all, good healthcare and good social services, I’m pretty sure that we’ll still find something to complain about if we wanted it badly enough. Won’t we? There seems to be an inherent cynicism that never seems to go anywhere. We may start complaining that the neighbouring country seemed to be getting more action in the international scene and we want some of the action too. I bet that one of the reason why the first democratic dispensation was scuttled was that people still weren’t satisfied with the situation of the time even though they had better food, better education and better healthcare. This is not a Nigerian problem. It’s humanity’s.

However, I believe so much in the potential for development in Nigeria especially, and the tendency for things to get better if we talk about them often, commit ourselves into making them work, and helping to maintain current structures that already serve us well. But some times it seems pretty much like a futile effort with no light at the end of the tunnel. In the end, every drop of contribution will go a long way into producing a flood of results.

I’m sounding like a politician or someone hoping to run for public office, right? I hope not, because behind the hope and optimism is a nagging skepticism. I’d just read the preface to George Carlin’s Brain Droppings again. George is an amazingly creative thinker whose ideas sometimes frighten me within the folds of their allure. Here we do not completely agree, but I’ve read the words very many times over and I find them interesting. Listen to him though:

“My interest in ‘issues’ is merely to point out how badly we’re doing, not to suggest a way we might do better. Don’t confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how the ‘ought to be.’ And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there’s a solution, you’re part of the problem. My motto: Fuck Hope…” He continues “I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don’t confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything’s gonna be all right…”

Could he be right? I sometimes wish I could say all that. And then I remember that my name isn’t George, I’m not Irish American, and I don’t occupy the same societal milieu as the comedian who died at 71 in 2008. In this day of terrorist threats, fear of the apocalypse, global warming/climate change, handguns infiltrations, gun-totting robbers, unsafe cars, non-universal healthcare, unsafe drugs, and underpaid airplane pilots among others, we’ll be lucky to even make it to 50. It certainly requires more than just a few shots of illegal drugs in one’s veins to adopt such a confident stance in the preface to a best-selling work. Personal confidence with a large shot of daredevilry is much needed. With all that however, perhaps a nagging inability to look into the eye of day, yell “Fuck Hope” and really mean it, and move on with life has kept me from the really funner roles.

___________________

Pictures taken at the 350 vigil in front of the White House on December 13th 2009 organized to pressure the government to take (its commitment on) Climate Change more seriously.

Quotable

“It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don’t say it.” Author unknown.

Friggatriskaidekaphobia

I came across this word while reading a Wikipedia entry about Friday the 13th or the fear thereof. Thirteen is supposedly an unlucky number and many skyscrapers have been known to name their 13th floor 12b. Friday, apparently, is another of such unlucky days. Even in the Yoruba culture, the fifth day of the week is Ojo Eti, supposedly a day on which one is not supposed to do anything worthwhile. So when Friday and 13 decide to fall on the same day, like will happen this month, it is believed to be catastrophic. What led me to this search was a curious discovery that the cost of purchasing a ticket for a flight due for 13th August is costlier than any other surrounding days, costlier even than the 12th, 14th or 19th.

The logic is that since majority of the people are afraid of Friday the 13th, there will be less delays for said flight, more room on the airplane and thus more comfort. The economics of it is that the airline will have to make up for the sparse patronage on that day by levying all other passengers. But in the end, for me, the fear of flying on Friday the 13th will be not out of fear of anything but the flight rates. And that sucks. It would have been nice to put fate to the test, or would it? 😉

And secondly, just how do you pronounce the word?

Brokeback Mountain

I find it interesting that the historic “Proposition 8” ban on gay marriages in the American State of California was struck down on the same day that I’d plan to blog about this movie that I was seeing for the first time. Brokeback Mountain (2005) is a very moving (but to me a little discomforting) story of two men whose friendship evolved into something more and lasted for a lifetime, withstanding even the challenge of their individual marriages and separate heterosexual lives. I doubt that bisexual love has been depicted on the screen with this level of boldness before or since Brokeback. Wikipedia compares it to the great romance stories like Romeo and Juliet and Titanic.

I had also recently seen a German movie called Aimee & Jaguar (1999) set in the Second World War, a true life story of an “abominable” (by standards of the time) relationship between a German woman, wife of a German officer, and a Jewish woman. Adapted from a book which contained photos of the many letters shared between the two, and official correspondences post WWII, the movie was remarkable not only because of the same sex nature of the relationship but because of the way the story depicts the love within the dangerous power relations and politics of the time. I know I could have enjoyed it better if my German was as good as that of the actors. Translations didn’t help much.

Both films – given to me by the same person who felt that I needed to update my tolerance credibility by exposing myself to the two prominent sides of the controversial coin – were refreshing in their own way. They both ended up very sad, yet moving, with very affecting moments, good acting and nice picture. Brokeback Mountain features Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal and it was nominated for the most Oscars at the 78th Academy Awards. It won three but lost “Best Picture” to Crash.

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