ktravula – a travelogue!

India Night

At the core of the events of yesterday evening was diversity, and India’s contribution to the world. India is the seventh-largest country in world by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. It is home to one of the world’s oldest civilizations, and they gave us Yoga, Bollywood, Buddhism, long hair, Hinduism, Karma Sutra, and – as I discovered yesterday – the game of Chess, Ludo, and Snake & Ladders.

The night, just like the Africa Night, or the International Night here was for food, dancing, fashion, trivia and a general culture fest of the country. Here are pictures. it was memorable, to say the least.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

-WB Yeats

The Big Quiz

There are several variations of this joke. When I first heard it in early 2000, it involved former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair and our former Senate President Chuba Okadigbo. Read this one and laugh your head out. The names have been adapted to suit current political climes. I found it on Facebook. I think it fits into the category of politically incorrect. 🙂

____________________________

While visiting the United States last year, President Umar Yar’adua of Nigeria was invited to have a drink with the president at the Oval Office. He asks President Bush what his leadership philosophy is, and he says that it is to surround himself with intelligent people.

Yar’adua asks President Bush how he knows that his advisers are intelligent.

“I do so by asking them the right questions,” says President Bush. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

He picks up the phone, calls Mr. Colin Powell and says, “Mrs. Secretary of State. Please answer this question: Who is your parents’ son that is not your brother?”

Colin Powell responds, “It’s me, sir.”

“Correct. Thank you and good-bye, sir,” says the President. He hangs up and says, “Did you get that, Mr. Yar’adua?”

“Yes, yes, Mr. Bush. I thank you very much. I will definitely be using that!”

Upon returning to Abuja, he decides to put the theory to test so he calls up his Attorney General, Mr. Aondoakaa and asks him to come to the State House. When they finally meet, he says:

“Alright Mr. Attorney General. Here is a test that might cost you your job.”

“What’s on your mind sir?”

“Uh, your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or your sister. Who is it?”

The poor Attorney General stammers for a second and finally asks, “Can I think about it and get back to you?” The president agrees, and Aondoakaa leaves. He then immediately calls a meeting of other senior cabinet members and they puzzle over the question for several hours, but nobody can come up with an answer.

Finally, in desperation, Aondoakaa calls Thabo Mbeki, the then president of South Africa, on the phone and explains his problem.

“Now look here Thabo, your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother, or your sister. Who is it?”

Mbeki answers immediately, “It’s me, of course.”

Much relieved, Aondoakaa rushes back to the State House and exclaims,”I know the answer, sir! I know who it is! It’s Thabo Mbeki!”

And President Yar’adua yells back at him in disgust, “Come on man. You’re not smart at all. I’m going to have to lay you off. It’s Colin Powell!”

Baby Showers

Some day before I leave here, I’ll be attending a baby shower of a friend and former student of this institution. A baby shower is an event where people gather to celebrate the life of a baby that has not yet been born. Alright. Forget all that naming ceremonies we do in Nigeria eight days after the child is born. Here, the baby shower takes place before the child is born. Isn’t it amazing? The said baby by the time of the shower would have already gotten a name. All that will be left is delivery.

There are many reasons pregnant women in Nigeria and much of Africa don’t celebrate their babies before they are born, and much of them are based on superstition. The most concrete of reasons will have to do with the maternal and infant mortality. Because of lack of adequate healthcare for much of the poor pregnant women in the villages who also lack access to education, good food and good shelter, many children are lost at childbirth, or to debilitating diseases afterwards. In cities, due to lack of good state or private hospitals, this happens to middle class people in the cities as well, except they are rich enough to go abroad to have their babies. I guess in cases like that, it would be futile to celebrate life when even its beginning is in doubt. The rest is cultural. From history, and from a tradition that probably predates the migration of Yoruba people to the west of the Niger river from wherever the came from initially, children are celebrated at birth, and named on the eighth day. End of story.

Among many other differences in pregnancy attitudes in America and Nigeria is disclosure. Unlike what I am more familiar with, here, people would tell you that they are pregnant even before the protrusion shows itself. For a reason perhaps close to superstition as well, you won’t find African women doing that. And you can’t ask them why. So,as it has happened to me several time while I was growing up, I would find myself unable to discuss the existence of someone’s pregnancy – even when it stared me in the face – until they gave birth. I wonder how much of that has changed with modernization.

With access to stable electricity, much of the problems (especially in Nigeria’s healthcare) would be solved. Sometimes, it is that simple. Hospitals will be able to offer better healthcare services if there is stable power. That is one of the biggest challenges before the Acting President Goodluck Jonathan who is now in the United States on a state visit to meet with the US President. He has about a year to set in motion plans to put the nation back on the track of development. A huge but worthwile task. There is a longer article about maternal mortality here by Eyinade Adedotun.

Check out other solutions for improving maternal health or to participate in the global call to solutions, please visit Healthy Mothers, Strong World: The Next Generation of Ideas for Maternal Health. www.changemakers.com/maternalhealth

Jungle Fever

I translated a poem for my Slovenian poet and musician from English into Yoruba a few weeks ago. It was a very short but humorous piece of work. I’ve also recorded it for him in my own voice.

But while we were looking for an appropriate background sound for the poetry recital, he sent me the following:

“I put the voice of birds. This would actually stress that you read in an African language and it would give some jungle atmosphere.”

Even though the bird effect turned out pretty well in the end, I really couldn’t stop wondering about what his reasons for it really reflects. It sounds like there is definitely a wrong assumption somewhere in there. Or maybe it’s just me. There are birds in England, India and Canada too, right? If birds and the “jungle atmosphere” is enough to identify an African language, what animals would be required to make noise in the background if I were to read in an American language? A bear, perhaps? Hard rock? Or a gun shot? How far do we go until such assumptions just turn into a bunch of pointless categorizations?

It was not long ago that I discovered that many people here wouldn’t really believe that I’d never seen animals in the wild until I came to the United States. (I saw a monkey, a chimp, a gorilla, a zebra, a lion, an elephant, a camel, a fox, and an ostrich for the first time in a public zoo of what later became my University in Ibadan. I was about eight years old then. I later saw some baboons in the wild when I went to Kenya in 2005, but before then, beside dogs, chicken, cats, cattle and sheep, most of the animals I’ve seen have been in confinement.) Cougar Village alone however has a large population of deer, geese, raccoons, cats and squirrels than I’ve ever seen anywhere, walking free without confinement. And the geese are wilder than any I’ve ever seen anywhere. One day in the winter, I saw a lonely fox walking by itself on the highway close to where humans might be found walking innocently on a lonely day. Maybe Cougar Village was the kind of jungle he meant!

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