ktravula – a travelogue!

Twurai Undercover

There is much to cope with when you are the wife of a sick and/or dying president. There is even more to cope with if said husband has now been evicted from a better working hospital in Saudi Arabia and is now back in the government house, causing commotion and/or being some sort of nuisance to the rule of law that has vested political authority albeit in acting capacity in the Vice-President for the time being. As a woman in the unenviable position of balancing loyalty to a dying man, taking care of said man and his political capital, and keeping sane within a barrage of flak from the citizenry, there must be much to cope with. If we could step back a little from personal disagreement with her personality (which we don’t know much about, except hearsay) and what the government represents, could we perhaps find in Turai Yar’adua a woman of substance who’s just being a loyal wife to a dying husband? I wondered.

Read up the full text of my guest-post on Nigerianstalk.org. It was enlightening even for me.

Twurai Undercover was published on February 25th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Fun, Observations, Opinion category. There are currently 11 comments on this article so far.

A Photo

I saw this picture on the wall of the Meridian Ballroom where the African Night Dinner took place on Sunday. It shows the writer Maya Angelou in one of her animated moments, and I couldn’t resist taking the picture. It was definitely one of the liveliest portraits on the wall that night.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.  – Maya Angelou

A Photo was published on February 25th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Academic, Art, Observations category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.

An American in England

An American visiting in England asked at the hotel for the elevator.

The portiere looked a bit confused but smiled when he realized what the man wanted.

“You must mean the lift,” he said.

“No,” the American responded. “If I ask for the elevator I mean the elevator.”

“Well,” the portiere answered, “over here we call them lifts”.

“Now you listen”, the American said rather irritated, “someone in America invented the elevator.”

“Oh, right you are sir,” the portiere said in a polite tone, “but someone here in England invented the language.”

An American in England was published on February 25th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Fun category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.

St. Louis to Saint-Louis

Today’s even in the Discover Languages Month was a talk by Elizabeth Killingbeck, a student of my department who had gone to Saint-Louis in Senegal in West Africa for a three month Rotary community project and a French-abroad experience. Elizabeth had come back with stories of said experience and was at the Plasma Lounge again to share it with members of the department, faculty and students who had come to listen. From a little after three pm when the talk started, and a little after four o clock when it ended, Elizabeth took us on a journey of her experiences, good and bad, in the West African country. It was worth it listening to.

Her trip to Senegal was doubly memorable for her and for us because Elizabeth had never lived within any community of totally French-speaking people, nor has she ever been to Africa (or for that matter lived within a community of mainly moslems). And on top of that, she is someone of not so large a stature that must have gone through so much to survive (even in the US) within a group of bigger framed folks, and here she was in French and Wolof-speaking West Africa in the blazing sun. Now don’t get me wrong, Elizabeth is only soft-spoken, she is neither timid nor shy when speaking about what she finds fascinating.

Wearing a green guinea attire that she bought while there in Abdoulaye Wade’s country, she talked about drinking water, flies, art, classrooms, children, vehicle art, street kids, food, family, language, camels, religion, literacy among many others. There were also pictures to show for it. Talking about water supply, Elizabeth talked about the problem of accessing good water where she lived. They drank from the well while she bought and drank bottled water. “Should she have drunk the well water?” Belinda asked me. “Definitely not,” I replied.

Present at the talk were the departmental head Belinda Carstens, the Chinese Professor Tom Lavalle, Prof Doug Simms, Prof Olga Bezhanova, departmental secretary Sherry Venturelli, the lab manager Catherine Xavier and many other members of the department. It was a nice talk over all.

Like in all of the previous talks in the Plasma Lounge, this one also had refreshments and drinks. The snacks was plantain chips – which I welcomed with all my appetite. Then there were marshmallows which Dr. Lavalle had brought just for my sake. See, this is one of the advantages of blogging. Somebody nice might read about your appreciation of the taste of marshmallows so much that he would actually go out of his way to buy you some more. I guess here is the time to express my appreciation for pineapple and chicken topped Papa John’s pizza. Not for everyday though. Just for Wednesdays. 😉

I think this concludes the Discover Languages Month events in the department. It has been a very good month for learning and sharing. I thank the organizers for the initiative.

St. Louis to Saint-Louis was published on February 25th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Academic, adventures, Fun, Travelling category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

Video Mardi Gras

I realize that this is a bit late, but I did make a short video of my visit to the Mardi Gras at the Soulard in St. Louis. Find it below so that you can appreciate the crowd. And the crowd you can see here is not even almost a tenth of the whole population of visitors on that day. I wonder how wild it would have been had it taken place in the summer.

My report of the event appeared in the Nigerian newspaper 234Next last week Friday. Find it here. This was my first time of being published in that newspaper.

Video Mardi Gras was published on February 25th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the adventures, Art, Fun category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.