Written on November 4th 2008, when I didn’t even know that I was coming to Barack Obama’s home state:
Dear friends,
I cannot resist this urge. And since we are in the mood for rejoicing,
I urge you to kindly do so with me as well. A few hours before Barack Obama
got his own ticket to the White House, I got news of mine to his great
country. Well, not a flight ticket just yet, but a confirmed selection
as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant. It is a one-year
teaching grant to a post-secondary American institution to teach my
language in the 2009/10 session.
As much a great news as well as a great challenge, I am now beginning
a new extensive re-immersion into the culture and ways of my people. I
would not be going there only to eat hamburgers, right?
Greetings on Obama’s victory. It’s a new day.
Thinking back, I cannot almost believe that it’s already one year. What this means, of course, is that a set of new Fullbrighters have already been chosen now as well. By this time next year, I will be back home, or wherever else the wind of life blows me, and this university would have got its replacement scholar just trying to find his/her feet. Two years ago, they had Busola from Ibadan, last year, there was Tola from Lagos, and now Kola from Ibadan. If the trend of names are anything to go by, I won’t be surprised if the next person to come over here is a “Sola”, “Demola” or “Bola”. For one thing, they are easier names for Americans to pronounce.
At two am on Sunday November 1st, time changed in America and everyone shifted their clocks an hour backwards, to deal with the late daylight that has 7ams looking like 6ams. Since about a week and half, I’d been noticing the fact that the day still looked very dark by 7am, and it always stayed dark until about half an hour later, so it was much of a relief to finally adjust with everybody else, and be able to get one more hour of sleep. For a change, I was also able to use the daylight saving switch button on my Nokia phone. Up until now, the function never meant anything to me other than “another American thing”. In Nigeria, we never had to change our clocks during particular seasons even though this same changes occur twice a year when the day gets shorter and the night gets longer. We didn’t change our clocks. We just adjusted ourselves to it. The changing the time part of the ritual here – I guess – is to make it “official” and generally uniform. It would be weird to get out at seven o’clock in the morning and never be able to find one’s way around because it’s still dark. But I can’t stop wondering: does Daylight Savings apply to the people of Alaska, the land of the midnight sun as well?
Monday 2nd November: