ktravula – a travelogue!

At Strathmore School, Nairobi

On Wednesday, October 14, 2015, I was a guest of the Strathmore School, a private school in a suburb of Nairobi called Lavington. It is a sister school to Whitesands School in Lagos where I currently work. They are both founded on a similar academic/religious philosophy, both cater to singular sex students, and both are day schools with members of staff, and students, from different religious and cultural backgrounds, and both offer the educational curriculum of the host countries. Strathmore is the first multiracial school in Kenya, founded in 1961 to bring together a young country towards a set goal of a more egalitarian future. Similar sister schools that cater to girl children are the Lagoon School in Lagos and the Kianda School in Nairobi. The name, according to the history of the school, comes from the Scottish word for valley, “strath”.

My visit to the school was engineered by my employers in Lagos as a way to share ideas between the two schools, giving me a chance to compare the students and school environment in the two cities, and finally to provide a chance to interact with the students especially on issues of career, talent, and passion. After all, I was visiting Kenya as a blogger finalist of a prestigious journalism award. Wouldn’t it be nice to give a talk to the students about how I got to where I am, how I’ve navigated my own life and vocations, and how they can also develop their talents and passions towards the future? I had looked forward to it all through my stay in Kenya, so finding myself on the campus a day before my departure was quite appropriately gratifying. It would have been equally nice, had there been enough time, to visit the Strathmore University which I’d also heard great things about. But it was located at a different part of town and time wasn’t sufficient.

The school surprised in the size of its campus, the school bus, the lush and extended vegetation, and the number of trophies won over the years for many athletic and swimming competitions, the relaxed confidence of the students, the huge and spacious library, but not very much else. The teaching environment, staff camaraderie, healthy eating cafeteria, voluntary mid-day Mass, boisterous, mischievous, but very confident students, and a range of teaching staff who love their work all reminds of Whitesands and the teaching and working culture there. Most of the differences are differences between Kenyan and Nigerian educational systems. In Kenya, for instance, the system is a 8-4-4 as opposed to our 6-6-4 system. In Kenya, the primary school lasts for eight years, although many people have been advocating for it to change. There’s one other notable difference though, which I’ll remember for a while: Swahili is taught as a subject, and is also used by students (and staff) in the school premises without raising any elitist eyebrows.

Strathmore School also combines the primary and the secondary schools, so students graduating from there only have the university ahead of them. Whitesands, however, is a purely secondary school, catering to just the six years of high school. This allows for a concentrated effort at students within a particular time in their lives. It probably explains the small space needed for all our activities in Lagos, while Strathmore spreads out over many acres of land. The land area accommodates two lawn tennis courts, a grass field wide enough to be divided into three separate standard football fields at any time, an indoor swimming pool, a religious shrine to the Holy Mary, and a number of administrative buildings, including classrooms, a chapel, and a hostel for university students who have nowhere else to stay in town. It also has an extensive parking lot where one can see two to three buses with the name “Strathmore School” written boldly on them, among other staff vehicles. It also has a bicycle rack for members of the administrative staff who want to use it.

My talk to the students went great. I spent some time first with the junior boys who charmed me with many of their curious questions about me, my family, my work, my school, Nigeria, and my language, among many others. Then, at 11am, the senior boys gathered for a talk that I’d put together, tracing the trajectory of my life’s work from early child curiosities to adulthood, Fulbright, writing, teaching, linguistics, and my future plans. Their questions were equally substantive, but also very engaging. They knew of Nollywood and wanted to know if it reflected Nigerian cultural attitudes, they wanted to know my opinion on political issues, they wanted me to share ideas of how to choose a career, they wanted to know more about my blog, photography, writing, etc, and at least one person wondered whether I played basketball. Even after the talk, before I was whisked away to Mass, a few more of them came to me to ask a few more things that bothered them as teenagers trying to navigate the world of career and vocation.

I left the premises of the school by 1pm after a lunch that was both filling and refreshing. One of the many topics I had broached with the students and staff was the benefit of creativity, passion, and persistence. I referred to our publication of students’ creative work called The Sail, and hope that something similar will take root at Strathmore at some point in the future. My experience with the boys show that not only are they capable of doing this and more, they are also willing to try. This, after all, is the most exciting, most creatively energetic, time of their lives when most life skills are first conceived, then honed as time goes on. For students brought up in the legacy of science education, most of them will eventually focus on science and technology. What I made clear however is how experience has shown us that you can be a writer or a creative person in spite of what you study in school.

I’ve now returned to Lagos, and here’s a sentence from an email I received from the principal of the school, a kind and warm host, Mr. John Muthiora, who had been my guest at the CNN gala, and whose help made my visit possible, and pleasant: “Your visit excited quite a bit of interest in writing among the boys and teachers alike.” I know, for a fact, that this is a heartwarming response that will delight me for a very long time to come.

Writer Sightings: Ndinda Kioko

This week: Ndinda Kioko


http://writersightings.tumblr.com/post/131822352375/ndinda-kioko-is-a-current-grantee-of-the-miles

To the East and Back

Travel, at conception, usually seems like a quick movement from one inch of earth to the other. In reality – at least as was the case with my just-concluded return to East Africa – it is a whole mental, emotional, and psychological trip, tremors from which can last a life time. A few hours ago, I returned from a visit to Kenya to attend the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist Awards 2015, in company of other finalists and nominees, as the first blogger to have been shortlisted for the prize in its 20 year history – a great feat in itself – for this story I wrote last year, in the “Culture” category.

From Wednesday, October 7th to Sunday, October 11th, invited guests (which also included past winners of the prize in its 20 year history), nominees, and the prize judges, were taken around places in Nairobi, from the famous Karura Forest to the Nairobi National Museum, among other places, for networking sessions and a chance to bond over conversations around journalism in Africa. At the final gala on the night of Saturday, October 10th, the winners were announced and the final prize given to the winner by the president of Kenya, Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta.

The tremors that remain however are more than that of a grateful writer whose vocation, done typically as a way of passing time away from the real grit of daily preoccupation, has taken him towards the pinnacle of a noble profession. They are also of a reuniting with a country – once visited before nevertheless – which holds a host of fascinating interests for a linguist and curious traveller. One week was not enough, and it never pretended to be, to explore the pleasures of a country of over 47 million people, covering about 582,650 km². But it was sufficient to meet up with colleagues from Moi University (Eldoret) where I had spent some time in 2005 with three other students from the University in Ibadan on a soci0-cultural exchange programme, to visit the Strathmore School (which is the first multi-racial school in the country, founded in 1961) as well as the African Nazarene School where a fellow Fulbright FLTA from 2009 now works in administration, to see the Giraffe Centre at Karen and a number of other places of significance to me as a writer and to Kenyan literature, and world history. Karen Blixen also features prominently. Making friends, seeing new places, and winning recognition for one’s work never felt so normal, ordinary, and exhilarating at the same time, especially when it was, for the most part, unexpected.

In the next couple of blog posts, over several weeks, I will be publishing – here on this blog that got me into all of this in the first place – a report of some of my most memorable encounters in Kenya, with pictures, and with perhaps enough restraint to avoid negatively contrasting Nigeria with her in the process, as I’ve done publicly and privately in the last couple of days. I can say, however, for a fact, that this is one of my most personally fulfilling travel experiences, made more significant by how short it actually was.

Habari, Kenya!

I’m currently in Kenya again, after an absence of ten whole years! And how time flies! Last night, the city of Nairobi welcomed me back into its breezy arms like a long-lost friend. I am here for the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year 2015 Awards, along with journalists from around the continent some of who, like me, have been nominated for this year’s awards, and some who have just been invited to participate in this year’s edition, which is the 20th anniversary.

Whenever I can, I will post updates on my trip here. By some luck, there will also be a couple of significant blog-worthy experiences around Nairobi for which I will be able to write a few long-form travel reports for you, the reader, and possibly for a few other publications. For now, in the comfort of my reunion hug with East Africa, let me go explore.

Saworoidẹ Again

Yesterday, at the Lights Camera Africa Film Festival at the Federal Palace Hotel in Lagos, this movie, Saworoidẹ, from the stable of Mainframe Opómúléró, was screened.

It is not a new film. It was released in 1999 (and, according to the director, was premiered during the inauguration ceremony of at least one state government in Nigeria during the transition to civil rule in 1999). It was however a fresh intervention both as a way to look back at the country and where we’ve been, and as a way to contrast today’s movie production to where the industry had been. That was not the stated objective, of course, of the showing. This is my conjecture, purely. The film was screened as part of an exhibition of films at the annual film festival.

For me seeing the movie again for the umpteenth time, and for my family members who were watching the show for the first time, it was a a trip back into a familiar cultural resource. From the regular folk songs strategically placed into parts of the movie to reinforce particular didactic points, to the copious but tasteful use of proverbs and aphorisms, Saworoidẹ delights in ways that can’t be successfully described to a non-Yorùbá speaker. Even for Yorùbá speakers not fully versed in the oral literature, some appreciation of the work might lack in depth, but never completely. The story is well told, well shot, and very well portrayed by the seasoned actors. It’s sad to imagine native speakers of Yorùbá not being able to fully appreciate all of what the work serves to the viewer.

For someone familiar with some of the actors in the film, the showing was also a drive through memory lane. Now deceased Dr. Lárìnde Akinlẹ̀yẹ‘s efficient portrayal of a corrupt chief was and remains a bitter-sweet treasure. The actor and professor died at 56 from injuries sustained in a motor accident in Ibadan in 2004, but not before appearing in a couple of films by Mainframe, including Ó Le Kú (1998), Thunderbolt Magun (2001), among many others.

One question I forgot to ask the director Túndé Kèlání during the Q&A session at the end was how the casting process was like which resulted in a presence of some of the biggest veterans in Nigerian media in many of his movies. Saworoidẹ was written by Professor Akínwùnmí Iṣọ̀lá, and stars as big as names like Adébáyọ̀ Fálétí, Tóyọ̀sí Arígbábuwó, Lérè Pàímọ, Akínwùnmí Iṣọ̀lá, Bukky Wright, a young Kúnlé Afọláyan and a young Kabirat Káfidípẹ̀, among others.

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