ktravula – a travelogue!

Home Never Leaves

I spent the last hour walking through a neigbourhood in Ibadan where I last visited about twenty years ago as a young boy. The memories have almost all faded along with the landscape. New homes and new streets have sprung up where trees and old buildings used to be, and I walked like a stranger that I now am, enjoying the pleasure of the welcome anonymity. None of the relatives I knew who lived around there live there anymore, thankfully. I would have expected shouts of “Kola! Is that you? What are you doing here? And who is this lovely woman walking with you?” Growing up has its perks.

I hope to spend the next hour checking out another part of this town that holds an even deeper memory: the neighbourhood where I spent the first thirteen years of life. The building in which I drew some of my very first breaths now exists in a different neighbourhood than the one I left it in. New neighbours, new ownership, and maybe a new paint job. I don’t know right now. I haven’t seen it in more than ten years. There exists a huge memory of my growing up that lay within the walls of the compound, and has gone with me everywhere I go. There also exists, at some level, a stronger desire to make a reunion with that memory permanent. If I ever become rich, I will pursue the desire. For now, this will become another tour of the long memory lane.

I have my camera ready, and the last image of that building in my head as I saw it through the rear-view mirror of the truck that took us out of there in April 1995.

Home Never Leaves was published on August 18th, 2012, with the tags , , , , under the adventures, Observations, Travelling category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

On Ibadan’s Literary Personality

Ibadan has a special quality which makes it conducive to intellectual and artistic production. It is a big city like Lagos but, unlike Lagos which is chaos running on crack, it is sufficiently laid-back. Consequently, the city’s rhythm is amenable to reflective activity. And don’t forget that the city began as a war camp so Ibadan has always been a city of immigrants, a legacy which makes it welcoming to newcomers till date.  It also has a vibrant, affordable and unpretentious social life; the history of highlife, fuji, juju, gospel and many other genres of music in Nigeria cannot be written without highlighting the importance of Ibadan’s bars, clubs and open-air joints to the artistic development of their major acts. And the city has long hosted the headquarters of most of Nigeria’s major publishing houses.

Add to this mix the city’s juxtaposition of age-long cultural traditions and contemporary urban culture,  its easy accommodation of the significant percentage of Nigeria’s academic elite based in the University of Ibadan, University College Hospital (UCH) and the Bodija area alongside the artisans and petty traders living in the city’s interior quarters, not to talk of the colourful and controversial characters who have illuminated the city’s fascinating and occasional combustible political history, and one begins to understand why the city has been so prominent in Nigeria’s literary history. The prestigious line of writers with significant connections to Ibadan stretches from illustrious names like Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Chinua Achebe and J.P. Clark Bekederomo in the 1950s and 60s to vibrant voices of the present like Kunle Okesipe, Niran Okewole, Benson Eluma, Ayo Olofintuade, Tade Ipadeola  and Ify Omalicha of blessed memory.

From my recent interview with Rotimi Babatunde, winner of the 2012 Caine Prize for African Writing. Full interview here.

On Ibadan’s Literary Personality was published on August 13th, 2012, with the tags , , , , under the Art, Literature category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Written Over Luxembourg

Dawn wafts in at a distance –

a crimson glow amidst the cloud

like mounds of angry smoke.

We float above a cumulus, with

old empires wasting beneath

the loaves of precipitations.

 

The child in me always

believed that angels lived here

up in the shining layers of the sky.

But now, black heft of crowded soot

hang there in shapes of gnomes

as our wing extends into a distance.

 

We remain a bump in the sky

trapped in man’s reckless bet

against wind and gravity.

In this cubicle, this window view

into a waking world

there is no silver lining, except us,

far above everyone else.

 

Defying the sky,

I am here as this daylight begins.

 

Written Over Luxembourg was published on August 12th, 2012, with the tags , , , , , under the Travelling category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Lagos Again

The state hasn’t changed much since 2010, except for more stringent laws prohibiting so many things. No more eating in traffic. Heavy fines for driving on BRT lanes, or for driving on one-way lanes. The roads haven’t got dirtier, or cleaner. The road cleaning worker service that has been there since a while has remained. There appeared to have been more traffic law enforcement officers on the streets as there should be: Lagos probably has more cars on the road than any other city on the continent.

A part of the 3rd Mainland Bridge has been closed down for repairs, for good reason. It’s better to be safe than sorry. The Silverbird Galleria looks like a ghost of itself, but that could be because 12noon on a Friday may not be the best time for socializing. BRT buses look a little older now, needing either repairs or replacement, or just some makeover. Much of what defines the state have remained mostly in place: the yellow buses, the long traffic jams, and noise.

In all, not a bad re-introduction.

Lagos Again was published on August 10th, 2012, with the tags , under the adventures, Travelling category. There are currently 3 comments on this article so far.

For the Dying

  1. Brutal anti-Semitic Terrorist Attack in Bulgaria
  2. Assassination of a Nigerian Senator in Jos. Nigeria
  3. Syria is and an interminable cycle of violence.

I discovered yesterday, to great sadness, that the man in #2 was the same gentleman – by then not yet a Senator – that invited a group of about six young “Youth Corpers” in Riyom, Plateau State, to his modestly furnished house, sometime in 2005, for a friendly, happy reception and exchange of ideas. I was one of his guests.

Update: 3.40am. Breaking News on tv says there is a mass shooting in progress at Aurora, Colorado. Two gunmen have opened fire on a group of theatreogoers in a packed theatre watching the premier of the new Batman Movie.

Update 9.15pm. The victims included 12 dead, and over 50 wounded. The suspect is in custody, lawyering up. His third floor apartment is being prised open by trained officers. A new debate arises on the liberal gun laws in the United States.

For the Dying was published on July 20th, 2012, with the tags , , , , , , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.