ktravula – a travelogue!

Caine Comes Home

On Monday July 2, my friend and writer, Rotimi Babatunde, was declared the winner of this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing – the highest prize for short fiction from Africa. The prize comes with 10,000 British Pounds, and the bragging rights that come with being singularly crowned out of a list of diverse nominees.

“The shortlist with Baroness Nicholson in Oxford yesterday: Stanley, Melissa, Jenna, Emma, Billy and Rotimi.”

His short story titled “Bombay’s Republic” (downloadable here) explores the almost forgotten story of Nigerian soldiers in Burma during the Second World War. In the citation, Babatunde’s work was described as “ambitious, darkly humorous and in soaring, scorching prose exposes the exploitative nature of the colonial project and the psychology of Independence.”

Rotimi Babatunde’s fiction and poems have been published in Africa, Europe and America in journals which include Die Aussenseite des Elementes and Fiction on the Web and in anthologies including Little Drops and A Volcano of Voices. He is a winner of the Meridian Tragic Love Story Competition organised by the BBC World Service and his plays have been staged and presented by institutions which include the Halcyon Theatre, Chicago and the Institute for Contemporary Arts. He is currently taking part in a collaboratively produced piece at the Royal Court and the Young Vic as part of World Stages for a World City. Rotimi lives in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Boiling over Healthcare

Yesterday, the signature legislative achievement of the Obama Administration – the Healthcare Reform (also called Obamacare) was upheld by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote. Among other things, it prevents insurance companies from dropping people from insurance who have a pre-existing condition. It keeps children on their parents’ healthcare plan until they are twenty-six. It basically fundamentally changes the way healthcare has been provided in the United States – a success that has eluded many presidents for many years.

I spied a few newspaper headlines today to see how the people on the ground relate to the ruling. I was only in Iowa, so my perspective is limited to a swing midwestern state. The USA today as well as an Iowa newspaper were basically optimistic, cautiously celebratory while advising that rather than repeal it as Republicans and other conservative groups have sworn, they should work to improve on the parts of the law that they find objectionable. Returning to the chatter on cable news tonight, what I find is that this is going to be an uphill task.

I’m only a foreigner anyway, with just a little knowledge of the country’s history spanning a few generations. I know however that the divisiveness and polarization of the nation’s politics is as old as Lincoln and as young as Monica Lewinsky. What is most stunning however is that this much of a fight is going to be waged over the right of people to have access to affordable and patient-oriented healthcare like the rest of other developed countries. In a hundred years from now, no matter who wins the final battle to be waged on election day in November, those alive in the world would be able to look back and see how – like the time of slavery – a group of privileged people were willing to stake the future of the country for a chance to get their way and keep the status quo.

On the one hand, I’m now confident of the historical place for the president for his fortitude and perseverance, on the other hand, I fear for a country in which this kind of fight becomes elevated to national attention. America, you fascinate me.

Memories of Iowa

The only mental picture of Iowa that I had before embarking on a road trip last weekend was that of driving through corn fields. All I had heard about it from politicians speaking to campaign crowds on television always included something about “corn fields” or the “hawkeye”. I never quite figured out what the hawkeye refers to, but what impressed me the most about driving through the state was something just as green: windmills.

Much of the midwest is a flat terrain. The view of the sunset out of my window in Southern Illinois at 6 o’ clock in the evening is one of the best I’ve seen anywhere. Being on the road at anytime from five pm anywhere around these parts is – if only for the view of the sun disappearing gently out of sight – one of the most pleasant. The trip however started earlier in the morning so we had a benefit of the sunrise as well. By the time we got to Iowa, after driving past Hannibal, it was already past noon. We had a stopover at Godfather’s Pizza (Herman Cain’s old job), and had our first encounter of a different kind of Midwestern accent.

Back to windmills. Somehow, for some reason, my idea of states with green priorities and dependence on wind energy never quite fit my image of Midwestern states. I thought of places San Francisco, or San Diego, or other parts of California and other mostly blue states: Hawaii, Rhode Island, etc. So when driving for about four hours through Iowa, everywhere we saw on the horizon had dozens of windmills, there was some disorientation. It eventually made sense with the realization that the flatness of the land makes the tapping of wind energy a sensible investment. (A news story about the disenfranchisement of ex-felons in the state eventually punctured my idea of the state as mostly progressive in politics, but that’s the story for another time).

At Cedar Rapids, we stopped by the Czech Village, a small neighbourhood created to celebrate the contribution of Czech and Slovak cultures to the United States. The small art shop which now houses a temporary exhibit of some of its most prized artworks welcomed guests with open arms. In 2008, it became the victim of flooding brought about by rain and the overflowing of the Cedar River. Today, a line runs about seven feet high in the art store showing guests the level of water when the whole neighborhood almost went under. As tall as I am, it took me stretching all my arm to be able to reach the water mark. The National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library itself was just a few blocks away. With contributions from donors from around the country, it has now been rebuilt and refurbished, and would be opened officially on July 14 and 15. (Little trivia: former President Bill Clinton was at the initial opening of the library in 1995, along with the president of Czech Republic and Slovakia.)

There are a few other memories involving Clear Lake, and Des Moines, two different but equally enchanting cities. Clear Lake it was where the three famous rock and roll musicians died in a plane crash in 1959. No coincidence, it was also where, on encountering a surprise traffic buildup on the highway close to Mason City, our vehicle got into a bumper-to-bumper accident involving two other cars. No one was hurt, except two of the cars. Des Moines is the capital of Iowa, with one of the most fascinating capitol buildings I’ve seen so far. Well, the car is still in Iowa, which means that there’s another trip coming up soon to pick it up. This time, we just might be able to spend a few more hours exploring Iowa City, the state’s second largest city, and maybe at Waterloo – the birthplace of John Wayne.

Iowa makes it the fifth Midwestern state I’ve visited so far, after Missouri, Minnesota, Illinois, and Kansas. One day soon, maybe there will be Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. I sense a book of travel stories coming up. Each of the state capitols around the country present unique delights. And like the huge one in Providence (RI), Iowa’s is a gold-plated dome in Des Moines that sits on a massive building. In front of it is a statue of three figures from the state’s history, all facing westwards. Iowa, we also found, is home to one of the oldest mosques in the United States, also with the first National Muslim Cemetery in North America. The things we learn everyday.

I guess that explains why it has remained a swing state for a while.

Iowa Sights

I spent the weekend driving through Iowa en route to Minneapolis. The trip itself however ended up as a trip to Iowa with a short stopover in Minneapolis. Here are a few pictures from “the Hawkeye State” which, to surprise, turned out to be more progressive – at least to the eyes, and to first impressions – than previously imagined from distant reports.

From the ubiquity of private windmills, and the stretch of corn fields for long miles, the presence of many impressive art museums, and the ornately designed capitol building with a bronze cast of Abraham Lincoln and his son Tag, the state was a pleasant surprise.

But, there being the limit to exploring a whole state with just a few hours to spare, we could only do so much. I am hoping to return there again in the coming weeks, this time perhaps to see the birthplace of John Wayne, and other sites in the town of Waterloo.

Nerd Propriety

I realized, just a few minutes ago, the uselessness of question marks in short text messages. In a world where everything has already progressed towards simplification – with “you’re” becoming “your”, “with” becoming “wit” and “you” ending up simply as “u” for the ease of typing, it just seems perfectly fine that we should just do away completely with the other superfluous punctuations. In any case, the words “who”, “where” or “how” or “what” at the beginning of English questions already tell us that whatever follows will be a question. And so, what I sent in the text was: “where’s my cake”. (And while we’re at it, we may as well get rid of the full stop as well, especially if the text message contains just one sentence.

I realize also that I may actually be the last person in the world who still held on to this piece of peskiness until now. But I should be grateful. It could be worse: I could be writing in Spanish, where exclamation and question marks still come at both ends of the sentence.

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