ktravula – a travelogue!

What Else Is New?

Q: How do I prepare for teaching class, usually?

A: I don’t.

Well, that’s not true, technically. It’s just a short response. I spend all waking hours, especially at weekends usually mentally mapping the format of the next class that by the time it’s Saturday evening, I’m in an almost panic mode, worrying whether I’ve done enough even though I’ve been noting things down and recalling examples that could help pass the messages across better. But I don’t study much just for the class. I follow relevant links that I find online or offline, and I follow up on new and old leads. Yesterday I looked through the first chapters of Je Ká Ka Yoruba, the text for the language teaching again, and tried to see if there was something there that I hadn’t seen before or taught before. I needed to cover much of the weekly syllabus because of the Martin Luther King holiday that fell on Monday, effectively reducing my week by half.

Before I went to bed at 3am on Sunday night, I managed to read the first chapter of A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt for the very first time in one sitting. Last semester, I had only just glanced through that chapter because I had too much to read then. I got much of the ideas of it from the students’ summaries and what we discussed in class. Lazy, I know. But after reading it yesterday, I understood why anyone could be forgiven for trying to avoid reading it. For an avid reader, each sentence is a treasure of lore. It tells of some thing or the other that the author has either not talked about before earlier, or that he wants to say again in another way. I agree, the chapter could have been a little shorter, but you should read it. You should read it. It brings memories of things parents talk about. Reading it, I felt like I was listening to a seasoned elder speak of his childhood in a closely knit extended Yoruba family. If I could meet the writer, I would ask him too many questions. Or I would just sit at his feet, just listening to him talk. He is a good writer. He’s a good story teller too. Why is this book not read in Nigerian schools? Oh, I forgot, Wole Soyinka’s Ake has already taken control of that spot in autobiographical narratives in colonial and pre-colonial Nigeria. Their experiences are not the same, but they are similar, as I pointed out in class, lest they get the idea that everyone of us in Nigeria – just like this writer – do not know our exact date of birth. Alright, go and get the book, and read.

There is nothing new I want to tell you about today’s class. It stated on time and it ended on time. No other student has dropped off beside Gretchen who had dropped out after a first class. She left us for a class in Finance, so we’re nineteen now. Still, the textbooks are not sufficient. Many will have to share. We can’t complain. Now we can greet, introduce ourselves, respond in Yoruba and ask few introductory questions in Yoruba as well. It’s a start. These students are more agile, a little faster to learn than the last ones. I think. I could be wrong. They got the “kp” and “gb” far easily, for sure. Maybe it is because of the size of the class that gives this positive feeling and active participation. It is turning out to be a blessing after all. We may not be able to joke around as much as we did last semester, but we will try. I may find it harder to learn everyone’s names on time as I want to. It will take a while, but I’ll get there. Today we met esu, ifa, Obatala, and Sango. Next week, we’re meeting Wole Soyinka, and maybe later Suzanne Wenger. Maybe it’s not a bad idea to have such a large class. It feels warm enough. I love it.

I think that the most memorable thing I have found as a pattern is that I usually wake up early whenever I have to teach a class, notwithstanding when I go to bed. It’s a good thing. Maybe that’s why I’m tired on Thursdays…

Just Like Old Times

“There are three major reasons why I wear this cap wherever I go, around the University, and when I come to class as I will from now on. I’m about to tell you.”

That was one of the first things I said to them them, a few seconds after I walked in to the full class where a horde of quiet, curious looking faces of attentive students stared back at me, none of who knew what exactly the class was going to be like. It was just like old times. They gave me rapt attention, they smiled when they had to, they had random looks of wonder and intrigue. But they probably had never seen anyone wearing this kind of cap before. It’s African, made of the finest aso oke, from Nigeria, West Africa. The class was full. I had prepared only seventeen copies of the syllabus, hoping that there would be at least fifteen students in class, and I’d have a few to spare. There were nineteen of them. No kidding! The twentieth student signed up a few hours later. This is a long shot from my previous nine students of the Fall semester! I took in the sight of them, fidgeted for a few seconds, and found a way into an introductory talk that was meant to put them at ease while providing an insight in the content of the course, and what it would take to pass, and to enjoy.

“The first reason why I wear this cap is that it is cultural. Yoruba people like to complement their dressing with a matching cap.”

Before I told them where I’m from, I first asked them to take a guess, and none got it right. So, I wrote it out on the board, and I heard a gasp, and random giggles. “Yes,” I said, “By now, all of you are familiar with the name of this country since Christmas day, right?” They all agreed. “Well, what you probably didn’t know,” I continued, “Is that we have over 250 ethnic groups, and over 500 languages. You also didn’t know, perhaps, that Yoruba – the language you would be learning for the rest of this semester – is spoken by over/about thirty million people both in Africa and all around the world. We have also produced a Nobel laureate in literature.”

“The second reason – as you can guess – is that it’s winter, and I don’t want to kill myself by exposing my head to the harsh cold weather”

They laughed at this one. It was the first victory. “It’s true,” I continued, “I’ve never lived in any place colder than 20 degrees Celcius before. It’s a wonder that I’m still alive now in a temperature of sometimes minus twenty.” That seemed to shock and surprise a few of them, and I continued. “Has anyone of you heard of a singer called Sade Adu? What about the musician called Seal? Oh, you have? Good. Does anyone know who Hakeem Olajuwon is? He played for the Chicago Bulls, I think. Oh yea, many of you do? Nice. What about Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, that very dark-skinned man that played an Egyptian mercenary in The Mummy Returns and a French Legionnaire in the movie Legionnaire? He was also in the first seasons of Lost, I think.” I counted them and smiled. “Well, great,” I said “one thing they all have in common is that they are Yoruba, originally from Nigeria. Are you excited already? In this class, we shall learn everything we can about the Yoruba people, their culture, way of life, and language. And the first step in that knowledge is that we all must have Yoruba names. Yes, indeed. I’ve told you mine, and you’ve told me your American names. Now, you have to go and look for Yoruba names, their meanings, and why you want to bear them. Go online, ask friends, read books, but by Wednesday, we will all begin the necessary steps to become Yoruba citizens. Who’s excited already? Great!”

“Well, the third reason is that I sometimes forget where I left my comb in the room when I wake up in the morning…”

And so it begins, just like old times!

The Last Notes Were Dodo-Re-Mi

It was just as well a case of serendipity, because when I went out to cut my hair on Friday, I didn’t have it in mind to run into another Nigerian restaurant at Edwardsville. For all I knew, the closest one to me was the one at St. Louis, forty minutes away by car. But I did run into an African market/stall run by a Nigerian, right beside the Barber’s shop. The woman who attended warmly to me was Igbo, from Abia state of Nigeria who also spoke fluent Yoruba and knew just what I would be wanting to buy: Ijebu Garri, Yam tubers, cans of sardine, frozen chicken, ewedu, sugarcane, and a whole lot of Nigerian-themed food items that I couldn’t find anywhere else. Ah yes, and plantain, which was the only thing I eventually bought since I wasn’t in the mood for any of the others at the moment of sudden discovery. She also found me quite amusing a tourist when I brought out my camera and started taking pictures. In any case, it was another very warm home experience. I drank malt, spoke Yoruba – and the little Igbo I could remember – and had a little political discussion about Nigeria, while showing off my new twenty naira notes which they hadn’t seen before. (Note: Nnenna from the shop has already left one comment on my Barber’s Shop post, which goes to shows that she kept her promise to check out my blog. Thanks again Nnenna for the hospitality.)

It was serendipity because just last week, the class consensus was an almost riotous but endearing request for Nigerian food before the end of the course. And as much as I tried to dodge the issue citing inability to get the foodstuff as well as the problem of conveying it to class in hot condition, I still wanted to give them an experience of the taste of Nigerian food and I despaired in me about how impossible it was going to be, especially since I feared a possible lawsuit from anyone that might find discomfort after a meal, and hold the teacher – me – responsible. But they made it clear that they wanted it too, so I spoke with Tola – a former FLTA (now a graduate student in the University) who said that we could work something out only if I could find the foodstuffs, and perhaps obtain a written consent from them absolving us of liability. It would prove not to be necessary in the end, as I luckily got sufficient plantain from the African shop, and woke up early enough today to prepare it to the best of ktravula‘s kitchen standards.

Wash your hands
Put a little vegetable/peanut/corn oil on the frying pan
Open up plantains
Slice them to the right sizes
Add a little salt
Put them in the now hot frying oil
Wait until it’s golden brown
Get them out of the oil into a clean plate
Wait until it cools down a bit, and then put them all into a ziploc plastic bag.

So it was probably a surprise to them today – the last class – for them to find that we were going to eat something after all. It was not the most quintessential Yoruba food, but it was representative of something that we eat and they did not, until today. Many of them hadn’t even seen the plantain before. Of course, the feeding was preceded with a little slide show of the production process, just in case they want to try it out at home as well, but mostly so that they know that it wasn’t such a complicated cooking process. I was glad that everyone had a taste, said they liked it, and showed sufficient curiosity about how we eat it at home. One person wanted to know with which sauce and which other food we would usually eat it with. It was learning in a new way. I also showed them sugarcane, which everyone seemed to be seeing for the very first time, ever. (Thanks again to Nnenna for the sugarcanes.) I was definitely new to me that most of the people I showed the sugarcane to, even before I came to class, didn’t know what it was. Most said it was “bamboo”. Apparently, having eaten sugar is not always a guarantee that one knew just from what it came. Maybe the sugarcane is a tropical plant after all, native to Africa, Asia and some warm parts of South America.

With this, my teaching class for this semester has now come to an end. The class that began with a memorable encounter over thirteen weeks ago seemed to have gone by so fast. And just before an emotional group photo and final dispersal, we shared a few jokes, revisions, small talks (which included my blog information and experiences), and a shared wonder at how fast the time had gone, and how much we have learnt from one another. The individual class essays from student about their class experience are now with me, for grading, and the contents are enlightening. We were dispersing in the flesh, but the shared community of our collective experiences would live with me for a long time to come, surely longer than the taste of dodo in my mouth – the plantain snacks from Yorubaland that was really our first, and last, communal supper.

This Week

Class is winding down in three weeks’ time, but in my case, work will officially close on Monday the 7th of December when all assignments and essays are due for submission. For the final paper, the students have been given two distinct essays to write. The first one – which is unrelated to an anonymous teacher assessment form that they will all have to complete about me anyway at the end of the term – is a standard sized essay which must detail their most memorable experiences in the Yoruba language class. Their essay must say what they learnt, what they wished they had learnt, what their expectations were at the beginning of the course and whether or not it had been met by the end, what they liked and what they hated about the course and about learning the language and culture. They have been given the liberty to be free with whatever they express, but they must write something, and it counts for their assessment, I said.

The second essay, which is mostly academic is a short story that has been decided on as the main final examination. In the beginning of the course, I had made them read a short story titled “Why Atide is Talking To A Coin” by Anja Choon, and write an essay on what they learnt from it. The story is one written by a German friend of mine for her Yoruba language and culture course under Karin Barber in Birmingham, and it gave me a tour of the students’ mind about how they perceived the culture. Since then of course, we have also completed summaries of Toyin Falola’s A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt, an autobiographical novel this time written by a Yoruba man about experiences growing up in Nigeria of the 60s and 7os. The short stories previously submitted by my students but which I have now returned to them with my notes of correction all detail their own imaginative truths about Yoruba people, expressed in nine individual interesting short stories. They are as diverse as they are original. Though written in English, the instructions were followed that the characters must bear Yoruba names, must use a few Yoruba expressions that must be explained in the glossary, and must express Yoruba cultural sensibilities either in dressing or in demeanour. All I wait to receive now on the last day of class is their final draft and corrections of the stories, which I have also promised them to keep close to me as valuable materials from an unforgettable experience. What would be better – as I told them as well – is to discuss with the head of department about the possibility of making the nine stories into a book, a sort of “Collection of Yoruba Stories from an American Yoruba Language Class”. I like the idea, and they liked it too.

Meanwhile the standard anonymous teacher assessment questionnaire is a regular part of the academic review exercise at the end of the American school term which includes students having to say what they felt about the course, the teacher and the whole learning experience. It would be anonymous so that students are free to say what they feel without fear of future victimization. It always plays a part in deciding whether a member of staff is retained or dropped next year, the teacher in question will also have access to the questionnaire at least to see how his students perceive him. I like the idea, and I think that if the Nigerian educational system would adopt it, there would be less victimization, negligence and random lassitude in our educational system as we have now. No Professor will take his/her student for granted if s/he knows that they are the part of the overall deciders of his future position in that place of work.

But until Monday the 7th, I have two more classes to teach where I may or may not tell them about this blog. Now that they will no more be my students, they might need something to keep in touch with my ideas and progress, especially now that I’ve put on hold till 2010 every of their Facebook friendship request intentions.

To Principia

Today, I went to the Principia College, Elsah Illinois with a two professors from SIUe and another international student from here. Retired Professor Wilson had been invited to give a talk on diversity to a few students in the University, and it turned out to be a nice experience. The campus of the College (called University in Nigeria) is located at a site off the river road and overlooking the great Mississippi River. No words can describe the grandeur of the river as seen from the road while driving. I’m much convinced that it would look and feel so much better while on a bicycle. According to Prof Wilson, Mark Twain the writer used to come over to the river to get inspiration. Oh well.

The journey to Principia took a little over thirty minutes from the SIUe campus, and we had to pass through a few small towns including Alton and Elsah, each with a repertoire of historical information, especially about the Native Americans that made the area their habitation for many years before their forceful dispersal. Alton has the famous Clark Bridge, and there is a famous painting of a prehistoric piasa bird on the face of the cliff also overlooking the Mississippi river. According to Wikipedia, Alton has “its steep-sloped streets filled with silos, railroad tracks, and brick commercial buildings”, and it counts among its famous former residents Miles Davies, the legendary trumpeter/musician, Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist who was murdered in 1937 for his role in anti-slavery movements (and after whom the Library at SIUe is named), and James Earl Ray, the murderer of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jnr.

Today, I went to the Principia College, Elsah Illinois with two professors from SIUe and another international student from here. Retired Professor Wilson had been invited to give a talk on diversity to a few students in the University, and it turned out to be a nice experience. The campus of the College (called University in Nigeria) is located at a site off the river road and overlooking the great Mississippi River. No words can describe the grandeur of the river as seen from the road while driving. I’m much convinced that it would look and feel so much better while on a bicycle. According to Prof Wilson, Mark Twain the writer used to come over to the river to get inspiration. Oh well.

The journey to Principia took a little over thirty minutes from the SIUe campus, and we had to pass through a few small towns including Alton and Elsah, each with a repertoire of historical information, especially about the Native Americans that made the area their habitation for many years before their forceful dispersal. Alton has the famous Clark Bridge, and the even famous painting of a prehistoric piasa bird on the face of the cliff also overlooking the Mississippi river. According to Wikipedia, Alton has “its steep-sloped streets filled with silos, railroad tracks, and brick commercial buildings”, and it counts among its famous former residents Miles Davies, the legendary trumpeter/musician, Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist who was murdered in 1937 for his role in anti-slavery movements (and after whom the Library at SIUe is named), and James Earl Ray, the murderer of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jnr.

One of the notable sights on the way from Edwardsville are the many oil refineries in Illinois that litter the way. “Those refineries refine the crude oil from Nigeria”, the professor quipped “before they are sold in the United States at different rates.” The crude oil is brought from different parts of the world – and indeed from Nigeria – in large ocean vessels, are refined, and sold as “gas”. What he didn’t know until I told him was that the finished petroleum products are also sold back to Nigeria – like chocolate products – at exorbitant prices whenever the steam engines of Nigeria’s refineries go down and the continent’s petroleum giant finds it hard to refine its own products. Passing through those areas of Illinois that I’ve never been before only reminded me of Nigeria’s Niger Delta: plenty smoke in the air, and plenty smell of gas – a depleting environment under serious gas pollution.

The Principia College is an institution for Christian Scientists and it graduated its first products in 1934. The campus is small, yet beautiful. The student population is 490 and from the little we saw, the students are warm, and all find a way of interacting with one another much more than one would find in a large campus as SIU because of the size. An interesting discovery I made was that one in every five students there was an international student. And over seventy percent of those international students are from Kenya. All of a sudden, it felt like if I was back on the campus of Moi University in Kenya again. I still haven’t discovered the reason for this density in Kenyan students population. At SIUe, the international students population is mainly Indian, and then a few others. In 1993,according to Wikipedia, the campus was designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the Interior.

The visit ended with a very delicious lunch at the University cafeteria where many of the international students worked as kitchen staff among others. The food also somehow reminded me of my stay in Kenya in 2005. Maybe it was because it was the first time I was eating rice again in a very long time. Luckily, we made it out of the campus early enough to get back to campus so that I was still able to get to class where my students, who had already waited for nine minutes, said that I was indeed lucky by a minute, or I would have met another empty class. Spoiled brats, those kids.

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