ktravula – a travelogue!

For the Dying

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.

Fading Landscapes

Spoke to mother hours ago. Two men from the landscape of my childhood just passed away. One was Pastor, the leader of one of the first churches that shaped my most vulnerable childhood times. He is around sixty years old. The other was Bro Kenny, younger, the director of the youth arm of the other church I belonged to as a teenager. Together with a select group of agile young people who all lived around that area of our youth, Bro Kenny as we called him then, led us through that period of our young restlessness.

Childhood and youth seems to fade away fast enough, and suddenly becomes a lifetime away. Faces from times past come flashing back, with strong energy currents of a familiar place… worshipers in church about three evenings a week, loving life with purest of enthusiasm, young innocent teenagers developing a crush for the very first time for fellow members of the youth group, trial music composers, dancers, proselytizers, picnickers, thespians, and general happy-go-lucky innocent boys and girls growing up within a bible-based yet liberal upbringing. Childhood was a little stricter, with religious instructions that extended beyond the church walls looming around as a constant threat and bulwark against our otherwise footloose rascally tendencies.

Where did all that go, dusty feet all around Akobo where all of this began? The naivete of youth, and the delightful profundity of biblical directions that sought to explain everything away? The simplicity of the day, the sweetness of the rain, the long pleasant smell of the harmattan at Christmas, the noise of little children during church services, the laughter of grown women and the intensity of their prayers up to heaven, the offering baskets and the coins we put in them, the general fervent intensity of youthfulness and mischief – all just floats around the plate of memory. Maybe this is what one death – or two – does: remind of how much was lost. And more importantly, how much more once was.

Blues: Of Love and Losses

For Granny (d. January 14), and Aunt Banke Akintunde, PhD (d. March 15)

How does goodbye begin? With love? With a kiss on the lips or a warm hug in public places?
How does goodbye begin? Sour drops of tears in the beer of a familiar place or worse?
Or streams running down the ugly face of a twice-recurring moment without a sound?
How do goodbyes begin? Do they run like a silent brook on a gloomy day, or bubble
like the fresh waterfalls of a once-forgotten hill? Do they fall like raindrops on a desert?
Do they hum like bees after the smell of fragrance, or like light glowing out of a burning wood
Do they burn? Do they pinch like flakes of snow? Do they, like birds, just pick up and fly?

How does goodbye begin? With a whimper? With a wave of hand or a cry in the night?
How does goodbye begin? Babbles and laughters that rise about the dark lonely room
When days and night merge into one, and strangers write the lines of tomorrow’s song?
How do goodbyes begin? Do they wander in the air, elusive to touch and description
like the wounded butterfly across the sight of an elder? Do they soothe or do they excite?
Do they waft across the oceans like a forgotten dream, or like the tired membrane of a drum
Do they tear? Do they itch like the rash? Do they, like birds, just pick up and fly?

There is a painful swelling in the dead of the night on my heart, ripe like a freshly open weal.
It is the goodbye mark of gems, with smears of the now bitter tears, too hard to heal.

(c) Kola Tubosun 2011

Of Ghosts and Cemetries

The conversation at the dinner table last night eventually led to talk about ghosts and cemeteries, only because one of us had expressed her fear of burial grounds. I was asked if I share the same fear and I said no, which is only a half truth. For, as I have discovered, to my own surprise all fear of ghosts and burial grounds always disappeared whenever I set foot on foreign soil.

Throughout last year, while riding back to my apartment at eleven or twelve o clock at night, I get to pass through a dimly lighted bike path with thick woods on its either side. And I’d always wondered to myself where all the trepidation went that I would usually have while walking at a similar place in Ibadan or anywhere in South-Western Nigeria around the same time. The conclusion, of course, was that the fears were only conditioned by familiarity. Perhaps it is impossible to import fear across such a wide ocean as the Atlantic. Note: I noticed a similar trend of artificially acquired confidence while in Northern Nigeria, and in Kenya. Suddenly, it seems that the best way to rid a human of fear is to transport them to a different environment.

Now when I see cemeteries and tombstones, at whatever time of the night, the only thing I want to do is to take pictures of/with them. It must come from watching too much of Michael Jackson. And yes, I’m still going to spend a night at the Lemp Mansion sometime soon.

It’s Not Going To Be Easy

There must be more to life than sitting idly in front of a computer waiting for the guy from the Chinese restaurant to make a delivery. I have looked at the date and it is NOT Thursday. It is still Monday. No, I refuse to believe that this holiday is going to be harder to take than I previously thought. I’m going to gain more weight for sure. Maybe. It is definitely not going to be easy to keep my mind functioning without deadlines to meet, students to teach, to grade, and classes to attend. I had considered going with Ben and Mafoya for a Burlesque show in St. Louis two days ago, but I had fallen asleep before it was time to leave, and Ben had refused to wake me up. In any case, I doubt that semi-naked women could have made that much of a lasting impression. Sour grapes, I know. There is always a next time.

My grandmother is dead. The news got to me in a text message on Wednesday the 16th from my sister. I don’t know how old she is, and neither does she, but from the age of her children, I would say that she was over ninety. In some culture in Nigeria, the saying is “Don’t worry about it. You have no more grandmother to lose now.” In my case, it is not totally true. My dead grandmother is actually a step-grandmother. My non-step grandmother is alive but not as strong as she used to be. And she doesn’t know that the other woman, her co-wife, is dead. She mustn’t know or it would be too hard to take, considering how long they’ve both lived together under the same roof with the husband, my last grandfather, who is still alive and strong.

My friend Olumide lost his mother in the same week as I lost my grandmother. But unlike my own (albeit also unexpected) loss, his own was not inevitable, and it came too suddenly. I met her for the first and last time in the University during her son’s convocation ceremony not too long ago, and she was fun, warm and jovial. Her death has made me reflect on the meaning of life, and what it’s all worth when it’s spent and done. I wish Loomnie the strength to bear the loss.

I’m writing a new poem on the theme of loss, distance and changes, but I’ve become stuck after the sixth line.

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