I remember, no have forgotten, the evenings when night fell at 3pm. A lonely child on the streets of America squinting at his watch and wondering where all the daylight went. Then there were days of killing cold at lonely bus stations, while waiting for the scheduled bus. Dull summer evenings. Bright afternoons in the face of a deceptively bright sun. What happened? It all seemed like a dream. Did it ever happen? Was I, a few months ago, a curious face in the jungle of shops, brands and malls? I pour water on my face. No, it didn’t happen. It must have been a dream. Did I really fly for almost twenty-four hours over a dozen countries last fall, and returned again via the same route the cool harmattan evenings? My new iPod says yes. My old Dell says no.
It’s cool here, like the temperature of a cool spring, and I dreamt. I arrived in Edwardsville again and started looking for familiar spots. I looked at my phone and there were two time zones. Darn! That always happened. There was no one else to speak to so I called yarinya and she too was not available. She was in a different time zone. Am I in America? I ask. No, I’m here dreaming out the malaria in my flesh. I’m drenched in sweat, on a bed with yellow covering. There is no fan to provide the desired utopia. Nepa! And it’s May, in Ibadan, the breeze wheezing along with the soft clouds and burnt wisps of grass from a faraway place. What manner of dream!
I’m up now to put on the generator. Time to blog.
I will leave Chicago with this feeling: thrill; this impression: awe. Here’s a city that runs on order and a certain edge. Walking the length and breath to where my feet could reach, I found an open eyed town that never stops demanding. Either going upward on an elevator onto the Skydeck of the Sears Towers, taking pictures there on the glass ledge, requesting for branded gift items at the Institute of Arts, getting a guided tour, getting a 4D Fantasea tour of the Shedd Acquarium, or getting onto the Ferris Wheel at the Navy Pier, Chicago never stops demanding. Here’s where a padlock costs up to $10. (A little riddle on that: Q: Which is safer, a padlock with number combinations or a regular one with jam and lock? A: If they both cost the same, they stand equal chance of being broken), and a bottle of soda could cost almost $3. It’s a shopaholic’s heaven, a traveller’s escape and a photographer’s playground. There’s hardly ever a place to turn without something memorable to see. The one advantage of this set of travellers was our preference for our feet as means of transportation all through the large city. There probably was no other way we could have seen so much.
New York has the Subway. London has the Underground system. Chicago has the “L”. “No, not the ‘El’. Only Boston folks spell it like that,” our guide says. “It’s the ‘L'”. It hardly matters that there are places where the train moves at ground level. It’s still the “L” which stands for “Elevated Train.”
Lying at Union Station with a computer on the lap and an earphone plugging the ears, a stranger stops by, hooded and jittery. He needs a smoke and was ready to pay for it. Walking across the street, a woman with a scarf on her head is throwing up on the curb with no one taking notice. A policeman on small motorped warns squatting travellers to watch out for their bus or stand a risk of being ejected from the Amtrak station as soon as it is midnight. Coming in a cab for the first time during this trip, conversing with a Romanian taxi cab driver, sharing the words of exile. He will one day go back home, but not to become a politician. He’s now a Chicago citizen.