ktravula – a travelogue!

The Conference

This is my 200th blog post!

Now that I have spent the whole of Thursday holed up in the hotel attending one workshop to the other, I am beginning to think that these photos from my solo walk around the little town yesterday might be the only ones that I have of its interesting sites. Or not. Let me check. Yes, I’m right. This conference is all I have come here to do.

Meanwhile, the conference itself is very warm gathering of 409 Fulbrighters from 49 countries teaching hundreds of languages all over the country. I have met old friends who remember me, and those who don’t. I have also met new ones who had heard about me and those who hadn’t. There will be more conference sessions tomorrow, and more feeding sessions too, until Saturday when the conference officially ends. We have learnt about Social Networking for the Foreign Language Classroom, Writing for Publication in Foreign Language Journals, and Scenarios & Strageties: Addressing Individual Student Concerns. Tomorrow, there will be more… Before this conference ends, we will meet with some representatives from the State Department. No, I don’t think that there is a chance to see the Secretary of State, so that’s that, already crossed out.

But this was my lethargic Thursday put into good and productive use of my time, although now, the only thing that hasn’t changed is the tiredness I feel at the end of the day. I however learnt many things in the conference sessions today. One that stuck with me was a fact that forty Fulbrighters from eleven countries have been awarded the Nobel Prize since 1952. They include Jean-Marie Le Clézio (France, and Nobel Laureate for Literature in 2008), Henry Kissinger (USA, and Nobel Peace Prize 1973) and two time winner Linus Pauling (USA, and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1954).

I Was Very Close

The following conversation took place a few minutes after my flight landed at the Reagan Airport in Washington DC this afternoon. The conversation had been waiting to happen since my first five minutes into the plane. I had taken my seat close to the window, and suddenly noticed a short but pretty white girl walking down the aisle. She walked past my row and took her seat on the other side of the plane, about two rows behind me. We exchanged glances, and she smiled. I wanted to say more but I kept quiet. The reason why was that the man who took the middle seat beside me didn’t look friendly and I didn’t want to look like an ass, especially since the lady was a little far away. It would be hard to make a conversation without making some noise. So I kept quiet. But every time I looked back, our eyes met and we repeated the same short smiles. On her part, it must be because she didn’t want to be rude. On my part, it was because I desperately wanted her to acknowledge that we had indeed met somewhere before even though I couldn’t immediately remember where.

Two hours later, the plane was at a stand-still and a queue had formed in the aisle for those who wanted to disembark, so I reached over the unfriendly looking man and broke the ice.

“Hi, how are you.”

“Fine,” she replied. “And you?”

“I’m fine. I’m sorry, but do you attend SIUE?”

“No,” she said.

Oops.

“Oh, ok. Really? You look really familiar. Is it Principia University then?”

“No.”

“Carbondale?”

“No, I attend Webster University.”

I’d never heard that name before in my life. And then I think I saw the man beside me giggle.

“I’m really sorry then,” I said. “You look really really familiar. I know that I’ve seen you somewhere before. That university that you attend – Webster – is it in Illinois?”

“No, it’s in Missouri.”

“Oh, alright.”

Damn! Right then, I could have just disappeared under the seat because I had successfully made an ass of myself not once or twice, but many times in the presence of about a dozen people within earshot of the curious conversation. All of them were white, and grown up, except the object of my tenacious attention. Not that it mattered much that they were white, but with their silence, I began to wonder what they must think of me. And then it hit me.

“Are you a Fulbrighter?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God. Of course you are! What a relief. You were in Providence, Rhode Island in August with me?”

“Oh yes.”

“Oh whew! That explains it then. Of course that was where I first saw you. I still have you in my photo albums. I know that I’d seen you somewhere before. I don’t usually forget faces. How silly of me to have forgotten to mention Fulbright.”

“Yea. I’m so sorry I couldn’t remember you.”

“No problem. I know I am not crazy!”

Now the man beside me, who was still on his seat because the airplane’s door hadn’t been opened and nobody had left the plane even though everyone else was on their feet, began to smile and looked at me with a look that finally seemed forgiving. It was such a relief.

“So how is the experience so far?” I asked.

We went on and on right there in the aisle talking about what we had done, and how stressful, fun, enjoyable, interesting, etc the experience had been for us. She’s from Germany, and she is the only Fulbright FLTA in her university. She teaches seven students and takes a tutorial for about forty more, she said. At some point, our hitherto unfriendly passenger joined in and shared his love for the museums in Cahokia and the Gateway Arch as well. It turned out that we were both heading to the same Conference, and we were both looking forward to meeting over four hundred others.

It was my first memorable welcoming into the nation’s capital, and when I left the plane, I couldn’t tell whether it was meeting someone familiar, or being absolved of that suspicion of stalking that made me happiest. But it was a happy moment of warm welcoming.

Last Year

Written on November 4th 2008, when I didn’t even know that I was coming to Barack Obama’s home state:

Dear friends,

I cannot resist this urge. And since we are in the mood for rejoicing,
I urge you to kindly do so with me as well. A few hours before Barack Obama
got his own ticket to the White House, I got news of mine to his great
country. Well, not a flight ticket just yet, but a confirmed selection
as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant. It is a one-year
teaching grant to a post-secondary American institution to teach my
language in the 2009/10 session.

As much a great news as well as a great challenge, I am now beginning
a new extensive re-immersion into the culture and ways of my people. I
would not be going there only to eat hamburgers, right?

Greetings on Obama’s victory. It’s a new day.

Thinking back, I cannot almost believe that it’s already one year. What this means, of course, is that a set of new Fullbrighters have already been chosen now as well. By this time next year, I will be back home, or wherever else the wind of life blows me, and this university would have got its replacement scholar just trying to find his/her feet. Two years ago, they had Busola from Ibadan, last year, there was Tola from Lagos, and now Kola from Ibadan. If the trend of names are anything to go by, I won’t be surprised if the next person to come over here is a “Sola”, “Demola” or “Bola”. For one thing, they are easier names for Americans to pronounce.

Reham the Egyptian

reham

There is an interesting article about my fellow FLTA Reham Othman in The Alestle, SIUE’s campus newspaper, today. It is very well written. Reham is from Egypt and she teaches Arabic, one of the oldest and most populated of world’s languages.

But reading the first comment on the article, I am convinced that exporting and exchanging language and culture might not always be the easiest way to correct deeply-held prejudices and mindsets, even though it is the best and most powerful means accessible to all. Find the article here.

A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt

On Wednesday, we spent much of the hour discussing the third chapter of a book of fiction titled “A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt” by scan0017 Toyin Falola which is our second class text. In many ways, the book is much like Wole Soyinka’s “Ake”, in style, content, and value, especially in the clever turns of phrase, eloquence, and reference to recognizable landmarks in the history of South-Western Nigeria before independence. The chapter is set when the author was nine years old, and the whole work is written in a way that makes it seem that we are listening to a child talk, even though we know that it is an adult relaying his many interesting experiences from childhood.

The third chapter dealt with the author’s first train trip in the 1950s from Ibadan to Ilorin, and his adventures on the streets as a beggar’s boy. He had started school, yet he could not resist a chance to ride on a train which was then a novelty in town. In the end, even though he didn’t have the train fare, he found himself in the belly of the electric “snake”, as he called it, delighting at the wonder of the European invention. As soon as he was discovered to have been riding without a ticket, he was dropped off somewhere along the way, and he found that he was in Ilorin, all the way from Ibadan, and he was loving it. Soon he became a “beggar’s stick boy”, holding the stick for one of the many fake blind men on the streets of the town who begged for alms in lieu of decent work. That job, which provided him with stipends on which to survive, and plenty adventures on the street, ended on the day he mistakenly spoke in English to a postman, wondering if he could send a letter home. Even though he was dirty and looked totally ragged, his grasp of the language shocked both his fake “blind” boss who immediately dropped his end of the stick, and fled as far as he could so as not to be arrested, and the postman who immediately grabbed the boy, and promptly drove him back home to Ibadan to the arms of his bewildered parents and neighbours. It surely reminds of some parts of Soyinka’s “Ake.”

I am convinced that the reason why this book is a recommended text is because of its many descriptions of Nigerian, nay Yoruba cultural life, especially before and during colonial times. The author was born in the 50s, and he grew up in a less educated environment than, say, Wole Soyinka(who was born in the 30s, yet had a whole library of books to read before he even went into school for the first time.) But in the end, there were so many questions raised than could be answered in that one class even though we tried very hard: Why did the boy find the train strange? Why did the postman take him home instead of to the police? Why was a boy not immediately embraced when he got home, instead of being suspiciously viewed by family and neighbours as some form of emere who was born only to torment his folks? Did children beg for alms a lot on the streets of Nigeria? How much of human sacrifice did the Yoruba believe in? Do they still sacrifice people to make money? What is the punishment for such a crime? What is the Justice system like? Do they hang condemned criminals in public or not? Do children have toys to play with? Do you have Amusement Parks in Nigeria? Do you have Six Flags in Nigeria? How come some people do not know/remember their dates of birth? Do you know yours, Traveller? etc.

Every day, I discover new reasons for the perceptions and misconceptions (many of which are justified) about Africa and it cultural practices. Every day, I learn new things about the influence of literature, and the power of words. And every day, I find new reasons why this programme is one of the best, and most useful projects of the American government, in helping us to understand better the world in which we live.

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