ktravula – a travelogue!

From French to English

As a speaker of French as a first language, how has writing in English affected your writing? And how difficult was it to render this book purely in English?

388098_10151137537299085_1297897237_nI find English a much simpler language for writing. French can become quite convoluted. My goal with African Expectations was not to write beautiful or intricate language but to convey ideas in the most direct and forceful manner as possible. I found the English language most suited to this requirement. Overall it was fairly easy to render the book purely in English but certain passages in the book, I have had to translate in my head from French to English. At this point, I mostly think and dream in English but sometimes I am unable to convey certain subtleties of thought directly in English. In those instances, I have had to think in French and translate to English. The translation part of the process has been a challenge because I have had to do research to make sure that what I wrote in English actually had the same meaning as the original thought.

From my interview with Mafoya Dossoumon, the author of African Expectations (a new book of essays, available on Amazon) in the new issue of the NigeriansTalk LitMag.

From French to English was published on January 12th, 2013, with the tags , , , , , , under the Literature category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Of Townships and Ownerships

I was not too surprised when a fellow FLTA from France said to me two weeks ago over dinner at the Union Station in Washington DC that the city was developed by a French person. She is french, and, as she said so, everything had just fallen along the line of positive French stereotypes in my mind. They designed the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, they must also be the big brilliant brain behind the planning and beautiful layout of the country’s capital. It was my first time of hearing the story, and though she didn’t have the name of the said designer, I believed it.

Today, I had a different conversation with Papa Rudy who says the city was developed by a black man. Now I’m confused. I told him of my discussion with the French girl, and he insisted that a black man did the city’s design. And somewhere in the conversation, the name Du Pont came up. Now I am familiar with a DuPont Circle in Washington DC, and reading more on it this afternoon showed me that it was named after a man Samuel Francis Du Pont (from the famous Du Pont family who really were originally from France). However, he is neither black nor an architect. He was a rear admiral during the Civil War. The wikipedia article on the beautiful Paris-like city does not say much about the “designers” of the city, so I’m giving up.

Or not. I have now come up with my own theory, that the person who conceived the brilliant layout of the city with the Washington Monument obelisk standing almost in its centre, could only have been the son of Oduduwa (the fabled progenitor of the Yoruba people). That’s the only explanation that can suffice to clear the air on the similarity between the Opa Oranmiyan obelisk in Ilé-Ifè and this Washington Monument obelisk. The Opa Oranmiyan was erected at a spot once believed to have been the burial site of Oranmiyan, a grandson of Oduduwa. Archeological evidence has now shown it not to be standing on any burial spot at all, but to be just a visible memorial to the fabled progenitor whose name it bears on it’s body. On the Opa Oranmiyan, as has been since its (undated) erection is an inscription in middle-eastern letters that archeologists have accepted as corresponding in sound to “Oranmiyan”.

It’s not the same in height and size as the Washington Monument, but that’s beside the point. The only other way to look at it is that Oranmiyan himself walked over to Washington DC from Ile-Ife with the Washington Monument on his right hand as a staff of office, and planted it firmly at the centre of the city as an artifact for future generation of archeologists to behold. What about that?

Of Townships and Ownerships was published on December 23rd, 2009, with the tags , , , , , , , , , , under the Observations, Opinion, Travelling category. There are currently 15 comments on this article so far.

End of Term

With my final examination completed this afternoon, I am finally done with the Fall Semester, and the holiday for me officially begins. Let me tell you a little about the exam. It was a test of everything we have done in the Linguistics class, and it lasted an hour, forty minutes, even though I finished before the set time. The notable thing was that the professor allowed us to bring notes into the examination hall, as long as it was on only one side of a blank sheet, and handwritten. It was a way, I guess, to make sure that everyone has a chance to succeed.

Many other changes are taking place around the campus. It is thinning out, and in a few days, the once bubbling mini-town that is campus will become an almost ghost town. Chris, my housemate has already packed his bags and is heading home. Ben, the rugged one, will be here for a little while more, but he will also eventually leave, and I will have the whole apartment all to myself. I may have to go buy my own christmas tree… Audrey the French is leaving. Her academic exchange programme was supposed to last one semester, and is now over. We are organizing a party for her at the apartment on Friday, which should be fun. She was such a nice company, fun, adorable and lively, although I haven’t seen her for a while in the last three weeks because of the hectic nature of that time of the semester. Also leaving are other international students from France who came on the same programme as Audrey. They all added colour in some way to the semester.

My most memorable times with Audrey included a long walk around Chicago in November while we were trying to locate our hostel much without luck. Until then, I had never seen her cute Frenchie self so upset by anything. And even though we all tried to maintain a sense of balance as frustration grew on us and the maps refused to point us in the right direction, when we stood at the bridge across Michigan Avenue and thought of how to proceed, I thought I saw her really pissed off, especially since we didn’t seem to understand each other’s words and motives. Eventually, her phone came to the rescue and we found out that we had just walked past the HI Chicago building by just one block. I also remember one of the many discussions we had in Chicago about breastfeeding (she was thoroughly against it, believing that it is “disgusting” to have anything come out of her breasts for anyone to drink), religion (doesn’t believe in it, rationalizing that there is too much wickedness in the world to believe in a good and kind God), and homosexuality (doesn’t have anything against it, since humans all have the right to express whatever they are), and how opposed to Reham she was every time the conversations took place. “As soon as I have a baby,” Audrey always said, “I will spend all my nights in bed, sleeping while my husband will feed the baby whenever it cries. I carried the baby for nine months, after all, and I’m not about to lose my sleep for anybody.”

She was fun.

The semester was fun. I hope the next one is just as fantastic.

End of Term was published on December 16th, 2009, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Academic, adventures, Fun category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

The Nation’s Capital

Just photos…IMG_3251IMG_3233IMG_3252IMG_3241IMG_3246IMG_3261IMG_3278IMG_3282IMG_3283IMG_3301IMG_3319IMG_3328IMG_3326IMG_3312IMG_3331IMG_3335IMG_3344IMG_3339IMG_3347IMG_3348IMG_3356IMG_3383IMG_3397IMG_3375 IMG_3376IMG_3250 all taken on my first day in Washington District of Colombia. Those familiar with the famous landmarks in the city would recognize the Capitol (which houses both legislative houses of the country, and in front of which each new president takes his oath of office), the Lincoln Memorial (which houses a larger than life marble structure of President Lincoln, and in front of which Reverend Martin Luther King delivered his I Have A Dream speech), the Washington Monument (which was at one time the tallest structure in the whole world before being overtaken by the Eiffel Tower in France and later the St. Louis Gateway Arch among others. Now, it’s just the tallest structure in DC), and the White House which houses the president.

The rest were random shots taken on the streets as I walked along. Around the Washington Monument is a fountain which is surrounded by walls that bear the name of each of the fifty states of the country. I am guessing that this was where Nigeria got its own idea for a “Unity Fountain” in Abuja that bears the name of all the states in the country. Or else, maybe the Americans “stole” our own idea. Hmm. No, I won’t bet on this one.

There were scores and scores of beautiful buildings, government houses and cathedrals along the way which I couldn’t shoot for lack of time. There is also the President Jefferson Memorial somewhere close, but I couldn’t see that either.

One more notable thing about this capital city is the abundance of aircrafts in the sky. From the hotel to the Lincoln Memorial, I counted more than ten aircrafts either flying towards where I suspect the airport to be, or hovering around the city like the few military helicopters that I saw.

The design of the city places each notable monument or memorial at very accessible points. There is certainly an order to this city. And if there is a chance in the next couple of days, and we get to go out for sightseeing, I will definitely take more pictures. I was speaking with a French FLTA earlier today who told me of her surprise and happiness that Washington DC was planned and designed by a French man. “Hmm, I see,” I said. “The French seem to have their hands in everything.”

PS: I have noticed that all the public structures looked really nicer at night. You will see it too in the last pictures of the Monument and the Capitol. It is because of a set of powerful lights placed in vantage points around them that make them look so bright against the background of the night. It’s definitely a sight to see.

The Nation’s Capital was published on December 10th, 2009, with the tags , , , , , , , under the adventures, Art, Fun, Observations category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.