ktravula – a travelogue!

Snowfight Holiday

The most awesome feature of winter break is the snow, with snowmen and snowfights. It’s beautiful. Besides the usual resentment for extreme cold especially for people like me coming from tropical regions of the world, seeing snow for the first time, playing with it, building snowmen and stoning each other with huge balls of it is delightful, much like a festival. (There are festivals in Nigeria where people beat each other up with canes, for fun, and with glee).

With the ground already thick with inches of the white fluffy material since Christmas Eve, we got on it a few days ago on our way to the cinema. “No, don’t throw snow at me,” Em shouted. “I hate it.” Mohammed, the young man who was being admonished, showed traces of changing his mind when I screamed at him from a distance: “Come on man. This is the season. You’re not going to let her stop you, will you?” “No, I won’t,” he replied “but now you’ve spoilt the surprise.” He threw a hand-moulded snowball towards her as she fled from his direction, screaming. “You’re wicked, Kola,” Chi said from another direction and I grinned. Then she got a bright idea. I looked away for just two seconds and two heavy snowballs flew towards my head. One was from her and the other from Mohammed who had now turned his aggression towards my direction. “I like snow, he said, smiling.”

I didn’t smile back, but the snow tasted very good.

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This post has been entered into the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition byHomeaway.co.uk

Glad for the Holidays

America is such a fast society; busy people talking on mobile phones, travellers in big cities with heavy backpacks and briefcases, racing cars on motorways and a 24 hour news cycle. One almost can’t keep up. I remember the feeling on the first day of my return to this town, wondering just how different it all seemed again. It took me a few days to get back in the grind. Things never seem to wait. It all goes by so fast, and one is left wondering where all the day went. More than thirteen weeks later, it feels good to take a breather. What a ride that was.

The awesome gift my Amigo Secreto gave to me last week. It's an awesome reminder of what I must do instead of being stressed out with work.

Last week at our final office lunch, I was talking with a colleague – an elderly professor originally from Italy. How does he like it here? I ask. Oh no, I don’t much, he replied. If he hadn’t left his country after the World War when it was both fashionable and imperative to do so, he would still be living there, he said. “It’s the people, the culture, the food, the company. Most importantly, the relaxing ability of people to enjoy life.”

There is something about America that is both endearing and sometimes frustrating at the same time, I think. It is the system that makes working the centre of existence, and leisure something you never do unless you’re dead. On the one hand, it is endearing to see how much you can achieve if you work hard for it, on the other hand it is frustrating to see how hard it is to enjoy the fruits of your labour if you only spend all your time working. The delight is in the balance. I wonder if the country has a retirement age.

In any case, I’m glad for a break from school work that sometimes threatened my sanity. Without the occasional comfort of delightful classmates and a couple of courses that one really loves, it could have been harder. Now all I do is stay up in bed for as long as I want, and wake up whenever I want. Watch a movie, listen to music, and get back to just being lazy. Yesterday, I saw the eclipse of the moon. Christmas is in a couple of days and I don’t even know it. Back home, it would already have been a bustle of fun activities including Christmas fireworks and the dry smell of burning grass that characterizes the harmattan season. Oh well, one can’t have it all.

On the bright side, all the snow from the United States has now been shipped to Canada and Britain. There are a few more warm days ahead.

Holidays and Readings

This period of the season just after final exams means only one thing: a long space of time left open to do anything under the sun – or on top of the snow, depending on what part of the world you occupy. Holiday means days without school, without classes or volunteer work at the Institute, without work at the Foreign Language Lab, without driving (much) and without Blackboard postings. I need that. I looked into my book drawer yesterday and found almost two dozen books I’d bought without reading more than a few pages.

Just yesterday, two more arrived: Richard Feynman’s The Pleasure of Finding Things Out and Wole Soyinka’s Art, Dialogue and Outrage. The latter was a text that had dominated much of the many conversations and debates with mates and scholar as an undergraduate in Ibadan. Obviously important to understanding the thoughts of Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature, the book has always been a reference point. Spending a few minutes on the preface has however convinced me that I should read it only when I’m well fed, and in a most patient mood for deliberately difficult writing. Feynman’s collection of essays is a delight, like many of his earlier publications. Much of the book are transcribed from his BBC interviews as well as from many of his published essays and speeches. Another one of his books What Do You Care What Other People Think now lay somewhere in my bag. I can’t wait to devour them.

The other crazy idea in my head, encouraged – no less – by Mohamed is that we get in the car and drive to California during the winter break. If I wasn’t considering it myself, I would have said that he had gone nuts. Now I’ve given my (almost) word and may have to do it after all. The only obstacle is a stretch of road 2000 miles long which may most likely include black ice and heaps of snow many miles long. What do you think? Is it worth it or would a good old flying do? Oh, there’s still the TSA scanners and grope-downs to worry about.

Easter Eggs

According to Wikipedia the “egg was a symbol of the rebirth of the earth in celebrations of spring and was adopted by early Christians as a symbol of the resurrection of Jesus.”

One more thing I discovered today is that unlike in Nigeria, Easter Monday is not a public holiday. It’s a good thing that I’ve discovered this early enough to send an email to tell my students that contrary to an earlier one wishing them a good work-free Monday, we will be meeting in class. Sigh. The life of an American professor. I can’t complain though. 😀

Happy Thanksgiving!

a3 001 a3 002 To YOU, yes YOU. Stop looking around!

You have been there all this while, so I am taking this time to thank you, yes you, because you have been reading this travelogue from the very beginning, and you because you joined in the middle and have stayed committed, and to you because you come in occasionally without leaving comments, but you leave with a smile, a giggle, a laugh or any other pleasant thought. You come in to rate the articles, invisibly, give them thumbs up, and then refer the articles to your friends to read. You, yes you even share my links on Facebook or retweet them on Twitter. Hmmm. What can I say but thanks? I thank you, and I appreciate your sometimes invisible but always reassuring presence. One day, I hope to list all the locations around the world where you have viewed this site from, and maybe also mention you all who have has left a comment at least once, or you who have talked to me behind the scenes, pointing me to a wrongly spelt word in a hurriedly-written post, just as an appreciation to your efforts and time. I am very grateful: friends, family, critics, and acquaintances.

a3 006 a3 005 Today in America, everyone of us will gather around dinner tables to devour family meals of the season set aside to thank the Lord for the harvest of the year. The anniversary began by the very first immigrants on the continent after their first harvest, and it has continued since. President Abraham Lincoln it was who decreed that it would take place on every last Thursday in November.

Back home, we have the Odún Ìkórè, which is a similar thanksgiving get-together of families and friends, but which usually takes place late in the harmattan/winter season, just around Christmas. I have attended a few of them in the Anglican church with my late paternal grandfather, and it was always nice: plenty food, palm wine, and a harvest barzar after the church service. I am also aware that back home today in Nigeria, there is the Moslem holiday to celebrate a different festival. I have a living grandfather for whom that is also day of joy and celebration with his immediate and extended family.

Here for me as a blogger ghoul in a stranger forest of a distant land, my harvest is both that of the success of this blog, the joy of the Fulbright programme and this travel experience, and the happiness it has brought me through the friends, fans and admirers that I have made though the medium. I thank you all, and wish you a very happy, and a very very pleasant celebration. As long as you’re there, I will be here, pleased in the warmth of your reading eyes.

-ktravula

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