ktravula – a travelogue!

Evening

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.

My University

At my alma mater, the University of Ibadan, earlier today…

Unfortunately, my internet is too slow at the moment for me to be able to put up more photos as I’d have wished.

UI, as we fondly call it, was established in 1948 as an outpost of the University of London. It became Nigeria’s first (and as we like to call it – best) university. It has produced Africa’s first Nobel Laureate (Wole Soyinka, author of Death and the King’s Horseman among several works) and many other giants in other areas of life. Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart was also an alumnus of the University of Ibadan.

Walking though the campus brought back some good memories of the times we spent there. There are now some visible changes on the campus – a statue in front of Queen Elizabeth Hall, a fountain around Alumni Centre and a few other road construction work all around. The administration has been very busy.

Today…

Was not so boring, because I presented a talk to a group of senior citizens (read grown folks over sixty) along with Reham in an event called Dialogue With Seniors. It was titled “Life in two of Africa’s biggest cities: Ibadan and Cairo.”

I enjoyed it because, contrary to my early apprehensions, they were quite amiable and relaxed. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience of speaking about everything from food to dressing to greeting to customs to religion and to malaria and HIV/AIDS. I showed them a picture of real Nigerian yams, as well as cocoa, both of which they were seeing for the very first time. They had seen Hershey’s, M&Ms and Snickers before, but this was the first time of seeing what cocoa really looked like. They asked questions and I responded. When Reham spoke, I learnt a few new things about Egypt and Arabic as well. It’s funny how much of what we had to say bounced off each other, as well as off the Americans. Cairo is Africa’s largest city while Ibadan is the second largest – by geography. The Nile in Egypt is the longest river in Africa while the Mississippi just close by is the second longest river in the world. (This fact about the Nile has amazed me since I grew up to realize that – contrary to the song we were taught in primary school – the Mississippi was NOT the longest river in the world. I wonder who came up with the song then.)

Yesterday, I participated in a similar seminar, this time for a class of students of English language teaching. Along with visiting scholars from Iran and Azerbaijan, we sat and answered questions about the difference in the University and learning environments in our countries and the United States, where they diverged, and where they were similar, and what we thought each could learn from each other. That was fun too. There were no “high tables”, just chairs. One thing I learnt from that event was that in Iran, since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, boys and girls were separated into same-sex high schools and don’t have any form of social interactions until they gain admissions into the University. According to the Iranian speakers, this causes a lot of frustrations when they eventually get into the University and have to engage in social interactions, it becomes awkward. I could almost say the same for Nigeria of a few generations back as well, but not as a result of a government decision or anything. Most parental restrictions on their children (derived from a claimed divine injunction to “train the child in the way he should go”) often result in poorly sociable human beings unleashed on the society.

In all, it has been a wonderful week so far, except for the ugly news of the loss of my files and all my student’s data and academic scores in my now unrecoverable hard drive. Well, the week is just half gone. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Dear Henry,

How are you today? I hope you are fine. I’m not so cheerful today. My arm hurts from the immunization injection I took last week. I’m bored from waiting for the long weekend to end, and I’m too lazy to get out of bed to make dinner. But that’s beside the point. I have always wanted to write you a letter.

From the last news I got from home yesterday, you and your little brother have finally left Ibadan for Lagos with your mum to face the new realities of life. I have used those big words “realities of life” just so that you know that the life in Lagos is not going to be as fun, colourful or adventurous as it would have been if you had stayed with your grandma in Ibadan. Or what do you think? In Lagos, you will be sheltered, you will spend most of your time indoors taking care of Oyin with whom I’m told you haven’t been getting along well most of the time. That’s no fun. When I was your age, I had already formed a mental map of the neighbourhood in which I lived, and I always managed to sneak out of the house to explore when no one was looking. It got me some spanking many times, but I always did it again. It was mad fun. It also helped that my parents were both working so I stayed most of those times with my grandmother. I can’t tell you how nice that was. But you had the chance since last year, didn’t you? You have stayed with your grandma for how many months now, along with Oyin. Did you enjoy it? I bet you do. She can be doting and relaxed when it comes to her grand children. With us growing up, everything fun and permissive was considered “indulgent”, and we weren’t supposed to do them. Until lately, she never even believed that anyone not older than eighteen should own a mobile phone. Yea, she’s strict like that. She’s changed a lot now though – things that come with growing up – yet I bet that if you eavesdrop on her conversation with your mum occasionally, you’d hear them argue about the most appropriate length of a woman’s skirt.

Since you returned from Ireland last year, coming to Nigeria for the first time, I have been really worried about you and your little brother, wondering how you would cope in a country that still grapples with the problems of electricity. I bet coming to Nigeria was your first time of seeing a power cut that lasted more than two minutes. How did you take that? Oh I remember, your mum told me that you looked at her and asked her to “put the light back on”, as if she was the one who took it out in the first place. Aww, so cute. By now, you are probably used to it, which might be a good thing. You are going to be a strong, rugged Nigerian man, not surprised by power outage nor shocked by an absent president. I bet it’s even the least of your problems. I remember that on June 22 or so in 1990 when the Orkar Coup took place in Lagos, the only memorable feeling I had was exhilaration. I didn’t know who Orkar was, but the excitement in the air all around our school tickled my brain beyond description. Work stopped, and everyone talked in low tones. There was an energy that I can’t describe. And when my father stormed into the school compound demanding that the school released his children to him or provide the signature of the school’s proprietress on a document taking absolute responsibility for our safety, and accepting all liability in the event of any mishap on anyone of us his children, I was giddy. She released us immediately, and we went home in daddy’s car, one of the few times he left work to pick us up from school. We had roasted corn, and ice cream – that one that is scooped into a cone and eat out of it. Yea, I still remember.

My point here is that I acknowledge the fact that you may not care about politics or everything going on around you except to the extent of their providing you with excitement. But why Lagos? That state is too fast, my young man. You need serenity in your life at this point in time. You need adventure, and I’m afraid that you might be exposed to too much of the grim realities of Nigeria before you’re sufficiently capable of reacting to them in the most playful, adventurous, and deeply reflective way. I may be wrong. In any case, take time out of your day to have fun. Do not, I repeat do not, spend your day in front of the television. It is bad for you. Go out and play with the sand. Get dirty. Your mum will wash the clothes, don’t worry. Play with flowers. Build sand castles like I did with Laitan when we were younger. We would later find grasshoppers and put them in the castle, watching them through the perspex glass ceiling, observing their process of discovering that they had been trapped. Now that I think about it, I realize that it must have be frustrating to those little insects. Build fake stoves, plant corn and potatoes in your own garden at the back of the house like we did back then. Get out of the house often and get lost in the streets. Walk for kilometres and return. Let your parents get worried and look for you everywhere, and let them find you. They might hit you involuntarily though if you stay too long, but don’t let that discourage you. Don’t listen to everything they say while angry. And do not believe them all the time. This is the best education you can have. Have you seen a masquerade yet? Have you taken a swim in the river? Have you stolen a bite out of some of your grandma’s delicious muffins as they lay on the table, or unscrewed your dad’s radio set just to see what makes it work inside? If not, you have a whole lot more to learn.

Your mother won’t tell you this, but when we were younger, we used to steal entrance into my father’s (your grandfather’s) blue Isuzu car whenever he didn’t go out with it. I was the youngest then, although Laitan had been born. She was never around, and I don’t know why. We didn’t have the key to the car but the doors were always open so we’d open it and get in. Actually, one person would get in, release the hand break, put the gear in neutral position and smile as the car went forward the slope towards the compound gate, then hit the brake as soon as it got close to the fence. The rest of us would then push the car back to its initial position, and some other person would get in to repeat the process. It was fun, but they never allowed me to do the driving. I always did the pushing. I think they stopped including me in the game when one day after church service, before anyone got out of the church building, I ran to the car, sat at the driver’s seat, released the gear into neutral and watch the car lurch forward on the long slope of the church’s parking lot that led out towards a sea of people. The problem was, I didn’t know which of the pedals on the ground was the brake. It took some random luck, and a few vigilant men on the road whom I had now almost run over with the already fast moving car to stop me. They must have seen me from afar and figured that I didn’t know what I was doing, so they gathered in front of the car and stopped it with the force of their strength. My heart was in my mouth. I was sweating, and I felt a very sorry. I had done the inconceivable, and I would get some serious punishment later in the day as a result. But I had driven a car, and it felt good. Your mum should remember some of this details if you ask her. But here’s my warning: you don’t have to go to that length to have fun, and besides, you don’t have to do what I have done. That won’t be original. Take liberty with your own ideas, and let me return home to meet you and we can share ideas. Our first meeting should be memorable indeed. I heard that you have really grown, and don’t look like a four year old. Do you still remember what I look like from the photos in your mum’s albums?

My regards to Oyin and your parents, and to your other cousin Jolaade as well. I will write you again when I have the time.

I am your Uncle KT, now at Edwardsville.

PS: Do you speak Yoruba by now? I hope you do. What an irony it is that when I was your age, I was busy getting pummeled by those Ghanaian teachers in my school who believed that it was a taboo to speak my local language within the premises of the school. Like they used to say to us back then in class whenever they were angry, I say “Wasia” to them now too. 🙂 And I still don’t know what it means. I only know that it’s not an English expression, and it wasn’t nice.

To Good Times

I like to be happy, most times. Actually, I like to be happy all of the time, although I have realized that it is when I am not so extraordinarily happy, yet charged with sufficient energy that I am the most creative. I like to be happy because there is no trophy for sadness. Nothing is romantic about it. There is no medal for a constant gloomy state of mind. I have discovered that cheerfulness, laughter, conviviality are better alternatives to gloom, and sadness. I like to be sarcastic only because it gives me more avenue to laugh and be happy. I am an optimist in a way that can sometimes manifest in occasional pessimism, or is it sacrasm. But I love life, and I enjoy it, each second of the way. This is my affirmation of life.

I’m thinking back to some good times I’ve had in life. Some times, the days appear long and a simple conversation with a pleasant company either over the phone or in an internet chat brings back moments of familiar conviviality, I relapse into a sweet nostalgia of the fun care free days. They are not gone yet. They are here still. I smell them in the cold night air. Tonight I remember Ibadan, not of childhood and innocence, but of youth and pseudo-recklessness and revelry. Well, not so much. I remember Sola Olorunyomi with his truck, his bicycle and his guitar at the Students Union Building bar in the Ibadan University campus in the early 2000, discussing poetry and politics within cigarette smokes, beers and music. There was Loomnie. There was Benson. There was Bukky who loved Benson, and there was Benson who loved his bottle. There was Luvles. There was Olads. There was Kemi who later became Idayat. There was Pinheiro. There was Lola. There was Kunle. There was fun. There was the religious Seni who had a bible verse for every situation. There was Chiedu, and Chido. There was Busola, who had a first class in Linguistics. Then there was Ropo, and Chris Dudu, and Funmi who liked to write daringly. There was poetry. There was Ify. There was Najite. There was harmattan and the dry wind of November. Then there was Uncle Prof whom we embarrassed by reading his love poems back to him in that public get-together. There was his lovely wife. There was Adelugba. There was the Arts Theatre which never ever ceased to be a fun place to be at evenings. And then, there was Nike who was so thin she almost didn’t have a shadow. There was Sophie who smuggled tobacco in from Germany to give to Benson, and there were Nadine and Bettina who saw Ibadan once with Sophie and could not wait to return, just to see us. There were days of walking all night from the University all the way to Dugbe. There was Noffield House. There was palm wine and pepper soup at Niser. There was Elizabeth. And there was Bidemi. There was fun Biodun who died, but was so tall that his legs stuck out of the coffin. There was Henrietta who I liked, and who Olumide liked, but who perhaps thought that we were all bad boys. There was Demola who was going to be a monk, and who became a butt of beer jokes. And later there was changed Demola who finally fell in love and got Ope before Pinheiro made his move. There was UCJ, and the different folks it attracted. There were endless dinners. There were endless protests. There was Mellamby Hall. There was Upper Mellamby. There was room A52 and its many adventures. There was Fidho. There was Ibukun. There was Kunle. There was Ositelu. There were riots. There were strikes. There were moments of silliness and idleness. There were moments of stupidity. They were good times.

I remember Lagos a few days before I travelled to the United States, at the Silverbird Galleria for a mini bear summit. There were books. There was laughter. There were jokes. There was Tolu, and Chris, and Rayo and Kris, and Bukky and Sunkanmi, and music. And ice cream. There was fun. And food. Before then, there was Bimbo on the expressway. Then Elizabeth, sometimes earlier in the day. Then there was Food Major, and roasted beef. And family. And Jolaade. And Leke. And Yemi. And Laitan. And strawberry juice. And suya. Tonight, I remember the good times. Whenever the cold wind blows within recurring laughters, whenever I smile, whenever the days seem long and only a phone conversation, or a pleasant internet chat, connects me with a world I have since left for a little while, I remember the good fun times. Those are the moments that count.

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