ktravula – a travelogue!

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.

With Love From Lambert

Dear Blog,

What does one do while sitting idly in an airport cafeteria on a Wednesday morning while waiting for a flight that may or may not be cancelled due to weather conditions? Look around and observe everything that moves and those that don’t.

The cafeteria has a banner just above the bar that says “Carpe Cuervo. Seize the day and the night.” It also has four television sets, each showing different programmes. CNN goes back and forth between The War President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, Afghanistan and the terrible snow storms that has got so many flights delayed and many cancelled all through the country this morning. ESPN is on the NBA games, and occasionally the channel flickers to the Tiger Woods story.

The food is horrible, and I’ve returned 3/4 of it uneaten. It’s nothing that I recognize, and I should have obeyed my inner voice never to make an order on the advice of the waitress… The lemonade is good though, and I get a free refill while Fela Kuti sings Follow Follow into my ears. Oh yea, there is also this book that I just bought: The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson. It has been made into a movie featuring George Clooney and Kevin Spacey among others. Well, I haven’t seen the movie, but nothing says that I can’t read the book first. The woman at the cashier when I bought the book said I could return it anytime within 90 days and get half the money back. I’ve told her that I have no such intention, yet she gave me the coupon nevertheless. It was so cold out today. You should see how many layers of clothing I’m wearing, yet suffering from occasional invasion from the random wind that blows in my direction even here where I sit in the corner of an indoor cafe.

But wait a minute. If a president who has just sent more soldiers into the war front in a foreign country goes to collect the Nobel Prize for Peace in Oslo tomorrow, what does that make him? A Nobel Peace Prize War President? Would his Nobel Speech be written by the same person who wrote his West Point address that signified the intention to send 30,000 more soldiers into Afghanistan? If so, would he make apologies? If not, would the Nobel Speech distant the man from the policies of his government?

Well, I should probably shut up at this point. It’s ten o’ clock and I’ve got some reading to do, and some people watching.

See ya.

Pondering Death

The only reason I can give for the title of this post is a recurring thought I have when entering any structure that is higher than a leaping distance from the ground. Saturday was one of them, and you already know what I was thinking while looking down from 630 feet. A few months ago while flying from Lagos to London, similar thoughts entered my head at some point during the long flight, and from London to Boston. What are my chances of survival from this height of over 60,000 feet? There is a kind of surrender that inevitably accompanies a decision to take a plane flight. Our lives are in the hands of the pilot whom we never ever get to see.

About two and a half weeks ago, there was a major news item about a pilot on the London-Boston route who was caught drunk just before take-off. Just two and a half weeks ago! The plane was grounded and the passengers resettled into another plane. Sigh. I mean, it could have been any of the planes that I have been in. And what are the chances that the pilot of my plane from London to Boston wasn’t equally drunk? Come to think about it, I kinda felt the plane shake and wobble one too many times during the flight. Or not. Well, one of the reasons Maya Angelou gave when she came to Edwardsville in October for buying her travel bus instead of travelling on a plane was a plane trip of hers in which the pilot, just a few seconds after take-off – even before the plane reached cruising altitude – came out of his cockpit and meet and greet “the distinguished Maya Angelou” who he had learnt was on board. Ha! According to her, she knew then that it was time to change tactics before someone got hurt from the effect of her star power. Those were not her exact words.

I can say also that one of the reasons for my choice of writing as a hobby, pastime, vocation or whatever one can call it is – not really a fear but – a preemptive strike against the eventuality of death. And no, I’m not depressed at the moment. Not even as bored as I might like to think. I’m just taking liberty with my ability to imagine.

Gateway To The West

The Jefferson Memorial in St. Louis comprises of more than just the Gateway Arch. Beneath the large steel architectural wonder that is the Arch is the Odyssey Theatre and the Museum of Westward Expansion. It was in the theatre where we saw the movie of the recreated account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The Museum of Westward Expansion has real-life replicas of things used during the expedition, things obtained from the native Indians, guns, carriages, animals, maps, and animated robots dressed and speaking like the characters they represent.

The way the Indians lost their land to the invading Europeans was a rather curious one – quite similar to the African experience. The white Americans approached them with a prepared text from the President, informing the awed natives that their land now belonged to an entity called the United States of America, and that more white people would soon come to displace them, and settle them in new places. To seal the “treaty”, the natives were given silver and gold coins that were said to represent coming in peace. The truth of the matter however was that the natives didn’t understand what the invaders were saying. All they wanted was to live in peace, so they agreed to everything without making sense of it. They probably thought that their guests were just going to settle among them in peace. Big mistake. By the time they realized it, it was too late. The land belonged to someone else, and they had to go elsewhere hungry, homeless and dispersed from their environment and means of livelihood. How messed up is that?

The African experience was different only in the fact that we were not totally annihilated, and after a while, the land was given back – except of course in places like South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe and some parts of southern Africa. The Native American Indians were not so lucky. It must have been the presence of malaria that made Africa such an uninhabitable place for the “visitors”, that after about a hundred years of exploitation, the invaders were as willing to go away as the Africans were willing to have them leave. But here is the similarity: artifacts, mineral resources, labour and artworks belonging to the great kingdoms were – mostly forcibly – taken over and given to the King, the State or the President as the case may be. It ceased to belong to the original owners from the time they however unwittingly agreed to accept the new folks into their midst.

Real, real curious, that word: civilization and enlightenment. If you asked the people of the great old kingdom of Benin, they would gladly give back (European) “civilization” to have back the original casts of their famous artworks now residing in the British Museum in London or the people of Egypt the great bust of their famous kings now resting in German museums. It’s a time like this when this saying rings most true: “As long as the deer family is unable able tell its story, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” – an old African saying.

Defying Gravity

A little after we left Cahokia on Saturday, we headed to the St. Louis to visit the state of Missouri’s most famous landmark – the St. Louis Gateway Arch, also called the “Gateway to the West” because of its place in history as the spot where the first expedition to the Western part of the United States began. It is an integral part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and it is the iconic image of St. Louis, Missouri. I’d always wished to go to this monument, right up to the top, even in my supposed fear of heights, but on Saturday, I got my wish.

The St. Louis Arch is located along the Mississippi river and close to the road bridges that connect the states of Illinois and Missouri. It is called the Gateway to the West because of the role it played when officers Louis and Clark set out on the orders of then President Thomas Jefferson to discover what lay further west of the country via the Mississippi river, once considered the longest river in the world. The Arch, an architectural wonder made out of cement and stainless steel, has always been the most visible monument in the state, and it’s considered the tallest monument in the United States at 630feet. It is visible in most if not all parts of the city.

The most fun part of the trip, of course, was going up to the top of the steel structure to look down at an expanse of the city’s land. A trip to a tall monument is never complete without a journey up to its summit. In this case, the lift was a little box that accommodated only five people, and took four minutes to get to the top. The first question in my mind had always been: how does an elevator work in such a steel structure as one curved as an arch? My question was answered amidst bouts of claustrophobia. It moved up the arch, quite logically, in an arched form, slowly until it reached the top while giving those in the small elevator a view of the steps as we went up. Apparently, it is also possible to ascend it by way of one’s feet, though I don’t know how long that would have taken. In any case, the stairs were closed to the public, and I don’t know how long it’d been like that.

At the top, we got off and walked up the flight of a few steps into the observatory itself where we were able to look down out of a series of windows. Even though it didn’t shake with the wind that must have been blowing outside, and even though there had never been a terrorist or vandalism attack on the monument that could have given me given me fright of death or falling, I felt a little afraid looking into the river from over six hundred feet above the earth. What if? There was a helicopter landing pad nearby where one landed and shortly took off. From afar, I could see that it was a tourist helicopter – for hire – and not a police one, so I wasn’t immediately relieved from my anxiety. If anything had happened while we were up there, I’d probably be long dead before landing on the pavement below, except I was lucky to have been blown by a strong wind right into the Mississippi river.

"On this spot, the monument to dreams came to life." It reads. But we were lucky, Reham and I. There were no attacks, and the uniformed officers on the observation deck with us didn’t have any work to do while we were up there than to pace up and down observing everyone as they did so. When we got enough of our shots up there, we went back down the same way we came, this time faster. It is always easier coming down in an elevator than going up. We then went around the gift shop, and later into the theatre within the complex, to see a documentary movie about the expedition of Louis and Clark, also eponymously titled, before going into the museum where we saw even more of the Native-American history. The famous expedition of officers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark did more than open up the American West to European civilization. It also served as the beginning of the great incursion of European settlers into a part of the country never before inhabited by people other than the indigenous Native Americans (also called the American Indians). The expedition achieved the main purpose of mapping the area, discovering the path of the Mississippi, and conveying to the native Indians that the land no longer belonged to them but to the white men – the real beginning of their gradual decimation.

The Arch has been called “A Monument to Dreams” perhaps because of its architectural pace-setting significance. Standing beside its base, scratching one’s name on its stainless steel where hundreds of names from all over the world have littered, looking down from its top or seeing it at night from any of the spots in St. Louis, it is definitely a wonder to behold. But at the end of the excursion, Reham remarked to me while we sat in the hall with a cup of coffee each in our hands, “If we hadn’t gone to Chicago, K, this would have been so impressive.” and I nodded in immediate unexplainable agreement. And even though I had enjoyed myself in some way, and was glad to have ticked the St. Louis Arch off my list of to-visit places, with enough souvenir and museum gift items to show for, the visit just happened to have lacked a certain kind of ktravula excitement. It could be from lack of adequate sleep the previous night. Nevertheless, I am glad that I went.

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