Hovering all around Europe for the last twenty-four hours, I’ve finally made a complete stop at a familiar place. This time it’s looking a lot more like a place I’ve been away from for a long while. There is some lethargy, no doubt, perhaps conditioned by stress, or by fatigue of flying in the aisle seat for that length of time, or the thought of my luggage in the hand of a random stranger.
Well, here I am now, no longer such a stranger. What does the city hold for the poor traveler?
The railway track from Lagos reaches Ibadan, Abeokuta and then head up north towards Zaria, Jos and Maiduguri, and the very first proposals on this trip was to have gone via railway. How nice that could have been, except that it would have taken days if not weeks to commute between even almost neighbouring towns. At least, it could have been a good chance to see more of the countryside as one ascends up the country.
So here I am in Ilorin, a sorta border town between the North and the South. But don’t take my word for it. Most residents of this town know for sure that politically and geographically, Ilorin belongs to the North. There is a very long and bloody history behind this conclusion. Don’t ask me. One thing for sure is that everyone here speaks Yoruba, and perhaps Hausa as well, among other languages. The state’s motto is “The Land of Harmony”, perhaps a play on the diversity it embodies.
The towns of Ekiti that lay in-between the journey from Ile-Ife to Ilorin are interspersed between rocks and hills. It is also a land of diverse tongues. The Akoko area of Ondo and Ekiti States is one of the most linguistically diverse places in Nigeria. Many of the languages there are endangered or under some sort of threat from globalization, and the influence of Yoruba, thus the influx of linguists from all over the world to study and document those languages. I have worked with at least three of such linguists, doing fieldworks in villages in the Akoko Area, some from the School of Oriental and African Studies, in the UK, and a few from SIUE itself. Has anyone heard of a language called Ayere or Uwu?
So, Kaduna is the ideal next stop, and it is six hours away from here by car. That is not the problem however. The problem is where I intend to sleep when I get there. This, of course, could also be the most exciting part of the trip. Now imagine me in jeans and a ktravula t-shirt, with a backpack and dark specs walking up to the gate of the government house and requesting to meet with the Governor in person. “Yes sir. I am a Nigerian Fulbrighter from the United States on a short trip around my country. I need a place to lay my head just for a few days while I check out your state and I have come to you, being the chief executive of the state. I’m all yours. What say you?”
Now, that would be an adventure.
Here are the reports of a few of the most interesting places of interest I’ve been in the last ten months, with pictures. Enjoy.
Here are a few blogs about literature, travelling and journalism that you should check out. I have also recently added them to my Favourite page.
Richard Ali on Nigerian Literature and the Arts.
Belinda Otas – Journalist, Writer, Blogger and theatre fanatic.
Naijablog – A British academic in Nigeria: views, observations and links.
Jude Dibia – Author of Unbridled and Walking With Shadows.
Novuyo Rosa – The Pen and I: Thoughts of a South-African writer.
Ruona Godwin-Agbroko – a Nigerian Journalist and 2010 Nial Fitzgerald Scholar in South Africa
Loomnie – thoughts of a Nigerian Anthropologist in Europe.
Ethan Zuckerman – My Heart’s in Accra.
Wordsbody – Nigerian Writer and Arts Journalist
The Mardi Gras in the United States and elsewhere in the world is an annual event of extraordinary proportions. It is defined by revelry, colour and excitement. This year’s edition was no exception. It does not take place in just one city in the US, but the biggest of them all holds in New Orleans in the state of Louisiana – an area that marks the beginning of the festival in the late 1600s. The Mardi Gras is so named in French (“Fat Tuesday”) to define the last days of indulgence before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday.
American beauties
I had gone to this year’s event in St. Louis in company of an American friend and classmate. Apparently, one of the biggest attractions of the festival carnival is the now accepted spectacle of women flashing their breasts to all interested for a little fee of colourful beads. Needless to say, before we entered the long street called the Soulard where thousands of human bodies lined up to witness the parade of colourful costumes and dance, we made sure to have purchased a whole lot of colourful beads on strings, just in case we needed them. It turned out that we did; we found beads of different colours, thickness and length – just like ours – on everyone’s necks. Those who didn’t have enough were found jostling to catch any of the many more strings of beads that were flung into the crowd by members of the parade that took place later. As part of the history of the cultural event, it is said that young women gathered in evenings around fireplaces to count their gains of the carnival in the number of beads they obtained. And all they had to do to get the beads is to flash their breasts, which, I should say, also came in different shades and sizes, from what we saw.
The parade this year included: a march-past by uniformed representatives of the American military, marching to an accompanying band. Other highlights were: a costume re-enactment of the French revolution along with a life-size guillotine wheeled across the street following the French flag and a big banner that read not ‘off with her head’ but “Off with her top”; a bike ride; a campus dance band complete with drums and cheerleaders; motor scooter rides of different shapes and colours; and horseback riding. Some of the displays were serious – like the military parade that had the crowd chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!”. Some were ludicrous – like a parade of colourfully dressed women on a truck with a banner that read “18+ holes with Tiger Woods.” Most were fun, and they took the same form: somebody was throwing beads at the crowd, especially in the direction of women who showed their breasts, and kept them hanging open for long amidst the loud roar of approval from the teeming crowd.
Rice and red beans
The crowd was unimaginable. It is estimated that there were more than 50,000 people at that event on Saturday, February 13; and this is just a conservative estimate based on visual approximation. A few minutes into the Soulard Street, I came across a man in an overcoat and a black hat whose beard and facial structure reminded me so much of the Nigerian Nobel Laureate. But I was standing at a roadside shed eating hot rice and red beans in sauce with mouth full, so that I lost a golden chance to scream “Prof!” behind his back. A few seconds later when such a chance presented itself, the man had disappeared down the street, and the initial hope of finding him – since “it can’t be so hard to locate a man in coat and a black hat down this street” – quickly frittered away. Such was the enormity of the crowd that occupied each labyrinth of the now festive street and its many alleyways, prompting the wonder about just how large the Mardi Gras festival would be in New Orleans, Louisiana this year. I also wondered how much larger the crowd here would have been – or how wild – had the event taken place in the summer.
Beside the indulgence and the number of people at this year’s event that has become part of American festival culture, I’ll remember it most for the colourful costumes, the parades, the beauty of beads around American necks, the roadside food stalls that cost almost double what they did on normal days, the capacity of the human spirit for fun and liveliness even in the face of a harshly cold weather, and the beauty of St. Louis at night. All these, for me, show an optimism that proves once again that life will always go on.
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As published in 234Next on February 19, 2010.