ktravula – a travelogue!

Before/After

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein

PS: I’ve spent the last two hours deleting old pictures from my laptop since I discovered how much space occupied without need. It was an agonizing effort, I tell you. And for all the effort, I have only managed to free up to 14GB. I can’t say that I won’t do some more deleting later today. The photo above was taken at the Lake Michigan in Chicago. The combination of colours in the shot makes it one of my favourites, and it looks even better on paper. I think I’ll present it to Papa Rudy as a gift.

PPS: The guy in the picture is a paid model.

Testimony Time

There is a reason why I usually never leave the kitchen whenever I am cooking there: I do not want to burn down the house by forgetting a pot of food on the hot cooking gas while I’m in my room reading or writing. I know myself. I think I have a very short attention span when it doesn’t have to do with something mentally stimulating. Food tops that list, and I have had to go hungry so many times because I would rather watch a movie, read an article or just stay in one spot thinking of the next mischief.

So on getting back from a long day of school yesterday, I didn’t bother to take off my back pack. I just went into the kitchen and started making pasta and soup on two of the four gas cookers there. In twenty minutes, I was done and the food was sizzling hot on the plate. But instead of sitting down in the living room to eat, I headed into my room, but not before putting the almost empty pot back on the gas cooker, and turning the knob to be sure that I had put off the fire and the gas.

Two minutes later, while in my room, and about to settle into my comfort zone of work, I became uncomfortable because I wasn’t sure whether or not I had refilled the water bottle in the fridge, so I dropped my food and the laptop, and went there just to be sure, only to find that the half empty pot of pasta was still on a burning hot cooker, almost burning itself out from excessive heat. What? I thought I switched this off. Apparently, I had turned it the wrong way, and instead of shutting off the fire, had only turned it up. Sigh. I then switched it off for good, refilled my water bottle, and went back indoors to enjoy my meal and work. It would have been a very fiery day in Cougar Village, and I can already imagine the headline: “Curious Foreign Language SKolar Roasts Self in Building Fire.”

That didn’t happen, and thus my testimony. Praise the Lord! Halleluyah! Amen!.

Offering time…!

The Year of the Tiger

I’m beginning to consider the possibility that I might have been Chinese in my former life. The more I think about it, the more I remember instances in which the Chinese people, or the Chinese language has revolved around me. One of my favourite FLTAs at our orientation in Providence, Rhode Island was Chinese, and she taught me to write my name and my country in Chinese, and I’d given up of ever having such a chance again.

But today, I had another chance or reunion with my adopted spiritual home in the continuation of the events marking the “Discover Languages Month”. Last week was Yoruba. this week is the celebration of the Chinese new year, called The Year of the Tiger, and the student of Chinese had come out to exhibit their skills and knowledge of the language. Supervising the event was none other than Professor Lavalle, the teacher of Chinese language and literature whom I’d blogged about a few days ago. As special attraction, there were marshmallows and chopsticks, and interested competitors can win one of several Chinese toys and artifacts if they could only hold the chopsticks right and move the marshmallows from one bowl into another.

"My name is Chinese Kola"

I had never had marshmallows before, so it was nice that I showed up. Afterwards, after devouring them all, with my hands – of course, I began to wonder why it was sooo sweet in the mouth. I also had dates, which were nice, and then a fortune cookie which predicted that I was about to become $8 poorer. Tell me what kind of a “fortune” cookie is that? Later, I walked up to the stand where calligraphy was being exhibited, and I had my name written, again, in Chinese. I can’t read it now, but I believe the Chinese guy who wrote it. And Prof Lavalle was there. I believe that he would have told me if it was wrong. More than that, I also confirmed that I had not forgotten the few words of Chinese that I know: Ni hau for “hello” and Shi-shi for “thank you. When next I get free time, I think I will be making a trip to Beijing.

If it helps, Chinese is a tonal language, just like Yoruba. Professor Lavalle had also told me on our first meeting that what he read of my poems reminded him of Chinese poetry, as opposed to the prosy and “confessive” nature of American poems. It is supposed to make me feel better, I guess, that my peripatetic spirit has now has more links to the Orients than I like to acknowledge?

Maybe this is why I like Jackie Chan so much. Blood is so thicker than water. 🙂

Culture Shock

This is a guest-post by my cool and brilliant colleague Professor of Spanish language and literature who also blogs as Clarissa on issues of feminism, literature, journalism , immigration, politics, and her love for the Kindle. 🙂 Originally from Ukraine, she migrated to Canada, and she got her PhD at Yale University in the United States. She has recently taught at Cornell University before coming over to our prestigious SI University. Hers is the first in a series of guest blogposts coming on this blog in the coming weeks. Thank you Clarissa for the post. Find her blog here.

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When I was 22, I emigrated from Ukraine to Canada. I was fully prepared to experience a massive culture shock but none came. Sure, it took some time to get used to the idea of a credit card and a check-book, realize that a bus driver doesn’t give out change and there is no need to negotiate the price of a ride with the cab-driver before getting into the cab, and figure out why maple syrup can be poured on bacon and eggs. The process of learning these small things was really fun and caused me no shock whatsoever.
Five years later I decided to go to graduate school in the United States. Having lived in North America for a while, watching American TV and reading American books and newspapers, I expected even less of a culture shock on this change of residence. I was only moving to Connecticut, where the climate and the way of life were supposed to be pretty similar to what I had gotten used to in Canada.

Boy, was I ever wrong. A massive culture shock hit me immediately after crossing the US border and remained with me for years to come. It took time and effort to understand this new reality, learn to like, and eventually even love it.

I the US I discovered a deeply divided society. Glaring class inequalities, the likes of which I never saw back in Canada, racism, religious fanaticism, gender inequalities, economically devastated areas with the kind of poverty I never saw even back in Ukraine, crime, violence, inept governmental strcutures. All this was very different from the US I had seen in movies and TV shows.

But soon I also discovered that yet another US exists. The country of intellectuals, thinkers, artists. The country of hard-working, kind, generous people, who have not abandoned the struggle for the perfect society they inherited from their founders. The country of intellectually curious people. The country of people who hate injustice and inequality. The country that deserves better than the corrupt structures governing them.

When people read the very critical things I write about the US on my blog, they sometimes ask me, “Why do you live in this country if you dislike it so much?”. But I ask, does hating injustice and inequality mean hating America? Or is it just the opposite?

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I love Clarissa’s blog because of the way she looks at the world. Even though she hasn’t called it that, her blog is a travelogue of sorts as well – a response to the American society from the viewpoint of an immigrant. And as expected of someone of her level of brilliance, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and she says what’s in her mind no matter whose ox is gored. I particularly like the way she responds to the people who make foolish or hateful comments on her blog. I wish I could be that quick-witted sometimes. 🙂

Where Am I?

Contrary to what you might think, I’m not lost. I know exactly where I am. I think.

I am in the United States of America, the land of the free… the place where your rights end right where mine begins.

Or not.

You are free to do anything as long as nobody (else) gets hurt. It is a land of rights as well as responsibilities.

This land does not run itself however. It is not on auto-pilot. It is made to work by people who spend their waking hours doing their part of the national chore.

“If everyone sweeps their front yard, the whole city will be clean.”

That is one quote that I’ve always liked, because it takes responsibility of making a society function properly away from the removed distance of “the other”, the government, and places it in the hands of the citizens who must either make it work or not.

The trash cans do not empty themselves. I have seen the guys who move them.

Neither does the snow magically disappear from the roads after a major fall. The woman who drives the snow mobile does so promptly and without fail. Or else how would I be able to ride my bike to school after a major snow fall?

The floor of Peck Hall is not magically clean, nor are its walls, corridors and classroom boards all fine and good looking all by themselves. The men and women who work every day to keep them as they should be also happened not to have more than just two hands. I have seen them.

This expanse of land inherited/taken over by a generation of immigrants is an interesting study. If I were to have won a great expanse of land estate such as this, I would be quite justified to fight for its defense with everything I have. I would be justified to jealously guard it as mine. I would never take it for granted. I would live everyday in the joy of the liberty afforded by such a gift. I would be an American, spending each day in gratitude and in the knowledge of the fragility of such great present, and in the joy of company. Life would be good. I would contribute to make it what it is – a land of order and contentment, if possible. I would not kill fellow citizens because they speak a different language or live in a different part of the nation.

I have seen the bus driver. She smiles at me every time I get on the bus, and we talk back and forth either about the book she is reading at the moment, or about the latest news about Nigeria and my American experiences. The bus comes on schedule. On time, most times. I do not get shoved when I go in, and neither is there noise of horns and a lousy conductor.

I’m not crazy yet, interestingly, within the silence of order and propriety. I am surprised by this. Cacophony beckons within the memories of heat and sweat in a distant city in Western Nigeria, and I sigh. I am still in the United States of America.

Alright, I’m in the Midwest of the USA, but it’s still the same. And sometimes, the calm and order unnerves me! 🙂

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