ktravula – a travelogue!

Guest Bloggers Welcome

Over the coming weeks, and perhaps for a longer while to come, I will be featuring Guest-Bloggers on this blog. I’ve had the idea for a while now of inviting my favourite bloggers, commenters, or just plain readers to make blog posts here about what concerns them. I like the idea of such interaction of ideas and opinions, and I hope that it will also open up new audiences both for ktravula.com and those bloggers and writers whose writing gets featured. If you are interested in being a guest-blogger on ktravula.com, let me know, send me a mail at kt@ktravula.com and surprise me with your subject of choice. There are no boundaries, I think. 🙂

On the flip side, I am guest-writing for a few blogs I like as well, so all invitations are in order. I would like to write one blogpost for any blogger who asks me to, and the topic would be any of my choice, but mostly along the ideas that I believe the readers of that blog would likely appreciate or respond to. Yesterday was my first guest-writing post, and it is was published on Clarissa’s Blog, entitled “Barking in a Foreign Language”.

Barking In A Foreign Language

This post was first published on Clarissa’s Blog today as part of a guest-writing project. Clarissa a cool Professor of Spanish language and literature at my department will also be a guest-blogger on KTravula.com in the coming days. Watch out.

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Prompted by two related observations in my mind at the moment…

One was the search term in my blog statistics today. Some random person had apparently been directed to my blog by searching for the term “barking in a foreign language”. This is not so strange when I realize that I had once made a blog post about the cartoon that I found on the glass entrance to my department.

The second was this very comprehensive article, and discussion, in the New York times about why, or whether Americans will really, learn Chinese. I enjoyed reading it and picked up a few nuggets, one of which was the fact that the interest of many Americans in learning foreign languages came from political and economic expediencies: They learnt Russian during the Cold War, Arabic after 9/11, Spanish because of their neighbours, and now Chinese in the wake of China’s global economic uprising. Thus said the writers of the article. Not me, even though I have learnt also from a few interactions on the matter that many American students now study Chinese for the purpose of gaining leverage in the emerging economic world.

The article doesn’t mention Yoruba, Swahili, or any of the other minority world languages being learnt in Universities all over America, but that is not the point – I guess. As much as this point in the article could be seen as a generalization of perhaps a genuine interest of students in expanding their worldviews, I believe that there’s something interesting about the said American foreign language fad. For a fact, the govenment of the United States has shown more interest in languages spoken in parts of the world with some economic, political or cultural relevance to its own survival. At the Fulbright conference in December, I had made friends with a guy called Osama from Yemen, a Fulbrighter on a similar programme. That was before the Christmas Day bombing attempt, and its subsequent link to Yemen. After the terror attempt, I asked a friend if she thought that Yemen will now get a lesser slot in subsequent Fulbright programmes because of the terrorism incendent, and she said NO. Quite the opposite, she said. If this all rings true, then Hausa will also soon become another language of interest for Americans in the coming years, because of the failed bombing attempt of Christmas day. This creed can then be summarized somewhat thusly:

“If he has tried to kick your ass, kick his ass too, and then learn his language. You might understand him more, and thus prevent any further aggression.”

Whether this is true, or whether it ever works as planned in the long term, is of course subject to debate.

The Yoruba Talking Drum

I made this video during the cultural awareness week on the campus of the University of Ibadan in May 2009. The talking drum is a uniquely Yoruba percussion instrument that is peculiar because of its ability to mimic tonal patterns of actual human speech. In this video, I tried to engage the drummer in a little competition of abilities; he on the skill of drumming, and I on the skill of discerning. Enjoy.

I showed it to students in class today, along with some music videos of Lagbaja, once again to illustrate the blend of tradition and modernity in Nigerian contemporary music. I had a reaction to his appearance almost in a similar form to the one I had the first time I showed him in class. My students are supposedly aware of the concept of the masquerade, but apparently, not in this particular shape and form. Let me get back to you after the Mardi Gras, and I’ll let you know what I learn about how American masquerades really look like. I’m guessing that they are not as elaborate, or as “scary”. We also learnt about the concept of Abiku, how different it is from the scientifically verifiable child mortality, and how many children often used it as a weapon against abusive parents.

Books On My Desk

On Black Sisters’ Street by Chika Unigwe. This is a powerful book about the lives of prostitutes from Nigeria in the brothels of Belgium. To write this very moving account of an oft neglected but very crucial social phenomenon, the author had to travel to the red light districts of Belgium and conduct one-on-one interviews with the prostitutes, and record their stories. In a recent interview, she confessed that she was able to earn their trust only because they didn’t believe that she was a writer, but a novice hoping to learn the secrets of the trade by asking around. The author Chika, a Nigerian writer, lives in Beligium with her family. Her first book De Feniks was the first work of fiction to be written by a Flemish author of African origin. Get the books, and read them. As soon as I finish reading it, I hope to come back with a mini-review.

In Dependence by Sarah Ladipo Manyika. In judging this book first by its cover, I give deserved kudos to the artist who placed the map of my home town and the town of Oxford, UK on the two unknown faces that grace the pink cover. The novel itself tells the story of love that spans generations, continents, amidst several obstacles , passion, idealism, courage and betrayal. Of the book, this has been said: “…has the subtle power of a well woven work, nothing is out of place… it is full of surprises” among other nice things by journalists and reviewers.

The first chapter begins thus in a sentence of quite enticing prose: “One could begin with the dust, the heat and the purple bougainvillea. One might eve begin with the smell of rotting mangoes tossed by the side of the road where flies hummed and green-bellied lizards bobbed their orange heads while loitering in the sun.” So far, it is a very good read.

I can’t explain why I read so many books at once, as I can’t explain why I keep acquiring them. All I know is that some times my mood requires a different kind of literary satisfaction. At some other times, another. I recommend these two good books for their entertainment as well as their literary value.

For my copies of the book, let me thank Tayo who got me an autographed copy from Sarah Manyika, and sent the book to me all the way from Nigeria, and Ikhide who gave me his copy of “On Black Sister’s Street” along with his review notes within its margins. Then Chika Unigwe, the author herself who graciously sent me a copy from Belgium.

All About Valentine

I’m sure that if I as much as asked around, I’d find that I am not the first or the last young man with embarrassing stories about Valentine’s day or first loves. The first Valentine’s day in my childhood memory occurred while I was in JSS3 or so just as I was just becoming a teenager. I had bought a well-designed card with lovely words and taken it to the extra-mural classes we had during evenings hoping to present it to the object of my attention who attended the same evening class. I however made the mistake of first showing it to a friend, who laughed at me, so I figured that the girl to whom it was addressed would hate it even more. Without reason, I tore it off, and sat the whole day wondering what would have happened it I had given it to her. I liked her very much after all. It was one of those moments that never come back, except in adult reminiscences of childhood playfulness.

An earlier moment of embarrassment in childhood love has however occurred a few years before this time. This was way back in primary school when a cute girl in my class suddenly became an object of my intense interest. The problem was, she shared a class bench and desk with some other guy who was not me. Not a good thing, I reckoned, and began to scheme how to take over the spot that I felt rightly belonged to me. So one day while everyone was on break, I moved my books and bag from my designated sitting space and transferred, without the teacher’s permission, into the spot where Tunde – my love’s authentic class partner – always sat, and waited for him to show up so as to show him his new sitting space far away; and for her to show up to be my new class queen. The succeeding events when class eventually reconvened a few minutes later – I must confess – were matters of great laughter to the class, and to me not just embarrassment but an attack, a conspiracy. For I could never fully understood the teacher’s sense of amazement that I had decided to finally move closer to “the love of my life.” I am convinced that variations of this event would have played out within laughters in my mind of my school mates whenever they thought back on those times of our childhood.

There was another one from childhood which I believe some folks might remember. Or not. A few quasi-risqué-romantic-ish prose poems from an eight year old boy have suddenly been discovered within his school books by his siblings. The boy was me, of course, and the girl was the same object from class. The punishment, according to them, was having to read the said “poems” aloud to a giggling audience of siblings within the house, or risk having them reported to parents. Why that threat of showing them to parents was such a big deal then is still not clear to me, but I will bet that it had roots in self-consciousness. I took the first choice, with all requisite boldness for such endeavour, and read my most private pondering on a desired love in public to a group of jesting folks who most likely just wanted to have fun at my expense. Luckily, it did not end up as the last of such expressions of emotions contemplated in solitude. As an undergrad in the University in 2002, I wrote another one and titled it “My Valentine Fantasy.”

St. Valentine’s day is coming again next week, and since the love fairy has already delivered my gift since a while ago, I don’t think that I have much of a request. It is likely that I spend the weekend at the annual Festival of the Mardi Gras in St. Louis anyway – my first time experience of the uniquely American festival of life, fun, colour and fanfare. For Chris’s sake – my American classmate and co-conspirator to the event, I hope it is more than just a day of staring at flashing boobs of random strangers. You bet I’d let you now what I think. Meanwhile, head over to LaurensOnline for those of you in Lagos who may want to impress friends and lovers with Valentine gifts of shoes and bags. You get up to 20% discount if you show proof of donation of any kind to the Red Cross for Jos Relief. It’s a season of giving, after all.

And yes, please tell me about your own childhood crush experiences. I’d love to listen to them, you know.

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