ktravula – a travelogue!

Meeting the Bloggers

Here is the most anticipated post about my meeting with some of Nigeria’s famous bloggers residing in the United States of America. The state of Maryland itself is home to a handful of them so it was already a granted fact that I would make a courtesy call on the anonymous personalities behind Nigeria’s biggest web voices. Going to Maryland and not meeting a Nigerian blogger is like going to France and not seeing the Eiffel Tower, or going to Lagos and not losing your wallet. Or something like that. Anyway, it was just as well that my Fulbright conference took place in a part of the country closest to the state of Maryland, so I arranged my trip to give at least a form of freedom to explore and meet the people of Nigeria living there, making a difference and contributing their individual talents to global conversation through their blogs and twitter feeds.

I had no unrealistic expectations when I decided to meet with those that were available, and I realized that it was going to be easier since they didn’t have any expectations either. We all belonged to a active (and sometimes resteless) group of bloggers in what is called the Naija Blogville, and even though we had never met in flesh, we existed in a shared space of fun, collective aspirations, life stories, laughter, occasional complaints and youthfulness where we tease, taunt, share, love, scandalize, flay, fight, and desire ourselves endlessly. Until then, I was as invisible to them as they were to me, and agreeing to meet up was as much a trust in good faith and the triumph of media development. After all, if not for blogger, wordpress, facebook or twitter, and most of all instant messaging, and the faith we develop from the impressions made therefrom, there was scarcely a way in which the following scenario would have taken place:

Vera: My school starts at 2pm. We agreed to meet at 2pm.

Me: At your school?

Vera: Yeah. I mean, my group mates and I are meeting at 2pm in school.

Me: Well, except your school is as small as this hotel room, there’s no way I can locate you in a large group of University students on a large campus. Does Bunmi know where to find you in school?

Vera: No, I’m sure she wouldn’t. Okay, let’s put on our thinking caps.

Me: I have mine on right now. It’s blue.

Vera: What time do you want to meet? That would help me determine where/how to meet.

Me: Problem is, I don’t know exactly when exactly Bunmi would be here. She will send me a mail to say when.

Vera: Nonsense. I’m calling her right now. Just hold on.

Vera Ezimora (12/12/2009 9:43:26 PM): My school starts at 2pm.

Vera Ezimora (12/12/2009 9:43:38 PM): We agreed to meet at 2pm

Moi (12/12/2009 9:43:47 PM): at your school?

Vera Ezimora (12/12/2009 9:44:08 PM): Yeah. I mean, my group mates and I are meeting at 2pm in school

Moi (12/12/2009 9:44:40 PM): aaargh. Except your school is as small as this hotel room, there’s no way I can locate you in a group of university students.

Moi (12/12/2009 9:44:50 PM): on a large campus

Moi (12/12/2009 9:45:14 PM): does bumight know where to find you in school?

Vera Ezimora (12/12/2009 9:45:42 PM): No, I’m sure she wouldn’t

Vera Ezimora (12/12/2009 9:45:53 PM): Okay, let’s put on our thinking caps

Moi (12/12/2009 9:45:58 PM): I have mine on

Moi (12/12/2009 9:46:01 PM): It’s blue

Vera Ezimora (12/12/2009 9:46:05 PM): What time do you want to meet?

Vera Ezimora (12/12/2009 9:46:07 PM): Lol

Vera Ezimora (12/12/2009 9:46:24 PM): That would help me determine where/how to meet

Moi (12/12/2009 9:46:55 PM): problem is, Bumight says she likes to wake up late, so I don’t know when exactly she’ll be here. She will send me a mail to say when.

Vera Ezimora (12/12/2009 9:47:14 PM): Nonsense. I’m calling her right now. Just hold on.

Moi (12/12/2009 9:47:16 PM): so if she can set me free by 12 or 1pm, where will it be better for her to drop me?

End of Term

With my final examination completed this afternoon, I am finally done with the Fall Semester, and the holiday for me officially begins. Let me tell you a little about the exam. It was a test of everything we have done in the Linguistics class, and it lasted an hour, forty minutes, even though I finished before the set time. The notable thing was that the professor allowed us to bring notes into the examination hall, as long as it was on only one side of a blank sheet, and handwritten. It was a way, I guess, to make sure that everyone has a chance to succeed.

Many other changes are taking place around the campus. It is thinning out, and in a few days, the once bubbling mini-town that is campus will become an almost ghost town. Chris, my housemate has already packed his bags and is heading home. Ben, the rugged one, will be here for a little while more, but he will also eventually leave, and I will have the whole apartment all to myself. I may have to go buy my own christmas tree… Audrey the French is leaving. Her academic exchange programme was supposed to last one semester, and is now over. We are organizing a party for her at the apartment on Friday, which should be fun. She was such a nice company, fun, adorable and lively, although I haven’t seen her for a while in the last three weeks because of the hectic nature of that time of the semester. Also leaving are other international students from France who came on the same programme as Audrey. They all added colour in some way to the semester.

My most memorable times with Audrey included a long walk around Chicago in November while we were trying to locate our hostel much without luck. Until then, I had never seen her cute Frenchie self so upset by anything. And even though we all tried to maintain a sense of balance as frustration grew on us and the maps refused to point us in the right direction, when we stood at the bridge across Michigan Avenue and thought of how to proceed, I thought I saw her really pissed off, especially since we didn’t seem to understand each other’s words and motives. Eventually, her phone came to the rescue and we found out that we had just walked past the HI Chicago building by just one block. I also remember one of the many discussions we had in Chicago about breastfeeding (she was thoroughly against it, believing that it is “disgusting” to have anything come out of her breasts for anyone to drink), religion (doesn’t believe in it, rationalizing that there is too much wickedness in the world to believe in a good and kind God), and homosexuality (doesn’t have anything against it, since humans all have the right to express whatever they are), and how opposed to Reham she was every time the conversations took place. “As soon as I have a baby,” Audrey always said, “I will spend all my nights in bed, sleeping while my husband will feed the baby whenever it cries. I carried the baby for nine months, after all, and I’m not about to lose my sleep for anybody.”

She was fun.

The semester was fun. I hope the next one is just as fantastic.

Why Fulbright?

The heaviness on my person since I returned from Washington DC on Monday, I have realized, has to do with more than just my delirious nostalgia for the taste of a certain thrill and an unexplainable positive strangeness that dominated that trip to the East. It could easily have been because of the food, because it was the one thing that almost equally matched the large number of workshop sessions that followed each other one after the other, sometimes without much of a breathing space. We got out of one conference workshop session and we hopped right into another. It was mostly worth it, but it will take the whole of my holiday to truly catch up with the details of all that we were taught. The food however was a different matter. They were diverse as they were elaborate, and I left that hotel on Sunday feeling that I’d committed an unforgivable sin of indulgence – as my mum would have called it. In any case, it was scarcely two hours after then before I entered another cycle of feeding, this time in the neighbouring state of Maryland, and the foods (most of it) were Nigerian for a change.

Fried eggs, bread, pringles, mangoes, (green) tea, orange juice…

and then later in the evening: pounded yam, rice, beans (note: not baked beans or anything American, but Naija style cooking), snails, cow leg and other beef parts in pepper sauce, vegetable soup, Hennessey cognac, and finally some red Malbec Argentinian wine…

I should probably confess that I have never ever eaten this much food in one day. On the one hand, it could be some form of indulgence which I immediately justified from previous frustrations with pizza and long queues at pastries food stands. On the other hand, it just was a very convenient acquiescence to the warmth of my Nigerian hosts who were more than happy to have me around. I felt loved.

It is in returning to my base now that the value of those warm connections are making their presence felt on my wandering self. But again, more than just the thrill, I have been very humbled by the responsibilities the Fulbright tag, and slightly worried that I may have been irreparably changed by the week-long indulgence in a way that I might not yet recognize. Oh well, give me another week or two in this now gradually emptying University campus and I will regain my required pungency. Until then, let us drink to life, and to hope for the parts of the world where there is none. And to peace and understanding – no matter how elusive it gets. Yea, it’s still me speaking. I told you that I’ve changed. Where did the old cynical travula go? I too have no idea.

Sunday, abridged

I left the hotel in Washington DC at around ten in company of my very charming host Bumight, who had volunteered to give me a lift from the hotel and a ride through Howard University. The tour was in the cold rain, but was worth it. Later, I was pleased to get a chance to participate in the cooking my own breakfast.

I then went to the University of Maryland as well and sat through a class group discussion that had students from three different continents.

Later, I went, along with blogger and radio personality Vera Ezimora, to the home of a Nigerian writer and literary critic Ikhide Ikheloa who had graciously offered to host me and drive me back to the airport in the morning. All these he did, and more. I had never eaten so much food at one sitting in my entire life. It was also my first time of finishing a whole bottle of red wine at one sitting. It was Malbec, a fine wine from Argentina. Mr Ikheloa has lived in the United States since 1982 when he decided on a whim to move from the prosperity of old Nigeria in search of adventure. It was another home away from home with stories, music, jokes, laughter and fun.

The morning of Sunday started with promise, in spite of the very cold rain. I left the hotel in Washington DC an hour before check out time in company of my very charming host Bumight, who had come all the way from Maryland to drive get me out of the capital. It was with her that I got a free ride-through tour of Howard University in Maryland where she’s a student of medicine. The tour was extensive and we almost froze our fingers off while walking in the freezing and dripping weather, taking pictures. I later went to Hyatsville where I did a little cooking for my own breakfast.

The Nigerian slice of the American blogging world is dominated, I believe, by a few young but strong Nigerian ladies many of who reside in the state of Maryland. On this visit, I was privileged to have met four of them. Bumight’s blog, like many others, express the different peculiarities of living, particularly as a student in a foreign country, but it has a medical slant, understandably. These days, you’re most likely to find her on twitter sharing thought or just being randomly funny. Can you guess what’s written on that shirt she’s wearing in this picture?

My travelling body was soon transferred from her hand, after a delicious breakfast, into the hands of another blogger Vera Ezimora whose online presence is almost greatly disproportional to her height and (almost) gentle speech. But don’t take my word for it. I’ve been told that while standing beside me, people of normal height look like dwarfs. Vera and I went to the University of Maryland where she’s currently a student. I sat through almost one and a half hour of class group discussion that dwelt on the different types of empathy. After those tortuous hours (of my life that I can never get back, of listening to them deliberate in at least four different accents of the English language – from at least three different continents), I am never going to see empathy in the same light ever again.

Then there was a brief interlude outside of the class, a short respite, where I met some two new faces from the Nigeria: Chinny and Sweet&Sour, who complained that I made them look short. See how one of them tried to get to my height level by jumping up high. I was meeting them for the very first time.

Nigerian writer and literary critic Ikhide Ikheloa who had graciously offered to host me and drive me back to the airport in the morning. All these he did, and more. I had never eaten so much food at one sitting in my entire life. It was also my first time of finishing a whole bottle of red wine at one sitting. It was Malbec, a fine wine from Argentina. Mr Ikheloa has lived in the United States since 1982 when he decided on a whim to move from the prosperity of old Nigeria in search of adventure. It was another home away from home with stories, music, jokes, laughter and fun.

Howard University

This one looks like a shrine I spent the beginning of Sunday on a foot and drive-through sight-seeing tour of the famous Howard University in Washington DC and its major famous spots. The trip was made possible thanks to a Nigerian friend and a student of the University, who drove all the way to pick me up and give me a tour even in the freezing rain.

The buildings in these photos include the iconic Founder’s Hall, the school gate, the school yard with all the fraternity trees and signs, the Arts and Science building, the medical sciences building, the “Founder’s Walk” area and the Howard Place, a building named after the General Oliver Otis Howard who the University itself was named after. He was an American civil war hero who also became the University’s first president.

The University was founded in the year 1866 as a theological seminary for African-American clergymen, but quickly expanded into a full-fledged University. One of its notable Alumni is Edward Brooke, the first African-American to be elected into the US Senate.

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