ktravula – a travelogue!

Heading Eastwards II

The other thing that came with my ordered dinner of “fried rice”, soup and soda yesterday night was a pair of fortune cookies which I had not ordered for. They are chinese cookies “folded and baked around a piece of paper on which a saying or a prediction of somebody’s fortune is written.” (definition by Encarta) I’m not superstitious (all the time) but I take little fun in poking fun at the predictions of the cosmos. I never believed in zodiac signs, but I always read the predictions in the papers whenever I can. Don’t mind the fact that all the predictions for each zodiac sign are in one way or the other similar and could work for anyone with as much as a little dose of superstition. It’s the placebo effect, I guess. But I digress.

By now you already know that in about a few weeks, very very soon now, I will be heading to the East Coast of the country, again! Yea, I’m excited about it too. There are just so many things to see in Washington DC. I can’t wait to stand underneath the real Lincoln Monument. The small one we took pictures with at the Chicago Grant Park was an impostor. I’ve hoped to use the opportunity to do a little wandering around the neighbouring states as well: New York, maybe New Jersey, and Maryland. The last state, definitely, thanks to Ikhide Ikheloa who has promised me a ride from Washington DC to Maryland, warm beddings to lay my head on, plenty naija books to read and to steal, a new iPhone 3Gs and an unlimited supply of Ofe nsala, isi ewu and cow leg pepper soup! Ha, don’t even think of reneging on the promise, Baba!

Anyway, when I broke open the two blasted cookies yesterday, I was too much in a hurry to consume them that I ignored the “fortune” paper in them until after the cookies, the food and the “soup” were well digested. And when I was ready, I took a look and here was what I found: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Travelling to the east will bring you great rewards.”

And suddenly, I’m a believer.

New York, DC, East Coast, here I come… at least after I finish devouring all the livestock of this Thanksgiving Week!

A Soup and A Yam

When is a soup a soup and a yam a yam? My concept of these two food items has definitely undergone a radical change in the past three months since I’ve been here. Well now that I think about it, there has been some gradual change in my perception of them, but not in the way that the United Forests of America has shocked this Nigerian ghoul into a different realization.

In the beginning, soup was red, peppery and totally fluid, except for pieces of meat, fish, shrimp or other animal flesh. Of course, soup was also vegetable cooked with crayfish, onions, spices, oil and some other nice stuff. And then I travelled out of my comfort zone and came across a few women to whom what I called “soup” was just pepper stew. Yea, if you’re an Igbo Nigerian, you’re probably grinning by now in agreement. I discovered from those women from South Eastern and South Southern Nigeria, and from an Igbo roommate while in the University that what I called soup (by the first definition) was nothing but ofe n manu (stew filled with palm oil, or something like that). We had many bouts of argument about what made a “soup” different from a “stew”, and I never agreed with his insistence that soup must have more than just a flood of water, oil, pepper, fish and meat cooked in a certain fashion. In Yorubaland, that is a perfectly cooked pot of soup which was aided many times by ewedu, okra, or efo riro. In any case, my idea of “soup” had been well defined before I boarded that British Airways flight from Lagos.

Okay, you already know where I’m going with this… I ordered some food yesterday and one of the items on the ordered menu was a bowl of soup. When it arrived, it came in a large cup, was greyish white in colour, didn’t have oil in it and was sweet in a way that doesn’t meet and could not have met the “soup” definition criteria of either the Yoruba or the Igbo women in Nigeria that I know.

This is not my first encounter with American “soups”, but this is one of my first conscious consideration of the criteria we usually employ to define types of food. It is the same case with Yam. I did tell you that a few people here have ever heard of, or seen, what the yam looks like, right? I have since discovered that America indeed had “yams”, but they are not our African discorea species kind of yam, but Irish potato kinds, even though they’re not called Irish potatoes here, but “potatoes” simply, or “yams”. If you find yourself confused right now, I don’t blame you. Papa Rudy, my host family at Edwardsville once did try without luck to explain the differences to me between the red (supposedly sweet) potatoes and the “Irish” ones. “These red skinned ones,” he said “are ‘yams’, and these grey skinned ones are ‘potatoes'”. I nodded in agreement, and went back to playing solitaire on his computer in the living room.

Which kain sweet potato? Of course by now it has changed colour It was just as well, because almost three weeks ago when I went into Aldi’s to shop for groceries, I saw some of the red ones and felt suddenly giddy. I would be eating “sweet” potatoes for the very first time in a long while. What heaven! I bought sufficient, ignored the grey ones, and headed home probably dancing to the songs in my head. Alas, the horror of horrors awaited me when after about thirty minutes of cooking said “yams” or “sweet potatoes” on fire with little salt, I sat cross legged in front of the television and peeled them to eat. I couldn’t believe my tongue, and I had to taste them all one after the other to confirm what I was now discovering anew: this “yam” is actually a friggin’ yam, goddarnit! A yam, albeit of a small variety! In Yorubaland, we called this èsúrú! Aaaaaaaargh! I used to love èsúrú, but at that moment of sudden discovery of a kind of cheating from the culinary gods, I suddenly lost interest, and went back to doing other things.

The lesson for me there was not only to learn to keep my taste-bud enthusiasms in check until I’ve actually tasted the product of my cooking labour, but never ever to judge a food just by its name. Yes, I’m sure that real sweet potatoes exist in North America, and that I might find them someday if I ask around, but who’s gonna eat all these red-skinned impostor-yam èsúrús now? Surely, not me!

An Article

I got this link today, and I found it interesting not only because it details the experience of an American Fulbrighter in Nigeria, but because it shows the many prospects of the Fulbright programme beyond just the classroom walls. Evidently – as I’ve seen from the popularity of posts here, and the blog poll – what interests readers of this blog is not always the academic side of the scholar’s experiences, but the subtle, the fun, the personal and the daring.

Find the article here, hat tip to Chris Ogunlowo for the link.

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.

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