ktravula – a travelogue!

art. language. travel

Searching ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for 'chicago'...

Can't find what you are looking for? Try searching again!

Otutu and other Stories

And so it is, just like it said it would be: the winter season is beginning little by little. The leaves are all almost dead, and the cold has returned, as benign as it always does at the beginning, keeping its biting fangs safe behind the months waiting for the most appropriate moment to strike. This is the time where I begin to wear three shirts at once, covering them with a large jacket. Gloves, not yet, but we’ll get there. On the one hand is a desire to rid of the heat of previous months. On the other is the dread of what comes ahead: short sunlight days and a long season of heatless sunrays. I’m gonna miss you, Nigeria.

A friend in the UK has asked me for a guide to surviving the winter season. I don’t know much about Britain, but if he was in America, here would have been my response:

1. Get a drinking habit. Be it hot water, tea, coffee, ogogoro, gin, vodka or akpeteshie, nothing kills the cold faster than a hot one in your belly. If you live in America, remember to hold your passport handy when going to the store to buy alcohol. If you are like me with very little tufts of hair sparsely across your face, you will definitely be mistaken for a 17 year old and may not even be believed after showing them the right document. Borrow a fake beard and speak in a deep guttural voice. Tell them that the alcohol has been prescribed for you as the best remedy against the onslaught of the season. If she still refuses to sell it to you, call 911, or scream like a baby.

2. Get married, fall in love, or move into your old girlfriend’s apartment. Body heat is a terrible thing to waste. When in doubt, ask married people. According to the KTravula poll of 2010 conducted over the phone to the many married women and men across America, divorce rates slow down to the barest minimum in the winter. Why? Who wan die?. You got it right. Nobody wants to sleep alone in a cold bed on a winter night. Even for the most dysfunctional family, somebody has got to shovel that snow that piles up on cars and at the door of houses. People have learnt to deal with their marriages and stay in them until the weather is conducive enough to be singularly enjoyed. I have warned you. If you want to survive this season, move in with someone. If you’re thinking of splitting with that old one, wait it out. You will always have spring for that.

3. Eat, eat, eat. Last year, it was pizza – a lot of it. This time, for me, it shall be pizza again, and any other fattening food substance I can find. Goat cheese, cheddar, Swiss cheese, American cheese… any kind of cheese you can find, store them up. And whether you make egusi, efo riro, jollof rice, fried rice, pasta or even okra soup, keep putting cheese in them. It’s the American way. And even if you, like me, don’t like cheese that much, you will find that it is a little sacrifice to make for one’s survival. You will thank me later for it. Scientific fact: fat builds a layer of insulation for your body against the onslaught of the weather. I should know. I’ve been a lanky fellow for as long as I can remember. And this reminds me: I should stay more in one place now. Too much body fluid (and fat) is lost by constant cross-country gallivanting.

4. Whatever you do, do not shave your head. I don’t care if you play for the Lakers, or the Chicago Bulls, or if Michael Jordan is your biggest idol. A skin-shaven head in the winter is suicide. Much of the body heat lost in the cold goes out through the head. Get a cap and wear it all day long. And never shave. I said that already, right? Yes, I’m saying it again to myself. I tried it last year and suffered dearly for it with moments of free-flowing tears occasioned by an outing with a bald head and no cap. The last time I cut my hair this year was sometime in August. The mistake I made was not cutting it again in September. Now I will leave it on until March. I don’t care if I come out looking like a darker version of Wole Soyinka or a lean skinny version of Don King. And who knows, maybe someone would mistake me for them and offer me a movie role.

5. It gets dark. The first time this happened to me, I thought that the world had ended. At three thirty in the afternoon, everything was already sufficiently dark. What happened? Winter. The sun, for some reason, decides to go to bed much earlier this time than at any other time in the year, and everyone outside is left wondering what on earth happened. If you need to go grocery shopping, go with your car. Hey Mohamed and Ameena if you’re reading this, if you ever find yourself stranded in darkness at three-thirty sometime soon, don’t panic. It’s not the end of the world. It happened to the best of us. And don’t call 911 either. The school shuttle will eventually show up, as long as you’re able to locate its shape in the total darkness.

There are a few more tips but they won’t all fit in one post. Stay away from the American East Coast (except your girlfriend lives there). The winters there are the worst. It shuts down a whole city. Develop endurance or a hobby, or anything to keep you busy when everything shuts down and you’re left alone in a apartment for days.  One perk of the winter season, in spite of the many worries that compelled this post, is that school gets to close on random days. That’s quite promising. I can already imagine the menu of the many new dishes to try out in such moments of leisure. And yes, you guessed it right: it’s gonna have cheese in it.

Otutu and other Stories was published on October 28th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Fun category. There are currently 4 comments on this article so far.

In Bedlam

Sleepy eyed in a quiet town, with just a bed-time snore to brand the night for all it was worth. A giggle there, a whisper there. The night rests sombre along the shore of reminiscences. A closet of dreams and a nightstand of slivers and sheets rest beside. An empty plate with a fork looking up. A camera and a lamp long dead from a burnt out fuse. A cordless mouse. Two books and a jar of cream, and pens, and two name tags that point to a faraway place.

Cream-coloured paint on the wall, a dreamy clinic for wandering night eyes; the vent, smoke detectors and invisible sneaky bugs of a metal bush. Deodorants just twenty feet away beside a basket of goodies that now just cups the wisps of air from behind the curtain. Either that or loose coins that make their home into the cracks of its browning chest. Others are straws, and hangers, and toilet rolls strutting underneath the shade. A padlock  here made of silver: Chicago-bought, and a white floor littered with shoes.

Then, a snore and a sigh: the city sleeps.

In Bedlam was published on October 15th, 2010, with the tags , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

On St. Louis!

Some thoughts occurred to me on the way to St. Louis earlier today that I must have mentioned “St. Louis” more times than I have mentioned the name of the city in which I have lived for the last one year. Here’s why: it’s the closest big city to Edwardsville, even though it is located in a neighbouring. The other big city around here is Chicago, and it is five hours away. I bet that people in Michigan find it easier to get to Chicago than we do in the south of the state. The city of St. Louis is just twenty to thirty minutes away, just by the bank of the Mississippi river, and it offers all that a big city offers.

It occured to me just today how similar to Chicago it actually is, in structures, atmosphere and general attitudes. It’s “South Side” is just as dangerous as the South Side of Chicago depending on the time of the day or night, and everyone had warned me to be careful wherever I went. Chicago, of course, has more museums and monuments, and taller buildings. While St. Louis has the Arch, Chicago has the Bean and many other attractions. And as a point of convergence, the Jazz artist Louis Armstrong has strong ties to both cities. In any case, the contiguity of St. Louis to much of where I live now has made it one city about which you’ll continue to hear so much for some time to come.

The trip to that big city today was uneventful today, contrary to expectations. Maybe it was because I got a GPS at last and had to endure a loud mysterious voice directing me to turn where necessary. I guess the only memorable part of the trip was when I finally got to my destination, and decided around the block that I wanted to buy some plantain chips to have for lunch, the lady at the desk of the African restaurant asked me if I was paying with food stamps or cheque. I knew what food stamps were, but I said I didn’t, and asked her to explain, because I had felt profiled by her assumption and didn’t like it. In retrospect, it was just a random welcome into a different kind of America and I should have embraced it as such. And I did, in the end.

How was your Monday?

On St. Louis! was published on September 28th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the adventures, Travelling category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

One Nigeria: Nigerian Unity 50 Years post-independence (i)

I’ve spent countless sleepless nights figuring out just how to write this article without rehashing the same old rote of complaining that has become commonplace while talking about Nigeria and the relationship of its constituent parts. I have started and deleted this piece about four times now, for want of a perfect way to begin to write about the process of transformation that I think has taken place since independence worthy of celebration, or at least of some sort of embrace as the direction to the future.

The first one I wrote dwelt on my disgust with the amount of vitriol in the comment section of the article by Nigerian writer Adaobi Tricia Uwaubani who had dared to claim that tribalism and ethnocentrism in Nigeria is and should rightly be a thing of the past. The article, first published in the UK Guardian was reproduced on Sahara Reporters (arguably the biggest portal for anonymous rage from mostly left-wing, passionate and often misguided, and often faceless citizens) and had pissed off a bunch of faceless people who felt that she had sold out by even considering getting married to someone from a different ethnic group. And thus went my optimism for a submission on the prospects of a more metropolitan future devoid of  really redundant arguments of ethnic purity or superiority.

Then I thought about all the friends I knew whose circumstance of birth and growing up has defied all limitations of ethnocentricism: the colleague whose parents came from the Old Bendel State but who was born in Abeokuta and has lived all his life in Lagos and Ibadan with his Yoruba girlfriend, the friend who was born to Hausa parents in Kaduna but whose sisters have all married Igbo and Yoruba men and who is now dating a Yoruba man, and the neighbour I grew up with in Iwo road who has lived in Ibadan, away from his hometown in the East, for decades and raising his three children there in a home away from home. Then I thought of my other friend in Lagos who was born in Kano to Yoruba parents from Ondo, spoke Hausa as a first language, went to school in Jos, but now lives in Lagos because his family was evicted from the North after the 2002 riots heralded by the 2002 Miss World protests. So I closed that page, and told myself that I would not successfully write this article. Nigeria is a hopeless irredeemable mess of people ever so slowly embracing the value of civilization and peaceful co-existence. Behind around every silver lining was always a dark looming cloud.

Then I thought about this quote: “I tell you my country no be one/ I mean no be yesterday I born”. It was written by Wole Soyinka in his musical album of the eighties: Unlimited Liability, referring – of course – to the fact that the way each of the constituent parts of the country called Nigeria looked at the nation differed depending on where one lived, or the socialization process of one’s growth into adulthood. The problem with looking at the quote from the dark side is that we tend to overlook its redeeming tendencies. Nigeria, indeed, is not one country, just as the United Kingdom or the United States isn’t either. Like the many nations born out of compulsion, and sometimes necessity, it usually takes a long while to evolve into a state of true homogeneity. It has taken America more than four hundred years, and still, the attitudes in Chicago still differ greatly from the ones in downtown St. Louis just a few miles away. Diversity, and a different way at looking at the world may yet be the best gift with which we would head out into the second fifty years of this country’s existence, and may hold the key to the success we seek.

Then I remembered that we are a country with over 500 languages and 250 ethnic groups. Let us develop our agricultural system to have good food, good roads, good governance, good healthcare and good social services/amenties, then maybe we will forget our differences and not base every general election on where the president comes from as is bound to play itself out in the next election when the non-thinking General rolls out his agbada into the arena which he soiled seventeen years ago with a national military broadcast. Well then, it won’t really be politics if there is no mud-slinging and silly ethnic sentiments. After all, even the most advanced democracies have their racist tea party activists to provide the national political drama on cue. It is for this reason that I submit that I really have nothing to celebrate in the progress of ethnic socialization in Nigeria beyond the simple consolation that not only are the jingoists no longer in the majority, they do not have more than their own poisonous opinions to peddle and will become less and less capable of bringing other people into their fold as globalization makes intercultural integration possible.

And there’s nothing really special about a “One Nigeria” anyway. Let us seek means of expression of the many Nigerias present in this melange, but let them all be happy. The future could be more exciting.

One Nigeria: Nigerian Unity 50 Years post-independence (i) was published on September 24th, 2010, under the Uncategorized category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Campus Random

I’m slowly warming up to this new yet familiar experience. School, with a once dry and slow atmosphere suddenly bursts into life without warning and everything finds its root from it. Just last week was the last days of the summer semester, and by this time tomorrow, the school would have burst into the full form of a busy, happening place. The geese are here, still not yet nesting. So are the deer. I saw one yesterday on my walk back to Cougar Village for the very first time in three months. It must have recognised me for having visited a place where its kind are “bush meat” because it immediately retreated from the road further into the woods.

Starbucks remains where it usually was, deep on the side of the students centre. On many sides of Peck Hall are water fountains that give the passageway a kind of home feel. On Friday, just for the kicks, I moved the knob on one of it and watch the water sprout up onto my face. The candy and cookie dispensers also remain, stationary as a public building. I won’t be using them this time. I think I have enough sugar in me to last a year. I won’t be patronizing Papa John’s either even if I get a 200% raise. Something about the exuberance of a bubbly Fulbright scholar has receded, and all that remains is a more relaxed mature student (but of course not without sufficient residue of needed mischief).

What remains is the famous bicycle, and/or the car. The latter is a luxury about which I am fighting myself very very seriously. Even with a bicycle, I remember the horror on my own face to discover how much weight I had gained after a mere ten month’s absence. Now imagine that spent in the comfort of a moving vehicle that requires even less physical exertion. I can also almost swear that I will forget where I’ve parked it on campus nine times out of ten. It doesn’t make sense that people who think of so many things should have to operate a moving vehicle. Isn’t there a law against that?

Today I attended a get-together for Turkish students on campus from various levels and different programmes. I was one of the third non-Turkish students there out of about fifty of us, and I made it a duty to tell whomever asked that my qualification for being there was that I had recently been a victim of Turkish Airline bag misplacement. What I didn’t say was that it was actually convenient that the bag had to be brought to me on campus two days later and I was saved the hassle of having to drag it all by myself all the way from Chicago.

I think pretty much everything is in their place now. Now let’s go enjoy the semester.

Campus Random was published on August 22nd, 2010, under the Academic, Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.