Places & Travel

AJ

Theories, Tea and (Future) 10ks

Image Source: Tara’s Multicultural Table

**

The difference a few degrees makes never ceases to amaze me, a small mercy I have recently found to my advantage as the morning temperatures, dipping as they have below 30 degrees for the first time since April, have allowed me go for short runs and brisk runs again. Between stress eating in South Yorkshire and not being able to rack up those 10k steps, my weight has ballooned by a cringe worthy amount. In a sudden fit of resolve, I downloaded the NHS Couch to 5k app and have now completed one week. Hopefully, that along with some portion control, gets me back headed in the right direction. Frankly though, I would settle for being able to complete a sub 24 minute 5k again, seeing as the chap who ran Parkruns for fun in the ‘Deen seems like a whole different person now.

Another small mercy, or delight really, was making a pit stop at a tea spot a few days ago in the middle of a long journey up north. Between the very short notice to grab my gear and head out – the call came during the morning meeting and I had all of twenty minutes to grab a coffee, defer some other stuff and head out – and the long drive (over three hours and then some of 120km/hr driving each way), making a pit stop to drink in the distinctive flavours and grab some much needed caffeine from a cup of Yemeni tea was a blessing in disguise. Thankfully I didn’t do any of the driving, though I did feel for the guy who did. It must have been shattering to do all those miles!

The other thing that came from being cooped up for so long was a deep dive into some conspiracy theories: 9/11, ISIS and the West’s complicity in the travails of the region all came up. Politics and religion are two things I steer well clear of out here, given the different notions of liberty and freedoms that rule the roost out here, so I did most of the listening, throwing in a few questions here and there to appear interested. I am not sure what to make of the Afghanistan debacle, with the Taliban making great gains in the aftermath of the US withdrawal, though the parallels with Northern Nigeria/Chad/ Niger are not lost on me. Sadly hope, which seems to be all we can do for the Nigerian situation, is hardly a recipe for stability or a solution there.

On a brighter note, our little adventure up north has nudged me closer towards being open to explore the vast expanse of this country. I do have to buy a car first, but with my first year behind me and a semblance of slowly settling in, I am finally mentally able to see myself out here for more than a year.

AJ

Spring, Shamals and the Aftermaths of Vaccination

***

The memories of the days are beginning to disappear into a haze, each one a maelstrom of activity that begins with waking with a dull, lingering sense of dread and ending the same way it began, only with a sense of battle weary tiredness layered on. One day it is Sunday, and then suddenly it seems like it is Tuesday and then Thursday – brings respite – only for it all to begin again; wash-rinse-repeat. The good thing is that somehow it is the beginning of March, and each day that passes quickly brings the arrival of that symbol of the worker’s Faustian pact, a salary, another day closer. In my more sanguine moments, I remind myself that for all my bellyaching, there are far worse things to moan about in the world than work.

With March comes a change of season to spring, if one can call day time temperatures in excess of 30 degrees C spring. December, and my will-I-or-won’t-I-wear-a-jacket phase, seem far away now. It is the season for sand storms, as I found out to my pain the other day when I got caught in a sand storm of sorts. As my bare legs stung with the impact of the grit, whipped into a potent weapon of attrition by the wind, I was grateful for the protection my glasses afforded my eyes. That does not happen often.

The other thing that March brought was getting a shot of one of the COVID-19 vaccines. Every time an opportunity to register came up, I put my name down, conscious of the seeming inevitability of vaccine passports and what not for travel. I opted to get my shot on a Wednesday evening, my thinking being that the timing would allow me sleep off any side effects. I felt especially tired the next day which might be related to not being able to sleep well the night before. My fitness tracker spotted a 0.4 degree C spike in body temperature for the next two days before returning to normal, but otherwise I had no discernible side-effects. One hopes that vaccine uptakes improves around the world, and a sort of normalcy returns thereafter. It has been a long hard year for most people!

For the word of the week, Khamis, for Thursday and respite.

Recent Finds

  • Teju Cole chats Fernweh amongst other things on the Behind the Covers podcast. Baldwin, race, photography and Switzerland all feature in this wide ranging chat.
  • Apparently, eating fresh mango with gold cutlery is the business, at least so say the experts on The Infinite Monkey Cage. Fun-fact, silver (in spite of its reputation as being the material of choice for posh, rich folks actually tastes the worst.
  • Confirmation that the ‘Deen Market demolition is to go ahead is somewhat bitter-sweet news on a personal level. It was hardly the most salubrious of places to eat in, or do anything else to be honest as O points out, but being starved of Nigerian food in my first few years there, popping in there provided some respite now and again.
  • Jane Goodall & Adam Grant chat Leadership (and chimps), not surprisingly there is stuff to learn in the areas they overlap.
  • And something poetry related of course. Naomi Shihab Nye chats poetry, growing up and a whole lot of other stuff with Krista Tippet at the On Being Podcast.
AJ

Season’s Greetings

It feels very much like my first Christmas up in the ‘Deen, what with being house bound, friends and family some distance away and there being a decided chill in the air. Now, as with then, I woke up to We Three Kings in my ears with all the rabbit holes of memories it brings with it.

The key difference this time is that the lockdown has given everyone practice of staying in touch across the distance. Fortunately or unfortunately, that means I have several family zoom calls to jump on. It is a small inconvenience I guess, given the year we have all had – the best of years and the worst of years to use that oft quoted line from Dickens.

There is a lot to be thankful for on all counts, so all I’ll say is give those friends and family members a call over this period and catch up.

Season’s Greetings from the Edge of The World!

AJ

On Lights, Language and that (c)old December Weather

Photo by Lawless Capture on Unsplash

**

In about as low key a manner as could be, lights – I won’t go so far as to call them Christmas lights – are slowly making their way on to trees around me. That they first turned up in front of the communal lounge and then a few houses here and there complete with inflatable Santas made me think they were put up by individuals. I am no longer so sure of that, given that some lights turned up on the tree in the middle of no man’s land in front of my house. Lights apart, you would have no inkling it was a week to Christmas – work continues apace and the only official holiday is the 3rd of January. For all the sameness that living in the bubble I live in seems to cultivate, it is these little differences that drive home the realities now and again. The positive is that I get to take the days off when I want which, all things being equal, should be soon-ish.

Two conversations this week, and one of my favourite podcasts, brought the subject of language to my mind. First was a conversation around learning French which for me remains lost in the dregs of the someday/maybe folder. Three months of lockdown had me diving into Duolingo on a regular basis but in the face of real life since then, the inscrutability of gendered nouns, tricky pronunciations and head scratching verb conjugations have put paid to that desire. Maybe English is far too reductionist – or more likely as a reasonably fluent English speaker I have become lazy with languages – but one wonders what the world-view behind gendered nouns is.

The past few episodes of the On Being podcast have focused on the subject of love and loving. In the notes to Ellen Bass’s Bone of My Bone and Flesh of My Flesh, the subject of language and how we refer to the ones we love comes up but perhaps most close to my heart was a conversation with O. O is a distant cousin who insists on speaking to me in our shared mother tongue. In the aftermath of our last conversation I couldn’t shake the thought of how we greet in the morning from my mind. In my mother tongue (and why is it mother tongue?), we say “mole muude”, which loosely translates as welcome from yesterday. Maybe some distant ancestor realized that life was a hard slog, and making it through a night exposed to the elements and wild beasts deserved a welcome of sorts, or not. Given the multiple theories on the origin of language, I suspect we will never know for certain.

When the morning temperatures first dipped below 10 degrees a few weeks ago, I spurned the use of a jacket as I the one I had was not fire retardant. Fast forward a few weeks now, and every morning when I get off the bus without my jacket, I am invariably asked if I am not cold. My usual response is to say that I’ve seen worse, and that 10 degree weather, sans the bracing Scottish wind – is hardly cold. This is an explanation I have overhead others repeating. I fear this is one of those things that will take on a life of its own, with interest continuing until the day I finally cave in and turn up with a jacket. For now, I am still holding out.

Recent Finds

  • Michael Curry (he of the rousing homily at Harry & Meghan’s wedding) & Russell Moore (one of the more considered and nuanced voices amidst America’s Southern Baptists) come from widely differing Christian traditions but manage to have a friendly, wide ranging conversation on the On Being podcast. Well worth a listen if conversations around public theology are your thing.
  • On the subject of language and poetry, David Whyte on the Art of Manliness talks poetry, life and the intersections therein. A theme which seems to be popping up a bit amongst friends and acquaintances turns up here too, the need for men to develop friendships that encourage difficult conversations.
  • Somewhat related, the folk from Love Thy Neighbourhood talk about gender on Where The Gospel Meets Manhood.
  • From Math Twitter, Steven Strogatz (The Joy of X, Infinite Powers) posted a link to The Mountains of Pi which delves into the story of the Chudnovsky brothers and their quest to build a super computer to compute the digits of pi, back in the early 90s. They’re still going, incredibly.
AJ

For Light

Because we really need to #EndSARS #EndSWAT and end whatever silk purse is being made out of the sow’s ear that is that organization. I make no claims whatsoever to this image.

***

The shadow of a long, dire night
has lingered over us, the weight
of the might of the ones who swore
to serve, and to protect, seared into
the small of our backs by their whips
and their boots, the air heavy
with the stench of the dread
which drenches everything
in their wake.

We fight for the light, standing strong
against the rowdy reality of reprisal,
that the bloated earth, sated by the blood
of the ones snatched before their time
might gain respite. That the ones to come
might fly free, dream and be. That home
may become a place where their visions
are not lost to the tyranny of the graveyard.

This is why we fight. For the light.
To banish the night.

AJ

On Returning to the City of Red Earth

With NaPoWriMo done and dusted for this year, I’m getting the chance to catch up on other stuff. The fifth (and penultimate) assignment for the Creative Non-Fiction Course I started in February was to describe a city and the feelings it engendered in us during our last visit. Here goes: 

***

In my more nostalgic moments, I call her the City of Red Earth, but that is as far away as possible from what I feel as I drag my bags towards the check-in desk ahead of heading back out there. The last time, H had just passed, and the three weeks which followed were consumed by the busyness of dealing with the dead. Everyone I tell about this upcoming trip shares cautionary tales; of the power industry grinding to a halt, the spiralling crime rates, and the rapidly disintegrating roads. Not to seem too dismissive, I smile and nod at their concerns whilst inwardly telling myself I’ll do a good job of passing; after all my pidgin English – lightly accented as it is – is passable.

The first few days after I arrive pass in a blur: taxi rides on congested roads, visits to the local malls to indulge in local delicacies and the odd phone call with the groom-to-be filling my days. With the weekend comes the wedding, and the chance to finally catch my breath. Afterwards, we head East.

What first hits me when we arrive is how little the city of red earth has changed. A layer of red dust covers everything, the remains of the clouds that trail the steady stream of old creaking vehicles sagging beneath the weight of humanity as they head to the local market. The old woman who hawks her wares at the side of the road – still ensconced in the makeshift stall she has for the past four years – waves excitedly when she recognises my brother. That she can spot him at the distance is not the only miracle of sorts; her stall, with a sheet of tarpaulin wrapped around four bamboo stems to form three sides and roof, is still standing.

Everyone who spots us, waves and stops us for a few minutes of commiseration, a small human gauntlet of sorts. Mild irritation apart, I suppose it is refreshing to see the small community in which everyone knows everyone – and in which you were as likely to get a reprimand from the neighbour two houses down as your mother for a public indiscretion – has stayed the same, whatever pressures of globalisation there are all around.

The house on the corner of 39th street also looks the same, only dustier, which perhaps is the clearest indication of H’s absence. Some of my clearest memories of her are with a duster in hand driving clouds of dust off the furniture. That is something we’ll never see again.

Otherwise, it is clear there is a new normal slowly settling in. Thankfully none of the feared things materialises – we survive without any incidents – and leave just in time to be on the right side of the line between being August visitors and ones who have overstayed their welcome. Three days are all it is this time. There will be a time for lengthy swims in these waters, but for now, a dip seems sensible.

AJ

The Diary: Malta

 

***
4 am on a weekend is far too early to wake up, particularly when it is the next day after a late-night flight, but given my flight the next day is a 7.30am one I have to suck it up. The next day, having rushed through a shower, completed final bag checks and double-checked I have my passport, we find ourselves in a taxi speeding away on the A3 a little after 5am, barely lucid but glad I don’t have to do the driving. At Gatwick, we find lengthy lines bent double on themselves with baggage handlers thin on the ground. That EasyJet, that famously lean airline, deigns to apologise over the state of affairs is perhaps all one needs to know about just how dire the situation is. Thankfully, we make it through baggage drop and security just before 7am; just enough time to grab a Shake Shack breakfast bun and start frantically eyeing the departure boards for signs of our flight. It ends up delayed, no surprise there.

It is almost mid-day UK time when we catch our first glimpse of the islands as we begin our final descent. The first thing that strikes me is just how small it looks, bringing to mind memories of our last jaunt a few months ago, Madeira. Passport control is a breeze (not for much longer given Brexit I suspect), finding our coach to the hotel takes a little longer but all told we’re at reception checking in to our hotel in Qawra just over an hour after our flight lands. The rest of the day is spent catching up on sleep and getting our bearings in the positively baking 17 deg C heat, a shock to the system given the London temperatures we’ve just escaped.

With time – three years and counting – a method has evolved around these holidays: a catch up with the official tour representative to get the lay of the land, followed by a hop-on/ hop-off tour of the city and then a few official tours with free days in which we do our own thing as we feel like. At our travel agency briefing we find out about shared connections – M is part Maltese and grew up in North London before upping sticks and relocating to this corner of the world. As for tours, we sign up for a day trip to Gozo, a guided tour that takes in the old capital Mdina, Mosta, a craft village and Valletta and the Christmas day special. We also sign up for the hop-on/hop-off tour of the south of the island to take advantage of the 3 euro discount.

There is a certain symmetry to the beauty of quaint European cities: narrow cobbled streets, old buildings and magnificent cathedrals around which each village/city is centred which, after you’ve been to a few, can begin to blend into each other. Undergirding what we see though is how the intersecting interests and intrigue over millennia have shaped the present. Thanks to its location, and perhaps climate, Malta has seen more than its fair share of conquest with imprints of pre-historic peoples, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, The Aragonese, Sicilians, Knights of Saint John and the British all there to see. These were all sights we took in in bits and pieces over the 8 days we spent out there. Most surprising for me though is how the Arabic influence has persisted, most notably in the spoken language. That tension between the past and the present remains visible in the form of cranes and spruced up facades sitting often next to the tired and worn limestone ones of other buildings.

We had the pleasure of experiencing two power cuts during the period of our stay, the causes of which we never managed to understand. That, and the chaos we seemed to just manage to avoid (read late departures for tours/ frantic phone calls by our travel agency rep to confirm tours were still on), brought shades of Lagos to mind. Back to the power situation: at the fishing village of Marsaxlokk we spotted a tanker delivering LNG to the power station visible across the bay and not very many wind turbines. Given the high winds we experienced – which threatened to toss someone’s weave into the sea as we waited to board the ferry at Sliema – the absence of wind turbines was interesting.

The ornately decorated insides of St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta and St Phillips in Zebbug caused me to cast my mind to sacred spaces and how their design can inspire a sense of wonder in the worshipping faithful. This is something our Pentecostal spaces would do well to learn from I think, given their typically more spartan outlook.

Being able to wander the streets, thanks to long paved promenades at St Julian’s, between Qawra and St Paul’s bay amongst others was a positive, particularly given the temperatures which were just warm enough, staying mainly in the 15 to 17 deg C range for most of the time out there. On one of those walks, we came across a game of bocce and stayed a few minutes to watch. Given it was our first time we had no clue what the objective was besides, as a German tourist who also stopped to watch put it, old people passing time 😊

One of the reasons for sticking with Europe this time was to try to get into the Christmas spirit. Nativity scenes and colourful night-time displays dotted the landscape. Running into several other black faces was a welcome change from our previous travels – even as it included running into friends of friends.

For all the things we planned and did, two things defined this holiday for me, both unexpected. A wander into St Paul’s Bay on which we chanced upon a tiny church which supposedly marks the location of Paul’s shipwreck and the introduction of Christianity, and a boy who took to the piano in the airport and proceeded to delight us all, to sporadic applause now again – the perfect, unscripted ending to a season of chilling if ever there was one.

P.S: More pictures here (on Google Photos), if those are your bag.

AJ

Pula Notes

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There is something infinitely fascinating about a gaggle of Brits suddenly transposed from their dour, grey climes into warm, sunny 24- degree weather. Once the coats and jackets begin to lift, the noise levels increase. I suppose nothing says ‘your holiday begins now‘ more succinctly than being hit by a wall of hot air.  On this occasion though, before the holiday properly begins, we have to navigate the small matter of customs and passport control at Pula Airport. Thankfully, it is a lot less painful than  before, thanks to new passports, and good timing – just before the rush of traditional holiday season.

Giancarlo, our Croatian guide with an Italian name, does a good job of finding everyone on our bus in time, and keeping us entertained with useful tattle as we make our way to the various hotels to drop folk off. The views from the window of our coach  – red earth, plenty of greenery and (mainly) quaint, boxy buildings  – suggest this is a place very much in its own image, yet to become fully subsumed in serving a tourist culture. That does not spare it from the long arms of globalisation though, the Lidl store not far away from the local Plodine underscoring some of the pressures behind the Asda – Sainsbury tie-up. Our hotel, the Park Avenue Histria, is the last stop, a walking distance from the Verudella marina. At first blush – grand facade apart – it doesn’t have the spanking new look of the Movenpick from Marrakech or the King Evelthon from Paphos, but once we are settled in, it feels like a good enough compromise between price and location, given what views of the sea we can see from our windows. The rest of that first day is spent catching our breath, having been up at 4.00 am for a 7.00 am flight from Gatwick (which ends up significantly delayed).

***

The next day, having been suitably energised by a good night’s sleep – and a hefty breakfast  – we made a beeline for reception, where we found a walking tour of the city just about to set off.  A wizened widower, returning for the first time since the loss of his wife, a retired banker who had taken up writing as a second career and his wife, and a couple from Montenegro now living in Berlin were in our group as well as a couple of British couples and ourselves. Our guide was yet another Croat with an Italian name, Romeo. The first stop on that tour was the local market where we mingled with the crowds eyeballing fresh fruit, vegetables and cheeses, with the smell of fresh fish from the adjoining fish market following us around. It was here we saw our first black face, in one of the stalls selling cheese. We did the thing, that barely perceptible nod that black people who find themselves interloping in the middle of a sea of other faces do to acknowledge each other. Once done with the market, our walk took us through the Golden Gate (more properly the Arch of the Sergi), then up steep, narrow side streets toward the maritime museum. Highlights of the route we took were James Joyce’s residence in Pula (click here for the fascinating story behind that) and the great view of the harbour with a few semi-subs in for maintenance. The shops along the way all had football shirts – Croatia had two players on the Real Madrid team which won the UEFA Champions League final, and will play in this year’s Football World cup. Football also came up in conversation with Romeo, when it came to light that we were Nigerian. The most breathtaking aspect of the tour was the old arena, its magnificent facade towering over that section of town – it is supposedly the most complete/ outstanding amphitheatre outside Rome.  Once done, our group broke up with quite a few folk wanting to have a wander about the insides of the arena whilst others wanted to press on elsewhere. We made mental notes to return to the arena and the maritime museum later in the week.

***

It was a good thing we did the city tour when we did as the next two days ended up being miserable and wet, ruining our plans to go out on a boat tour. The silver lining from those days was running into Romeo at reception, alongside the writer and fashion buyer couple from our second day. At his prodding, we headed off to the sports facilities to golf in the rain and afterwards enjoy a mini table tennis tournament. When the rain let up on our fourth day, we visited the nearby aquarium, housed in a re-purposed Austro-Hungarian fort. The grey, boxy fort brought back memories of Vienna, and the Haus Der Meeres – housed in another re-purposed military installation.

The rest of our stay served up much better weather, which we took advantage of with a couple of packaged tours. The first of these, the flavours of Istria tour which we booked via our TUI representative, took in a number of the main tourist cities (Medullin, Vodnan, Bale, Porec and Rovinj) as well as a few out the way places (Zminj & Grzini from memory). Lunch was at an agro-tourism restaurant in Zminj (the Familija Ferlin) where we had a soup (manestra) for starters, hand made potato dumplings in a ragu sauce for the main and some fritule for dessert. Although our guide compared them to doughnuts, the more pertinent association in my inner Nigerian mind was to puff-puff. The second was a boat ride out of Medullin with a pit stop at caves for the more intrepid divers to explore and a grilled lunch aboard.

***

The long and varied history of the Istrian peninsula – from being first populated by an Illyrian tribe through various conquests and interactions with the Greeks, Romans, Franks, Goths, French, Venetians, the Austro-Hungarians, modern day Italians, Germans, and being part of Yugoslavia – was on display all through the whistle stop tour in the arena, numerous temple ruins, Rovinj with its colourful buildings down to the edge of the water, old church buildings with detailed murals and paintings, forts and military installations. This  is a region of Croatia which has clearly been enriched by its various interactions with people over its history. How that history has affected the demographics of the region is a subject I cannot pretend to know enough of from a few days spent here but amidst the clamour of voices suggesting it has been good for the region there was the odd voice of discontent praising the central region for never being subsumed into the Venetian republic. Tito’s legacy was also another subject that spurred vigorous discussion. For all the vitriol lobbed in his direction in the West for being a dictator, I got a sense that he was venerated in many quarters in Pula. As one guide put it, even now we struggle to paint the things that Tito built.