Road Trip: Thoughts of Homeland
- By Uche Peter Umez
- Published March 17, 2009
- Features
- Unrated
Uche Peter Umez
Uche Peter Umez has won awards in poetry, short story and children novel. He is the author of Dark through the Delta (poems), Tears in her Eyes (short stories) and Aridity of Feelings (poems).
View all Entries by Uche Peter Umez
Blustery.
“It’s a road trip,” Hugh says, in his characteristic self-deprecating manner. Sometimes when he speaks I recall some quotes I chanced upon while reading Oscar Wilde’s plays. “Guys, you can stay back if you want.”
Most writers whoop; the rest just sigh, as if world-wearied. True, the previous flights have induced slowness into our writing routine and spirit. Some of the writers even fell sick when they returned back to Iowa City. Others complained of the distance, of jetlag while a few are still trying to modulate their sleeping pattern; and someone mentioned to us a couple of days earlier, that Daylight Saving Time is just around the corner. Prior to the much-anticipated time adjustment, my own clock has in fact altered its notion of time. It has reset itself automatically, wrongly of course.
Nothing to complain about, space or time, motion or inertia, except the low buzz in my ears when we’re thousands of feet above the earth. Except the strange chill – or dread – that claws its creepy way around my chest when the airplane bumps for a few seconds. Except this ruthless chill that fiddles with the hairs in my nostrils and tickles the soles of my feet when my landlord fails to switch on his heater while the oak tree groans desolately outside my window.
Swaddled in a pullover, hoodie, winter jacket, and jean trousers, with a furry cap strapped over my head, I still can feel the sting of autumn on the back of my hands. I try to ward it off, but realize it’s senselessly futile since, in four hours or more, we shall enter Chicago. I am ready, for now at least.
I reach for my gloves in my pocket. I feel a slight reassurance in my spine that I can withstand the weather extreme when it blows cruelly, a mini-tornado, across my way. I remember that I almost chickened out when I woke up that morning, with the winds roaring in the chimney.
Should I change my mind? I don’t have anything to prove, do I? It would be terrible to fall sick now, at a season so raw and merciless – who’d cater for an infirm in a foreign country? I’ve spent most of my per diem on gifts for families and friends, so it’ll be horrid to lie in the hospital bed. I heard the bill is not only high, but also petrifies your savings.
How can I back out now? I’ve looked forward to visiting Al Capone’s gangland. The city that made Michael Jordan a legend; inspired the award-winning musical film that featured a stellar cast of Hollywood icons from Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger, Queen Latifah, to Taye Diggs and Lucy Liu.
Shikaakwa – Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer, two reality talk shows most Nigerians enjoy with so mad a passion.
Shikaakwa – Pointe du Sable, and Barack Obama. History and modernism.
“We’re cool with the trip,” I say, defying the hypochondriac voice that frets and wishes me nausea.
“A road trip? That’s far, what’s the distance?” a voice wafts towards me; the voice is low and hoary from the gust. I cannot tell if the speaker is male or female. The face is almost swallowed in a black wool cap and grey neck gaiter. Although the form looks like a slapstick of an Eskimo, I imagine it in a visor, playing the part of Sir Lancelot.
“Road trip?” I shoot the question back, as I make out the swell of breast beneath the dark brown jacket and the curve of round hips hugged in a faded blue jeans.
She peers at me from under her cap and says, “The cold, wouldn’t one feel better staying back at home?”
Peter and Kelly, two of our coordinators, alerted me beforehand that Chi-Town wasn’t called the Windy City for nothing. After they’d uttered that statement, I went to grab a Styrofoam cup and half-fill it with coffee without non-dairy creamer and sweetener. But the potent brew did not stop me from picturing humid, dark clouds devouring the sun. Bitter winds bellowing out from the mouths of Lake Michigan and Chicago River, swamping the entire lakefronts and skyline. Not even the thermal kit would warm my limbs, I feared.
“It should be fun, travelling by road,” I answer, bracing for the worst, determined like a mountain climber.
“You think so?” Unconvinced.
I don’t have the slightest idea what fun could possibly await us along the road. Is there any fun when you traverse highways and count the number of McDonalds and KFC and Dunkin Donuts and Wal-Mart that zoom by? I think of speaking about the singularity of vast, sprawling acres of corn and soya bean – the grooved, golden blanket that clothes both sides of the expressway when you drive through the great, diverse American states. Is it not thrilling to marvel at this man-made ingenuity?
I don’t mention any of this, because she’ll write me off, a bore, a poet incapable of differentiating splendor from boredom.
“It would really be fun,” I repeat, more confidently.
She doesn’t reply, but hobbles away towards the back door, like a bedraggled bunny rabbit.
Travelling by road? Will it be as exciting as watching the delicate clouds float over the mazy architecture of the city through the window of an airplane? But something else slips into my mind, before the question finds an answer.
The road trip will offer me some opportunity to tackle the stack of books now atrociously piling on my shelf, threatening to burst through my bag when I’d finally lug its sheer bulkiness to the airport. Travelling by road will make it possible to cut down Measuring Time, Song of Night, Long Way Gone, Sky-High Flames, and The General is Up, to mental bits digestible enough for my near-saturated mind.
Some weeks earlier, I made a vow to myself: I’ll finish reading all the novels before I get back to my homeland – despite the tedium of activities IWP expects of us. Expectedly, every vow is broken. I have flagged it, over and again. But now, I think the opportunity has jumped into my lap!
Hugh springs past me. My eyes follow his heels, and I wonder if men have graceful movements, like gazelles, like panthers – or are such adjectives only reserved for the female folk? Language belongs to men, an Iranian poet once told me. They skewed it to suit masculine agenda, whim. And they’d always control and manipulate it. She argued, like a zealot, that there was an obvious double-standard even in sexual behavior. She gave instances, especially the phallic. Penis, penetrate...
And that night tucked in bed, thoughts roamed wanton in my head, as I tried to debunk her feminist obstinacy. Before I dozed off, I acceded to her point. When a woman slept around, she was called promiscuous; a whore. When a man was having it off, what was he called? A guy, a player? A stud? Casanova, Lothario? – epithets more romantic and less pejorative than bitch, hooker, ho, slut. Language was thus paternalistic.
Hugh turns around, as if he’s made out my thoughts, and gives me a stare that borders on sympathy. Judging from the way he tilts his head sideways, I suppose he’d say, “Hey guys, plans have changed. We aren’t going to Chicago anymore!” Just the same way our trip to Red Bird Farm was cancelled because the weather fell to less than 10° C.
“It’s a road trip,” Hugh says, in his characteristic self-deprecating manner. Sometimes when he speaks I recall some quotes I chanced upon while reading Oscar Wilde’s plays. “Guys, you can stay back if you want.”
Most writers whoop; the rest just sigh, as if world-wearied. True, the previous flights have induced slowness into our writing routine and spirit. Some of the writers even fell sick when they returned back to Iowa City. Others complained of the distance, of jetlag while a few are still trying to modulate their sleeping pattern; and someone mentioned to us a couple of days earlier, that Daylight Saving Time is just around the corner. Prior to the much-anticipated time adjustment, my own clock has in fact altered its notion of time. It has reset itself automatically, wrongly of course.
Nothing to complain about, space or time, motion or inertia, except the low buzz in my ears when we’re thousands of feet above the earth. Except the strange chill – or dread – that claws its creepy way around my chest when the airplane bumps for a few seconds. Except this ruthless chill that fiddles with the hairs in my nostrils and tickles the soles of my feet when my landlord fails to switch on his heater while the oak tree groans desolately outside my window.
Swaddled in a pullover, hoodie, winter jacket, and jean trousers, with a furry cap strapped over my head, I still can feel the sting of autumn on the back of my hands. I try to ward it off, but realize it’s senselessly futile since, in four hours or more, we shall enter Chicago. I am ready, for now at least.
I reach for my gloves in my pocket. I feel a slight reassurance in my spine that I can withstand the weather extreme when it blows cruelly, a mini-tornado, across my way. I remember that I almost chickened out when I woke up that morning, with the winds roaring in the chimney.
Should I change my mind? I don’t have anything to prove, do I? It would be terrible to fall sick now, at a season so raw and merciless – who’d cater for an infirm in a foreign country? I’ve spent most of my per diem on gifts for families and friends, so it’ll be horrid to lie in the hospital bed. I heard the bill is not only high, but also petrifies your savings.
How can I back out now? I’ve looked forward to visiting Al Capone’s gangland. The city that made Michael Jordan a legend; inspired the award-winning musical film that featured a stellar cast of Hollywood icons from Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renee Zellweger, Queen Latifah, to Taye Diggs and Lucy Liu.
Shikaakwa – Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer, two reality talk shows most Nigerians enjoy with so mad a passion.
Shikaakwa – Pointe du Sable, and Barack Obama. History and modernism.
“We’re cool with the trip,” I say, defying the hypochondriac voice that frets and wishes me nausea.
“A road trip? That’s far, what’s the distance?” a voice wafts towards me; the voice is low and hoary from the gust. I cannot tell if the speaker is male or female. The face is almost swallowed in a black wool cap and grey neck gaiter. Although the form looks like a slapstick of an Eskimo, I imagine it in a visor, playing the part of Sir Lancelot.
“Road trip?” I shoot the question back, as I make out the swell of breast beneath the dark brown jacket and the curve of round hips hugged in a faded blue jeans.
She peers at me from under her cap and says, “The cold, wouldn’t one feel better staying back at home?”
Peter and Kelly, two of our coordinators, alerted me beforehand that Chi-Town wasn’t called the Windy City for nothing. After they’d uttered that statement, I went to grab a Styrofoam cup and half-fill it with coffee without non-dairy creamer and sweetener. But the potent brew did not stop me from picturing humid, dark clouds devouring the sun. Bitter winds bellowing out from the mouths of Lake Michigan and Chicago River, swamping the entire lakefronts and skyline. Not even the thermal kit would warm my limbs, I feared.
“It should be fun, travelling by road,” I answer, bracing for the worst, determined like a mountain climber.
“You think so?” Unconvinced.
I don’t have the slightest idea what fun could possibly await us along the road. Is there any fun when you traverse highways and count the number of McDonalds and KFC and Dunkin Donuts and Wal-Mart that zoom by? I think of speaking about the singularity of vast, sprawling acres of corn and soya bean – the grooved, golden blanket that clothes both sides of the expressway when you drive through the great, diverse American states. Is it not thrilling to marvel at this man-made ingenuity?
I don’t mention any of this, because she’ll write me off, a bore, a poet incapable of differentiating splendor from boredom.
“It would really be fun,” I repeat, more confidently.
She doesn’t reply, but hobbles away towards the back door, like a bedraggled bunny rabbit.
Travelling by road? Will it be as exciting as watching the delicate clouds float over the mazy architecture of the city through the window of an airplane? But something else slips into my mind, before the question finds an answer.
The road trip will offer me some opportunity to tackle the stack of books now atrociously piling on my shelf, threatening to burst through my bag when I’d finally lug its sheer bulkiness to the airport. Travelling by road will make it possible to cut down Measuring Time, Song of Night, Long Way Gone, Sky-High Flames, and The General is Up, to mental bits digestible enough for my near-saturated mind.
Some weeks earlier, I made a vow to myself: I’ll finish reading all the novels before I get back to my homeland – despite the tedium of activities IWP expects of us. Expectedly, every vow is broken. I have flagged it, over and again. But now, I think the opportunity has jumped into my lap!
Hugh springs past me. My eyes follow his heels, and I wonder if men have graceful movements, like gazelles, like panthers – or are such adjectives only reserved for the female folk? Language belongs to men, an Iranian poet once told me. They skewed it to suit masculine agenda, whim. And they’d always control and manipulate it. She argued, like a zealot, that there was an obvious double-standard even in sexual behavior. She gave instances, especially the phallic. Penis, penetrate...
And that night tucked in bed, thoughts roamed wanton in my head, as I tried to debunk her feminist obstinacy. Before I dozed off, I acceded to her point. When a woman slept around, she was called promiscuous; a whore. When a man was having it off, what was he called? A guy, a player? A stud? Casanova, Lothario? – epithets more romantic and less pejorative than bitch, hooker, ho, slut. Language was thus paternalistic.
Hugh turns around, as if he’s made out my thoughts, and gives me a stare that borders on sympathy. Judging from the way he tilts his head sideways, I suppose he’d say, “Hey guys, plans have changed. We aren’t going to Chicago anymore!” Just the same way our trip to Red Bird Farm was cancelled because the weather fell to less than 10° C.