As I'm still enmeshed in my being so busy at work that I'm finding it difficult to find time to blog, the realization that I have been tagged by Pilgrimage to Self http://pilgrimagetoself.blogspot.com/ is perhaps a welcome break......
I now have to answer the following questions and tag four others. I am afraid I'm not going to tag anyone but will answer the questions-yes I know I'm being a spoilsport- but almost everyone I've thought of tagging's been tagged already. Plus maybe this is the blogging equivalent of those "forward this e mail to 10, 20, 100 people" e mails that I keep getting from my nearest and dearest and keep deleting unread, so I shouldn't really be helping this tagging to proliferate....anyway
1. Black and White or Color; how do you prefer your movies?
I just watched George Clooney's Goodnight and Goodluck in glorious black and white, and it was a great film and I loved it, but still I missed the colour-call me shallow and superficial but much as I like the old world elegance and clarity of black and white, I just love my glorious technicolor............... after all if black and white was so cool, how come they invented colour later :-)
2. What is the one single subject that bores you to near-death?
Dunno, probably something like complicated IT programmes and stuff- I'm beginning to sound really shallow on this, perhaps the real me's escaping......... I remember my exasperation when as an undergraduate in Nigeria, I decided I wanted to learn to use a PC or as we termed it then "become computer literate" There were all manners of training schools springing up everywhere and I struggled to find one that would let me do what I wanted which was to learn how to switch on a computer, use it and turn it off. Each "school" insisted on beginning with lessons that started with "a computer is made up of a central processing unit, a keyboard...etc etc" and attempted to delve into the distinctions between hardware and software and all sorts of technical stuff that I had little interest in. I ended up having to teach myself, largely by playing (once I started working) on the computer that adorned my boss's desk even though he hadn't the foggiest idea how to use it, but all the trendy bosses were getting them (and the company was paying) and so he did.....:
3. MP3s, CDs, Tapes or Records: what is your favorite medium for prerecorded music?
I grew up listening to LPs- from the large 33rpm Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington to the smaller 45 rpm Victor Olaiya and Rex Lawson's highlife records.I can still smell the musty paper inner sleeves.... By the time I was ten or eleven, I was buying blank tapes and taking them to the local record store to have "selections" recorded for me which I then took to show off at school....I remember the fuss about whether you had recorded on Chrome or Normal...the chrome tapes were more expensive and allegedly better listening......Never really got into CDs and am now planning to buy an iPod...In my heart of hearts, I think I'm an LPs man- in spite of the scratchy quality......
4.You are handed one first class trip plane ticket to anywhere in the world and ten million dollars cash. All of this is yours provided that you leave and not tell anyone where you are going … Ever. This includes family, friends, everyone. Would you take the money and ticket and run?:
No way. My family and friends are too important to me- although of course my circle of friends keeps expanding. I'd want my friends and family to share in the windfall and I suspect life wouldn't be worth it with all that money and no one close with a shared history to share it with....... at least that's the theoretical answer...who knows what I'd really do?
5. Seriously, what do you consider the world’s most pressing issue now?
We need to acknowledge our shared humanity and commit, borne out of that acknowledgement, to spread the "goodies" around....
6. How would you rectify the world’s most pressing issue?
Through blogging...hahaha. Seriously, by trying to apply these principles to my life..... Hey I didn't say I was succeeding....
7. You are given the chance to go back and change one thing in your life; what would that be?
Nothing, as Edith Piaf crooned....., je ne regrette rien. The joy, the sorrow, the sadness, the pain, the exhilaration, the laughter, the anger, the frustration....it's all been useful learning and worthwhile
8. You are given the chance to go back and change one event in world history, what would that be?
One event- you can't be serious!
9. A night at the opera, or a night at the Grand Ole’ Opry – Which do you choose?
Can I have both? I love my country- thanks to the numerous uncles and aunts who lived with us growing up and played dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers endlessly...and I love my opera thanks to my "been-to aspirational" parents- Some mornings, I still wake up to the strains of the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco and imagine that I am back in my childhood bedroom listening to my parents' music wafting up the stairs....
10. What is the one great unsolved crime of all time you’d like to solve?
Who managed to get rid of MKO Abiola and Sani Abacha within exactly a month of each other and how did they do it?
11. One famous author can come to dinner with you. Who would that be, and what would you serve for the meal?
James Baldwin. I'd serve him cow tail pepper soup, followed by rice and beans with chicken stew and dodo, washed down with several bottles of Star beer
12. You discover that John Lennon was right, that there is no hell below us, and above us there is only sky — what’s the first immoral thing you might do to celebrate this fact?
You mean there are really people who take life that seriously?
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Friday, February 24, 2006
Still too busy too blog, sad about Onitsha and some paradoxes to chew on
My hectic week, persists right into the weekend. I'm exhausted but there's a sense of exhilaration as well, from juggling so many balls and meeting so many challenges in such a short period and succeeding. I probably need to catch up on what's been happening,in the UK and in Nigeria but the saddest thing for me has been the reprisal attacks on Muslims in Onitsha which has left so many dead....in addition to the several Christians killed in Northern Nigeria last week as a result of the Danish cartoons. I've blogged before on the pointlessness of vengeance and so won't repeat it here, but I mean, what next- more reprisals in the North and more in the South until we descend into a widening gyre of violence? I cannot even begin to imagine how hurt and angry the families and friends of the killed must feel- I know how angry I felt when I heard of the initial killings- but surely more violence is NOT the answer........ a message that would be well-heeded in Baghdad as well.........
Meanwhile, it's infuriating to see that the president's acolytes third term manoeuverings continue even when they risk inflaming an already volatile situation.....
I briefly overheard an impressive Christian cleric from Nigeria (missed his name) on the BBC, a few days before the reprisal attacks, apparently repudiating a statement from another senior Nigerian Christian cleric- an Archbishop no less- who had suggested that no-one held a monopoly on violence and that Christian leaders might find it impossible to control their flocks in the face of the provocation of the Northern killings. As I rush around on my various tasks, I muse on this paradox- a minister of a gospel of peace-spreading a distinctly unpeaceful message........
Another paradox I've mused long and hard on is the furore in the United States (which has nothing against Arabs, as we are so often reminded) over the fact that a Dubai based company has bought P&O, a UK shipping company that controls some major American ports. Many distinguished Republicans, proponents of the free market all, are now seeking to intervene in the market and reverse the sale on the grounds of national security; President Bush, perhaps for once actually understanding the implications of his actions is insisting that he will veto any bill that attempts to do this.......
In Iraq, Shiites and Sunnis united in their desire to see occupying American forces leave their land, turn on each other in an orgy of violence......which if anything is only likely to extend the stay of the foreign forces......yet another paradox....
Why do we find it so difficult to live up to what we profess to believe? I suspect (even if it's a banal and cliched thought) that if we did, there'd be a lot more happiness about.............
Meanwhile, it's infuriating to see that the president's acolytes third term manoeuverings continue even when they risk inflaming an already volatile situation.....
I briefly overheard an impressive Christian cleric from Nigeria (missed his name) on the BBC, a few days before the reprisal attacks, apparently repudiating a statement from another senior Nigerian Christian cleric- an Archbishop no less- who had suggested that no-one held a monopoly on violence and that Christian leaders might find it impossible to control their flocks in the face of the provocation of the Northern killings. As I rush around on my various tasks, I muse on this paradox- a minister of a gospel of peace-spreading a distinctly unpeaceful message........
Another paradox I've mused long and hard on is the furore in the United States (which has nothing against Arabs, as we are so often reminded) over the fact that a Dubai based company has bought P&O, a UK shipping company that controls some major American ports. Many distinguished Republicans, proponents of the free market all, are now seeking to intervene in the market and reverse the sale on the grounds of national security; President Bush, perhaps for once actually understanding the implications of his actions is insisting that he will veto any bill that attempts to do this.......
In Iraq, Shiites and Sunnis united in their desire to see occupying American forces leave their land, turn on each other in an orgy of violence......which if anything is only likely to extend the stay of the foreign forces......yet another paradox....
Why do we find it so difficult to live up to what we profess to believe? I suspect (even if it's a banal and cliched thought) that if we did, there'd be a lot more happiness about.............
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Sweeping under the carpet, Yinka Davies in London and an almighty blogspat
Another busy week ahead at work, and therefore it’s difficult to find time to post on here. And yet it seems that there is so much to blog on- in Nigeria, the recent riots against the Danish cartoons in Maiduguri that tragically left (depending on whose figures you accept) 16 or 56 Southern Nigerians dead and the taking of 9 foreign oil workers as hostages (no confusion over the figures there) by the militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. The tragic and senseless deaths had me, like many asking, “What on earth did Southern Christians in Northern Nigeria have to do with the publication of cartoons in Denmark? What warped logic could justify this orgy of bloodletting, which has become the hallmark of many protests in Muslim Northern Nigeria?” In another Northern Nigerian state, Katsina, riots against the alleged third term ambitions of President Obasanjo also left several wounded and some people killed.
The previous set of hostages taken last month were released following government negotiations with the hostage takers, but then the bombing of a village in the Niger Delta by the Nigerian Air Force angered the militants and led to this fresh round of hostage taking. The thread running through both incidents is the absence of any genuine in depth attempt to address the issues- a sweeping under the carpet that ensures that these issues continue to recur on a fairly regular basis……….
At the weekend, I watched as thousands of Muslims marched through central London, protesting against the cartoons. The tension was palpable and many of the white bystanders failed to meet my gaze, and a couple exchanging disapproving comments, stopped abruptly as they approached me- perhaps conflating my blackness with being Muslim- perhaps signifying that the discomfort was more to do with otherness than anything else……….Is this another issue being swept under the carpet that might rise up to smack us in the face in the future? Jeff Tayler, an American journalist who travelled through the Sahel thinks so and lays out why in his travel book The Lost Kingdoms of Africa which I’m reading at the moment- cognizant of the usual health warning when reading a book written by a Westerner about Africa……
The jailing in Austria yesterday of David Irving, the British historian for Holocaust denial coming on the heels of the debates over freedom of speech revealed again how complicated the issue is. Would an Austrian journalist who published the offending Danish cartoons have been jailed? And if not, are there double standards at work? I think it is important to re-examine these issues as it is these perceptions that fuel much hatred and bitterness……
On a more cheering note, I was delighted to see that the multitalented Nigerian singer Yinka Davies, whose debut CD Emin Lo http://snipurl.com/msbv has been a permanent fixture on my play list, features on the new Lagos No Shaking CD by Tony Allen, Fela’s percussionist http://snipurl.com/msbn which has received fairly good reviews in the UK press http://snipurl.com/msby , http://snipurl.com/msc6 , http://snipurl.com/msc4 . Unfortunately I was unable to be at their concert last night at Cargo in Old Street, but will surely be getting my hands on that CD as soon as I can……..
Meanwhile an almighty blogspat is brewing on Jeremy Weate's excellent naijablog over a post provocatively entitled "It's 2006 abroad but 1956 in Nigeria"http://snipurl.com/mscd
The previous set of hostages taken last month were released following government negotiations with the hostage takers, but then the bombing of a village in the Niger Delta by the Nigerian Air Force angered the militants and led to this fresh round of hostage taking. The thread running through both incidents is the absence of any genuine in depth attempt to address the issues- a sweeping under the carpet that ensures that these issues continue to recur on a fairly regular basis……….
At the weekend, I watched as thousands of Muslims marched through central London, protesting against the cartoons. The tension was palpable and many of the white bystanders failed to meet my gaze, and a couple exchanging disapproving comments, stopped abruptly as they approached me- perhaps conflating my blackness with being Muslim- perhaps signifying that the discomfort was more to do with otherness than anything else……….Is this another issue being swept under the carpet that might rise up to smack us in the face in the future? Jeff Tayler, an American journalist who travelled through the Sahel thinks so and lays out why in his travel book The Lost Kingdoms of Africa which I’m reading at the moment- cognizant of the usual health warning when reading a book written by a Westerner about Africa……
The jailing in Austria yesterday of David Irving, the British historian for Holocaust denial coming on the heels of the debates over freedom of speech revealed again how complicated the issue is. Would an Austrian journalist who published the offending Danish cartoons have been jailed? And if not, are there double standards at work? I think it is important to re-examine these issues as it is these perceptions that fuel much hatred and bitterness……
On a more cheering note, I was delighted to see that the multitalented Nigerian singer Yinka Davies, whose debut CD Emin Lo http://snipurl.com/msbv has been a permanent fixture on my play list, features on the new Lagos No Shaking CD by Tony Allen, Fela’s percussionist http://snipurl.com/msbn which has received fairly good reviews in the UK press http://snipurl.com/msby , http://snipurl.com/msc6 , http://snipurl.com/msc4 . Unfortunately I was unable to be at their concert last night at Cargo in Old Street, but will surely be getting my hands on that CD as soon as I can……..
Meanwhile an almighty blogspat is brewing on Jeremy Weate's excellent naijablog over a post provocatively entitled "It's 2006 abroad but 1956 in Nigeria"http://snipurl.com/mscd
Friday, February 17, 2006
Remembering Beko and the other Kutis
One of the things that my busy week stopped me from doing was to acknowledge the passing of Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti, the last of an extraordinary set of siblings who strode across the Nigerian firmament in the last century. Together with his brothers, Fela, the dazzlingly gifted Afrobeat musician and activist and Olikoye the former health minister and tireless advocate for public health, Beko, a general practitioner and human rights activist provided a compelling alternative to the selfish, greedy and short-sighted mantra that seemed to grip a majority of their Nigerian contemporaries. Unorthodox, visionary and dogged, you could disagree with them or with their methods but you could not help but respect them. Their only sister, Dolu, one of the pioneer Western trained nurses and midwives was equally active and unorthodox as an interview I once read with her in which she described the maternity home she ran for poor women in their village and how she walked away from her marriage in the fifties because she felt she did not have to put up with her "husband's nonsense" revealed.
The Kutis were remarkable in many ways- in the way that Koye the paediatrician continued to drive his little Volkswagen Golf car throughout his period as Minister of Health; in the way that he gave up his 20 a day smoking habit on appointment to that position; in the way that Beko kept fighting injustice and oppression through several dictatorships, in the way that Fela electrified audiences with his Afrobeat with a message- How can I ever forget, dancing to his Beast of No Nation, which included the words "You can't dash me human rights, human rights na my property" in a bar in Abuja during the Abacha years and we all screamed the words throwing them back in the faces of the numerous security agents that swarmed the bar.....
The Kutis of course came from distinguished stock- their father, one of the earliest graduates and no-nonsense principal of Abeokuta Grammar School; their mother Funmilayo- firebrand woman activist- the first Nigerian woman to drive a car. Their cousin Wole Soyinka famous for his own activism and for winning the Nobel Prize in literature.
And the next generation continues- Nike, Beko's lawyer daughter was active in the pro-democracy movement during the Abacha years. The novelist Sefi Atta, whose groundbreaking unabashedly feminist novel Everything Good Will Come has raised eyebrows in Nigeria is married to one of Koye's sons, himself a doctor. Seun Kuti and Femi Kuti, Fela's sons keep the musical legacy going strong.......
There's a huge study waiting to be done exploring the lives of these remarkable people, a world which can be glimpsed in Wole Soyinka's Ake the Years of Childhood and Isara: A Voyage Around Essay but we're more likely to read commisssioned hagiographies of all the useless money-miss-roads that strut across the national stage displaying flamboyantly, their greed and ill gotten wealth........
Nigeria is the poorer this week
The Kutis were remarkable in many ways- in the way that Koye the paediatrician continued to drive his little Volkswagen Golf car throughout his period as Minister of Health; in the way that he gave up his 20 a day smoking habit on appointment to that position; in the way that Beko kept fighting injustice and oppression through several dictatorships, in the way that Fela electrified audiences with his Afrobeat with a message- How can I ever forget, dancing to his Beast of No Nation, which included the words "You can't dash me human rights, human rights na my property" in a bar in Abuja during the Abacha years and we all screamed the words throwing them back in the faces of the numerous security agents that swarmed the bar.....
The Kutis of course came from distinguished stock- their father, one of the earliest graduates and no-nonsense principal of Abeokuta Grammar School; their mother Funmilayo- firebrand woman activist- the first Nigerian woman to drive a car. Their cousin Wole Soyinka famous for his own activism and for winning the Nobel Prize in literature.
And the next generation continues- Nike, Beko's lawyer daughter was active in the pro-democracy movement during the Abacha years. The novelist Sefi Atta, whose groundbreaking unabashedly feminist novel Everything Good Will Come has raised eyebrows in Nigeria is married to one of Koye's sons, himself a doctor. Seun Kuti and Femi Kuti, Fela's sons keep the musical legacy going strong.......
There's a huge study waiting to be done exploring the lives of these remarkable people, a world which can be glimpsed in Wole Soyinka's Ake the Years of Childhood and Isara: A Voyage Around Essay but we're more likely to read commisssioned hagiographies of all the useless money-miss-roads that strut across the national stage displaying flamboyantly, their greed and ill gotten wealth........
Nigeria is the poorer this week
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Too busy to blog,flexiworking, well-heeled begging and The State(or fate) of Africa
I can't believe it's been nearly a week since I was on here. It's been a whirlwind of a week- so much to do at work- many new challenges but most of them met on schedule and with a lot of positive feedback so it's been worth it. Today I actually asked my colleague who said "Have a good weekend"( She doesn't work Fridays) if tomorrow was really Friday....
Which brings me to the subject of flexible working and how it's changing the way people work- I have met people who work three days a week or four days a week, or no fixed number of days a week, but have a specified number of hours a week and it's up to them how they deliver. I had to do a lot of working on the move this last week and my memory stick and laptop were invaluable in letting me do it.....to think that only a few years ago, I'd never even been on the internet. I look back at Nigeria and realize some civil servants back then had already pioneered the art of flexible working- I mean what else do you call signing in in the morning and disappearing to your other businesses for the rest of the day?
Last weekend, at a train station, an elderly woman who looked Nigerian ( funny how you can often tell, isn't it?) stopped me to ask "Are you Nigerian?" Once I replied in the affirmative, she explained that she had lost her purse and needed fare back to where she lived. Having once, at Yaba busstop been the victim of pickpockets and having had to beg the fare home off a generous passerby, I'm quite susceptible to helping out in this sort of predicament. Plus she looked like your typical Nigerian aunt of a certain kind- with her slightly tatty hair and stolid shoes- the epitome of a kind of respectability. It was only after I'd handed over the amount she said would pay her fare and she shuffled off, that it struck me why she had been so familiar- I'd gone through the same charade with her at a different train station about a year ago. I did feel sad that someone of that age would need to resort to this sort of trick and wondered what her real story was......
It's been as busy a week for the British MPs as it has been for me ;-)- with votes on everything from a ban on smoking in public places (which went through) to a vote on ID cards (not quite yet ) and a vote on tightening terror laws to make "glorification of terrorism a crime" The problem with such vagueness is of course around the term "glorification" and how it is interpreted. As a member of a visible minority, and conscious of the potential for miscarriages of justice, I can't help but worry when loopholes are left in laws which can be exploited by the unscrupulous........
I finally finished The State of Africa by Martin Meredith and was intrigued by the two different titles and covers. In the US, it's marketed as The Fate of Africa with a cover picture of a map of Africa with a picture of the stereotypical sorrowful African mother and child http://snipurl.com/mmxa . In the UK, it's marketed as The State of Africa and has a map of Africa as well but as a parched land with a red flower (of hope?) sprouting in one corner http://snipurl.com/mmxc. I must say that I found the latter part of the book less well written than the earlier chapters which dwelt with the pre-independence era. By the time I got to the bits that addressed the time I was familiar with, I began to be less convinced and indeed spotted some errors- such as the author's assertion that Sani Abacha had killed his second in command following a trial for treason. While Diya, the said second in command had indeed been sentenced to death, he was released on the death of Abacha, before the sentence was executed...
Which brings me to the subject of flexible working and how it's changing the way people work- I have met people who work three days a week or four days a week, or no fixed number of days a week, but have a specified number of hours a week and it's up to them how they deliver. I had to do a lot of working on the move this last week and my memory stick and laptop were invaluable in letting me do it.....to think that only a few years ago, I'd never even been on the internet. I look back at Nigeria and realize some civil servants back then had already pioneered the art of flexible working- I mean what else do you call signing in in the morning and disappearing to your other businesses for the rest of the day?
Last weekend, at a train station, an elderly woman who looked Nigerian ( funny how you can often tell, isn't it?) stopped me to ask "Are you Nigerian?" Once I replied in the affirmative, she explained that she had lost her purse and needed fare back to where she lived. Having once, at Yaba busstop been the victim of pickpockets and having had to beg the fare home off a generous passerby, I'm quite susceptible to helping out in this sort of predicament. Plus she looked like your typical Nigerian aunt of a certain kind- with her slightly tatty hair and stolid shoes- the epitome of a kind of respectability. It was only after I'd handed over the amount she said would pay her fare and she shuffled off, that it struck me why she had been so familiar- I'd gone through the same charade with her at a different train station about a year ago. I did feel sad that someone of that age would need to resort to this sort of trick and wondered what her real story was......
It's been as busy a week for the British MPs as it has been for me ;-)- with votes on everything from a ban on smoking in public places (which went through) to a vote on ID cards (not quite yet ) and a vote on tightening terror laws to make "glorification of terrorism a crime" The problem with such vagueness is of course around the term "glorification" and how it is interpreted. As a member of a visible minority, and conscious of the potential for miscarriages of justice, I can't help but worry when loopholes are left in laws which can be exploited by the unscrupulous........
I finally finished The State of Africa by Martin Meredith and was intrigued by the two different titles and covers. In the US, it's marketed as The Fate of Africa with a cover picture of a map of Africa with a picture of the stereotypical sorrowful African mother and child http://snipurl.com/mmxa . In the UK, it's marketed as The State of Africa and has a map of Africa as well but as a parched land with a red flower (of hope?) sprouting in one corner http://snipurl.com/mmxc. I must say that I found the latter part of the book less well written than the earlier chapters which dwelt with the pre-independence era. By the time I got to the bits that addressed the time I was familiar with, I began to be less convinced and indeed spotted some errors- such as the author's assertion that Sani Abacha had killed his second in command following a trial for treason. While Diya, the said second in command had indeed been sentenced to death, he was released on the death of Abacha, before the sentence was executed...
Friday, February 10, 2006
Perpetually closing down sales, a diary discovered & kudos and a plea to Obasanjo
Today it's freezing but bright, sunny, crisp and clear- the kind of day that still fascinates me- I suppose because I grew up in the tropics- associating sunlight with heat....
Last weekend, walking down bustling Oxford Street, I walked past a shop with huge red signs plastered all over its front windows -proclaiming "Closing Down Sale- Everything Must Go" Fantastic bargain you'd think, except that I could have sworn that that shop has been closing down ever since I arrived on these shores a couple of years ago. The owners certainly seem to be taking their time with the closing down- judging by the tackiness of the merchandise, perhaps even with the sale, they're finding it difficult to shift the goods. Or perhaps, as is more likely it's a form of English 419 to hoodwink the gullible tourists searching for a bargain.....
I've stumbled across the online diary of a young Nigerian woman professional living in the US . http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/content/blogcategory/0/135/ It's incredibly frank and honest, if true; and if it's fiction, then that girl better start looking for a publisher.....
On the Nigerian front- since too often people like me are criticized for seeing nothing good in the government- kudos to President Obasanjo on the recent appointment of the eighth female minister into his cabinet. As far as I can remember this is probably the largest number of female ministers in the Nigerian federal cabinet at the same time, and they are certainly making their mark- most of them.......Now if only Mr President would follow Thabo Mbeki's example and announce loud and clear that he's not interested in a third term, instead of this Abacha-like read-my- lips stance that he's adopting at the moment that'd be great; The current situation where the sycophants around ask him to stay on forever and he, like Abacha before him maintains a deafening silence is unhealthy. If only he'd speak out, it would let everyone concentrate on weightier matters, like bird flu.....
Last weekend, walking down bustling Oxford Street, I walked past a shop with huge red signs plastered all over its front windows -proclaiming "Closing Down Sale- Everything Must Go" Fantastic bargain you'd think, except that I could have sworn that that shop has been closing down ever since I arrived on these shores a couple of years ago. The owners certainly seem to be taking their time with the closing down- judging by the tackiness of the merchandise, perhaps even with the sale, they're finding it difficult to shift the goods. Or perhaps, as is more likely it's a form of English 419 to hoodwink the gullible tourists searching for a bargain.....
I've stumbled across the online diary of a young Nigerian woman professional living in the US . http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/content/blogcategory/0/135/ It's incredibly frank and honest, if true; and if it's fiction, then that girl better start looking for a publisher.....
On the Nigerian front- since too often people like me are criticized for seeing nothing good in the government- kudos to President Obasanjo on the recent appointment of the eighth female minister into his cabinet. As far as I can remember this is probably the largest number of female ministers in the Nigerian federal cabinet at the same time, and they are certainly making their mark- most of them.......Now if only Mr President would follow Thabo Mbeki's example and announce loud and clear that he's not interested in a third term, instead of this Abacha-like read-my- lips stance that he's adopting at the moment that'd be great; The current situation where the sycophants around ask him to stay on forever and he, like Abacha before him maintains a deafening silence is unhealthy. If only he'd speak out, it would let everyone concentrate on weightier matters, like bird flu.....
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Bird flu in Nigeria, Tropical Fish's literary prize and Nigerians off the beaten track
Just as we were recovering from our losing to Cote D'Ivoire in the African Cup of Nations and were slowly creeping back to the third term agenda- whether or not to allow President Obasanjo alter the constitution to continue in office- and other sundry matters (like the planned Nigerian police strike), comes news this morning that the H5N1 flu virus has been detected in a poultry farm, in Kaduna, a few hours drive from Kano where legislators yesterday burnt the Danish flag (another instance of taking Panadol for another man's headache). Perhaps this will help focus the minds of the third term agitators and others pursuing trivia on what is really important.....
I've blogged elsewhere about how much I enjoyed Doreen Baingana's Tropical Fish:Tales Out of Entebbe http://snipurl.com/mcjd, so was delighted to hear that it had won the African regional Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book. It beat Uzodimma Iweala's Beast of No Nation ( I know I should have been rooting for my fellow Nigerian;-)) and Repeat Performance by South African Angie Herrmann and will now go up for the overal Best First Book Prize. The Africa regional prize for Best Book went to Ghanaian Benjamin Kwakye for his The Sun by Night and he'll be up against Zadie Smith's On Beauty for the overall Best Book Prize. Nigerian-Brits, Helen Oyeyemi and Diana Evans- (see my list of contemporary Nigerian writing http://snipurl.com/mci5) lost out on the Eurasian Regional prize for best first book to Lazy Eye....
I've been meaning to do a blog on Nigerians off the beaten track- Nigerians abroad working not as lawyers or bankers or doctors or nurses or engineers or academics, but in slightly quirkier roles- the writers, the artists, the musicians. I first thought about it last summer when I went to a classical music concert and was pleasantly surprised to see in the programme, a distinctly Nigerian name playing one of the major instruments which was my introduction to Chichi Nwanoku http://snipurl.com/mciu. A year earlier at the Smithsonian in DC, I had enjoyed the Church Ede metalwork sculpture of Sokari Douglas- Camp http://www.sokari.co.uk/ , a representation of her father's funeral bed which took me straight back to my grandfather's funeral years ago. There's also Khafila Abiola (daughter of the late MKO and Kudirat) who's training as an opera singer in Vienna http://snipurl.com/mcj5 And only yesterday courtesy of the blogworld I was introduced to Frances Uku, http://francesuku.blogspot.com/ "a theatre trained union actor working in New York and LA" Strangely enough, they all seem to be women...... To balance it up a bit, I'll now have to catch that Nigerian chef I found working at the trendy London eatery Les Trois Garcons a while back....
I've blogged elsewhere about how much I enjoyed Doreen Baingana's Tropical Fish:Tales Out of Entebbe http://snipurl.com/mcjd, so was delighted to hear that it had won the African regional Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book. It beat Uzodimma Iweala's Beast of No Nation ( I know I should have been rooting for my fellow Nigerian;-)) and Repeat Performance by South African Angie Herrmann and will now go up for the overal Best First Book Prize. The Africa regional prize for Best Book went to Ghanaian Benjamin Kwakye for his The Sun by Night and he'll be up against Zadie Smith's On Beauty for the overall Best Book Prize. Nigerian-Brits, Helen Oyeyemi and Diana Evans- (see my list of contemporary Nigerian writing http://snipurl.com/mci5) lost out on the Eurasian Regional prize for best first book to Lazy Eye....
I've been meaning to do a blog on Nigerians off the beaten track- Nigerians abroad working not as lawyers or bankers or doctors or nurses or engineers or academics, but in slightly quirkier roles- the writers, the artists, the musicians. I first thought about it last summer when I went to a classical music concert and was pleasantly surprised to see in the programme, a distinctly Nigerian name playing one of the major instruments which was my introduction to Chichi Nwanoku http://snipurl.com/mciu. A year earlier at the Smithsonian in DC, I had enjoyed the Church Ede metalwork sculpture of Sokari Douglas- Camp http://www.sokari.co.uk/ , a representation of her father's funeral bed which took me straight back to my grandfather's funeral years ago. There's also Khafila Abiola (daughter of the late MKO and Kudirat) who's training as an opera singer in Vienna http://snipurl.com/mcj5 And only yesterday courtesy of the blogworld I was introduced to Frances Uku, http://francesuku.blogspot.com/ "a theatre trained union actor working in New York and LA" Strangely enough, they all seem to be women...... To balance it up a bit, I'll now have to catch that Nigerian chef I found working at the trendy London eatery Les Trois Garcons a while back....
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Dodgy,other English turns of phrase & the transformational power of sport
Thinking about language, perhaps because the theme of free speech still hovers somewhere in my unconscious, what with cartoons and protests, and the right and the left and the centre all speaking out vociferously for and against free speech and about sensitivity and responsible reporting and convicted drug dealers dressing up as terrorists in defence of piety and on and on.....
So I'm round to thinking about those peculiarly English turns of phrase that I have acquired in the few years I've lived in the UK- things like dodgy, ish, iffy- words that I knew when I lived in Nigeria but would not consciously use.
Now I call out in response to the query from my colleague- "What time will you get in, nine? And I respond "ish", calmly easily as if I have used it all my life.
A friend asks if I'd like some meat pies on slash price sale at the supermarket-"Hmm, they look a bit dodgy" is my pat response
And to another friend who asks if we are definitely going to the exhibition at the new gallery next week, I respond- It's looking a bit iffy at the moment, I may have to work.... and so on
In Nigeria, all is on hold at the moment as we follow the Eagles' giddy progress through the African Cup of Nations- impeachments, third term agendas, oil troubles, all fade into insignificance before the dazzle of our footballers. Musing on the power of sport to unite, I remember dancing with policemen at a check point on Lagos Island on the night we won the football gold medal at the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996- they waved us through, not bothering to ask for our "particulars" or the customary "wetin you carry". I suppose it was the same spirit that led the New Zealanders I saw massed on a London street at the weekend to turn out in such great waves to support the All-Blacks, the rugby team. Amidst the cans of beer and bottles of alcopops making the rounds that morning, I couldn't help but marvel at the number of young NZ men who were dressed in short sleeved shirts, shorts and flip-flops (that's bathroom slippers to you) in near sub-zero temperatures........talk about the magic passion of sport
So I'm round to thinking about those peculiarly English turns of phrase that I have acquired in the few years I've lived in the UK- things like dodgy, ish, iffy- words that I knew when I lived in Nigeria but would not consciously use.
Now I call out in response to the query from my colleague- "What time will you get in, nine? And I respond "ish", calmly easily as if I have used it all my life.
A friend asks if I'd like some meat pies on slash price sale at the supermarket-"Hmm, they look a bit dodgy" is my pat response
And to another friend who asks if we are definitely going to the exhibition at the new gallery next week, I respond- It's looking a bit iffy at the moment, I may have to work.... and so on
In Nigeria, all is on hold at the moment as we follow the Eagles' giddy progress through the African Cup of Nations- impeachments, third term agendas, oil troubles, all fade into insignificance before the dazzle of our footballers. Musing on the power of sport to unite, I remember dancing with policemen at a check point on Lagos Island on the night we won the football gold medal at the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996- they waved us through, not bothering to ask for our "particulars" or the customary "wetin you carry". I suppose it was the same spirit that led the New Zealanders I saw massed on a London street at the weekend to turn out in such great waves to support the All-Blacks, the rugby team. Amidst the cans of beer and bottles of alcopops making the rounds that morning, I couldn't help but marvel at the number of young NZ men who were dressed in short sleeved shirts, shorts and flip-flops (that's bathroom slippers to you) in near sub-zero temperatures........talk about the magic passion of sport
Friday, February 03, 2006
Meeting the internet and musing on freedom of speech and strange bedfellows
Recently, in an article, a journalist asked "do you remember the first time you used the internet?" Try as hard as I could, I couldn't.
I do remember my first e mail address, though. It must have been in the dying years of the 90s. It wasn't an e mail address like we know them today. It was at the local post office, where for some odd reason, someone somewhere had been visionary enough to link them to the internet. For a relatively small fee (Two hundred naira or so I think it was) , you could open an account with them and receive and send e mails. Does that sound straightforward? It was anything but. We were not let anywhere near the actual PCs- instead there were wooden desks at which you could write out in longhand your e mail and then pass it to the clerk who took it to the back room hidden from view where other clerks proceeded to type and send it for you from the post office address.
Confidentiality was non-existent and all replies to you had to include in the Subject line "for the attention of XY"so that they could be printed off and put in a pigeon hole for you to pick up the next time you visited the post office. It was a bit difficult as at the time I was carrying on a romance across the seas and this method of communication (and the thought of the dour matronly chief clerk reading through my sweet nothings) did tend to stifle the ardour......
And from there, I remember moving on to my first internet cafe- whatever gave me the temerity to think I could, I cannot recall. I remember the sniggering of the staff and the regulars at my one handed typing technique, and my wondering how anyone could ever type so swiftly with two hands without ever going to typing school... I soon became a regular at that cafe and as other internet cafes sprang up across town, I began to note which ones had good connections and which ones always had"their system down", which had generators to battle the frequent power cuts and which didn't, and so became a favoured and discerning customer.....Those internet cafes opened up new vistas for me and I do owe them a lot more than the browsing fees I paid....
Freedom of speech has been on my mind lately, partly because of my earlier post, and partly because of the Bill before the UK parliament to ban incitement to religious hatred, a law which opponents said curtailed the right to freedom of speech. The law sought to extend to religion the protection already offered to people from being insulted or abused on the basis of their race. Interestingly enough, it was opposed by a coalition of die-hard atheists who felt that religious belief deserved no such protections and fundamentalist Christians who felt that it would limit their right to preach to people of other religions or criticize them, the often unnamed other religion of course being Islam. The Bill was defeated and the government (in a farcical moment occasioned by Tony Blair leaving the House before he had voted, and thus allowing the defeat by one vote) had to accept an amended version which distinguished between insulting a religion and inciting hatred against it. While I mused on how freedom of speech could bring together the oddest bedfellows, news broke of the riots against the cartoons said to depict the Prophet Muhammed across the world
I must admit that while acknowledging that my opinions are no doubt shaped by my own personal circumstances as a non-Muslim, I struggled to appreciate the rationale behind the demand that the Danish government should have stopped the newspapers publishing the offending cartoons. I believe that people should respect each other and their beliefs, but I also believe that people have a right to free speech, and fail to see how on earth legislation can enforce respect. Fear and threats will not achieve much either, and can only lead to increasingly polarized positions.
Freedom of speech is obviously a very complex minefield to wade through, with shifting alliances and perspectives...
I do remember my first e mail address, though. It must have been in the dying years of the 90s. It wasn't an e mail address like we know them today. It was at the local post office, where for some odd reason, someone somewhere had been visionary enough to link them to the internet. For a relatively small fee (Two hundred naira or so I think it was) , you could open an account with them and receive and send e mails. Does that sound straightforward? It was anything but. We were not let anywhere near the actual PCs- instead there were wooden desks at which you could write out in longhand your e mail and then pass it to the clerk who took it to the back room hidden from view where other clerks proceeded to type and send it for you from the post office address.
Confidentiality was non-existent and all replies to you had to include in the Subject line "for the attention of XY"so that they could be printed off and put in a pigeon hole for you to pick up the next time you visited the post office. It was a bit difficult as at the time I was carrying on a romance across the seas and this method of communication (and the thought of the dour matronly chief clerk reading through my sweet nothings) did tend to stifle the ardour......
And from there, I remember moving on to my first internet cafe- whatever gave me the temerity to think I could, I cannot recall. I remember the sniggering of the staff and the regulars at my one handed typing technique, and my wondering how anyone could ever type so swiftly with two hands without ever going to typing school... I soon became a regular at that cafe and as other internet cafes sprang up across town, I began to note which ones had good connections and which ones always had"their system down", which had generators to battle the frequent power cuts and which didn't, and so became a favoured and discerning customer.....Those internet cafes opened up new vistas for me and I do owe them a lot more than the browsing fees I paid....
Freedom of speech has been on my mind lately, partly because of my earlier post, and partly because of the Bill before the UK parliament to ban incitement to religious hatred, a law which opponents said curtailed the right to freedom of speech. The law sought to extend to religion the protection already offered to people from being insulted or abused on the basis of their race. Interestingly enough, it was opposed by a coalition of die-hard atheists who felt that religious belief deserved no such protections and fundamentalist Christians who felt that it would limit their right to preach to people of other religions or criticize them, the often unnamed other religion of course being Islam. The Bill was defeated and the government (in a farcical moment occasioned by Tony Blair leaving the House before he had voted, and thus allowing the defeat by one vote) had to accept an amended version which distinguished between insulting a religion and inciting hatred against it. While I mused on how freedom of speech could bring together the oddest bedfellows, news broke of the riots against the cartoons said to depict the Prophet Muhammed across the world
I must admit that while acknowledging that my opinions are no doubt shaped by my own personal circumstances as a non-Muslim, I struggled to appreciate the rationale behind the demand that the Danish government should have stopped the newspapers publishing the offending cartoons. I believe that people should respect each other and their beliefs, but I also believe that people have a right to free speech, and fail to see how on earth legislation can enforce respect. Fear and threats will not achieve much either, and can only lead to increasingly polarized positions.
Freedom of speech is obviously a very complex minefield to wade through, with shifting alliances and perspectives...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
