The psychology of the wash

A bath or a shower

When I owned my own place, it is strange that the decision to buy my apartment could have hinged on the bathroom having a bathtub instead of the installed shower unit.

There were times during the negotiation process where that was a niggling thought at the back of my mind, the place became a stronghold, a refuge, a kind of security from the things that ravaged my life and worth many years later. I spent ten and a half wonderful years there before I sold up.

The shower was a special place, the feeling of water cascading down my body, the temperature of the water set to just about bearable, but very comfortable, the floor of the bathroom heated such that the cold of winter was barely noticeable.

The wash for something

Indeed, there was something about the wash; I could adjust the showerhead to deliver the spray as a soft rain through to a pulsing massaging hosing down.

The quest for cleanliness also offered a cubicle of meditation, but there were times when I spent much longer in the shower as if I could get rid of a dirty thought or a feeling of a grimy existence not cleansable with the shower gels scented for seaward ambience and greenish blue hues.

We all have a predilection for some sort of wash, especially we of African descent, whilst those of other cultures might have concoctions to drink and possibly ointments or powders to rub on our skins to provide protection, fortify us for the formidable or empower us from some nondescript daring-do, we have the wash.

The ritual of the soap

I have prayed over waters and bathed in the strangest places, using soaps that would not pass the science of reasonableness to be applied to the skin.

Yet, the soaps, black or any other colour purported to grant powers for the favour from all mankind or defence from the dark arts are well sought for by the many who publicly appear rational but privately can be found in grottos ministered to by shamanic priests, fetishists or witch doctors.

The wash is not limited to these events, Christianity talks of the wash too, the washing away of sins as much as it pertains to baptism as a sign of faith, the Mohammedans perform the wash of ablutions before their prayers as a sign of purification before approaching their deity in submission and supplication.

Ritual purification is a function of many belief systems as Hindus will wash in the River Ganges, and the River Jordan has significance to both Judaism and Christianity.

The wash is deeper than the skin

For the holiday, the wash is in a swimming pool or at sea, we have an affinity for water caressing our bodies with or without particular reason – we cannot deny that regardless of who we are, the wash is critical for our presentation and thereby it determines how we are accepted.

We find that the whole context of clean and being clean is defined by the wash, the health of the body, the mind and the spirit might we be affected by the wash too even though the water only really touches the body, but the effect is much deeper than what we see or feel.

Thought Picnic: The Power of Desire II

The path to it

It was a path I never walked for almost 16 months of my being there and it led to a house that looked decrepit, visited by some who wore drawn faces and made you wish the world had something to offer besides waiting for God and heaven.

Indeed, at Sunday school we had learnt of the sweet by-and-by taught by teachers whose sadism pretending to discipline would have made the devil smile with glee.

This was a different crowd, almost hip and quite urbane studying art and exhibiting creativity that just blew you away. How they did it, I could not tell but I found myself walking up the path with them and for all the African initiated histrionics I had seen and heard my mother display, calling names of angels from beyond a place yonder comprehension, these guys were in a different place.

Rituals and victuals

They knelt to pray and suddenly started speaking in languages I could not phantom but it sounded Middle-Eastern, the questions came later and with that came a conversion from the faith I once knew.

Now I was caught amongst the throes of establishmentarian High-Church Anglicanism, the unschooled atrocity of prophets, psalms, potions, candles with ritualistic practices that gave evil the palpability to scare to death and a new living way that still had many scrambling to find true direction and purpose.

The incisions were too many to count and as to what one was fed, after chewing and swallowing a new Tiger brand razor blade under the supervision of a witch doctor, one probably had the constitution for anything that could be offered on a plate. Don’t contemn African animism, they don’t do illusions and once you visited the grotto, Harry Potter will be kindergarten with docile kids.

Desires that tore

With this came new friends, many challenges, serious misgivings, deep conflicts and worst of all familial friction. At a time that I really did need help I found myself alone, ostracised, abandoned and cursed – yes, cursed for deviating from what had become the norms for some but made the bizarre look tame.

From that day, desire battled with desire, the battleground being my mind and the burdens it grew to juggle between the good, the bad, the ugly, the unmentionable and much else.

You never arrived, you were always on a journey as perfection and imperfection traded with your soul and each faltering step forward seemed to bargain with a precipitous fall from grace. You were caught in the pincers of the power of desire to be who you are and be what you want to be.

Nobody told me that it would be this hard and at the same time it could be so easy. Trust is what matters and the knowledge that comes with that will help make the desire to be good come true. 

The Churches of Strange - A short story

There they stood

“What is all this?” He said in amazement almost bordering in stunned amusement to his mother as he made to leave her room. It was one of those bizarre events that would almost read as too good to be true, it had to be the figment of an imagination in overdrive looking for the incredulous to offer as fact.

Somehow, there seems to have been a disconnect between mother and child, for all the tradition and culture she knew that she hoped to instil the greatest fear and dread in her son, one can only say she had cried wolf one too many times already.

The church of the bizarre

The boy had his problems, many could not be attributed to the usual adolescent issues, they were much more troublesome and she had resorted to remedies in African-initiated churches to deal with possibly mental, maybe psychological and generally termed spiritual problems.

The raison d'etre of these churches were of an almost macabre ritualistic creed that bore very few similarities to the established church which Africans generally never felt tackled the vague dread of the supernatural and superstition that held mind and reason hostage to agents of demonic and devilish persuasion personified in some close blood relation who was either envious or jealous of a person’s circumstances.

It allows for every misfortune to be blamed on some unnamed enemy or some hapless powerless victim that cannot fight back against accusations of sorcery or witchcraft.

The hold and the sway

Much as the bible appears to be their source inspiration, the powers of the churches derive from seers or prophets if you like and people convulsively possessed of influences that portend to prognosticate or exhibit telepathic or clairvoyant tendencies. This provides a great draw that one might well find of the terror of shamanism.

In the process, people who have bought into this religious chicanery are literally fleeced by these “false” prophets whose church establishments have all the trappings of some outward show of holiness and purity but are bastions of the occult gaining some Christian legitimacy by excitable references to God and Jesus along with even more violent exertions in battling Satan as the prophets operate like modern-day Levites and the laity recite the Psalms repetitively with Christian numerological symbolism of threes, sevens, twenty-ones or forties.

Many religions of Christ and others

You can imagine the confusion of “Christianities” the boy had, as his mother took him to strange prayer meetings before he was 5 where the family friends were bedecked in flowing white robes and red sashes, candles taking a prominent place in the homilies, those were seemingly secret liaisons.

Publicly, the family was Anglican though his dad had dabbled in bizarre animist rituals for protection and other life needs. However, every religion was tapped from medicine men through witch doctors to Islamic mystics. In the case of the Islamic mystic she used an episode in the boy’s life of terror and fear to warn him off telling anyone they had been seeking help there.

It was a nasty thing to do but with hindsight the boy felt mother hens will do anything to protect their chicks and this was just a personification of that justification.

The boy deciding

By the time the boy left home, he joined up with what was at that time termed an extreme Christian fringe which brought quite a bit of friction with his parents because they were at variance with other Christian practices.

Meanwhile, in that boy’s life, he had been cut many times, incisions made on the scalp, on the check, on the face with all sorts of potions rubbed in, he had bathed in forests, drank the most dastardly concoctions, seen the indescribable, experienced a lifetime of Steven King kind of horror and to culminate all, had eaten and swallowed razor blades; all in the name of protection, safety and help.

Then came this day as he returned from his church, she called him into her room and after much railing and agitation she cursed her child telling him, if he returned to that church again, he will not find his way back home again.

What is right?

It could have been literal but elements of the child’s upbringing meant that this act will hold less significance as it might have held for someone else steeped in their culture. The rationality of doing this unclothed never dawned on the child for his Christian persuasion at that time put him on a trajectory that gave him a sense of safety from that episode.

The child is then left with many questions on what really is Christianity from the established versions through the African-initiated ritualistic establishments to the ones steeped in dread of evil and a brand of ultra-evangelical exuberance whilst at the same time, he is yet to find his way back home – all because the conflicts in doctrine that govern all these congregations sometimes persuade people to do the most unlovely and inhuman things.

That is the story of a boy and the many “Christianities” that vie for his soul and claim to offer him protection.

Childhood: Ghosts and ghouls of my past

Seed thoughts of evil

I had an impressionable young mind, ripe and fertile for imagination and the imagining of things that take fear to another level.

I alluded to this in Childhood: Shocked into adolescence the two paragraphs appear below and I’ll continue from there.

I had a very terrifying experience when I returned home after 4 months down South when my aunt and our houseboy were chatting about appearances of evil and to the mind of an impressionable 10-year old there was fertile land for imaginations that could produce untold realities.

That night as my parents entertained guests, our kitchen was detached from the main building and as I went to place the dishes out at the washing area, I saw what I believed to be the devil and my life changed completely from then on, I knew fear, I knew terror, I found out that having my parents present did not save me from what my imagination could conjure for my seeing.

Ghouls and ghosts

In my first term at secondary school as a boarder, I arrived late enough to take the top bed of a bunk bed, the chap below lived to regret it, that, I wrote about in Childhood: Atòólé.

However, there was a bigger problem, we slept in pitch-darkness and the experience I had at home after a while followed me to school, my sleep interrupted one night and as I opened my eyes, I thought I saw something white fall from the high ceiling to the floor and that set me off.

I recited Psalm 23 out loud incessantly until I fell asleep out of exhaustion; it was a nuisance to others because it meant no one else could have sound sleep.

There were times I woke up and I thought I could hear things being dragged across the floor, all sorts of remedies were tried to no avail though bunking with others did seem to help, the nocturnal enuresis was intolerable.

Dark jungles of the unspeakable

I ended up with all sorts of nicknames from holy ghost to pastor, it was the latter that stuck. When the term break came, I was sent home and my parents were told I could not return to the boarding house until they had sorted the problem out.

This time between my aunt and grand-parents every kind of animist remedy was tried, baths in the strangest places, potions of suspect concoctions, an amulet belt and chewing razor blades – a story for another blog.

It was a deep dark world of all sorts of trials by anyone and everyone not to talk of the different incisions with things rubbed in on the chest, on the scalp, on my cheeks – all because a seed thought was planted in the mind of a child with a very vivid imagination.

The power of the mind

Now, one can reflect and wonder if the best thing to do was to tell better stories of triumphalism to wipe out those thoughts rather than what we all went through – the problem was my mind, my imagination and the grip it had on my reality.

There is very little you can do externally to arrest that and for all they everyone tried, the answer could have been a lot easier if we had a religion that was not steeped in superstition and fear but one that espoused a bold all-conquering Jesus.

I returned to the boarding house for the second-half of the second term, not as fearful but the mattress needing sunrays every few days.

Apes Obey! With very little sense of veracity

The story has many more legs

When I declared that the story I wrote about in my last Apes Obey! Series probably still has legs, little did I know that it was a duo-decapod, in short, it is an octopus and a half with a possibility of growing a few more legs.

The CNN [1] must have read the whole story, seen the news interest but tried very hard to extract the information that would work with an international audience without ending up making it look like a spoof.

Much as I try to look for international and independent sources to corroborate and verify stories I read about Nigeria, in this case, the Nigerian angle of this story reads as the most incredible tale of stupidity, excess, abuse and neopatrimonialism [Refer to my last Apes Obey! blog about this].

A short history of Sam Edem

Mr. Samuel Edem was until recently the Chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) [2] but was suspected and being investigated for fraudulent practices yet to be presented before a court of law. I have taken the liberty of printing to PDF [I acknowledge the source of the material from which the PDF was created to be from the NDDC website] format his corporate biography [3] from the NDDC site just in case changes in that organisation deprive us of access to this mine of information.

To go by his title, he is Ambassador Sam Edem, holds a Bachelor’s degree in French and a Masters in French Philosophy, he has at various times help two Deputy Director-General positions in the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and has held a Special Duties portfolio in the Presidency.

He was also involved in restoring diplomatic relations with Canada – I did not know our relations were that soured except probably during the Sani Abacha [4] era, a task the biography says he performed excellently.

Ambassador to all and sundry

He was once ambassador to the Republics of Senegal, Rwanda and Burundi as well as the High Commissioner to the Republic of Uganda. His diplomatic brief has included liaising or working with diplomatic corps in the Kingdom of Belgium, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the European Union and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and he voluntarily retired from service in 2003 before he was called up to head the NDDC in 2005.

He is a Fellow of the National War College which has since been renamed to the National Defence College[5] and he is supposed to have been honoured with over 200 awards, having been selective about the awards his receives which include the l'Ordre du lion du Sénégal as well as being a Friend and Patron of the Yitzhak Rabin Centre [6] in Israel.

A Christian with his name written in gold

In the words of the corporate biography which appear here verbatim – “he has brought his wealth of experience from the public service to bear and undoubtedly proven to be a quintessential administrator, a strategic planner, and a conflict manager. There, his tenure has heralded tremendous improvement in the region. Indeed, his panache at work is common knowledge and has transcended the entire commission”.

This man is well travelled having been to over a hundred countries, is the son of a pastor of African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church who was also the Chairman, Nsit County Council and his mother was Deaconess of the church and a fashion designer of her time.

Ambassador Edem is a devout Christian who “with modesty, humility, diligence and discipline as his guiding principles; he has written his name in gold!”

A man of achievement, it seems

I could not write a better biography of a man in a corporate setting that reads more like sycophantic praise-singing so obsequious to the point that it could be sick-making.

That is however beside the point; it would appear that this man has an enviable biography that gives him the qualities by merit and experience to hold the brief of Chairman of the NDDC and he really had his work cut out.

But can anyone tell me after reading his biography why as a career diplomat with global experience he could not get on with his managing director that he wanted the man dead?

Recklessly burning money

Ambassador Edem engaged the services of a witch-doctor [7] who went by the name of ‘Dr.’ Perekabowei Ogah who was to ensure the death of the NDDC Managing Director, Timi Alaibe and ensure that he, Edem had a steady flow of contracts from the Akwa Ibom State Governor, Godswill Akpabio.

Ambassador Edem’s offices would have been based in Port-Harcourt and he was concerned with activities in far-away Akwa Ibom for his personal purposes.

Having agreed a contract sum of N570 million ($4.79m), N310 million ($2.60m) was first paid to ‘Dr.’ Ogah with a balance of N260 million ($2.19m), but eventually the ‘Doctor’ was paid N800 million ($6.72m) in total.

Rituals were conducted in a public cemetery and one of the more bizarre activities at the cemetery included bathing in the ashes of N270 million ($2.27m) – read that again, Ambassador Edem set fire to $2.27 million cash, gathered the ashes and had a bath in those ashes in a cemetery – even Stephen King cannot come up with a tale this twisted.

No refunds for failure

Despite this hocus-pocus activity by a devout Christian and Christianly man engaging the services of an accomplished con-man masquerading as a powerful witch doctor, Mr. Timi Alaibe the Managing Director of the NDDC did not keel over and die.

An aggrieved Ambassador Edem then sought a refund of his money and on failing to get anything back filed a complaint with the police accusing ‘Dr.’ Ogah of fraud; that is how the cat was let out of the bag and apparently, Ambassador Edem has not denied any part of the crazy, incredible and seriously amazing story.

In what I would call a first for ThisDayOnline.com a columnist has gone on to try and analyse the whole situation [7] about people employed in public service, the abuse of power, the misappropriation of public funds and the use of fetish practices to settle office squabbles.

Lord Lugard did say then, “In character and temperament, the typical African of this race-type is a happy, thriftless, excitable person; lacking in self-control, discipline, and foresight; naturally courageous, and naturally courteous and polite, full of personal vanity, with little sense of veracity, fond of music and loving weapons as an oriental loves jewellery”.

One is left with a number of questions

How does a seemingly intelligent and accomplished man get all tied up in this kind of nonsense?

Where did the man get all these sums of money considering there is no mention of his being a businessman in the biography, detail that can never be left out of a biography written in Nigeria?

Ambassador was serving a 5-year tenure representing Akwa Ibom State, if he does get removed as the Chairman of the NDDC would this position move to a candidate from the same state for the remaining 2 years of the tenure or would the candidate from Bayelsa State resume early?

With little sense of veracity

The sad tale is how the public persona of an accomplished diplomat who is considered a philanthropist, pillar of society and devout Christian is completely different from a private life of fetish and animistic rituals which defy every form of logic.

A man put in a position of great trust and responsibility, holding such high office who really is a crook, a fraud, lacking in integrity and self-serving selfish megalomaniac – a leader with very little sense of veracity – it is the most damning assessment that can be made of a distinguished career that has come to disrepute, disgrace and naught.

[1] Nigerian official accused of hiring witch doctor - CNN.com

[2] NNDC - Niger Delta Development Commission homepage

[3] The Chairman - Corporate Biography on NNDC

[4] Sani Abacha - Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

[5] allAfrica.com: Sourced from Daily Trust - Nigeria: Senate Renames National War College

[6] About the Centre - The Yitzhak Rabin Centre (I cannot find any record of Ambassador Edem being either a friend or patron of the centre and only the American have formed a society of Friends of the Centre.)

[7] allAfrica.com: Sourced from This Day - Nigeria: How Sam Edem Story Mirrors the Country Tragedy

Mr. Khadim's calling card

In my post box

I got home this evening after a long weekend away only to find that Mr. Khadim had left his calling card.

Mr. Khadim happens to be bilingual, or so it seems because he had a Dutch message on top of an English notice, presumably a translation which usually would go wrong because during my sojourn in the Netherlands and in my visits to Germany and Spain, the locals never to seek the assistance of English-speakers in crafting their notices.

There have been times that I have found the notices so annoying that I have taken it upon myself to re-write the notice or even replace it before the irritation of reading the stuff leads to something as bad as unintended self-harm.

Anyway, it appears after my blog earlier today, Mr. Sam Edem might have benefitted from Mr. Khadim’s services and not wasted $4 million on a whim.

No payments for this one

Mr. Khadim’s card, reads thus:

Payment after result. May I introduce myself: I am real African, International, very quick medium. I can help you with: return of your beloved people or your lover, your carrier (sic, career, I suppose), examen (sic, examination, I suppose), chance of happiness (sic), sexual impotence, infertility or bad spirits, even when your problem is hopeless. I guarantee you a quick result.

Well, well, well

So, one does not have to pay anything until the results you seek are in, well, I am also a real African and international, I was born in England, I live in the Netherlands, so.

He can help with the return of my beloved people, the ones departed or is it, which one of my ex’s who has gone on with their lives do I want to destroy their happiness to selfishly fulfill mine?

My carrier; well, I fly KLM most of the time, and then I participate in the Sky Team Alliance [Source: Wikepedia] when KLM cannot get me there, or I do not like my couriers, they do not deliver at a place and time of my convenience.

A send-up, it is

Examinations; would that be medical examinations, like show better bloods than I have such that I am picked up for doping even though the most sport I do is walk to the elevator? Ah! He probably meant exams, if I have been studious, surely, I should have no problems with that or I see the answers to the questions on a paranormal teleprompter - now, that is real technology. Errr! is that before or after the exam?

Chance of happiness; if it is still left to chance, I would keep what I have got, I am happy enough and what I cannot sort out I seek alternatives.

Sexual impotence; it works when it is needed, I do not want to go round town like I have a permanent drip-feed of Viagra coursing my veins, as for infertility, I am not looking to have kids, if I have been shooting blanks, all well and good, don't want to hurt anyone.

Bad spirits; ensure the barman opens the bottle in front of you, I had some sherry at a bar a few years ago and well, I saw it all again a few hours later at home – how horrible.

Even when your problem is hopeless, that sounds like a proposition, but I would pass on that because the guarantee is written on such cheap paper, it would appear no one has been getting results.

Mr. Sam Edem, were you seeing Mr. Khadim?

Apes Obey! Seldom rises above pantheistic animism

Seeking development for the Niger Delta

As if there was not enough turmoil in the Nigerian Niger Delta region [1] where every little skirmish and outrageous militant operation including the damaging of pipelines [2] and kidnapping of people seems to be the accelerator pedal for global oil prices.

Somehow, it is not clear how those issues can resolved because the more the Federal Government tries to ameliorate the situation there, the more the so-called leaders seem to have an agenda inimical to improving the lives of the people they lead and represent.

In 2000, the Federal Government under General Olusegun Obasanjo (Rtd.) set up the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) [3] with the sole mandate of developing the Niger Delta region.

Squabbling as usual

The chairmanship of the organisation which usually engages a lot of Nigerian hot-air about fairness and opportunity for any position, settled down on a rotation covering the 9 oil-producing states in alphabetical order.

The second term of 5-years is now with Akwa Ibom State where a paramount leader took the opportunity 2 months ago to ask for an additional state [4] created in the South-East region for no other reason than looking for some ill-conceived parity with other Nigerian regions.

Big budget for more pickings

One has to conduct more research to determine what the NDDC has done in its about 8 years of existence, one thing we know is whatever they are doing has not lead to the abatement of criminal activity in that area.

In June, the President sent a budget of N79.4 billion to the National Assembly for the NDDC, the National Assembly consequently hiked that budget to N89.2 billion [5] – these are large sums of money.

Unfortunately, it appears the Chairman of the NDDC, Mr. Sam Edem has been pre-occupied with other activities than those for which he was employed.

He has since been suspended from his office [6] and arrested by the police for engaging black magic services.

Engaging the supernatural

Now, the Nigerian society is a very superstitious society that is held under the sway of all sorts of religious teaching and dreads best explained in Lord Lugard’s words that said, “the religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural.”

Mr. Edem evidently felt that he could harness the powers of animalism and the dread of the supernatural to deal with a subordinate that he assumed had ill-will towards him and also earn favoured status for contracts from the state governor.

Logically, one would think if a manager has a problem with his subordinate basic management training would instruct the manager to either engage the person in some conversation or institute a process to eliminate the conflict situation.

Surely, it should not in anyway involve seeking to kill the person by whatever means or for whatever reasons – any law-abiding person should also ensure such intentions are reported to the police immediately.

As for obtaining contracts from the state governor, one would think with his brief as chairman of the NDDC his hands were full, there was just too much to be done politically, socially and economically to have a business by the side.

Neopatrimonialism

In fact, I would introduce two new words I learnt today that derive from the root word – prebend [7] – defined in the Catholic Encyclopedia as “the right of a member of a chapter to his share in the revenues of the cathedral”.

In the case, of the NDDC, it is called Prebendalism [8] or more closely Neopatrimonialism [9] where “patrons using state resources in order to secure the loyalty of clients in the general population” or rather for self-enrichment.

Studies show that this undermines political institutions and the rule of law, it is almost always corrupt and probably is the reason why “African economies have failed to effect neoliberal market reforms”.

There are already too many cases of people in government organisations who have sapped its resources or used their positions for corrupt enrichment, damaging its organizational effectiveness and fuelling more corruption.

Whose folly?

As it transpired, the news has it that Mr. Sam Edem engaged the services of the witch doctor to the tune of $4 million, which raised suspicions about Mr. Edem’s means.

It all turned sour when the services the witch doctor was engaged for did not materialise as the death of the subordinate and the juicy government contracts and Mr. Edem demanded a refund.

Any fool would know that witch doctor services are not covered by any trade description act and what was to say that the people who were to come under the spell of the witch doctor had not sought other forms of protection from undue influences.

So far, Mr. Edem has not denied any of the allegations the ill will the subordinate might have had towards his manager might well have been discovering that his boss was siphoning off moneys towards illegitimate activities.

This story probably still has legs, but it cannot be so unique in Nigerian society, it is just one that has suddenly received the international spotlight.

Sources

[1] Niger Delta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] China Daily - Nigeria's militants claim two pipelines damaged

[3] Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] The Tide Online - Traditional ruler wants additional state for S’East

[5] allAfrica.com: Sourced from Daily Trust - Nigeria: Senate Hikes NDDC Budget By N10 Billion

[6] Nigerian official accused of hiring witch doctor - CNN.com

[7] Catholic Encyclopedia: Prebend

[8] Prebendalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[9] Neopatrimonialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia