Seven Years of Hope, Faith, and Love

Finding My Own Path

Unconventional would probably define much of what can be said about my perspective on life and living, not out of trying to be different or rebellious, but seeking out what gives me purpose, joy, and fun.

Nothing in my work life resembles what others before me have experienced. I chose a path driven by curiosity, exploring what interests me, and finding opportunities where I was recognised for my abilities and how I might change things. It has been turbulent, successful, and rewarding.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Yet, it is in the pursuit of happiness that I might have been the most misunderstood. It is as though living your own life becomes a challenge to others, through no fault of your own, viewed from cultural or societal perspectives.

However, I do not want to make this a weighty piece of psychological reasoning, as it is a day of celebration. Reflecting on how finding someone special can change your world, that is an undeniable fact.

Seven Years Ago

Seven years ago, I met someone whom I would not have initially approached. They came to say hello, and we started a conversation. As we sat at the bar talking, the world faded away; an undeniable connection between us was established.

We met again for lunch before parting ways, one thinking it was a fleeting holiday encounter, and the other wondering what might develop. I saw a future after nearly a decade of silent grief at the death of someone I loved, but I was too timid to pursue that relationship boldly. In my youth, I saw obstacles, barriers, hurdles, and excuses; we all suffered for it.

A Leap of Faith

When this unexpected turn came, as I was not even actively seeking it, it felt different. It was new. I didn't hesitate; I seized the moment. A long-distance relationship, nurtured against all odds, fulfilling in countless ways, grounded in hopes fuelled by a dreamlike imagination that only living can make real.

Every moment is lived and cherished in the realisation that I am truly, madly, deeply, and wonderfully loved. We have laughed, cried, fought, and made peace; struggled and triumphed, but most importantly, we discovered the power of companionship, trust, love, joy, and the enduring strength of desire in making things happen.

A Happy Anniversary

To all of this, I wish you, Brian, a very happy seventh anniversary. You mean the whole wide world to me. I love you dearly and thank you for your indescribably unconditional love.

Twenty-Two years of blogging

Blogging the story within you

You may have read somewhere on this blog that it was started in a Berlin hotel room on 8th December 2003. After a few years, I began writing an anniversary blog, especially now that the whole art of personal blogging has fallen out of fashion in favour of trendier and more engaging podcasts and skits.

I'll be the first to suggest this medium suits me best, and I think writing will always have an enduring quality over all other means of expression. Even in the case of music, before we had recordings, it was putting all that creativity into musical notation that has given us the joy of listening to classical music today.

There is no need to write a long treatise about blogging beyond relating to the view expressed in this quotation: “If a story is in you, it has got to come out” (William Faulkner). I think we all have stories, and too many of us never let those stories get out. That is a shame.

This is a quiet celebration of 22 years of blogging, and I'll keep doing it for as long as I can. I am thankful for the readers, even the large language models that have been trained on it, my loyal audience, and the people who take the time to comment on my blogs. Here's to more words coming together in stories you'll enjoy.

Nickel Blogs - Blog by blog for 21 years

A House, A Home - Anna Wilson

The first brick

I thought the 8th of December 2003 was a weekend, but it was a Monday. Now, I cannot recollect what I was still doing in a Berlin hotel the day I wrote my first blog. I must have been on holiday.

I had been sharing some of my views with a closed circle of friends by email, but it was not efficient, and frankly, some were rather fed-up with me clogging their inboxes with musings and rantings. Did one not ask that I be more authentic, and by that, suggested I was putting up a façade?

Blogging was becoming a trend, it was the subject of an interesting report I caught on CNN when it was the global news outlet pumped into every international hotel room. Quick research on how to start a blog landed me on a website managed by a small outfit in Scotland, and http://akin.blog-city.com/ (now defunct) was born.

Building homes

Even blog hosting sites could not stay the course as I received an email in late 2010 that the service would close in January 2012. That began the process of migrating what we now call content to Google’s Blogger and https://akinblog.nl, over 1,500 of them, a manual activity and what I lost in the process was the engagement and many link references.

Brick by brick, blog by blog, I built a house and a home of thoughts, views, opinions, and perspectives. I have been writing about what I have experienced and how it might affect me or others for 21 years. It is as easy as it is hard. I have 4,177 blogs, including this one, with over 8,300,000 views to date.

A place of blogs

I am commemorating today with a song written by Anna Wilson for Habitat for Humanity International because every sentiment expressed in that song applies to this home that my blog has become.

Finally, thank you to everyone who has visited my blog for whatever reason, some interacting by leaving comments or engaging me directly. I found a quiet corner and you came to say hello, I appreciate you all and hope you will continue to visit and interact with my blog and me.

Here’s to many more anniversaries. In human terms, the 21^st signifies the key to life and the anniversary gift is nickel. Let’s keep building homes for every expression of humanity, brick by brick.

Nickel Blogs - Celebrating 21 years of blogging

Nickel Blogs - In view of 21 years of blogging

Nickel Blogs - 21 years of telling better stories

Nickel Blogs - 21 years of going against the grain

Nickel Blogs - 21 years of articulating the identity spectrum

Nickel Blogs - 21 years of articulating the identity spectrum

Finding a place to be known

Negotiating the identity spectrum has been a feature of my blog, though when I consider the situation, it has always been a feature of my life. However, having a blog has helped articulate the issues around how identity is more defined by influences than by progeny.

I can think of the many experiences and realisations, the earliest being when I first arrived in Nigeria, barely a 5-year-old and I noticed there were more people like me than where we had left. How was a little black English boy to know that Nigeria would be different?

English, people have issues with that, I am supposed to be Black British, yet on those atrocious forms, I would write in Black English. That aspect of being English became ascendant when I had to tackle the question of where I was from when I lived in the Netherlands.

The many questions of where

“Where are you from?”, they would ask. I answer, “I am from England”. The next question usually was, “Where are you originally from?”, The answer, “England”. Confusion or frustration clouds their faces with a further inquiry, “Where are your parents from?”, The answer, “Nigeria”. Enlightenment, “So, you’re Nigerian”, “No, I am not, I was born in England.”

The best question in that vein was, “What is your birth country?”, I answered, “England”, and my interlocutor asked no further questions. This brings me to the other matter of my accent, it started as a typical Brummie accent influenced by associations in Nigeria especially in schools that had a large international pupillage.

Strange juxtapositions of identification

It's funny that most of the Caucasian kids were Nigerian-born, and many of the black kids were foreign-born, with foreign accents, too. However, reading an article by a friend of mixed-race parentage revealed another interesting thing about identity. Those of mixed-race parentage were othered from afar. We looked like everyone else until we began to speak, and then we were put aside, too.

It was like we never really belonged where we thought we belonged; we had to work out how we wanted to be identified. For instance, how do you tackle a statement like, “You’ve always thought like a Westerner?” I was 42 years old, which was what my father said in a conversation.

The privilege and the opportunity

In my case, I have found both privilege and opportunity by the accident of birth that is not of my making, how it has helped me navigate situations in life and at work cannot be covered in a blog. Too many examples come to mind.

Maybe, I am more fortunate that working with my sense of identity and the quality of my education has taken me to interesting places.

I have little time for identity politics, but woe betide anyone who attempts to pigeonhole me in dockets where I neither identify nor wish to place in. Such is the life of a Third Culture Kid.

Some additional context

A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who spends a significant part of their childhood living in a country or countries that are different from at least one of their parents' passport countries:

The child's parents' culture is the first culture.

The host country's culture is the second culture.

The child's own cultural identity is the third culture, which is a fusion of the first two.

The child adopts some traits from each culture. [If I may add, some kids even live in bubbles different from the nominal culture too.]

Nickel Blogs - 21 years of going against the grain

Developing a life of views

It would appear even to me that my blog has developed some unintended characteristics, but these have become some of the elements that give context to what I write.

For instance, one regularly occurring theme is the Thought Picnic which began just like when the blog began, in a hotel room on one of my travels. I was in Antwerp during my news junkie days when another of those Israeli-Palestinian conflicts was in the news.

The world news channels gave an Israeli representative a global platform to which she relayed to my unmistakable hearing, “We have to tell the world our truth.” Not the truth, but their version of the truth, which in its narrative was as far from the truth as the opposite cardinal points of the compass were from each other.

I found myself carted away in my mind’s eye on a picnic into a wilderness left to my thoughts to contemplate the seemingly intractable issues of the world around me. Indeed, I wander away in thought, into things that seem silly or complex. Those who have wondered what goes on in my head want to venture in there as I warn them it is probably no place for the sane.

Becoming an alien to the contemporary

You might also wonder why I have a theme titled Essential Snobbery 101; it is hardly about snobbery but a reflection on how norms have changed over time that some of us despite adaptations still find certain attitudes and behaviours unbelievably strange as to wonder if we have been visited by an alien civilisation.

There are themes dotted around this blog of 21 years, they are informed by perspectives and outlooks that might differ from how people would generally view things. There is a surfeit of commentary on the issues of the day, and where I have an opinion, I dare say it is rarely on the well-trodden ground of thought.

Challenging the orthodoxy brings conflict and controversy, however, celebrating independent thinking should never go out of fashion. Even when I was involved in syndication, remaining unaffiliated and so not beholden to a corporate policy mattered more to me than gaining a wider audience.

Nickel Blogs - 21 years of telling better stories

Celebrating life in abundance

21 years can seem like a lifetime, yet it is just over a third of my life. In that time, one can look back at the many things that have happened, the things done, the people encountered, the places travelled to, the events and activities that could be life-defining, and that becomes a chronicle of life.

I count my blessings and celebrate the joy of living. To have lived through two episodes of life-threatening cancer 15 years apart and still have a story to tell makes me one of the most fortunate people alive.

I take nothing for granted, the life I live is by the grace and mercy of God, medical interventions notwithstanding, the guarantees offered count for nothing if you do not have a greater assurance for results.

For writing better stories

Then what do you do when you have a blog and experience episodes of cancer? You write about it, document the treatment and side effects at diagnosis, and provide some thoughts in the aftermath.

Yes, my blog contains life stories and experiences, both the toughest and the triumphant. I am still standing because there is much more to reveal in my life, and I have better stories to tell.

Whatever inspired my blog at its inception has now turned out to be a reckoning of how favour had greeted me in too many places to mention, especially where I have neither worked for nor deserved the abundance of good that has come my way.

You would notice I rarely use the word lucky, rather, I am fortunate; 1: bringing some good thing not foreseen as certain: auspicious 2: receiving some unexpected good. Definitions according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. If anything, I have been remiss and negligent in recording the many instances of this glorious divine goodwill accorded me.

Nickel Blogs - In view of 21 years of blogging

It might be a low-key affair

I obviously had great ambitions for celebrating the 21^st anniversary of blogging in a week’s time, but that takes both organising and promoting, activities I cannot say I have the skill for.

Nickel Blogs - Celebrating 21 years of blogging

As it goes, I might just settle for a celebratory blog and a review of things that have caught my attention and interest over that period. The blog itself remains a personal blog even as I find that it garners a global readership and has been achieving record monthly visits for most of this year.

While storytelling has not gone out of fashion, it is a shame that personal blogs of a non-profit nature have waned in significance. As I have alluded to, other forms of expression and media platforms have taken hold as global attention spans have become more engaged with the stimulation of different senses for thrills.

Longevity can be impactful

The other day when I introduced a colleague to my blog, the first thing that caught their attention was the collapsed year archive that read as far back as 2003. Some people even thought I had a journalistic background; I have rarely done anything in the arts and humanities since my secondary school days. However, I do have an interest that might eventually inform a graduate programme.

If anything, the longevity alone can be interesting. I have not made many changes to the blog even though some static content does need to be updated. I won’t even ask anyone to wade through almost 4,200 blogs, but the “Random Post” button on the desktop or non-mobile version of the blog can lead to interesting topics.

Meanwhile, I will post a few thoughts until the anniversary. Thank you for visiting my blog.

Nickel Blogs - Celebrating 21 years of blogging

How expression has changed

In a month, my blog will have been running for 21 years. Eleven years ago, on the tenth anniversary of starting this blog, I invited friends and readers to contribute blogs to commemorate the occasion.

It was a different time and age; much has happened in a decade. There are hardly any personal blogs or many with a prolific output like there were back then. That is not because we do not have stories to tell. The medium and the model has changed.

It is all about content and engagement, hobbies that have become earners too. We are in the era of TikTok and skits, everything to titillate the senses for a few seconds you are lucky to grab the attention of that fleeting patron who is already unimpressed before you can make an impression.

Something for Nickel Blogs

Even as the thought of running another Your Blog On My Blog party seems to verge on wishful thinking, one can only try. This is an invitation to anyone who has ever found anything interesting on my blog, to write on any topic of interest to them to share in the celebration of this landmark occasion.

In tradition, brass and nickel are associated with the 21^st anniversary; I prefer nickel over brass. I might call this series the Nickel Blogs, but better ideas might come. The countdown has begun, and I’m excited.

Can this happen again?

The last time around I was honoured with 35 contributions, each published daily over 5 weeks. Looking back, some contributors have even dropped off Twitter. It might rekindle old friendships and acquaintances too. Some blogs still get readers today, and I might also get newly interested people.

Please contact me if you want to write a blog for my Nickel Blogs. Thank you for your readership, patronage, interest, and custom.

Decade Blogs - Roundup V - All the 35 Blogs and Thanks - December 2013/January 2014

Trying to forget Remo Secondary School at 75

Skipping around schools

Much as I would have liked to remember, it is also forgettable, and that is why I find myself writing about it two days after the event. I attended three primary schools in Kaduna and Jos, in the north of Nigeria in the early 1970s.

The first primary school, the Army Children’s School in Kaduna I barely remember apart from the fact that the headmistress was Indian, and she would walk through assembly in the morning checking our nails then striking our knuckles with the edge of a ruler if they hadn’t been cut. What a child can do about their nails when it is a parent’s responsibility, I don’t know, but that is how we all learnt to bite our nails.

The uneventful year was soon eclipsed by our move to Jos where I attended the Corona School, Shamrock House, Bukuru, and I do have many memories of my being there having jumped a class straight to class 3 through to class 5. We returned to Kaduna for my last year in primary school at the Sacred Heart Primary School where I was away for 4 months in early 1976 attending common entrance examinations for secondary school admission in the south-west of Nigeria.

Never forget the injustice

Remo Secondary School (RSS), Sagamu won my pupillage in September 1976, in it’s 30^th founder’s year. My 5 years in this school, though eventful and interesting remains somewhat forgettable, for I maintain the minimal ties with the place and the institution apart from memories tragic, sad, and unsettling besides the fact that my set in the last year of the Class of 1981 were unjustly punished collectively for what a few miscreants did because the Parents Teachers Association was too lazy to conduct a proper investigation of the issue.

Beyond that, life in the school whilst having thrills left me with hardly any enduring friendships, I have met a few of my class and school mates, even have social media connections with them, but I have shunned all old student association meetings or involvements, this is a part of my history that will be recorded but not necessarily cherished to any extent.

For the little matter

Yet, because dates hold some sort of significance to me, the 4^th of February 2021 was the 75^th Founders’ Anniversary of RSS as the 1^st co-educational secondary school in West Africa, or so it is reputed. We had the school motto of 'For God and Fatherland', the former stands strong, the latter is constantly under review.

That I have visited the grounds a few times in my dreams as it then means for all my misgivings it did have a significant impact on me, I had the nickname of Pastor for most of my time there. Anyway, I am just journaling a piece of my past, there are more stories to tell, in the 40^th year of my exiting that place.

Congratulations on 17 years of blogging from Brian

Congratulations!

On this day we join you in celebrating 17 years of writing blogs. From the first moment I was introduced to http://www.akinblog.nl/ I have enjoyed reading every word. The views you share on the various topics in your blogs are always thought-provoking, insightful, and inspiring.

I have been amazed at how you seemingly get to write on so many issues and are able to get this done with such effortless ease. Many of the blogs that you have published are well researched and informative.

I admire your skill with words and it only makes me more believe that you are certainly a logophile. For someone like me, writing even a short text is always an enormous challenge but somehow you have successfully ignited a passion for the art of writing.

It is always a pleasure reading your blog as it leaves one greedy for more. From this point on we continue to wait and look forward to the publication of your book of which I am sure will be a best seller.

Once again, Congratulations on 17 years of blogging. May you continue to inspire us all with your good work, we all look forward to many more interesting reads coming from your desk. 

After 17 years blogging is as easy as it is hard

Kinds of stage fright

Give me a microphone and no matter how well planned out my speech is, whether written and prepared over many agonising editions of content, context, meaning, intent, concision whilst pertinent and relevant or unscripted, my voice begins to quaver, I have a kind of stage fright, I am not naturally a public speaker.

This blog and the day was going to be dedicated to another to celebrate 17 years of blogging, it is important to me because apart from my career this is a personal venture I have continued under my own steam, following my own rules and expressing my own views, from the silly to the serious.

We can all blog

Maybe through practice or sheer force of will and it is probably the latter, I will say to anyone that blogging is easy. We then to overthink and get overwrought which then overwhelms us that we lose that flow, the ability to express ourselves, the simplicity it entails becomes a complexity insurmountable, just like when my trembling voice is amplified to me hearing by a microphone. I am a better conversationalist than witnessing me in that setting will suggest.

Yet, I believe everyone has stories to tell and there is no one better to tell your story than yourself, that is why I encourage blogging for it is your perspective, how you are affected, what is your experience and your full control of the narrative – it is amazing how an authentic relation of ideas, events, or experiences can resonate with others in ways the writer might never have anticipated. It is always to the cause of our shared humanity.

As we grow old

Last year, I asked Brian, my boyfriend then and fiancé now to help write a commemorative blog for completing 16 years of blogging, I could not have had a better person to give that platform. We are getting married and I do hope to have more of his contributions to my blogs, he might well become the custodian of this compendium of 3,333 blogs.

He also started blogging in March of this year, he writes quite beautifully, we just have a fright of the audience, him of writing and I of my voice, I think we will find a way to fix it for each other and get better it.

Blog - Brian's Point of View

I hope to celebrate many more years of blogging and write celebratory blogs on the 8^th of the December, I have been blessed and I am thankful for readers, contributors, skimmers, browsers, commenters, and supporters who have visited my blog over the years, your patronage is both kind and encouraging. To another milestone in blogging.

Celebrating 16 Years - Brian Jenkins' commemorative blog

Introduction

Two weeks ago, in one of our conversations, I told my dearest Brian that the 16^th anniversary of my blog is coming up and I would like him to write something for me to publish on my blog to celebrate the day.

Reticent and shy, sometimes unsure of his articulacy, he hesitated but in passing kept to mind the anniversary and self-deprecatingly suggested he couldn’t do much worth publishing.

However, well ahead of schedule, I received an email written to celebrate the day, in which he expressly said was not for publication, but as you read his piece, you will notice it was written in the context of something to be published. His honest flowing prose with innocent flair shines through.

I had to go back to Brian to ask if I could publish this as it was just too good to be kept between us. On the advice of another friend, she suggested it be given the pride of place as the sole blog of commemoration.

It does me the great pleasure to have my partner, my boyfriend, and my love to do the honour of this anniversary blog below. Thank you, Brian, love you so dearly.

Making A Connection

Every day we meet different people in different situations and places, but there are some people we meet who are just exceptional and make a deep impression on our lives. It has been said before that when we meet someone for the first time it is only within a few seconds that we would have already decided on whether we will like that person or not.

Meeting Akin for the first time is a story I could describe in so many delightful ways, it was like something scripted for a movie scene, but that is a story for another day.

I couldn’t believe this man was talking with me. I was so fascinated by all he had to say, instantly I was captivated. All the noise and distractions in the background of that night couldn’t distract my focus and attention on him but as the night came to its end and we exchanged contact details and I remember thinking at that moment we would just become emailing friends and eventually forget each other.

We made plans to meet up for lunch the following day, being the gentleman that he is he honoured his word, we met for lunch but my departure back to Zimbabwe was scheduled for later that evening, I couldn’t get it out my head that I might never get to see this man again.

Spending that afternoon together I clearly remember just listening to him speak to me, it felt so spellbinding, I had never met a real person like this who can motivate, inspire and encourage another soul like this man before my eyes, a man who can make you realise things from a different perspective is an exceptional man. When the hours grew into days and we had gone our separate ways, still, it became undeniably clear that our connection had to be of pure divine intervention.

Discovering the Person

We kept constant communication via various channels, video calling became a new thing for me. Talking for hours on end and in talking with Akin, for those who know him, will know that Akin is a man of great depth, one of the very few good ones remaining, and I am blessed to know him.

With a great interest in getting to know more about Akin’s life story by just listening to him speak or by simply reading all about him through his blogs. It does not take long to appreciate that his story is the stuff bestsellers are made of, surviving cancer - the challenges and the triumphs, his views about life, in general, are so very insightful, which only leaves one even more inspired to want to become a better person.

It may only be a short time that I have come to know Akin, discovering his blogs, I look forward to reading what is on his mind his topics are always interesting and he presents it with such panache, one can only become habituated.

Over the past sixteen years, Akin had documented his life’s journey and experiences with great eloquence, and it is admirable, to say the least. I am positively sure even far before this electronic recording Akin has much more recorded resources out there that can be found that will be of even more great interest to share of his life, his thoughts, and experiences.

The more I read Akin’s blogs, the more I get to realise the man that he is, smart, caring, selfless, intelligent and knowing just how to use the wisdom he has received, also he has a great ability to impart that wisdom to others around him and that is purely astounding.

The strength of a man is in his heart, and his courage is gained by his confidence.

Discovering Akin’s blogs ignited a fresh renewal on my perspectives. I can only wish for you Akin, much more blessings and success as you continue to impart to those around you and to those who come to know you, the wisdom and knowledge you have and continue to inspire in us and give a positive outlook of life events and everything surrounding us.

I for one, I have truly been blessed, inspired, motivated and encouraged by you, and wish those who know you, and those who will come to know you get to learn much more from the experiences you share. You have a gift and it is worth sharing.

May you continue to receive more blessings, more wisdom and knowledge and may you never tire to share and enlighten those around you. I look forward to one day reading the book that you will one day publish.

It is my crystal (15th) anniversary of blogging

A new introduction

When my first blog was published on the 8^th of December 2003, I was in a hotel in Berlin when I had the idea to begin writing and as a matter of coincidence, I will be travelling to Germany again.

Reading through my first blog, I reflect on what has happened over the last 15 years, what has remained the same and what has changed. I am still English of Nigerian parentage, that sense of identity has not changed, rather become more ingrained, but I have returned to live in the United Kingdom which is fermenting under the ructions of the train wreck of Brexit.

Blog - A cliché too many - Introduction!

It is very likely my dad would be reading this, he is on Facebook, but I have not made a specific provision for my mum to join social media, she is probably preoccupied with other activities. The Internet has changed considerably in the last 15 years, there is no telling who else might get to read my blogs.

On the job

In October, I celebrated 30 years of an Information Technology career, I am still trying to make Microsoft products do what customers hope and expect they can do. Along the way, I am asked impossible questions, pressed to provide answers and expected to perform miracles.

Blog - On celebrating a 30-year career in IT

Nothing has changed in finding that the crazy and the outrageous idea needs to be kept at bay through forceful challenge and dispute. Solutions still require a good deal of thinking and I am no less excited by what can be done with the tools we have to work with.

The unconcerned purist

“Language is a tool of total expression.” That is a quote from my first blog, I still find myself a bit of a purist railing against malapropisms, neologisms, Americanisms and much else. I am probably not as pernickety and pedantic, there are times, I can’t really be bothered to react. I observe and move on.

I used to read the Daily Telegraph, it has lost many of its good writers, it is badly managed, and it has become a shrill village rag for Brexit, I cannot abide it, even if it were the last newspaper to hand. I have replaced the Economist with The Week and as I seemed to gather volumes of The National Geographic without time to read much of it, I stopped the subscription.

The crazy politics

When looking at politics, I must say it is the stump of the Liberal Democrats that appears to represent my views. The Conservatives are in a state of self-immolation over Europe as if that is news, the Labour Party has been hijacked by a leftist fringe of peddlers of unrealisable Utopia, it is depressing to watch the mess our politics have become.

It is about mantras rather than conviction, Brexit has sucked the oxygen out of any progressive activity in the UK for 30 months, it is as unrelenting as it is suffocating, we are led by crazies with an ideological bent devoid of any sense.

In the meanwhile

Now, back to my blog, I still love travel, it relaxes and refreshes me.

In 15 years, I have had an amazing life full of experiences of academic achievement, different jobs, surviving cancer, making friends, long before Twitter and Facebook became the rave.

I am thankful and full of gratitude for the years and everyone who has found something on my blog, you are welcome, and you affirm the purpose that inspired the 2,897 blogs that have graced this place.

Maybe, I would write more, I don’t know, but we must celebrate today. To follow the thinking of wedding anniversaries, this would be my crystal anniversary of blogging.

14 years, a blogger

In 2017, I have not been as prolific a blogger as I had hoped to be, and it is not for the lack of stories or opinions to write about.

The year has been eventful as I was caught up in the maelstrom of circumstances sometimes beyond my control and definitely beyond what I was ready to endure that I took some rather decisive steps about where my career was headed.

I suffered for that principled stance, but I would not have a story uniquely mine if I have not throughout my life launched myself from the platform of comfortable certainty in the uncharted space of uncertainty about many things including whether I had enough to see through the day, talk less of the next.

Yet, this is a milestone I must celebrate, the 14^th year of my blog and this would be my 2,846^th blog, I would not beat myself up for not having written more than this, I am just glad and full of gratitude for the times that have filled me with new purpose. When I started this blog in a hotel in Berlin, I would have never thought it would still be active, this long after.

I constantly think of living and of dying, each having some sort of purpose with renewal being the recurring theme like the need to breathe to stay alive. I look forward to celebrating more years of writing and hopefully doing more with what I believe is the gift of expression.

I hope I can invite you, the readers of my blog to contribute blogs towards the 15^th anniversary. Thank you for being there and being near.

6 Hurrahs to Blogging

On the 6th anniversary of my blogging hosted at Blog-City, I have decided to simultaneously post my blogs there and here. However, the blogs would appear here a bit later than when they are originally published.

There would be a link from this blog to the original location too. Thanks for visiting and reading my blog.

To blog one must

On the 8th of December 2003, I believe I was in a hotel room in Berlin watching a news story on this seemingly passing fad called blogging or web logging as it was originally known. I thought for a moment, this sounds like an opportunity to just put my everyday thoughts on “paper”, there is lots I would like to talk about but without the company or companionship necessary to share these thoughts with your mind is in constant overdrive.

I had done some experimental writing before, some friends had before encouraged me to try technical writing and at one time I sent out a religious newsletter that related to very personal matters to a closed group of friends.

That day saw the first blog of now almost 1,300 blogs now.

Where to start and how

Blogging appeared to be a good outlet from where I was; after surveying all the different blogs online, I decided on a young Scottish company with the catching community feel of Blog-City.

Somehow, I felt the service can be better tailored in a smaller outfit than the megaliths that were reviewed on that programme.

Beyond that, Blog-City offered the easiest registration and management functionality I could find then – the landscape has changed.

Within a month, I had published over 20 blogs on all sorts of topics with many of the blogs exhibiting a rather complex writing style and recording great reading scale difficulty that I have had to work on without necessarily compromising the essence of my voice.

I also decided to keep the faith with Blog-City and took up a subscription with a 5 year duration, it was necessary to allow my blog a professional and uncluttered look with the adverts, pop-ups and other things I did not publish but were inferring by the service provider’s initiative.

Fun and more blogs please

I did not know for how long I would keep blogging up for, but it was fun to maintain but I think it was not until early 2006 that I really got into it with consistency and a broader range of topics which cover Nigeria, human rights and the bizarre.

I have created in the right gutter a section called My Themes which links to related blogs I have written with that particular theme.

Nowadays, I try to encourage other friends who have stories to tell to start blogging, they do not have to write a treatise, probably just two paragraph about the simple blogging concept of yourself, your views, your environment, how things affect you and maybe what that could mean in general.

You cannot tell your story in another man’s voice; it is why I do not read pretend autobiographies of the successful non-lettered cadre who have their pulp non-fiction ghost-written by some hungry arts major.

You have a voice, give it volume and let it be heard, I had to improve my writing from difficult to easier, you can improve your writing too from what it is now to better, it takes practice and review, apparently, only a blog can give you that kind of training.

Thanks

Finally, this is a note of gratitude to all who have read my blog in the last 6 years, more so to those who have left comments and ever more so deeply to those who regularly read my blog for all sorts of reasons.

And really, without Blog-City, where would I have had a soap-box to bellow from, now and again. Though it has changed from its humble beginnings, it still behoves me to be thankful for their consistently prompt, professional and friendly service.

Here’s to another 6 years of blogging.

Remo Secondary School (RSS) at 60

Early through school

Time passes as the 4th of February marks the 60th anniversary of Remo Secondary School in Sagamu, Ogun State, Nigeria.

I had the interesting advantage of doing a lot of things early, such that I was a year below the class average age in primary school and almost 2 years below that average in Secondary School.

My immediate sister even finished secondary school at an earlier age; she was only under 15, whilst I finish in 1981 at just 15 and a half.

We were up North in Kaduna when my parents agonised about where I should have my secondary education.

There were lots of options in the North and a very close friend of my mother really wanted me to school nearby, but there was a feeling that I needed to learn more of our traditional Yoruba background and hence, the South West offered the best opportunity.

More so, I was not that fluent in Yoruba, and with the entire commendable grasp I now have in Yoruba, I find that I speak Yoruba to almost everyone except my parents with whom I mainly converse in English.

Selection selects the worthy

Sometimes I wonder about the debate about admission selection that dominates the political debate in the UK when it comes to education.

For six months, I was in home school in Lagos with a relative who ensured I had what was necessary to do well. In one instance, as we were on our way to one of those entrance examinations we had an accident as our old banger ran into a rather expensive car.

That gave my guardian the impetus to acquire a new car which with the help of my father happened to be a Peugeot model 504 that was the car of the middle classes in the mid 1970s.

I attended a number of entrance examinations and in the end had a number of choices, but realised that whilst we did Arithmetic in the North, they did Mathematics in the South; the concept of negative numbers was alien to me, but I survived with a few lessons from an aunt.

Spooked in decisions

Odogbolu Grammer School was the nearest to my ancestral village Ijesha-Ijebu, but declined the offer when I noticed that the school literally shared its grounds with a graveyard.

I have seen a few ghosts; the experience was terrifying though the phenomenon sometimes begs for lucidity in explanation.

Mayflower School in Ikenne was considered the cream of the crop, but I was not successful in achieving the grade, so the next choice was Remo Secondary School.

As it happens it was the very first co-educational school in Nigeria, previous attempts at that model had foundered that no one expected it to work.

However, on the fourth day of February 1946, it opened its doors to new students, and I was in the class of 1976.

Admissions selection ensured we had a mixed bunch of students from all works of life and experiences, which was both wholesome and healthy.

Privilege of a good start

I was indeed a child of privilege, many who travelled from the North did so by train, which could be a very unhealthy exercise and probably unsafe for young ones too.

I flew in, was chauffeured around and kept well supplied with provision and necessities. I definitely did not lack for anything; my parents did almost too well in ensuring comfort in a wild place.

Certain events of terrifying nights which had me reading Psalm 23 aloud for hours on end lead to my being called Holy Ghost by some but more popularly Pastor.

One had to deal with the shame of bed-wetting on the one hand and just the desperation to carry on and out live that foible.

A hard life out there

The first two friends I made were just I was, born abroad with quite a bit of the tenderness that indicated we were not used to the hardships of boarding school, it probably made us ready targets for bullying, but we did have our wits about us.

You have to be wily and smart to survive in a setting where abuse could be meted out with importunity and some seniors did get their kicks out of that.

Part of the orientation included the selection into school houses; I was in Adedoyin house which came last for my  first three yearly inter-house games, the other houses were Falode, Mellor and Igimisoje all of which were names of founders or pioneers of the school.

Reverend Mellor who was a Methodist minister died in his eighties just at the end of 1976.

An academy for life

I did well in most subjects except Yoruba which was a compulsory subject until after the third year.

In the fourth year, my scores in the sciences were poor such that I had to do arty subjects like history and literature, but after the first term, it just was not my vocation and immediately, I switched to the full sciences and did quite well there.

Between the fourth and final year, we had summer school which was to help us prepare towards the West African Examinations Certificate, and in one of the most unfortunate cases of co-educational co-existences, some of my colleagues went on the rampage and attacked the girl’s hostel which left quite a few with injuries and material damage.

Judgement was swift, pervasive and indiscriminate; the summer school closed, we were sent home and not allowed to board in the fifth year.

A last year of lasting injustice

The fifth year is the most crucial year in any secondary school student’s life, the experience definitely marked everyone, especially those of us who had nothing to do with that fracas.

The board of governors then in their “all-knowing” and parochial manner did not even seek evidence from anyone, but it was also evident that the vice-principal then knew that many of us were not involved and would not get justice.

I barely did as well as I was able in my finals, however, it was enough to move on, I somehow still hold it against the school with regards to the way we were treated.

My last year was also quite interesting because then, the selection process had been abolished for just moving all the pupils from local primary schools to neighbourhood secondary schools.

Only once did I hear any of those new intakes complete a sentence in English flawlessly, it made me weep.

Schoolboys and pranks

I was quite adventurous, we went swimming in a quite notorious river at which we saw a medicine woman walk on water that much we observed as we could have broken the 100m dash record – heels touching heads – back to school, we could hardly tell the tale.

The worst times were the “mass attack” events which really meant the cutting of grass around the school which was just etched out of a forest, I never completed my allocation, sometimes, I got a good friend to help out, if he was not being feted by the girls.

We read so much pulp written by James Hadley Chase even made statements out of the book titles such as “You’re safer dead” and “The dead stay dumb”.

This in fact got other guys into trouble when they were suspected of being members of the Bucknor and Bucknor Chambers of Inquiry, I being Philip and my co-conspirator being Larry.

Well, we made our mark, in one instance; I posted a letter to the authorities about activities that involved us being forced to contribute money for voodoo amulets which would help us win the inter-school football competition.

Unfortunately, we were always second-best to Mayflower School, no matter how hard we tried.

Looking to celebrate at 70

As memories are recalled about those days, it is a shame that I did not make enduring friends of the boys I met at school; I suppose my strict upbringing forced my focus to educational pursuits to the exclusion of other adolescent pleasures.

As the school does wax older and more mature, I hope to be able to visit for the 70th anniversary, as the injustice meted out 26 years ago mingles with the joy of seeing all those whose lives were moulded as they passed through the school and the school passed through them.

RSS – Happy Birthday!!!