Men's things XXX: Let's talk Prostate Cancer

Making Those Nature Calls

As I was about to leave the office yesterday evening, I followed that familiar credo: "Go before you go." It's one of those habits people of a certain age need to entertain before leaving the safety of indoors for the outdoors.

That is, visit the toilets. Return to that childhood scenario where your parents or guardians asked if you needed to use the toilet before commencing a journey. In fact, they would have probably made you go regardless of how you felt, to forestall a mishap at an unfortunate time.

A Poster to the Prostate

Anyway, I was gladdened to find on the inside of the cubicle doors in the Gents the prostate cancer campaign poster I had recommended, advising men to be aware and to check up on their prostate health.

In my view, it might make for a friendly conversation starter after we have used the facilities and are doing the essential ablutions following these intimate activities. I also hope to find other opportunities to share my experience with prostate cancer: the criticality for us all to know what the symptoms are and how catching issues early saves lives.

A Call to Healthy Brotherhood

Fundamentally, we need forums and spaces not only to broach matters of men's health, but to discuss men's things openly and without embarrassment, to give each and every one of us a fighting chance, and to support each other through challenging times. This matter calls for a brotherhood in arms. I am all for it.

Check your Prostate Cancer risk in 30 seconds.

References

Blog - Men's things XXIX: The Cubicle Next Door

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - A year from starting radiotherapy

Blog - A prostate cancer diagnosis, one year on

Blog - Men's things - Prostate Cancer blogs

Know your symptoms.

1 in 8 men will get prostate cancer.

Know the symptoms.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

In a brotherhood we stand at !Audacious Church

In brotherhood we stand

Last weekend, I attended a men’s conference at !Audacious Church which goes by the title Brotherhood.

The theme of the conference was “Faith for …” and one can only say that the messages were enlightening, inspiring and exhilarating.

Yet again, from another perspective as I have seen in other men’s conferences in Pentecostal circles before, these gatherings are overtly muscular, an orgy of heterosexual celebration seeking an inlet to the vulnerability of full-grown men.

The view from the book

We were not disappointed and really I cannot take issue with situations that I willingly and wilfully let myself in for.

This conference taking place just as we celebrated the first gay marriage in the UK elicited comment from the Pastor about what the bible says and I guess we’ve heard it all before and again.

My concern stems from the fact that I do know what the bible says, we all, if religious, know most of what our religious tomes say and how sometimes we tend to hang on every word of the letter and leave out the humanity needing ministry.

Beyond the book to people

Now, this is not to attack anyone, but I have many times come to understand that what the bible says might mean a lot to me yet very little to others. The others whose impressions of religion have come from the experiences they have suffered from being put down as unworthy, unclean, common, hell-bound, hopeless, dirty and much else.

Their lives have been made miserable by people who portend to have some spirituality with the arrogance of ‘knowing’ that they are closer to God than others.

In that vein, it is difficult to see how to persuade and proselytise without bludgeoning the person into helpless submission, it is unhealthy.

My Good Samaritan view

I hope that when I encounter the broader diversity of our humanity, I am a light than a flame, that I have an embrace of warmth to offer than an accusative finger pointing out where they are wrong, bad, difficult, rotten or inferior.

For some people the spirituality I espouse would only become effective when I meet them where there is a need, an angel of compassion than hopes that the encounter would bring a thankfulness, a cheerfulness, some happiness and a hope. I believe that gets further than “the bible says.”

If the Samaritan who we now know as the Good Samaritan had followed spirituality over humanity as the priest and Levite had done before him as they walked past the man left for dead by the wayside, we would have had no such lesson of how our humanity matters more above spirituality. Neighbourliness transcends norms.

Left a spiritual Humpty Dumpty

Yet, in these conferences, we have ample space for conviction, though in some more vulnerable than others, they would be consumed with guilt and condemnation, broken and helpless, the showing of hands with a prayer supposed to transform the person almost in an instant. But some are left spiritual Humpty Dumptys with no king’s men to put them back together again.

Between denial and acceptance

As you wander between discernment and critique, it is important to know when you have become part of the mass hysteria as the crowd is worked up to a frenzy. It is at that time that so many things Anglican allow for a personal and private spiritual awakening within a public celebratory space.

Pentecostal circles are highly expressive, seeking a public declaration and almost at the same time bringing a sense of satisfaction to the protagonists who deign in acknowledgement, the power of persuasion.

The atmosphere is combative to the point of being aggressive, your response is required else you are almost condemned for being ashamed that it compels you to react – on whether it is right, I cannot say. But if God knows the heart of every man, does a man have to see the hand of every heart?

Choose where I go

I left the conference sat on a fence disputing between who I am and whether I should accept myself or reject myself. Under that kind of mental duress, much harm can be wrought, for a man who is not a husband or father, nor aspiring to be one, a lacking is exposed that only having been happy with yourself before and having learnt to love who you are can help dampen the supposed inadequacies.

At my age, I sometimes wonder if men’s conferences have much to offer me after from a stark realisation that I might well be too radically different from others who bare, seek or manage the responsibilities of husband, father, marriage and strongly conservative leanings.

I am well advised to choose the conferences I attend wisely.

The entity is Nigeria, the identity is Nigerian

Inadvertent Ambassadors

I am of the opinion that anyone who has any association with Nigeria is automatically an ambassador of Nigeria and by unfortunate commission assumes that role fully when they leave the shores of the motherland, fatherland or ‘parentland’ as you deem fit.

This is not to impose the weight of any responsibility on anyone, but if people do identify you as Nigerian, you become the source of information about the country and you are inadvertently the window into their opinion of Nigerians.

I have been in conversations where some people have had bad experiences with Nigerians and someone speaks up saying they have had Nigerian friends, salt of the earth, compassionate, responsible and very trustworthy confidants – we leave impressions everywhere we go.

Nigeria is the entity for identity

I tire of the argument that the entity called Nigeria is not representative of a people who have a common purpose; (reference to a comment on Chxta's blog) that entity has existed since 1914, there are very few people alive who can remember when Lord Lugard put together that jigsaw puzzle.

Nigerian is what we are regardless of localised affiliation; our old national anthem recognised that ‘though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand’. There is a brotherhood of Nigerians, whether you decide to belong and contribute to its development and progress is your choice.

It is time for us to move beyond the tired arguments and debates of old of which we have had not part apart from the reading of history.

Drop those old chains

I tire of the allusion to slavery when problems of Nigeria are discussed, I do not know anyone who was taken as a slave from the localities of my forebears; I had the good fortune of having a great-grand mother into my early 20s and she never did talk of anyone taken into slavery in her time – Slavery had been outlawed since 1834 in the British Empire.

I have been to Badagry to see the chains and shackles of old, I have seen Roots, but I do not intend to try out those chains and make them the symbols of my tomorrow by blaming the problems of today on a past I was never part of.

Becoming relics of the past

Nigeria has a very rich history of empires, kingdoms, conquests and defeats; we can take the lessons of our history and use those as a force to build a people of a strong heritage with a future brighter than the brightest day.

Many of us are free-born Africans but have refused to be what we are, rather we seek refuge in some hamlet mentality fearful of the next village and bound in the terror of superstitious beliefs that everyone out there is the enemy – if we cannot come together in community building we cannot move on to the greater task of nation building.

Colonised in the mind

I also tire about the tales of the effects of colonialism, Nigeria was already independent and a republic before I was born, so why should I aspire to have a colonial mentality when I was born after the country of my heritage was already the master of its own destiny.

When my father built his house, it was not built to the design of some old colonial District Officer quarters, it was built as he wanted it with his own ideas and plans as a Nigerian free to decide how he wanted things to be done, the architects, surveyors, builders and decorators, all Nigerian, were paid for their work, no slaves were employed – there was no colonial brick in that building. I do not intend to build mock-Tudor, Georgian or Jacobean either.

We deceive and delude ourselves if in the fifth decade of our independence we still think our problems are not majorly of our own doing and seek to blame them on others like Mugabe is trying to do about Zimbabwe after 28 years of destroying the good land he inherited.

You cannot choose your co-passenger

A simple analogy is this, when I book a flight, I can choose the seat I want, but I cannot decide who sits beside me. If at the end of the day I have to sit with someone for a 4-hour flight I can be all grumpy and asocial throughout and make my flight utterly miserable.

Alternatively, I can try and engage the person in conservation, something, I am wont to doing because I am something of a chatterbox; a foible, I suppose – the person either responds or doesn't.

If they do, we enrich each other's life, knowledge, experience and probably become friends; I cannot count the number of invitations I have to visit the homes of people in faraway places because of these chance meetings.

Nigeria – Our sovereign Motherland

The entity called Nigeria is the source of the identity of every Nigerian, it is time for us to accept the fact of that entity as it is and start to engage with the unknown passenger (other Nigerian) beside us in the flight (Nigeria) that we are in and work towards a unity of purpose to build Nigeria, the nation of which we are all willing or unwilling ambassadors.

When I see the Motherland of our old national anthem until 1978 and the Fatherland of the new since 1978, I wonder if the old does not capture more clearly the essence of what it is to be Nigerian and the pride we should have in our great country; that critical word seems to be missing in the new.

The new seems to be a slight rewrite of the old and though we have to live with the new, the fact is we still seek a nation where truth and justice reign, where our flag is a symbol of honour and where no man is oppressed.

The old tells us what it is to be Nigerian, the new tells us about the duty we have to make Nigeria great such that the labours of our heroes past shall never be in vain.

Arise, O Compatriots!

Reference

The two Nigerian National Anthems