Strange case of the dead burying the living

Closing the accounts before year-end

I believe it is customary for media organisations to have draft obituaries or prepared documentaries for prominent society figures such that at the demise of such people, only cosmetic changes are required to the drafts and that is out to press.

A case in point was the recent passing of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the long and glowing obituaries were out within the hour of the announcement, the BBC literally had hours after hours of rolling commentary and documentaries about him, it all had to have been pre-planned and produced in readiness for his death.

On the 17^th of June 2021, Kenneth Kaunda, the 1^st President of Zambia died at the age of 97 and soon after the Guardian had published a 2,000+ obituary written by Guy Arnold, a British explorer, travel writer, political writer and specialist in north-south relations, according to his Wikipedia page. [The Guardian: Kenneth Kaunda Obituary]

When the dead speak

I learnt much about Kenneth Kaunda in secondary school because his political autobiography titled Zambia Shall Be Free was one of our required literature texts in my second form. When I travel to South Africa, place names that appear on the navigator maps look quite familiar, Kitwe and Livingstone, seem to have that déjà vu quality and now I realise why.

Anyway, back to the original point of canned obituaries. It is one thing for the living to read of their obituaries to which Mark Twain on reading his own obituary sent a cable from London with the message, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” It is quite necessary to have a good sense of humour at the premise of death. [Dictionary.com: Mark Twain]

However, it becomes a bit disconcerting if certain words ascribed to Jesus Christ in Luke 9:60 begin to fetch true. “Let the dead bury the dead.” For indeed, we have a strange case of the dead writing obituaries of the dead. As it transpires, Guy Arnold who penned the obituary of Kenneth Kaunda, died on the 4^th of January 2020, a good 530 days before the person he eulogised. I would expect the estate and survivors of Guy Arnold will receive payment for this publication.

Just the way it is

It is very likely Guy Arnold had written the obituary many years ago when there was some anticipation of Kenneth Kaunda’s death as he passed the 3-score-and-10 threshold into his 80s and 90s, with a few edits and updates depending on the news.

Guy Arnold himself was no youth, he was just 8 years younger than Kenneth Kaunda when he died at 87. The Guardian might have done some editing prior to publication, but the bulk of the copy had been completed by the dead.

Strange one, but should not be allowed to go unnoticed.

Guardian obituary of Kenneth Kaunda authored by someone who died 530 days before.

Edinburgh of the dead

And so, I strayed,
To places that made me afraid,
A city of many hills,
That surely gave me the chills,
It has so many ghosts,
Beware they might be your hosts.

By Regent's Park, I walked,
In the wariness of the stalked,
To wit, in the rubble, I saw,
A hand outstretched live and raw,
Before fear gripped me so to run,
My senses deigned it belonged to someone.

In this stroll, I wrote and thought,
What a place to be highly wrought,
Stones and memorials mark the places,
Of souls and works of long gone faces,
A city strewn with graves,
Of the dead, we became as slaves.

Nigeria: Let us include the rite of the autopsy in the burying of the dead

Speculation was rife

The apparently sudden death of Prince Abubakar Audu who was more or less on the cusp of a gubernatorial victory has elicited much commentary on social media.

When the news of his death as we were awaiting the announcement of the electoral results first emerged, I was persuaded to overlook the breaking news and curb my curiosity for the frenzy to dissipate enough for the facts and the truth to emerge.

The only truth that has emerged from this tragic tale is that he is deceased and has been interred according to Islamic rites, everything else with regards to manner of death, cause of death and other extenuating factors has been a matter of accusation, supposition, speculation, conjecture, suggestion, rumour, innuendo and fable. This list is hardly exhaustive.

Nothing really was known

I cannot attribute anything, but in all the reports I have read, there has been mention of cardiac arrest, stroke, poisoning, paranormal activity, voodoo and all sorts of silliness. None of this helps the matter at all.

For all the enlightenment we have acquired, we tend to heighten our superstitious predilections at times of birth, at marriages and at death, even if our general lives are hardly lived in any recognised adherence to faith or religion and the tenets the books require us to espouse to be model examples of our belief systems to our common humanity.

Now, I have no medical training, but the most recent pictures of the man depicted an unhealthy pallor, very much like that of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua when he ailed with nephrological complications that led to his demise.

Besides looking overweight and other deleterious conditions that might evolve from that, it is very likely that there is a clear-cut medical condition that resulted in the man’s death.

Bound to ages gone

Yet, as we live in the 21^st Century, our lives and livelihoods are majorly trumped by belief systems, traditions and cultures that have not evolved for many quincentenaries, that we fail to benefit from the knowledge, logic, reason and developments that have brought humanity to the amazing modernity and comforts of the present times.

One such area we fail to deploy at death is medical examination and autopsies, the advances in modern medicine can in most cases determine the cause of death, not only to put beyond doubt the rife speculations that surround a sudden death, but such knowledge in either a minor or major way can also help the living.

Knowledge from deaths

In cases of cancer, it might cause survivors to check if they might be susceptible to the same  type of cancer especially if there is a genetic predisposition to it. It might aid medical science in know what to look for if anyone presents symptoms that might lead to complications. This is a valuable knowledge that goes beyond the individual and the present tragedy to the greater good of humanity.

Part of what has given medicine the tools to treat many ailments has come from the study of the dead and much as it has from observation of the living. It is sad that one only has to leaf through the pages of a Nigerian newspaper to read obituaries of many of died of a brief illness. The brief illness is a catch-all term that covers everything from a fatal asthma attack, through epileptic fits to cancer discovered so late that nothing could be done beyond providing palliative hospice care.

Bringing reason to belief

Whilst there is nothing wrong with being religious, we allow religiosity to becloud both judgement and reason. In the absence of a modicum of reasonableness compounded by grief and loss, we accentuate a fanatical tendency to fatalism, providence and destiny allowing the burning questions to remain unanswered in submission to the primordial where ignorance becomes the cradle of bliss and succour.

Whether, there is a soul or not, once the force that animates and enlivens the body is gone, we have just a body in the process of decay and disintegration. We must respect the memory of the person departed and treat the body of the said departed with dignity, but there is no rule created in anticipation of the modern times that prevents gaining knowledge from an autopsy.

The rite of the autopsy

In times past, there were probably no means of preserving the dead, the Egyptians of old used mummification and embalmment for their pharaohs, other cultures found burial, cremation or some other means of disposing of their dead. Yet, we attach ourselves to age-old customs at our convenience when at other times we desperately avail ourselves of the benefits of medical science.

We need to rethink this clash of options and the time has come to include the autopsy in the burial rites and have civil law demand that where cause of death is inconclusive or death is sudden, internment will not proceed before medical examination, else the body will be exhumed for final determination.

Thought Picnic: The Chronicles of the Dead

Plans for journeys

As I got up this morning, I felt I needed to get out if the weather was fine enough and fine a place to meditate. Over the last few months, I have done serious mileage on my bicycle, the round-trip to church on Sundays is about 26 kilometres, maybe more, but it rarely bothers me, there are days that I have done close to 40 kilometres.

However, today, my ride to Zandvoort would have been 28 kilometres but in my quest to follow signposts for bicycle paths that lead to dead-ends, detours and strange places, I probably did close to 40 kilometres on my way out before I finally reached my destination.

A promise fulfilled

Before I left Amsterdam, I found I would be riding past the Saint Barbara Cemetery, I was last there on the 8^th of February 2010 when I attended the burial service of my dear friend Dick van Galen Last, had an idea of where he was buried but never saw the burial or the burial plot itself because it would have been too emotional for me and I had to get to hospital for what turned out to be my last chemotherapy session.

So, I stopped by to pay my respects and I just could not find the location. I made for the cemetery office to ask about the location of the burial plot and they produced what one might call the register of the dead.

Cemetery management

Nothing was computerised, his name appeared in cursive handwriting in the book, with his age; he died 8 days short of his 58^th birthday and the coordinates of where he was buried was noted.

The clerk who also doubles as a craftsman and many other things around the cemetery then checked the layout of cemetery on a map and after donning on some heavy-duty boots, lead me to the grave site.

As we walked up on of the avenues, he hand-pulled a ground moving digger, probably used to dig graves, just big enough to ride in but also small enough to be manoeuvred by a strong man too.

The first location we got to did not have the grave, I suspect certain graves have prominent headstones and then cards behind the headstone to indicate others sharing the allotment.

At his grave

Eventually, after about a 5-minute search, he found Dick’s grave, a nice marble headstone with his name and the account of dates as each person’s portion of the expanse of eternity gets carved into stone at graveyards – the date of birth and the date of death – the history of great men is not written in cemeteries, rather it is in the memories of those who return and in books far away.

I do not know how long I spent at Dick’s grave but as I muttered my thanks for his being my friend the words of Jesus came to my mouth – I am the resurrection – at which point I knew that death is simply part of the journey of the soul in the unlimited and unfathomable extents of eternity.

Thinking beyond ourselves

Time is an amazing thing, even stars we see in the night sky might well have long disappeared but if they are thousands or millions of light-years away, we will never know if they are still out there however their light travelling to us through the amazing universe signifies there was a source for the light we now see.

So do all those grave stones with the bones beneath the earth, the people laid there once walked the surface of the earth with passions and failings like you and I have.

As I left the cemetery, I thanked the clerk who was busy trimming the hedges, you then realise even the dead need caring for or else the cemetery will become a jungle and the thickets we’ll have to cut through to see our loved ones would have just reflected very badly on the living.

Dead Aid - Review

Aid is not working

A couple of months ago it burst on our screens and there was all this rave about a book – Dead Aid – reviews in newspapers, interviews on chat shows, blogs awash with opinions and Twitter in overdrive.

Dambisa Moyo comes with impressive credentials and experience to boot having worked for the World Bank and been a global economist; she completed her Masters at Harvard and culminated in a PhD in Economics at Oxford.

I suppose that is enough to turn heads when she talks about aid especially when it runs counter to the megaphone diplomacy and sympathy-laden enjoyment-based concert fund raising efforts spearheaded by the apostles of aid to Africa in Sir Bob Geldof and Bono.

Easy reading

I consciously decided after all the publicity and debate I had heard not to offer any comments about this matter until I had read the book and reviewed its contents and measured the opinions proffered against reality, expectation and fantasy.

Dead Aid became part of my holiday reading, it was not a tough book to read and it sits in the genre of economics for dummies, taking basic examples, analogy and allusions to explain difficult subjects, it was just as good a read as the Undercover Economist.

At 154 pages, it probably could be finished in hours; between cocktails, the beach and waking hours along with holiday commitments of loafing around, it was done in just about 5 days.

What has aid done for us?

The book is divided into two parts named The World of Aid and A World without Aid – the first part is quite engaging, indeed, it is a brief history of aid and what it has now turned into – her historical analysis of aid and its failings were succinct.

We can more or less agree that the amount of aid poured into Africa has not necessarily shown any appreciable progress or benefits. There is no doubt too that there is a culture of aid dependency that might be counter-productive to development allowing for lazy policy and government activity.

It was also interesting to note that a vicious circle has evolved between the drug addict (aid dependent countries) and drug pusher (countries that mean well and find it an obligation to offer aid). I was not sure the external catalyst to wean off the addiction or the business model of the pusher is clear cut.

The aid industry is a beast, if not a leviathan, it needs to be fed and watered, the employees and the agendas in the West, the bottomless receptacles of ineffective utility in Africa engaged in a mutually destructive alliance that seems to prevent Africa from coming of age and leads the continent into a downward spiral of poverty, disease and insufficiency.

Implausible solutions?

I was not too sure that I followed the leap from aid dependency to tapping the capital markets through the issuing of bonds by the way of obtaining a sovereign credit rating. Whilst she does say sovereign ratings are different from corporate ratings, she suggests that businesses are limited to the ceiling of their sovereign ratings and offers examples of certain businesses that seem to have ratings higher than that of their countries.

I was afraid that the exposure as a global economist might have beclouded some stark realities in Africa, access to the capital markets requires that some fundamentals as infrastructure are available if not robust and governance through leadership are critical for confidence to be garnered from issuing bonds.

To garner support she suggested road shows which brought to mind Nigeria’s moribund rebranding project – there were examples but I felt they would be difficult to extrapolate without the fundamentals.

The Chinese are here

We all recognise that the Chinese are coming and they are offering deals of engagement than the West have ever afforded Africa. But this is just a new Bwanarism in my view, we still have Chinese managers and many Chinese staff supervising where their money is going in projects, however, I am not sure there is enough high-level African involvement to move from installation to maintenance, when the Chinese leave.

The danger of all these projects falling into disrepair is possible as with other aid sponsored projects that did not engage the communities in the purpose before execution despite the benefits that would initially accrue.

Trade and finance

Trade is growing but we need more equal partners in this enterprise, we also need to be able to appreciate what we have, a country selling off land to be developed for agriculture purposes by foreign lands is absurd, when we should be able to manage and cultivate the land and sell the food instead.

There is more scope for the Grameen micro-finance model, the advent of mobile telephony banking instruments but quantitative reliance on remittances as an anti-aid push is a bit far-fetched though one probably needs the brain of an economist to see the effects in entirety.

The Dead Aid model

The Dead Aid model suggests a secession of aid in maybe 5 years forcing governments to pull up their socks – I almost scoffed, but it might work for countries where the governments really care; care being used as an expression for those who understand the purpose of government as opposed to ones that just want to be in office and in power and nothing else.

To implement Dead Aid policies in the fictional Republic of Dongo that we were told of in the book, Dongo requires technocrats, in a very politicised country, it is difficult to focus on enterprise when it is power that offers privilege and opportunity.

Dr. Moyo herself confessed that she was not sure that opportunities in Africa offered commensurate challenges to her qualifications, but that is just half the story, there are so many of us who have been exposed to Western influences that would almost find it impossible to fit back into our indigenous settings along with the culture and attitudes.

We are of a different generation from our parents too who returned home to build the motherland and have rarely left since then – but Dr. Moyo’s assertions need to be road tested not by the pot-pourri of examples all around the world but by being engaged by African leaders in a concerted view to getting off aid and pursuing real development.

It would preposterous to adopt Dead Aid wholescale without participation that risks the reputation of the proponents that see the truth in the detail.

The need to more modern books

Beyond this, the references and notes in the books were not consistent and whilst URLs to certain documents were so long, as a user of Twitter those URLs should have been accompanied with shortened versions.

It like to read opinions and views but most importantly I like to see where the facts are derived from, and it should not be an extraneous exercise with cataloguing numbers for books and an accompanying website that compliments the views expressed in the book with all the alluded references, the audience does not want to be spoon-fed everything nowadays.

Presumably people with doctorates are accorded a modicum of originality of thought but this topic is too volatile in its assault on the norms of aid to be the main tome but a body of knowledge and opinions has to be created with the proponents coming to the fore – they have their work cut out against the juggernaut of aid.

In the end, to use the readability scales of another magazine which rates books as Read, Skim or Toss, I would give this a Read; you just cannot honestly participate in the debate about aid not working without reading Dead Aid as part of your reference material.

Book Reviewed:

Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa

ISBN: 9781846140068

Enlisting the dead for Iraq

Increasing the pain

No greater pain can be inflicted on those who have lost their loved ones in the Iraqi war having first received condolence letters from Donald Rumsfeld that he could not be bothered to sign before there was an outcry, the troop numbers are now so stretched that they are calling on the dead to reenlist.

For those who believe in life after death, this takes the war to a new dimension; for a Ministry of Defense that has the most sophisticated computer systems not to have a very basic database of the dead to ensure that the wrong kind of communication is not sent to those who have survived the ones that have paid the ultimate price.

I would hope that the Army surge that President Bush is contemplating excludes the figures for those dead, wounded or incapacitated.

As usual, this would be blamed on computers rather than the cretins in charge who have not been meticulous in their duties.

No! Computers cannot take the rap for stupidity – garbage in, garbage out.

Shame!

Iraq is far away from a Gettysburg Address

The address of great import

Four months after a battle in which 7,500 soldiers perished, an afternoon was chosen for the dedication of the soldiers’ cemetery.

The program, elaborate as it was included an oration that last two hours after which the president was to give dedicatory remarks.

In 10 sentences of 272 words, his words were few but its message was loud and clear, if not laden with meaning beyond the reading of the message.

Those remarks are now referred to as the Gettysburg Address and it ended with the following words …

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” – Abraham Lincoln

Knowing the cause

From these closing remarks, Abraham Lincoln drew some specific inferences that matter in terms of history, occasion, politics, governance, freedom, liberty and civic duty.

They matter in that they establish in clarity the context in which our democracies must operate and how those who exercise authority should defer to the magnitude of their responsibility.

First, that we should recognise those that went before us in creating the society in which we now live and engage in fervent promotion of those values they espoused for the future in which we now live.

Second, that the cause of freedom for which life has been lost must never be derogated to goals that deprive us of those hard-earned liberties.

Third, that the things that make us united and the things that underpin our moral tenets offer opportunities of greater freedom.

And lastly, these are the things that give meaning to our democracy.

Not ready for a Gettysburg address

When I review these inferences, it begins to make sense why Iraq after four months of elections a leader has not emerged for the government for the people.

The country is in so much tumult, people are still dying that the “cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion” cannot materialise for adequate reflection.

Whilst we are still counting the dead, one cannot get to the point where “these dead shall not have died in vain”.

The nation of Iraq is an amalgam of disparate tribal and religious entities in conflict and far from agreement, the expected “new birth of freedom” looks patently stillborn.

So, even though the people have spoken, they have not yet been heard such that “that government of the people, by the people, for the people” has not taken root to allow for it to endure.

However, it is the earnest desire of many, especially now, the people of Iraq to see that their dreams and desires for peace, freedom, liberty, justice and good governance does “not perish from the earth”.

Looking for a Gettysburg moment

Whilst Iraq has exceeded in numbers the count of the dead and injured in battle as compared Gettysburg, they are far from a Gettysburg moment.

The closing remarks of the orator (Edward Everett) clearly indicate that Iraq is seriously unfinished business in need of a greater appreciation of what has past, what is now and where we are headed for the future.

“But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that where so ever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country, there will be no brighter page than that which relates the Battles of Gettysburg”

The battles of Iraq for now have no particular end in sight; tectonic plates of opinion and process need to shift for that sight to be acquired.

References

Powerpoints on the Gettysburg Address

The dead are dumb when money talks

Letting the dead bury the dead

Once, a person looking for a purpose in life was offered a career opportunity with prospects that make heroes of the subjects of the Bible, but he felt that he could only take up that prospect after he had buried his father.

The response of the employer was, "Let the dead bury the dead". There is a possibility that this meant the literal but I'll err on the side of the figurative.

The inference being let those who have not prospects continue in their purposeless lives and those who do get on with doing something meaningful.

Blunt as that may seem, the proponent was never known for mincing his words and these ones in particular.

This saying however carries more poignancy when viewed in terms of some recent events that have caught my attention. The last weekend witnessed the occurrence of two major but man-made tragedies.

First the 3 suicide bombings in Bali, Indonesia [1] and then the day after a tourist boat capsized on Lake George in New York State. [2]

Both events bought untold grief to the victims, survivors, relations and citizenry in general; as an act of terrorism in Bali [3] and some freak accident on Lake George.

What however bothered me more was the way the news was delivered without a pause to allow the disaster to sink in before agonising about the loss of tourist revenue and business.

Now, there is no doubt that those locations do really depend to a great extent on people visiting as tourists, keeping those economies and livelihoods going, but there is no use being an anxious tourist.

For those who are not anxious, it is not time for the bravado for business as usual in the midst of the recovering from the event.

It is saddening that subtle aspects of humanity and conditioned response to tragedy are being lost to the quest from the tourist dollar above all else.

Indeed these places do need tourism as I do say again at the risk of inadvertent tautology, but at least, let the wounded be succoured and let the dead be buried before we return to counting the pennies which either fall from heaven or come from afar.

References

[1] Two questioned over Bali bombings

[2] Jemaah Islamiah split but still deadly

[3] Tourists die in US boat disaster

The dead are dumb when money talks

Letting the dead bury the dead

Once, a person looking for a purpose in life was offered a career opportunity with prospects that make heroes of the subjects of the Bible, but he felt that he could only take up that prospect after he had buried his father.

The response of the employer was, "Let the dead bury the dead". There is a possibility that this meant the literal but I'll err on the side of the figurative.

The inference being let those who have not prospects continue in their purposeless lives and those who do get on with doing something meaningful.

Blunt as that may seem, the proponent was never known for mincing his words and these ones in particular.

This saying however carries more poignancy when viewed in terms of some recent events that have caught my attention. The last weekend witnessed the occurrence of two major but man-made tragedies.

First the 3 suicide bombings in Bali, Indonesia [1] and then the day after a tourist boat capsized on Lake George in New York State. [2]

Both events bought untold grief to the victims, survivors, relations and citizenry in general; as an act of terrorism in Bali [3] and some freak accident on Lake George.

What however bothered me more was the way the news was delivered without a pause to allow the disaster to sink in before agonising about the loss of tourist revenue and business.

Now, there is no doubt that those locations do really depend to a great extent on people visiting as tourists, keeping those economies and livelihoods going, but there is no use being an anxious tourist.

For those who are not anxious, it is not time for the bravado for business as usual in the midst of the recovering from the event.

It is saddening that subtle aspects of humanity and conditioned response to tragedy are being lost to the quest from the tourist dollar above all else.

Indeed these places do need tourism as I do say again at the risk of inadvertent tautology, but at least, let the wounded be succoured and let the dead be buried before we return to counting the pennies which either fall from heaven or come from afar.

References

[1] Two questioned over Bali bombings

[2] Jemaah Islamiah split but still deadly

[3] Tourists die in US boat disaster