On your visit to Akinblog Hall

A journal of intent

There are very few people who are regular visitors to my blog and so readers of what I have been writing for 17 years. It is, however, important to state or maybe restate the purpose of my blog. It is a journal, not necessarily in the traditional sense of a leather-bound or a spiral-bound book with illegible handwriting.

I would not even pride myself into thinking some of what I write is even intelligible, I have simply put a somewhat personal diary in a public space. It is now the best record until a book is written of many aspects of my life, recollections, memories, expectations, plans, ideas, opinions, and much else. I hope it is kept alive by my survivors in some way or form.

Welcome to Akinblog Hall

One could even suggest a good deal is extemporaneous and developed in the process of writing. When I first thought of writing this blog, I imagined a palatial estate with expansive grounds, a large gate that opens unto a meandering drive that feasts the eyes with nature and the manmade, before you arrive at a big house or a small hut, as you are either overwhelmed or underwhelmed at what is before you.

The house is built to my specifications and taste, decorated for my comfort and situated to provide the best views of my entire. Visitors are attended to with the best hospitality can offer, a white-glove service, if you may. The hope is that guests have a memorable experience.

If occasion warrants it there will be a time to capture a visit in posterity, a picture in a frame to hang in the great hall and one you can take away as a keepsake. My house is also my home, in it I have the freedom to be myself without hindrance or prohibition.

Always guests, never prisoners

What I am saying is this, my blog will cover so many things including conversations I have had with people along with the crazy thoughts that are formed in the analysis of people, events, places, or things. Obviously, I will disguise personalities and sometimes find the form of words to address very personal issues, so they cannot be attributed to anyone in particular, when it can apply to everyone in general.

I apologise if you think anything I might have written is inadvertently about you, but if blogging is about how you see things and how you are affected by those things, it should be no surprise that this blog stays true to that concept. Returning to the idea of my blog as an estate, I receive guests and take no prisoners. Read it liberally, with an open mind, the way the words make sense to you might not be as intended, it is all without prejudice. Surely, I should not have to write an expository blog too.

Opinion: Resurrect your dead blogs

Dead blogs as Internet zombies

Sometimes I go checking on blogs I once read fervently and notice there has not been a newly written blog for years. It makes me wonder about when blogging seemed to be a trend and once the novelty wore off the interest in blogging died.

More so, I visit corporate and establishment websites with links to blogs that were enthusiastically written for a while and have had no recently new content. Now, apart from my personal blog that I have consistently contributed to for 15 years, I do have a professional blog that has had no new content for almost 5 years.

We all have stories to tell

The question then becomes, have we all run out of stories to write about? On a personal level, there is always an idea, an event, a circumstance or a personality engaging enough to write about along with having a perspective of things that can become a blog.

My view has always been, we are story people, we all have stories that can only be best told in our own voice, written in our own style and related uniquely from our own perspective. A blog is who you are, what you see, how you feel and the way you are affected or unaffected by that or other situations.

Blogging is easy, honestly

That means, there can be no reason not to have a blog in the first place and then keep it running as much as you could. There was a time when people religiously kept diaries and journals, captains of ships kept logs. The issue of documentation and record keeping is both for reference and posterity, removing dispute from ascertaining the facts as the reckoner has archived the situation.

Not that a blog is as formal as that. For where some have seen blogging as a means to a livelihood, mine is written out of interest, I have opinions and I write them down in a blog, I address social issues and those sometimes find resonance with other people, they begin and interaction that leads to a conversation.

Resurrect yourself in a blog

A blog does not have to be a serious endeavour of academic rigour, do your proofreading, do not dispense with the rules of grammar for the chosen language of communication and follow the common sense of a good seamstress making a skirt; make it short enough to keep the interest and long enough to cover the detail. I hope that analogy is relatable without appearing sexist.

As you read this, why did you stop blogging if you were once a blogger? The excuse that you haven’t the time for it would come across as lame; you can knock out a blog in less than 15 minutes and it does not have to be a treatise. Then the other question is, why are not blogging? That is, if you have never had a blog before, you cannot convincingly say you have no ideas, no opinions or no perspective of the things that surround your life.

There are too many blogging tombstones on the Internet on which we have written; Here lies the exhausted ideas of a person who once regaled us with stories that many once came here to read. Alas! You can resurrect your blog by posting one today.

Almost in vain for a vein

Making it to the hospital

I made it to hospital with just 5 minutes to spare, I had checked the public transport route guide to determine how best to get to the hospital in the East of Amsterdam from Saint Barbara Cemetery in the West – interestingly my ideas were quite different from their suggestions which appeared to be better.

As I entered the chemotherapy ward the nurses wondered why I was dressed up to the nines with bowler hat and all. I told them I had just returned from a friend’s funeral, they commiserated and I volunteered that they might even know Dick.

One of the nurses who I did not think I had met before had in fact attended me when I had my very first chemotherapy in my hospital bed on the 5th of October 2009, she said I look so greatly improved and well compared to then – well, you can say that again nurse – I am thankful and grateful to God, my doctors, the nurses, my friends and well-wishers to the way things are today.

More about Dick

They did and they were quite shocked at his death, the main consultant also was shocked and surprised, none could clearly say that his death was impending anyway and one nurse said they still had the newspaper article on Dick which was published on the day he defended his thesis.

For all his affable and amazing life we should not forget that Dick was an intellectual, an academic and was at one time the Chief Librarian of the Netherlands Institute of War Documentation, he was well published and respected in that field, the nurses wondered if I was a historian, well I am not – Dick met with people from all walks of life.

Cold and hiding veins

I settled in one of the reclining seat and made ready to get my chemotherapy infusion but they could not get a vein however hard they tried, in my left hand I had the first prick and the access was not good enough so it had to be taken out.

The nurse suggested I wash my hands in warm water for a while to help the veins show up, I knew it was dreadfully cold outside but I did not know it was 6 under zero – that is cold, I sometime wear another pair leather gloves over my normal gloves.

The nurse made another attempt on my left hand and still was unable to get a useful vein, the cold makes veins contract and even though my hands had been warmed up there the vein appeared but could not take the full length of the needle so she removed it and asked the other nurse to try it out.

Another hand another try

A few minutes later, I offered my right hand, one good vein was moving around and there was a lot of tapping before a vein near the thumb phalanges was found, after insertion, she was not sure it was right, I then injected with saline solution to check if it was through, it appeared to work.

She said the glucose solution that goes in with the chemotherapy treatment would have been painful if she tried to determine whether she was through to a vein. However, she was only fully satisfied after she connected the glucose solution and lowered the bad to see if gravity would make some blood flow out.

The chemotherapy Caelyx solution was then connected and set for an hour of infusion but with that feeling of being unsure she said I should try not to move my hand just in case the flow was disturbed – I reclined my seat and fell asleep through the period of the infusion.

When the infusion kit was removed, I asked if I could still submit blood for tests in readiness for the meeting with my consultant in 9 days, I could not do those tests on Friday because they were a special set of tests. I was informed the blood could have been taken through the infusion system, well, now I know.

Four pricks in a day

I left the chemotherapy ward for the blood clinic where I warned that precautions be taken because I had just receive chemotherapy, the bloods were taken in 4 vials and that was it. A whole 4 needle pricks in one afternoon, sometimes I feel I am going to be irrationally truculent a scared of the needles and then try to think nicely about it to help things happen – I surprise myself.

I tried to see the priest but he was out today and I made my way home.

That was the end of my 7th chemotherapy session, I now only have one left. Thank God.

To Miep Gies protector of Anne Frank diaries

Anne Frank tours

I first visited an Anne Frank [1] exhibition in a church in Islington in North London some 16 years ago, the pictures and detail of the suffering of the Jews in the Second World War were harrowing but there were as personal story too, the diary of a teenage girl who was hardly in her teens about their daily life the courage of the very few who strove to keep her and her family from the grip of Nazi-occupied Netherlands.

Two days ago, the last of the Dutch citizens to aid and shelter them from harm died at the age of 100, her name was Miep Gies [2].

On my second visit to Amsterdam, in 1996, the Anne Frank Museum [3] was a must see for us and on that dull afternoon we trundled to the almost non-descript house and walked around the house, the enclave and noted the observations of Anne Frank on panels and boards all around the house, it really had that very old feel to it.

A tourist’s itinerary

My third visit was a chaperone to the parents of my friend with whom I visited 10 years before, the whole setup had changed, adjoining buildings had been acquired and the place now looked like a very commercial tourist attraction, probably one of the most visited in the Netherlands and for all intents and purposes, it is worth a visit.

Without going into much detail, Miep Gies, her husband and 3 other Dutch citizens helped conceal Anne Frank, her family and a number of friends, all of whom were Jews in a annex of the office they worked in.

It was an act of exceptional courage in a time of great suspicion and deception, it was difficult to know who to trust, the risk they took could have cost them their freedom as well as their lives.

Unfortunately, Anne Frank and her concealed colleagues were discovered and transferred to Nazi concentration camps where she died at the age of 15.

The preservation of memories and memorials

Miep Gies found the diary Anne Frank kept during the times of concealment and when Otto Frank, Anne Frank’s father returned to the Netherlands, that diary was published and has made Anne Frank probably one of the most talked about victims of the Holocaust.

Coincidentally, the concentration camp site at Auschwitz in Poland is falling into disrepair [4] and there are appeals for aid to keep the infrastructure from falling apart and hence preserve an essential piece of memory about man’s inhumanity to man.

The narratives are very clear, the need for exceptional courage and bravery in preserving our humanity, the utility of documenting our daily lives for posterity and fact that we cannot afford for monuments of remembrance to waste away just because they look like relics of times long gone.

All these are signposts of history from which hopefully we can learn lessons to live better lives for ourselves, our communities and humanity at large. Rest in peace, Miep Gies and thank you for showing us your deep humanity and preserving the memories of times we must never forget.

Sources

[1] Anne Frank - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Miep Gies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Anne Frank Museum Amsterdam - the official Anne Frank House website

[4] Auschwitz asks Britain for help to preserve decaying death camp - Times Online