Interrupted conversations with Django

My doggone life

Every time I have this conversation in distant Bulawayo, I ignore the din of our conversation to listen to the distinctive musical chords of Django.

She sings for the foremost canine symphony orchestra, her repertoire is legendary as to be endearing, you can only want to meet her in effusive fandom for appreciating her talent. I could have met her, but I was constrained and restrained, barred and denied that great pleasure.

Every demand fell on deaf ears, for he would have made our acquaintance was envious of her. As she sang to my ears, he seized her, the dog-napper in his element put her in the van and made to getaway. He never did for I had let out the air in his tyres as he tried to put his foot down.

The seat of his pants

Well, he did put his foot down and his rickety van welded together with bits from a scrapyard, the windshield held in place with duct tape, and everything else rattled like cymbals and drums in cacophonous disintegration. And there he was strapped to his seat far in front of the van.

A crowd gathered around to help; the accident had apparently pulled off his dungarees that he was left in his underwear. Someone dared to ask, what happened, and he sheepishly answered, he had just tried to take Django away from her friends. The patriarch and the boyfriend. The crowd booed him and freed Django, for she was loved by the neighbour and definitely not a nuisance sheepdog.

Django happily jumped about and wagged her tail, we were reunited and then in one lunge, she took a bite out of his cakes. Oh, we laughed, as he ran off, his heels touching the back of his head as he sped away. What a sport you are, Django.

Refrigerant notice: Take dog to vet and dig hole for man

Drink like the last

I was offered a glass of coca cola after a long day in the heat wave that has engulfed England for the past few weeks.

Cool it was, especially that it contained ice to lower the temperature of the drink and give it the semblance of refreshing refreshment that I needed.

From the first sip, I noticed the ice was not melting as one would expect, rather, it was as if a new state of water was being synthesised in my glass, somewhere between solid and liquid, small globules of ice presenting a form of gel.

A new state of water

I started asking questions, about the ice as I downed the refreshing cola wondering what could have given the ice such a characteristic I had never observed before.

When I finished the cola, it became evident that this was not ice as I had always known it and perchance I happened on the packaging from whence the ice came, a product it was and the small print read, “Not for human consumption and not good for the dog either” or as I read it, take to the dog to the vet and dig a hole for the man.

Apparently, unbeknownst to my host, an ice pack had been crushed into my drink, the ice pack being colourless rather than having a blue tinge meant we were no wiser about it.

Refrigerant for the cool

Then I was on the Internet to find out what I needed to do, have the nurse perform the Heimlich Manoeuvre by putting his knee into my back, sticking my finger up my throat unhinging the peristaltic stability of what I had ingested or just wait it out.

Thankfully, the refrigerant component of the ice pack was not harmful and did not present a medical emergency of any sort, there was no need to panic and I was not on the verge of the discovery of a new state of gelatinous aqua much as I kept my calm not to be driven to the histrionics of suggesting I was about to be poisoned.

Makes for a good story though because, for my afternoon drink I asked for some refrigerant, what the heat will make you do, the consequences are yet to be imagined. 

Childhood: The fruits of a chicken napping dog

Fruits of many trees

When we finally moved to Jos and settled in the suburb of Rayfield, we had a full house with Unculu (my paternal uncle) and other relations of my father that included his niece and kid sister.

Our colonial bungalow was set in grounds that included an orchard of mango trees, a lemon tree, a fig tree, a cashew tree, a few orange trees and lots of grazing ground for cattle.

There was a separate garage for the car and a block of rooms set aside about a minute’s walk from the main building which was the boy’s quarters – a colonial definition of apartments for servants.

Blood of thieves

Besides the help we had from our relations we had a maid servant who despite her work was offered the opportunity of schooling and a gardener who doubled as a watchman of sorts.

This however did not stop the watchman of being robbed once, where some of his family possessions were stolen and on one occasion a thief tried to gain entry to our house, broke and window pane and cut himself badly.

All the blood and the trail of blood from the scene of the crime was quite unsettling for me as a child, in fact, it was just as scary as when we found a bat squeaking in the kitchen sometime before.

Et tu Bruté?

However, one of the memories that stuck with me was of our very first dog, Brutus, a very nice cheerful dog that seemed to have a taste for chickens in the neighbourhood. One day when I was away at school, the people came round, chased the dog into the bushes which were downhill from the house some 500 metres away and ran a spear through it, as I was told.

Rumour has it; it ended up in some soup pots, the killers probably doing well to retrieve their chickens by eating the dog that ate their chickens.

It was something of a traumatic experience and it took a while before we got another dog that I named Scot after the dog Scot in the Janet and John books we read at school.

Beheading the chicken

Thankfully, Scot did not have a taste for chickens at all, considering we had quite a few chickens then on the grounds.

Every once in a while we chased a chicken to exhaustion for a meal, none of that frozen chicken stuff and I had been taught how to clamp the wings under one foot and have the feet under another foot, grab at the head, holding it up to reveal the neck and cut without necessarily decapitating the bird.

Once, I did cut the head completely off and did not let all the blood out or allow for the last breath, lifted my feet and got half chased by a headless chicken before it expired – thankfully, it did, because there was no way I would have tried to catch it after what had happened to it.

Imagine if the chicken ended up like Mike the headless chicken [Source: Mike the Headless Chicken - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] which survived for 23 months, sometimes; the weirdest people do the craziest things and find a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

It's a barking barbecue

Hello Doggie

I probably read this twice, the first time, it looked quite humourous but by the second read, I almost despaired at the light-hearted way a serious issue had been depicted.

The writer obvious has a good feel for Nigerian parlance, the Pidgin English, the jargon and the sayings which convey truth like no other expression can.

Yes, dog meat is a delicacy that has made it from what we in Western Nigeria considered an Eastern aberration to the Federal Capital - Abuja, where the chef de cuisine adds international flavour as a South African who 32 years ago began a 2-year apprenticeship for what has become a livelihood.

Mercifully, it would appear the dog meat is barbecued rather than put into some soup or stew where every meal that contains meat would become suspect.

Claims that sell

One can expect where certain foods make many cringe, extra-ordinary claims would be made to justify and entice others into the act of eating the pet. What better lure can there be for a virile black man than to say that dog meat is an aphrodisiac?

The image of being able to hump like a crazed rabbit even in the absence of a mate with whom to express and dramatize ones prowess would not take away from the hopes of the possibilities.

As if that is not enough, others claim that dog meat has medicinal qualities.

Now, anyone reading this might think there are dog farms where the dogs are reared as free range, corn fed dogs allowing for the Sunday dinner of mouthwatering Pedigree - full of hormones and other beneficial healthy food products rather than some rabid lame stray that dared to bark and could not run off when the dog-napper walked by.

Cow saved by dog

Even more seriously, the advent of the dog on the flesh menu only indicates that the more common livestock which requires more attention as a financial venture and food supply is scarce or priced out of reach of the common man.

My Western sensibilities leave me a bit biased and prejudiced against this development, I once had a dog called Scot named after the dog in the Janet and John children's books and much later in life, we took care of a dog called Winnie, once I took her for a walk and the many who saw her said nice dog licking their lips, she was never let out of the compound after that.

But like the lady at the African Shop at Amsterdam Central Station said when I told her of this situation, "In the West, the dog eats with his master and in Africa the dog is eaten by his master." Even I cannot add much more to that or the story that appears on the BBC.

A Dog's Dinner from your Grocery

No Dutch on my palate

I have not been one to heap praise on Dutch cuisine, but it is not fault of the Dutch, the fact is a national dish depends on the kinds of crops, ingredients and animals for food that can be obtained local to that region.

Potatoes, pulses and members of the cabbage family feature in many dishes which are either dark or bland compared to colourful Mediterranean or Tropical dishes.

Like the English, many cuisines have come from the sub-continent to augment local dishes; the English variety of Indian cooking is probably the most eaten kind of food in England, here exotic tastes from Indonesian are very prominent.

There was a time I had a salad full of grit which I took back to the chef, rather than replace the salad with a fresh one, he took one leaf ate it and the declared the salad gritless, you could imagine my amazement.

Food snobs they are not

However, that exemplifies the difference in care and attention that the Dutch have towards food compared to the French, Italians or even Spaniards.

Furthermore, I have the advantage of a supermarket on the ground floor of my apartment block. For light shopping, I take down a bag, for serious shopping, I wheel the trolley home – living on the seventh floor of an apartment block which has a supermarket should count for something.

Albert Heijn is the biggest supermarket chain in the Netherlands as part of the Ahold group of companies. There have been lots of improvements over my last 6 years of residence in the Netherlands – shelves are better stacked and labeled, you rarely find out-of-stock stuff, tills get opened when queues get longer, they have not gotten to a bagging service yet.

Unfortunately, what has gone into a decent and organized shop floor has been lost in food psychology.

Yikes!

I picked up a pack of meat – heart cubed for stews – I use it for pepper soup and an assortment of stew recipes. Apart from the label signifying what it was, it had another sticker – (Dier Voeding) – Pet food in Dutch.

Don’t get me wrong, I would suppose most human food is dual purpose, that is, it can be served to both humans and pets, but that should be an unwritten prerogative of the pet owner.

One other explanation might be, the cost of gourmet pet food might be so high that preparing you own pet food is a cost saver, and there are humans whose work it is to taste the edibility of pet food. That, said, this would have better be put in the pet corner and not amongst food for human-beings.

To put that dual-purpose label on food in a supermarket beggars belief – need I say more? I think we can conclude the Dutch have no clue about the concepts of food psychology; this is the fundamental of good cooking, if you could get that from Dutch ingredients.

Albert Heijn have now done the Dutch a disservice, but, if it is acceptable to the Dutch, I would not complain, basically, anything labeled dual-purpose like that, is for the lowest common denominator – in this case, I would not be eating pet food.

Beware of dog - recruiter alert

What to do…

I am beginning to wonder if my temperament and demeanour is suited to certain interviewers, interview techniques or job prospects.

My CV is generally supposed to present me as an expert in a field of expertise where the simplicity of installation obfuscates the complexity of implementing useful solutions.

For instance, in my last project, the “Customer Solutions Architect” had spent the best part of 7 months installing a Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 environment which worked but was completely unmanageable.

Any administrator would have cried in frustration with simple day-to-day activities. A person with my experience and expertise would consider all stake-holders affected by any solution offered.

This comprises of the business, their requirements, the users, the administrators and any prevailing political and organisational influence that impacts the effectiveness of the solution.

My pitch sits squarely in realising solutions for the enterprise with due consideration of all resources provided and expected benefits. It means that one has to be authoritative, candid, truthful, realistic, resourceful and always honest.

Illiterate pimps

Starting with the interviewers, these are sometimes recruitment consultants in recruitment firms who usually have one thing in mind; the mark-up they can earn off your contract fee.

In some cases, there has been close to a 50% mark-up; it hasn’t really bothered me, because what is not negotiable is my fee at the first time of asking.

That is beside the point; it is when they have not taken time to read my CV that irks me the most. I used to be a director of a company called NextStep Limited in Nigeria then I got a call asking if I could offer programming expertise in NeXTSTEP software.

Then after 12 years of IT experience (I now have 18) of which 7 then were at a senior technical specialist level, sometimes in management, I get a call asking if I am interested in a trainee position. I have no problem with being a trainee if I am working on the launch controls at NASA.

However, apart from recruitment consultants, there are professional recruiters employed by organisations to sift prospective employees with bizarre questions and mind games.

Bouncers in the bank

The biggest bank in the Netherlands was recently on a recruitment drive which they co-sourced to an agency that was to weed out ineligible candidates along with agreeing certain terms of remuneration.

Having passed that hurdle, I met up with this male and female team of recruiters whose first onslaught was to refuse to interview till I had agreed to take a salary 15% below what had been agreed with the agency.

Evidently, this was on the paper sent to them by the agency well over a week before, and it could have been discussed with the agency who would have sought my consent or advice about going further or not.

In the circumstances, they blamed their lack of preparation on the agency where they should have paid more attention to the detail of the client to be interviewed.

Then the interview starts with “Give us an example of relationship building” – you must be kidding me.

Now, if I had only been working in IT 2 years, I would probably still be learning about how to get things done.

After 18 years, with the roles I have held and the beneficial things I have done in the organisations I have worked for … if my whole career has not been about building, maintaining and nurturing relationships, my career must have been a farce.

OK, maybe I am being a bit melodramatic, but after the salary haggling that would not have been worthy of a sub-continental marketplace or bazaar, I do not think I was in the mood for unimaginative recruiters.

They were like bouncers, you either have an invitation and we let you in, or you are going nowhere regardless of your relationship with the host.

They interview to an organisational mindset if there is one, or are just probably incompetent and answerable to no one especially when they can cover up their lapses.

At the poker table without chips

One other reason why I probably was not considered could be the fact that I decided to carry on the interview on the prospect of a better position, which they did not have to offer.

Interviewing with people who have no latitude on the one hand and then cannot recognise the skill you offer could as well be a dead-end.

So then, to another interview that is for the role of a specialist and I get the question “How do you set up a user?” – That is definitely taking the biscuit. Having worked in global enterprises, some sites have had well over 40,000 users along with their computers under my management.

They probably have not read my CV and if they had, maybe those questions are just to tug at my intellectual arrogance and the brooding “expertise complex” that beclouds the ability to deal with fundamental issues.

The truth be told

Aspects of a CV can sometimes look like they are too good to be true, then, ask for references; there is not reason to purvey falsehoods, the IT world is too small to get away with lies and sloppy work, you soon get found out.

Though it is gratifying when 10 years ago, was I walked into an interview they placed my in a room and I had to do a technical test. I then was hired within hours of that interview – I learnt that people doubted my abilities and I was baited with the test in which I attained the best ever score.

Beyond a good professional relationship with my manager which lasted 4 years including his taking over to another posting he had, we are still very good friends. Do I have to cry from the hilltops that I really am what my CV says I am? I am beyond exasperated.

At least, 80% of the work I have done in the last 10 years has been through networks formed off working with colleagues, managers or agencies – every now and then, I get a call asking about my availability for a project they have at hand.

I can fix that

All is not lost, I realise that I interview best when I am hired to fix something. At least the last few projects have involved my going in sort things out, mentor people and implement working solutions.

When people have questions, problems or appalling catastrophes requiring first a confident understanding of the issues and a good idea of how to chart from the rotten and bad through the acceptable towards the ideal coupled with availability in terms of both my expertise and time, I always get the job.

Probably, my wealth of expertise is also becoming a burden, I thrive in teams where I have something offer, something to share and something to learn. However, the mentoring aspect is gaining more significance when I embark on projects.

Projects are however, short-term, longer term contracts probably require that one be ensconced in management. This calls for a radical career re-alignment assessment; am I ready for that? 

Muzzle the dogs

Recently, it appears, I am not doing well with jobs that are mundane, routine and easy-going or barely anticipate problems, not because I am not qualified, but because I first have to outrun the dogs to get to the main door.

Sometimes the dogs make so much of a raucous the man of the house is forced to come out to calm the commotion and see who is trying to get in. Alternatively, I might just get Pedigree Chum laced with sedative, feed it to the dogs and walk right up to the door.

This is where; Mighty Mix and the dog food offer might be better appreciated than it has been in Kenya.

Once that happens, well, it is another notch to my CV.

Not at any cost

Swallow your dog food

Kenya had declared a national disaster by reason of the fact that the rains had failed and hence a poor harvest and the consequences of hunger and deprivation have ensued.

Down in some faraway land (New Zealand) a food company run by a motherly lady who sprinkles nutrients on her porridge every morning offers to send 42 tons of those nutrients to feed the probably starving children of Kenya.

The offer is rejected with derisive comments as perception overrides reality in the quest to maintain dignity and pride – we are only human.

Aid on Trotters

Then in Palestine, Hamas prepares to take on the mantle of leadership which we must agree is well deserved because they have to-date been benefactors of their people a lot better than the erstwhile Fatah movement.

The West threatens to withhold aid because there is another facet of Hamas which exercises an uneasy ceasefire in attacking Israel that it wants to obliterate in favour of a Greater Palestine.

The curse of democracy means they have a mandate to run and if the West who so willingly enjoys trotters and the other parts withhold aid, other trotter-haters of the Middle-East might just step in and completely undermine any little influence the West might have in Israel-Palestine crisis.

Babe and Scooby

This shrill singing from the West does not seem to faze Hamas who might eventually moderate their views about Israel for the sake of peace and progress as the two-state solution betweens to saunter down the crooked roadmap

However, there is concern that the powder mix which when mixed with water forms a paste that could well rival the gourmet quality of Pedigree Chum might be construed as dog food even though the recipe has been modified for humans.

Pride or Prejudice

As Kenya swallows their prejudice and Hamas moderates their pride in an exchange of sentiments; it is hopeful that the West consider the Hamas social record of prudence, efficiency and service to the needy Palestinians and our dear lady of Mighty Mix dog biscuits rephrase her offer without the mention of dog

Kenya might then not bark at such a tainted but useful if not essential gift and Hamas might grunt as they recognise Israel and elevate the standard of living of their people.

Without prejudice

No offence is intended with regards to analogies appearing in this piece. The import is to illustrate agreement and strong disagreement as donors’ intentions and misunderstanding contrasts with recipients’ requirements and the maintenance of their dignity.

Reference

BBC NEWS | Africa | Kenya rejects aid of 'dog food'

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Hamas rejects 'unfair' aid demand