Meeting Leonie, a wonder woman of 90

Someone for the crossing

Leonie Irene, 90, is the last of 7 siblings, she is now the only surviving one, her big sister having only died recently. She wanted to cross the junction at the intersection where Hulme Hall Lane meets Oldham Road to get the Miles Platting Post Office and corner shop to do some shopping, so, she asked if I could help her cross the road.

I gave her my arm as you used her wheelie bag in the other hand to give her support as we made to cross the road. Asking where I was from, I told her I had walked from the centre of town and she recalled that there used to be a Whitworth Street School for Girls bordering the canal where her mother used to be a cleaner.

Down memory lane

Keen of sight and hearing, she was observant and quite sharp, though her short term memory seemed to frequently fail her, the conversation was a thing of patience and care because I probably told her ten times where I lived and then she would recall I had told her before and that her mother did work at the posh school which has now been absorbed into another school system.

She talked of how Manchester had changed that transport into Manchester then was by tram, but that was a long time ago, it made me feel quite young that when I said I was 56, she said I did not look a day over 40.

From a list and much more

Getting her to the shop, she insisted she had to treat me to something, the shopkeeper was new, but he had seen her two weeks before, she did not recognise him when she said she had not seen him before and then her shopping began. The newspaper she paid for and put in her shopping bag as she brought out a shopping list for milk, butter, and dinners.

For the milk, I asked if she wanted the blue top (full milk) or the green top (semi-skimmed milk), she decided on one each of the smallest size bottles to fit in her fridge, a large container of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!, and some sandwiches that she could not persuade me to have. I took those to the till and paid for them.

Treats for her and I

However, the shopping was not done, as she had picked up a loaf of bread and the dinner was not the sandwiches but ready packed meals that you could put straight into the oven. At which point she got three different dinner packs and persuaded me to take a pack of fish and chips.

Unawares to her again, I paid for the order. Then she wanted chocolate bars, some biscuits, and a can of All Day Breakfast, all those she got separately, which I allowed her to pay for as she would have been all too aware of her spending nothing in the shop.

Every few minutes she would wonder if she had everything on her shopping list and probably something else and each time, I would assure her of what she already had in her bag whilst hoping to help her remember what else she needed.

Repeated answers and new questions

After the shopping, I helped her back across the road to the bus stop and waited with her until her bus arrived. That was when I asked for her name which was apparently given to her by one of her elder sisters who had been reading some posh book, she said. When I told her my name, she spelt it out correctly. She then asked what I do and then she surmised I must be well educated. Many more questions she asked including if I was married, quipping that maybe I had not met the right girl. I told her, I do not like girls, she chuckled.

She deduced that I probably did not have a family as in a nuclear family and for relations, she said but you have people. I am not as inquisitive or I might have asked if she was married or had children and grandchildren, I hate being intrusive if personal information is not freely volunteered.

Quite remarkable, she wanted me to get on the bus offering to pay my fare, I had already walked miles and I told her I was just out for exercise. When I bus arrived, I got her on and told the bus driver she was only going one stop, I bid her farewell as she shook my hand, thanking me for helping her, recollecting we had just met down the road.

Waking down, I met up with her at the next bus stop where she had alighted. I asked if she had far to go, she said it was only around the corner and she will be fine. We shook hands again and she went on her way. At 90, she was no pushover, I was quite enriched by this brief encounter that probably lasted an hour. That was just part of my evening out in Manchester.

And I laughed like Sarah

A diversion from destination

About coincidences, I would err on the side of the uncanny, or what would I attribute an encounter I had this evening to? My walk was to take me all the way to River Mersey and Chorlton Water Park, just about 9 kilometres in all until I came to a standstill where the police and fire engines had sealed off the main road that I had to take a detour.

When I first started my walks almost a year ago, I did circuits around Alexandra Park, that it came to mind, when I returned home to pick up a notepad and pen, was interesting, but it was not my direction of travel. As it transpired, my detour led to Alexandra Park and walked into the park and took a seat on a bench.

A nod and a greeting

I made a few phone calls and played a couple of Sudoku games on my mobile phone before I got up to return home, first needing to dispose of some litter in a bin. To my left as I walked up the wide path, an older black man nodded in acknowledgement towards me before I answered back and then he suggested he might have met me somewhere. I could not say.

He asked if I was Nigerian, I responded my parents were and he volunteered he was Nigerian, from the West, from Abeokuta. I had visited Abeokuta twice as my father used to work at a brewery that had offices there. One of those visits allowed a tour of Olumo Rock.

I laughed like Sarah

Typically, he asked if I had a wife to which I answered I have not been blessed with that kind of companionship and I have learnt to be content with the situation I am in. It was at that point that he averred that to God nothing is impossible. I intoned, he made me laugh like Sarah. This referring to a biblical story where Sarah the childless wife of the patriarch Abraham was promised a child in her old age within the year. She laughed at the incredulity of it, she did eventually give birth to Isaac. [BibleHub: Genesis 18:12]

The conversation continued, on the theme of the omnipotence of God with verses from Jeremiah, the Psalms, the book of Job, and the epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. This was interspersed with testimonies of success, inspiration, and ideas for progress in his life.

He had many stories

He was a career soldier who diversified into poultry business, suffered a failed first marriage yet got introduced to his second wife by his first and through his new wife’s British citizenship, he shuttles between Nigeria and the United Kingdom, pastoring a church in both countries. His repartee was engaging whilst serious and meaningful too. A good deal of it was in Yoruba.

I am wary of being proselytised and avoid the prospect of ritual, I have done too many from childhood into adolescence, but much of what he shared would be useful for meditation and consideration. We ended with a moment of prayer before asked to show me his wife’s store on the main road and after walking together a few hundred yards, he veered off towards his home as I did mine.

To laugh like Sarah

To laugh like Sarah is not so much an expression of disbelief but one measures a current situation against a promised outcome that literally seems impossible, yet, it is put in the scheme of things as possible, if you dare to consider it. To laugh like Sarah is to prepare yourself for something good, something long longed for that you might have now given up on it. To laugh like Sarah is to begin to write a different story in anticipation of the transformation from the ordinary into the extraordinary.

To banish all my fears and realise my hopes with my wildest dreams coming into a reality I could not begin to imagine. There will be much to laugh about, the laughter of joy, the laughter of goodness, the laughter of the miraculous, the laughter of gratitude. We can all begin to laugh like Sarah when we are told what we thought can never be is just about to happen. I am laughing like Sarah.

Identities in birth and travel

Testing the areas

Reflecting on times we were in Cape Town; we did not get around as much apart from spending just over a week of the last part of our stay at Mouille Point not too far from the Green Point Lighthouse after four weeks in the Oranjezicht area near the Parliament precinct and Company Gardens.

On the evening of our move, we found a restaurant where we settled into steaks rather than seafood along with my first helping of Malva pudding. Whilst I usually have my steak medium rare, mine was closer to rare than medium, the fat became a bit off-putting that it became a discarded script of Murder, She Wrote unworthy of any edition to be progressed for auditioning.

We returned to the restaurant on our last night together before my departure but could not sit outside as we did before because of the wet weather. Wary of sitting inside, we found a table at the highest of cascading levels to the very back of the restaurant, not that crowded, though with a couple at a table already tucking into their meal.

Stake upon steak

As we were putting in our order, we could not help but notice the frenetic activity at the other table, the man who we soon learnt was the husband was constantly genuflecting for the waiter modifying their order and trying to engage in conversation with the staff as a regular customer who might have been slighted for not being recognised. He ordered a second steak even though for his appetite he seemed to have found a means of not allowing it show on his physique, and that is commendable.

Soon, he engaged us in conversation telling us that the restaurant had the best steaks as it transpired that they were regular visitors to Cape Town and this restaurant did take their fancy any time they were in town. A flutter of introductions ensued, he was Indian born in Nigeria with no religious pretensions to vegetarianism, his family having lived there for at least two generations, he knew the Chellarams, his wife was Scottish born in Hong Kong, Brian is Zimbabwean with distant Scottish and English ancestry and I am English born of Nigerian parentage.

Partners in blush

It made for interesting conversation even as they were UK-based but had escaped the lockdown to Cape Town via Addis Ababa only to find it uninteresting because of the restrictions and the alcohol ban that they were going to jet off to Dubai and stay there until things eased off. I did not get his line of business, but he appeared to have made a fortune selling his company in the UK having learnt he was not suited for the cutthroat business environment in Nigeria that his father prospered in.

We were soon through our two courses and were ready to leave, his sometimes-inquisitive talkativeness had a Nigerian influence that at times made me uncomfortable as he insisted on knowing what kind of partners were. Whether he missed the passing comment that we were too like his, partners in bed, I could not tell. We parted friendly and jocularly enough and surprisingly loose-tongued without the aid of alcohol. Even with strangers, encounters can be not so strange at all.

Don't let me bare my teeth

The conflicts

An encounter that brought one to the meeting with another where much left unsaid is the unresolved conflict that goes back too long that memories begin to fade.

Yet, there are memories that will never go away because they are the foundations on which everything else is built, that thing unlooked, that praise unsaid, the act unloved, that wound unsalved, that curse unleashed are indelible markers of time and space, the manner in which all came to play in scenarios never yet spoken, they are deep.

The discord

Then a visit in the midst of sleep stirred up a maelstrom, a knowing that this was not comfortable, an instigator came to stir up the moment for a fiery exchange and that was the cause of excuses made when the other flung the apron strings again to see if they would bind, no, they would not for they’ve been cut for too long.

As the parting began, a terror was again unleashed, a momentary lashing out but one thought the better of it, the time and place will probably never come for any of this to be resolved, the egg has been broken, there is no getting the yolk and the albumen back in the embrace of nature that once was and the evolution that follows next.

The escape

Witnesses oblivious of the long history trooped to the other side and ganged up to torment, they began and at first strike, with a bite of a serpent in the deep of the back, a painful cry and the end of slumber.

They can harm the body but they will not touch the soul, that hold is gone and that story remains long and yet untold, there is a salvation beyond which they will never control who saved that soul.

If there is another encounter …

A Full Yoruba Prostration in the Centre of Manchester

Seeking insight on sight

I found myself at the much improved Arndale Shopping Centre in Manchester where just 17 years ago on my very second visit to Manchester the IRA set off a bomb that had shards of glass fall on someone hardly 10 yards from where I was standing.

For a while, I have been thinking of my sight, the state of my natural eye-sight as compared to when I have my glasses on, basically, I have not had an eye-test since well before I fell ill, so I walked into an opticians to have a test with the hope that I will walk out with a pair of glasses in an hour – well, that is the spiel but nothing could be further from the truth.

Squinty eyes with puny pupils

In any case, the tests began with a check on the strength of my glasses, then what prescription might be right by peering into kaleidoscopic instruments that brought a colourful hot-air balloon into focus before jets of air were shot at my eyes to test my eye pressure.

Then, reading the charts where F, P and R or Y and V had you seeing one thing and thinking another, though it is better not to second-guess the system and let the natural sight guide you.

The light tests to observe the back of my eyes left the optometrist running the tests thrice before he decided my pupils were too small that I needed my pupils dilated with the help of rather stinging eye drops; this easily added another 45 minutes to a visit that I thought will not be over an hour and 15 minutes.

Choices between frames and types of lenses took their toll between avoiding the trendy whilst at the same time getting something fashionable and traditional enough to fit my generally conservative and typically formal look, I just about succeeded but my lenses were not in stock; which means another visit to Manchester in two weekends rather than having the glasses posted by mail without the benefit of a fitting in the shop.

I’m an Englishman

However, something more bizarre happened, a loquacious young man, well-dressed in a single-breasted suit with all buttons done up walked in apparently to fix his glasses and when he saw me he came over to ask where I was from. I already sussed he was probably Nigerian and Yoruba but I had to avoid being accused of sorcery.

The answer I always give to that question is, I am from many places, starting with my being an Englishman of Nigerian parentage. He scoffed at the idea that I might be denying my Nigerian heritage but the real story is I have spent almost two-thirds of my life outside Nigeria apart from the fact that I was not born in Nigeria.

The optician’s assistant who has Pakistani parents was also born in England and we stated that the fundamental difference between us and him was that he was naturalised whilst we were born here, it meant that he could lose his acquired British citizenship whilst we could never be denied our status by any organ of the state.

Undue familiarity

By which time, we had exchanged mobile phone numbers and he had learnt I could speak Yoruba and on realising I was over twice his age, he prostrated in typical Yoruba genuflection in the shop, I had to pick him up and tell him it was unnecessary.

At the back of my mind, the familiarity was getting concerning as he fawned in language and action towards me, suggesting I could become his new father he having lost his father only the year before.

From then on, he addressed me as daddy as we made to leave the opticians and walk out of the Arndale Centre.

Tales of convenience

A number of uncanny situations came up, I could not say if he was channelling me or he was genuine, as he fed off my answers to find affinity, like going to the same secondary school as I did though I had left long before he was born – now, the whole story on reflection does not seem to fit together if he is 23, he has lived in the UK since 2002 and he apparently finished secondary school in Nigeria.

In any case, he said he had just moved up to Manchester from Cambridge and when I said I lived in London, he averred that he once lived in Edgware.

As we conversed, I had a phone call from a friend that interrupted flow of communication though he seemed to be keen on talking over the conversation I was having on the phone.

The loaded invitation

I promptly ended the phone conversation and asked about Nigerian restaurants in Manchester, he offered that instead I come to his home where his wife who from his rather chauvinistic tone was available to cook and make homely meals for me and I could also have the opportunity to bless his new born son in more traditional ways than through Christian provenance.

It made me more uncomfortable that I was ready to tell him that I was too much a stranger to be invited to his home just like that.

No apple for this worm

Then I saw the toilets and politely excused myself to use the conveniences; by the time I came out he had disappeared, it was like a hit-and-run event, as if my break for toilets had interrupted a confidence trickster’s ploy to inveigle his way into my confidences and in turn relieve me of something that he might have wanted to use to his nefarious ends.

I was both relieved and strangely concerned but somewhat happy that I had been left to my own devices. I can only wonder what he can be up to and though I have his number, I will rather wait for him to call if he would, else, one can deem the encounter one of those where providence and good fortune have spared me much pain and the embarrassment of being used or worse abused.

But the ‘Coming to America’ moment was a classic, in the middle of Manchester, well away from the cultural hotpot of Yoruba civilisation, a man recognises the presence of an elder and prostrates fully in respect – let us not read too much into what the intentions or ulterior motives were – encounters like this are just as well the spice of life.

Was this respect on retrospect? I do not know.

C3 Encounters 2012: God is manifested in who you are

Easy on the ears

Later this week for three full days our church will have a conference bringing together members from all around Europe to Amsterdam.

One thing I like about our movement is its international youthful and vibrant approach to things of Christianity that explores how people can get to live their best life.

Our conferences do not have the razzmatazz titles of a James Bond film or the thriller of a science-fiction flick with all the suspense of other-worldliness that sometimes presents from the usual Pentecostal fare, they are easy of the senses and approachable by all – the mother church in Australia held Presence just over a month ago and here in Amsterdam where our church was planted just about 12 years ago we will have Encounters 2012.

Last Sunday and this Sunday we have had sermons preached by the resident pastor Steven Warren and the C3 Europe Director Simon McIntyre encouraging us to make the best of Encounters have a life-changing encounter with God that could do wonders for who we are and where we are.

Of personalities and relationships

Pastor Simon McIntyre gave a talk on encounters based on II Samuel 22:26-27 (NLT)

²⁶ “To the faithful you show yourself faithful;
    to those with integrity you show integrity.
²⁷ To the pure you show yourself pure,
    but to the wicked you show yourself hostile.

In context, as we believe in a God that never changes the reality is God meets people at the point that they relate to him.

The first example he gave was of King David who wrote Psalm 23 which begins with “The Lord is My Shepherd.” He could well relate because David before he became king was a shepherd boy, he knew what it took to herd sheep, to corral them and protect them danger as well as the apparent dumbness of sheep which presents itself in their getting lost, falling into ravines or being prey to predators.

In the same vein, he could see God as his shepherd, protecting him from danger and even being forgiving if he had done really foolish and dumb things.

Besides, David was also a warrior and there are many Psalms that talk of war, of enemies, of defeat, of despair, of courage, of victory and of praise. The characteristics and character of David in his personality allowed him to relate to God in the context of what he knew and who he was.

Relationships by reason of who you are

Then came Moses whose defence of the Jews before he was called to lead them on the Exodus from slavery in Egypt, he was driven by a sense of justice and that sometimes drove him to task rash decisions in the pursuit of justice. He always argued his case before God many times sometimes persuading God from His wrath against the people of Israel and at other times having his arguments defeated.

The then became the law-giver and most of what represents the pursuit of justice today derives from Mosaic Law and its application to society.

With Joshua who succeeded Moses, his role was to lead the children of Israel to take the Promised Land and as the head of the army he stood to challenge anyone who came within to the camp.

He was fearless when he saw a man stood over him with his sword drawn that he asked if he was friend or foe and as the man answered that he was the captain of the hosts of the Lord, Joshua immediately the man of superior rank as he fell to his face and worship as should be expected of army hierarchies – that was how he could relate.

Connecting with the best of you

Then Pastor Simon talked about the lives of Pastor Phil Pringle the leader of the C3 movement and himself signifying that Pastor Phil came from a hippie culture where what he knew was about experience and atmosphere and his ministry has always reflected experience, presence, encounter, deliverance, relationships and leadership.

Pastor Simon is a different personality, more methodical, quite introspective, processing thoughts and ideas before he made decisions. Though, he took his time to fall in line in obedience, he was at the time that he did fully persuaded of the reasons why he made the decisions he made and that is what has been reflected in his ministry.

The essence of the message shared today was clear, we do not need to imitate other are attempt to copy the personalities of others in wanting to relate to God.

We should be ourselves and in being ourselves in the knowledge of who we are and what we know we find that our encounters with God are fulfilling and worthwhile because our being is fully connected with who made us who we are – warts and all.

God is by your makeup

To take the Message version of the text of the sermon today, this is what it boils down to.

^26-28 You stick by people who stick with you,
      you're straight with people who're straight with you,
   You're good to good people,
      you shrewdly work around the bad ones.
   You take the side of the down-and-out,
      but the stuck-up you take down a peg.

Whoever you are is what will become the conduit of your relationship with God, it good without saying that you want to express your best characteristics and virtues the more and make less of the uncomely parts of your personality that will represent God to you as hostile – not because He is hostile but because you have clogged up the conduit to God’s goodness with the wrong attitude, wickedness and lack of responsiveness to His great love.

The Encounters 2012 conference is on from Thursday the 17^th of May through the 19^th of May 2012, I am expectant and ready for a great experience, I will be a better person of me to get linked in with God’s purpose for me and this will be an encounter that will make a difference for me.

Join us, if you can – click on the link above for details to attend the whole conference or just to visit a day session.