The hole relationships leave

Just the way things are

On my return from South Africa in early September, two things were clear. I did not worry about the state of my home, and something I had left on the counter intended for the freezer was still there, growing mould and displaying every sign of culture that should not be inhaled.

This was because, for the first time in about eight years, I did not have a house sitter, a friend with unrestricted access to my apartment at any time for his convenience rather than mine.

While I always appreciated his presence, he had a peculiar habit of rearranging the place to such an extent that, on my return from holidays, I could scarcely recognise my own home.

An untenable situation

The final straw was when I returned from sick leave in December, after being away for seven weeks. Following a 14-hour journey, I had to run a vacuum around my home before I could sit down and catch my breath. Meanwhile, he was there packing a bag, even though he knew I was returning that day.

It was never required of him, but he was always helpful around the house: doing basic cleaning, taking out rubbish, or managing recycling. Besides, as people living away from close family, seeing each other often meant anyone could ask the other about their well-being, knowing they had current information.

However, I had had enough. I asked for the keys to my place, and since then, it seemed the true bond between us was access to my apartment rather than a nearly decade-long friendship. Even when I email to ask after his well-being, he rarely responds; no one truly knows the other anymore. We have entered a state of indifference bordering on obsolescence.

The hole relationships leave

Looking at the state of my living room this morning, I felt a hole that had widened into a chasm after my friend's withdrawal. I only took the keys from him; I did not end our friendship.

Yet, how anyone perceives the other in any relationship can be an inscrutable mental process, revealed only when circumstances push us to confront who we really are.

All relationships introduce something into our lives: the good, the bad, the ugly, or the simply nonchalant. When the relationships fade, we lose something, regardless of its size. Our friends are warts and all; much is tolerated, forgiven, and given leeway until limits are crossed and irreconcilable differences emerge.

Then, for me, it is time to get my act together and look after myself better, for my health, my mind, my relationships, my apartment, my environment, and every other aspect that fosters a sense of contentment and fulfilment. C’est la vie.

Thought Picnic: Back on the treadmill of worthwhile relationships

Like a work of nature

Worthwhile relationships need to be cultivated; they are the product of complex dynamics in our humanity and interactions which I have learnt through experience might be difficult to understand.

This is not a zero-sum game, such that what you put into a relationship is what you get out, the transactional kind carries lofty expectations and extraordinarily little reward along with disappointment and disillusionment.

Cultivating relationships is like farming; you prepare the ground, sow the seeds, and let nature take its course; the sunshine for warmth, the rainwater for life, as the seed germinates, sprouts, grows, and thrives.

There is a concept of time and duration to it that matures relationships. We all need a personal experience and revelation of planting seeds and watching the wonder of nature, from seedtime to harvest.

The work is a cycle

Yet, it is not just about harvesting, it is a continuous cycle of life. Like a farmer, you work the land of relationships and experience the wonder of things you could never have imagined.

Certain emotions come to the fore quite unexpectedly, in how care, concern, and consideration for another create endearingly invisible and significant bonds.

These relationships can be familial, but we are all too aware that blood does not assure the best of relationships, it might be the start of something, but it goes beyond that.

It is in how we choose our partners and friends, and what we do to maintain relationships and maintain is such an inadequate word for it because it is not perfunctory.

Knowing the work that works

Yet, in the moment of vulnerability and adversity, you begin to see the quality and value of relationships, like who is still about watching out for you when there is nothing you can do for them except respond and engage.

Among those relationships that reach deep into the soul of whatever makes us human, you might have a hand and a half to count on.

I have many friends, but I only have a few friendships that are the substance of relationships to be cherished. You cannot account for how others feel about the people you choose to form these relationships with.

It is sometimes interesting to see the perspectives of others and realise how things are different. You should, however, be discerning about cultivating your relationships based on the viewpoints of others, for what is significant and valid for them might not be relevant to you.

And what works for me

As I end this rambling piece that I am not entirely sure makes all that sense, sometimes, we never really know how truly and fondly liked and loved we are by those with whom we have cultivated relationships in the main, and then others who for all sorts of reasons and issues in life might have failed to register until the point where we are sorely missed.

Just to check if I was still with it, before publishing this piece, I did a search on my blog for ‘Cultivating relationships’ and I had written one as recently as last month and then as far back as the year, 2007.

I am onto something. Then, there may be fences to mend and others to abandon, and then certain relationships are, unfortunately, not worth it. Yes, crops do fail. Such is life.

Reflections on a childhood reunion

The mantle that fell on us

The weekend past provided a moment of deep reflection on the quality of relationships and how they endure. In other ways, I thought about how a generational mantle of favour covers us in certain places out of reverence for what our forebears have done long before we became part of the scene. The ability to understand that grace which is not of our ability or achievement is something to reckon with.

I can say I have benefited immensely from much of what my parents have done and the enduring relationships that have grown from those communities. Social media and the wonders of modern communication abstracts from the reality of sight, sound, touch, and hearing in terms of physicality. The convenience tends towards the substitute.

Then back together again

How I felt about seeing relations and friends who I had not seen from about 7 years ago was heart-warming, the catching up and the memories that linger. You feel you have adapted and changed and still much remains the same. What is evident is the mutual love and affection we have for each other, whatever the trajectories of life, what brings us together is strong, enduring, and wholesome.

Further on, there are people I had not seen since the 1980s, and we were gathered to celebrate a landmark birthday with all the siblings of the celebrant coming from the far ends of the world for the festivities. The matriarch, the widow of my father’s closest, best, and childhood friend presided over ensuring I graced the occasion. My arrival indicated much of my features are too easy to recognise, even as I scan the deep recesses of my archives to link and appreciate.

The childhoods that sired this

The greetings and the smiles, I have not attended a Nigerian fare for longer than I can care to remember, we are counting decades and more. In any case, I was being introduced to the new generation to which the reference point was the close friendship of my father to their dearly departed grandfather.

The party managers having marshalled us to the organised settings, I looked up again to recognise another childhood friend, scion of the community of childhood friends of my father. Then he introduced his wife to me, my father had given the eulogy at his father's funeral. That was news to me, that his father had passed on, along with the additional detail.

It occurred to me as it has before that with the blessing of a long life comes the misery of bidding your peers fond farewells with the reminiscing in sadness and warm feelings. The traction of time is perpetual, and our marks in the notches of time’s unending length of totem pole is where we look to reflect on the things that suggest, we need people to gather again for old times sake.

O to be received into everlasting habitations

What I seemed to lack

When I launched a fundraising drive some 5 weeks ago, I had some reason to believe that my target would not only be reached but also exceeded. Then again, the situation in which I founded the premise could not be termed as dire or desperate, an unfortunate set of circumstances created a situation that I had both hoped and felt the fund drive would help alleviate.

Yet, it is unmistakable that the unmatched generosity of some contributors brought in 36% of my target which was very helpful, but insufficient to attend to the need and purpose of the drive. I appreciate that I did not get much of the support I would have normally relied on from people I trusted and hoped to see what I was trying to achieve.

What I saw happen too

Another issue that seemed obvious, fundraising for yourself is not that easy, for no matter how well you can tell your story, it seems that the more successful drives are achieved by others taking your story and telling it to others. It would seem you need to have some abstraction from that situation, with others finding the more compelling phraseology to provide the narrative.

Then, I am humbled by another thing I saw, I had work colleagues from almost 2 decades ago since we last worked together visiting with largesse, some old schoolmates from time immemorial calling first and then contributing, some concerned friends also pitched in and then strangers who left nothing to identify them contributing too.

What friends I didn’t make

In the recesses of thought, you think about the fact that there is a lot of money out there in the world, moved around for all sorts of reasons. Charitable causes adopt fundraising schemes to get people inclined to see what they are trying to do so that they are generous and supportive of the cause. A charitable cause in your own name, however, sometimes reads like something else.

I do not regret the fundraising activity, if anything, it made a case, probably not as compelling as it ought to be, that I needed some help. There are many ways to read into what Jesus meant when he said, “And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.” [Luke 16:9 (KJV)]

What smarts I’m left needing

Looking back, it would seem I have cultivated many useful and enduring friendships, but I might not have extended the scope enough to ensure that when hard times come, I do not suffer penurious disadvantage from downturns as I have had. In context, what he said came after he talked about a scheme where a wily and crafty servant who had fallen out of favour with his boss, went out to his boss’ debtors and transformed heretofore unserviceable debts to favourable terms for the debtors to immediately address.

Yes, the boss had to commend his disfavoured servant for acting shrewdly, despite his precarious employment situation, for which Jesus then said certain people are better at controlling, making, and managing money than others, most especially those who by terms seem to be religiously inclined.

What everlasting habitations could be

In review, I have possibly made a lot from being a freelance consultant, but I have also not been particularly shrewd with it as I probably should have. If I had an everlasting habitation to draw on, it would have been something along the lines of a wealthy benefactor calling me to say, “Akin, come out to my ranch or hacienda, maybe even use my vacant apartment by the seaside and bring whoever you want along with you. I will see to all your requirements for accommodation and sustenance for the next few months whilst you get yourself sorted.”

Alas, the need for purposeful networking is one that sometimes you learn too late that you need. However, you ruminate over how things are and how things could be, an exit strategy has to exist somewhere, including enduring much to come out to a better story told of a life lived.

As I finished writing this blog, it is Macy Gray’s second single, I Try from her album On How Life Is, that seems to capture the essence of what I feel, strangely, it is about companionship, support, and understanding how best to do certain things of which my GoFundMe effort has not been as successful as I believed it could be.

Blog - I published a GoFundMe appeal

Blog - Let's not stigmatise personal fundraising like GoFundMe

Dick van Galen Last - Remembered!

A friendship cherished

It is the nature of friendship and the things that you remember of people who have contributed to recognising the beauty of knowing and sharing their lives. It seems like an age, for it is 13 years to the day that my dear friend Dick van Galen Last passed on.

A tall and skinny Dutchman, wise in experience, affable in temperament, a polyglot and gatherer of people from all the corners of the earth. An erudite archivist that specialised in world war history, especially where the imperialists and colonisers enlisted the colonies in the wars.

It was a chance meeting in Paris in 1997 that began our friendship and from then we maintained contact, he in Amsterdam whilst I was resident in London. When I moved to the Netherlands in 2000, he was my host and he helped me settle down as I found my feet.

He was a wonderful cook and we regularly had soirees at his home in the North of Amsterdam. In so many ways, he was such a great help, someone I could call on for advice and other things. For his 50^th birthday, we met up at Café Beaubourg in Paris for brunch. There are so many memories to recall.

A meeting vivid

We last saw each other when he came to visit me, a week after I was discharged from the hospital on Friday, the 16^th of October 2009. We were to go for a meal, but I was too frail to go out, we just sat and chatted in my living room over tea and biscuits.

There was the occasional phone call, even as he was rushing to finish his PhD thesis. Just after Christmas, he first informed me that he had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, we shared the same oncologist, and we even thought our chemotherapy schedules would land us in the same treatment room.

A few weeks later in the New Year, he defended his PhD, witnessed by friends who said they could see strength and spirit ebb out of him during his viva voce. I could not attend as it was just two days after my penultimate chemotherapy session, I just did not have the strength.

A death announced

Then, it was the Wednesday morning on the 3^rd of February 2010 that I received a phone call, the caller ID for Dick gave me the thought to congratulate him on his PhD defence, but it was Ousmane, his lodger on the phone, Ousmane came to clean my apartment every fortnight. He was bearing news, rather shocking news, Dick had passed on the day before.

I am glad Ousmane took one decision in consideration of Dick, he refused that Dick be taken to the morgue, and so, Dick was dressed up and laid on his bed for all of us his friends to visit and pay our respects, even as funeral arrangements were made and friends were coming in from other countries to attend the obsequies.

He was interred on the 8^th of February, just 2 days short of his 58^th birthday after a well-attended service. I could not attend the interment itself because I needed to attend what eventually became my last session of chemotherapy. Even with the apparent passage of time, the thoughts still feel fresh and raw. In all, I remember quite fondly, my one true Dutch friend, Dick van Galen Last. Rest in peace.

Some memories

Blog - Dick

Blog - Dick: As he lay

Blog - Seeing Dick Off

Blog - Remembering Dick van Galen Last

Blog - There was only one Dick

Blog - Dick van Galen Last - A Decade On

Thought Picnic: How still I see me lie

Met in thee

There is a calmness that you find to gain some refuge from concern and worry, something that registers from that line in O Little Town of Bethlehem that speaks of the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Thee being the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ as we countdown to the celebration of Christmas, the Sunday past being the Fourth Sunday before Advent. It goes without saying that I am a man of faith, a spirituality that sustains me through times that do fill me with the dread of insufficiency and incapacity, that I fold into a shell of seclusion.

Met with constraints

There are things I would have been quite forward to do that my hand has been shortened by circumstances and situations that exacerbate fears, but all those are held at bay by hopes buoying confidence that change will come and change things so radically.

Occasions have come and gone to which an appearance was difficult, and support could not be provided, then many would not know why, it is just that times failed the opportunity and not for the want of trying.

Personally, there was pain, deep pain, but life teaches us only to stretch to what is available and not beyond the resource to the point of suffering, you can only work with what you have.

Met on experience

Life presents many cycles, and the recurrence of events and experiences does not offer the same solutions, you have to learn anew and then commit that to new experiences, learning is a continuous process for which in my own life, I am grateful that wherever I have been set in my old ways, I find that I am upset into new ways.

Realities are another thing, seeking assurances in a turbulent world where trust is finite that you are questioning yourself about what you have been assured of. This is where communication and the ability to do it well to elicit the information you need matters. How to turn sleepless nights into restful nights full of sweet dreams and the awakening to the freshness of a new day, energised to live and thrive in the moments you are given.

Met to befriend

Most of all, friendship and love are at the heart of the calmness, in love, there is someone to lean on whose voice is indeed a strength and stay much as they rarely realise who and what they mean to me. In friendship, is one that reads me better than I can read myself, whose support is unflinching and ever-present.

From relationships past comes structure and symbiosis, we seem to exist for each other, cheering on with encouragement and praise, we find the words of comfort to weather the challenges that waylay us in our pathways. This is not the stuff you take for granted, it is what you cultivate so that you are not left alone absent of people who cherish you and care deeply for you. The world I live in is about relationships and that is how even in the darkest hour, the dawn would soon be upon us.

It shall pass, it never stays still, for the motion of time is always the harbinger of change bringing us to the living splendour of dreams coming true beyond anything we could have ever countenanced. I strongly believe I have a better story to tell.

As an older gay man

Resisting the platitudinal

Rarely do I comment on matters of deep emotional situations, especially when it comes to relationships and I would be reticent to give relationship advice as there is no template to coupling and desire, we are as individuals seriously complex beings who in the course of life find and choose people who impact our lives like no other.

With some we form such deeply inexplicable and emotional bonds we might never find the words to express, we just know that the person who has come into our lives is extraordinarily special, incomparable to any other and paramount in the purview of any matter of concern and import, they are where our hearts and lives are. In the middle of which, we take each day like it would last forever.

Alas, the forever we hope for is only to the extent of the moment we are in, for nobody knows even as the hearts of two merge into one, how things might turn out, what things might be changing in either them or us and how we can be blinded by circumstance to suddenly happen upon a catastrophic breakup. It happens and there is no easy way to deal with it.

A commentary lost

It is on this that I posted a comment on Instagram a few days ago to commiserate, sympathise, probably empathise on the breakup of young black queer couple who had been together for a few years. Some of the emotional fallout had been playing out on social media that I read with just a signal of acknowledgement until I saw a radical move of relocating to another city. That triggered the urge to engage with viewpoint of life, experience, grief, hope, and stories.

Unfortunately, the somewhat substantial comment I posted to that particular situation was lost when the original poster deleted that status, my attempts to recreate what wrote in the context of that posting here would at best be ambitious, but I felt strongly about it enough to dedicate a blog to the matter.

Blog: Opinion: Who owns the public conversation?

Sharing experiences of life

As an older black gay man, I probably have a few tales to tell, no so much as an activist, but just as someone who has decidedly just accepted that in my own difference, I belong in the common embrace of diversity in the pursuit of happiness that I have rarely shirked from.

I was intimated with and reminded recently that I am some sort of role model, and I can say none of this is by intention or purpose, however, in the telling of my story either by myself or others, some have recognised an affinity and a belonging that they can freely be who they are, not as the proselytised, but in knowing they are not alone.

It happened to me

I also had a relationship that lasted almost 7 years, I thought we would be together forever, but one day, I was told what we had going was no more and when I enquired deeper about what might have changed, I realised there was another person from whom my partner had to seek counsel to determine whether we still had something going. It was then that I knew it was over.

At that point, I thought my world was over, I cried for days, got compassionate leave from work, went to stay with an elderly gay couple who were like family whilst I tried to sort myself out. What helped me through that breakup was the support of friends and even more significantly, the offer of continued friendship and love from my newly ex-partner’s parents, it somehow made me see beyond the present without any pretence that there was any hope of reconciliation.

For me, I decided I was going to work on the transition from being a lover to becoming a friend with the passage of time, it was left to my ex-partner if he would want to be a friend, but I was of the view that 7 years was too consequential a period in one’s life to just dispense of a relationship that lasted that long.

That my ex is one of my best friends, we chat every few weeks and sometime last week marked 30 years since we first met at London Euston Station and felt an unexplained attraction towards each other that developed into loving relationship.

Making difficult transitions

Though I eventually handled that breakup well, I had had one before him that just lasted a few weeks, from around Christmas of 1991 into mid-February 1992, much as I loved him, there were signs it would not last, his friends never liked me and wondered why he was going out with a black guy.

When we broke off, we also had nothing to build a friendship on, it affected me so much that my boss at work said to me, the way I looked so different from my normal disposition suggested I was going through a relationship breakup, it was much later that I confided in him.

The result of breakup of the longer relationship was just over a year after it, I emigrated to the Netherlands where I lived for almost 13 years and where my ex came to visit a number of times, furthermore, I was chaperone to his grandmother who as a war widow, yearly visited the Commonwealth War Graves of Arnhem Oosterbeek where his grandfather is buried until her death.

And life happened

In the Netherlands, I had a few relationships, some fractious, others enduring, and whilst they did not last, with those that we could find friendships out of the ruins of a relationship, we remain friends, and at the very least I call them on their birthdays.

I also suffered bereavements, one said partner died just a few days after I left hospital in 2009, we were a bit estranged but had not broken up. That death I grieved alone for years, and it probably hindered me from contemplating new relationships too.

Other short relationships, hopeful and hopeless followed with some yielding new friendships that I reckoned I was not cut out for this thing called love, my life was filled with ex-boyfriends who had become friends, they securing significant others along the way. I have always been happy for them.

I found new love

Then I decided after a challenging year of 2018 to spend Christmas in South Africa and there, someone I would never have approached as I reckoned, he was out of my league, came round to say hello at a club I attended, he stole my heart away.

I found love in a somewhat hopeless place in a person that would be stuff of dreams, this same person is known to all my ex-partners who have embraced him and welcomed him into their friendship too. We are planning on setting up home together and getting married too. I could not have scripted that for myself in my wildest dreams.

Living for a better story

On the matter of relationships, we can only work with what we have got in the moment and time we have to cherish each other, we can build on our dreams towards forever, but there is no guarantee that it would all turn out right, such is life. Yet, we cannot for the fear of failure never live in the expectation of wonder, adventure, love, and happiness. Life has its mysteries out of which we craft stories.

To my friend, I said on his Instagram post, “we are meant to live, to survive, to thrive, and to glow, I know you will do well. You will get to write a better story cherishing the past and looking forward to the future.”

There are parts of our life story when living through it, there is no fun, no joy, much sadness and sometimes the loss of hope, but as long as we are living, we cannot give up, for breakups, we need the time to grieve and begin to repair, hopefully with the likelihood of keeping a semblance of friendship going, we are possibility personified, the stories do get better, and breakups are part of the fabric and tapestry of life preparing us for new relationships to take us on journeys that were once impossible.

Being the salt of the earth

Making no apology

I sometimes find myself warning friends and acquaintances about associating with me, not because of who I am but out of concern for them in terms of how I am perceived by others. Somehow, some people who have publicly associated with me have been ostracised or penalised for no other reason than their humanity.

In a way, I represent a kind of independence not beholding or dependent on anyone, system, or situation. I am outside the ambit of influence of some who think people like me should be in the closet, depressed and fearful rather than living beautifully, thriving, and enjoying the kind of happiness that has never been in their purview.

I’m just me

Not that it bothers me in the least, I have always been who I am, level-headed, playful, seriously unserious, clowning about, easily accessible, hopefully sympathetic, and empathetic for humanity and humanitarian causes, with a liberal worldview of living and letting live, avoiding unnecessary confrontation and giving many much latitude in the benefit of the doubt.

Those quite close to me might wonder about my kind of crazy that might be mistaken for a negative when it could well be stooping to conquer. I want to think I am not a difficult person or even one difficult to understand. Yes, there are seriously misunderstood or underappreciated aspects of my person and personality, if I were so totally predictable, where would the mystery be?

I am spice

Yet, I appreciate those who see more in me that on the surface, who do not pass any judgement until they have duly and properly engaged me, who that sought to know me as a person rather than a label or an object, who have grown to respect me for my views and opinions no matter how they might differ from their outlook.

In the end, we have to share this world and this space, we would not agree on everything, we can respectfully agree to disagree without becoming disagreeable. Heck! We might even become friends with aspects of common interest, accommodating of each other in the broadening of our horizons. I have a teachable spirit and an inclination to learning. I hope to give my curiosity the widest field to explore whilst never losing my sense of youth and almost childish precocity.

I am without negotiation who I am, if you can’t take me by the spoonful or by the pinch of salt, I would never be any less one of the condiments of life, whether you choose to spice your life with my presence is neither here nor there. I would remain the best human I can be for myself and to anyone who considers me such.

Huis Doorn (1999), Rhodes Cottage (2019)

Men who touched the world

This morning, I read a story of how Cecil John Rhodes inspired WWI through a first fraught then interesting friendship between him and Kaiser Wilhelm II. The fascinating link between them is exemplified in a paperweight presented to the Kaiser in 1905 which included rocks from Cecil John Rhodes’ grave at the World’s View in the Matopos Hills, which is to be displayed at Huis Doorn. [The Guardian: The kaiser and the paperweight: how Cecil Rhodes helped inspire the first world war]

Now, I will not go into the lives of these two extraordinary yet flawed men who have left an indelible mark in world history, that is covered by more qualified archivists and historians, but I find myself filling in another blank in my experiences of travel interests spurred on by curiosity.

My own personal journey

It was August 1999, in January of that year, I had just come out of an almost 7-year relationship, but we remained friends and best of friends to date, we had gone on holiday to Brussels for a week, then he returned to London whilst I made my way up to the Netherlands by train to holiday with a friend I first met on a trip to Amsterdam and developed a friendship with over more than a year.

He picked me up from Utrecht Central Station and we drove to his house in Doorn. Just a few hundred metres from his house was this uniquely imposing building, Huis Doorn where I was told the Kaiser spent his final decades in exile after his abdication at the end of WWI. Audrey Hepburn’s mother had before his residency spend her childhood at Huis Doorn too.

My friend had a story, three times in the preceding decade with his mother by his bedside, they thought he was not going to make the morning, like a cat with nine lives he rose from the grip of AIDS to survive and thrive. His mother lived a few streets away, a native of Doorn. It was whilst in Doorn that I observed the solar eclipse of 1999 on the 11^th of August. [Wikipedia: Solar eclipse of August 11, 1999]

Huis Doorn – a personal tour

His mother, a dear lady in her early 70s was such fun to be with, we just bantered at length and as a child, her father was a groundsman at Huis Doorn, with their house neighbouring the grand house. She talked of times of having tea with the Kaiser who had many children and embraced into the Doorn community found time to entertain the children of the village and play games with them.

She told me of times when they, the children played hide-and-seek in the house which had secret rooms, doors, chutes, tunnels and much else. She offered to take me on a tour of the house on a bright afternoon, which we eventually did. A guided tour by someone who knew the Kaiser, the house, the stories, the gossip, the rumours and witnessed his demise was something not to be missed and we were the only ones there, after the public museum itself had closed.

Rhodes Cottage Museum – a personal tour

Just over 30 years later, I was in Cape Town with Brian and we decided to visit Rhodes Cottage Museum in Muizenberg, the cottage by the sea was where Cecil Rhodes spent his last days and died. Upon arrival there, the cottage was closed, it did not look like a typical museum, it is run by volunteers.

However, we went next door to ask for some information about the museum and as luck will have it, they had keys to the museum and the cottage was opened for Brian and I to tour at our leisure and return the keys when we were done. [Facebook: Rhodes Cottage Museum]

To view the bed in which Cecil Rhodes died and other elements of his personal history within the cottage rather than his public profile in monuments, endowments, and bequeathments was awesome. You got the essence of the man in his greatness and limitations of our humanity in our mortality. The Kaiser and Cecil Rhodes, after all they did, were now footsteps in the sands of time.

Houses with personal effects show a different picture of a person’s humanity with all the accoutrements of public life and achievement stripped away, I visit houses because I get to know the person is just human rather than superhuman or divine.

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