A view in city living

The apartment

The chute is at the end of the corridor to the right, through four doors, some serving as fire doors and others I am yet to properly determine apart from the fact that one of them is useful.

The communal living in an apartment block offers an interesting social experiment in engaging with people you don’t know but leave the evidence of both their existence and irritation.

The building we access with electronic codes and are not supposed to let anyone tailgate us into the building if they are unknown to us. Yet, we all somehow work on the premise that anyone who follows so closely behind us probably has business in the building that is unlikely to be nefarious.

The people

I am of a reticent disposition, I rarely tailgate access to a building where I am a guest, I will wait for the host to acknowledge me and give me access to the building. At certain times, my bell rings and the person at the door is unknown, to the unknown, I will not provide access, no matter the tales they have to tell.

Our post-boxes stacked on each other within a hall to the back entrance is on two sides on the walls and there is nothing as irksome as receiving junk mail, but worse still is those who drop their unneeded mail on the floor. I will be asking the concierge to keep an eye on the closed circuit television camera to catch out the culprit.

I could not help but notice that someone had taken a brutal implement to the post box for flat 27 and the door to the post box is left open, warped and damaged. It is likely that the occupant of that apartment is tenant rather than an owner because no owner would nominally exhibit such vandalism.

The chute

The room where the electricity meters are for each floor sees much activity; parcels and packages delivered to the concierge who serves many purposes including this; storing the goods in this room which is more a cubicle.

The activity in that space presages inactivity in my department, thrice goods have been stored there and in the process, the main switch to my apartment tripped off. There was a time I was away in South Africa and after the first week out of four I could no more contact my computer, well, the power had gone and with that, all was stored in my freezer went to waste with an unbearable stink.

That was a number of visits to the chute that allows every floor to send their household rubbish and waste apart from recycled stuff to the huge waste bins in the basement. You chuck your rubbish in the chute and it should slide down and land with a thud that you should hear.

Sometimes, it requires the swinging of the chute door to allow the bag fall through, yet some on my floor do not wait to see that their rubbish has left the receptacle and fallen into the bin. Usually, these are bigger than normal bags and it takes a bit of working at to let the bag fall through before you could put yours in.

The Concierge

The absence of housetraining that includes the consideration of others is evident in these bugbears, litter, rubbish, spills, smells, blockages, noise and those are just a few of the problems with sharing an apartment block. Were it not for the presence of the concierge to attend to some of these issues, existence here would have bordered on the unbearable.

This is life in the city centre, the conveniences, however, almost always outweigh the inconveniences.

Opinion: No Time to Pat Mr. Fox on the Head

I believe

I do believe that animals need to be cared for and treated humanely; they have a place in this world as much as any of us who live on earth. We must however distinguish between pets, domesticated animals, exotic animals and wild animals, properly categorising them and handling them in their appropriate habitats.

However, I also do believe that man by reason of providence immemorial is at the top of the hierarchy of the animal kingdom and for that we have a responsibility of husbandry of the earth, the inhabitants and its resources.

Sensible usage

More pertinently, we have come to the understanding that there must be judicious and fair use along with conservation to ensure that we enjoy the fruits of the earth but not exhaust them that those who come after us end up living in a barren world.

We can use but we must be careful not to abuse, we can manage but resist the licence to plunder; there should be a balance in the way we work the system for the benefit of all.

The fox has moved

Now, I was not one in favour of the ban on fox hunting, my opinion was it had been an age-old tradition though at the same time a celebration of the class system which is patently British and it is something we cannot divorce ourselves from for the sake of modernity.

There might neither be consequence or causality but the news that a four-week-old baby boy was attacked in his cot by an urban fox was as terrifying as it is troublesome that it needs to be addressed before a more unspeakable event becomes the news.

The fox has somewhat moved from the counties and the shires into the home, our homes and that is just so not right.

Fox on the throne

What is quite bothersome is the fact that the fox did not scare easily when the mother of the child approached it; she literally had to fight off the fox that had the literally bitten off the finger of the child as if it felt it was being denied its well-earned meal.

The fox had gone on the hunt, albeit in an urban area, gained access to a building, found a baby and sunk its feral rabid teeth into the child without any consideration – as if foxes have the powers of consideration that human-being have.

This is just an unacceptable development, a rise of urban fox numbers helped by the way we discard our rubbish and the lack of a natural predator to keep the numbers down.

What to do

In the longer term, we do need decide how we secure our homes, to manage better how we dispose of our food waste that foxes do not see our urban areas as easy places to feed and be fattened, our encroachment into the usual habitats on the outskirts of town needs to be curtailed but as a matter of urgency, this issue is one of vermin, a pest and the need for a controlled process of extermination to rid our cities of thousands of foxes.

It is impractical to have them relocated and they are not necessarily exotic enough first for domestication or for mass deployment into zoos, the hard truth is they need to be culled, we should make no bones about that.

Before some animal rights advocates rise up in arms about the need to pat the fox on the head as it makes chicken drumsticks and chicken wings of the thighs and arms of our vulnerable babies that we have simply left to sleep peacefully in their cots, there is no reason for foxes and us to live in the cities, they belong in the bush, in holes that they by nature used to dig to live in and must either by management or otherwise be sent back to the bush where they belong.

My simple view is this – this is no time to pat the fox on the head.

Nigeria: A place called Gege

Working the government we have

It started off as a seemingly innocuous but general posting on Twitter. “If you cannot have the government you want, use the one you have. They are there to work for you.”

It was a variation on Luther Vandross’ song which had the line, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

The nature of Nigerian politics is such that the winner takes it all and those in power have the ability to influence and change things for the better of the people.

Somehow, they are not naturally disposed to attending to their responsibilities and the duties we voted then into office for, it appears they need to be persuaded, goaded, coerced, forced, shamed, challenged by whatever means to be sensitive to the needs of the people and become engaged in the work of good governance.

The role of government

In my view, it is the government that creates the legal framework within which socio-economic development can thrive – civil society needs to know that they can explore, innovate, research, inform and develop enterprise and resource in the setting conducive to advancing their communities and ensuring progress.

However, if civil society hugs the side-lines and just engages in criticism and antagonism they will never engage the government enough to help them realise their aspirations and goals for progress in their communities and the country at large.

Constructive analysis matters

The involvement of the general voting populace the elections was a force to be reckoned with and it must not be allowed to fizzle out, that whole momentum needs to be channelled into demanding accountable and responsive government for everyday day until the next elections.

It was interesting to read the analysis of the first few days in office of the new governor of Imo State by Joachim MacEbong titled Is Rochas for Real? [1] It represents the kind of objective and genuine assessment and analysis we require of the so-called informed and one is hopeful that it will become the trend – it was this that inspired my original Twitter posting.

This lead to a Twitter discussion on the indifference of government to the plight of its citizens and this was exemplified in the comments of Adebiyi Adewale, a Mass Communications major who had seen problems in a suburban ghetto of the city of Ibadan in Nigeria.

A place called Gege

Gege – It was the first I had heard of Gege and there was not much information on Google about the place. As I had been informed, it has serious socio-economic problems of poverty, poor schools, high truancy rates, teenage pregnancy, drug-abuse and probably many other inner-city evils we get regaled with in the news or on television.

Gege calls for a radical intervention but it appears to be invisible to those who matter or the problems seem too intractable that the system will rather work against any agitation for progress than make to change and develop the place.

It might well initially fall on the shoulders of Adebiyi Adewale to give Gege a global profile, a location on Google Maps for starters, the publication of the pictures he has taken of the place, an objective and incisive analysis of the issues and the problems affecting the community and then growing the necessary critical mass to make government react.

It is hard work but possible

Fela Durotoye started something similar for Mushin in Lagos called the Mushin Makeover [2], there is the fear that the initiative has run out of steam, it is no doubt hard work to first drum up support, garner momentum and then keep the interest for lasting goals [3] to be achieved – it is not a task for the faint of heart, celebrity is not enough as engagement has to be enduring and persistent.

Gege is probably symptomatic of many other places in Nigeria and probably typical of the communities show-cased in the Welcome to Lagos series shown by the BBC last year.

What I have learnt so far is there is a place called Gege and there is a Mass Communications expert who will bring his skills and expertise to bear and hopefully bring lasting change to that community, as for the details about the place, I am interested enough to read more about Gege and if you know something about Gege or communities like Gege in Nigeria, it is time to put them on the map and within the sights of those who have the responsibility to facilitate the change those communities need.

Sources

[1] JMac’s Blog – Is Rochas for Real?

[2] Fela Durotoye – Mushin Makeover: History is Made

[3] GemStone Nigeria – Mushin Makeover