In the throes of maternal angst

Thinking motherhood

Mother is a word of many emotions, to which we all belong sometimes in terms and ways we cannot find to describe. Of all my siblings, it is obvious that we all have different views of mother almost like the Six men of Indostan.

Of love we have plenty and of experience we have many, in her duty it is impossible not to find praise and admiration, even gratitude will abound because she is devoted and unstinting, if that were the only perspective to consider, sainthood would beckon without asking.

Yet, the mother is human and imperfect, with passions and frailties that might shock or surprise. The memory of such is hurt and pain, leading a declension into resentment. Forgive, forgive, the heart cries, in pain, in pain, the soul weeps. For a child much can be done unawares, and to the child, the memory does not disappear.

Conflicted situations

Why am I plagued with a remembrance of abandonment, threat, and curse? For they leave marks indelible that the showers of love fail to wash away totally. Even somewhere in my spirit, I hear the divine ask to take care of it all, I guess I have not reached where I can cast it all upon him.

Much as I have questions, I probably do not need any answers, for there is no change to be expected of those who are determined they did no wrong. One has to be thankful that God is not like man for His longsuffering, mercifulness, lovingkindness, and faithfulness. How hard have I made my way to be more like God?

There are many ways in which I am blessed and even when mother is sent to Coventry, in spite of everything, a mother remains steadfastly praying, for the peace we all seek to live by.

Thought Picnic: On mother today and everyday

On being mothered

A mother remains mother, motherly, and mothering and I am blessed to have my mother whose voice gives soothing and calm to a child nearing 60. Even with the challenges she faces, she abandons that for concern and consideration of others in encouragement and prayer she speaks to the heart of me, telling me not to lose hope and assuring me that there is a God on the throne.

My health she asks after, my well-being is paramount, she mines the timbre of my voice to determine how I am holding up even when I give assurances. She remembers every detail of things I have shared with her to know whether there has been progress or new developments. 

At times, what might seem hopeless is given the radiance of possibility as her fervent desires are expressed in private supplication and entreaties for tremendous change to come.

My mother who sat and watched my infant head still watches over my greying bald head, a blessing immeasurable in duty and responsibility, a treasure beyond any calculable value that many a time, we never well appreciate. Yet, in the whisper and the sound of her voice when we converse and in the playback in the recesses of my mind as I reminisce, I know I am blessed.

My Eema of God, dear mother of life, Shalom! Shalom! May your heart’s desires be met with the grace, favour, love, and power of the God you serve so diligently. Amen!

Mothering Sunday, of Mothers and Baptism

Calling mother today

This Mothering Sunday was quite unusual, though it is commonly known as Mother’s Day, it is in fact supposed to be the Sunday when people visit their Mother church, usually, where you were baptised and it could be your local church. The extension to this is the opportunity to celebrate and honour one’s mother. [Mothering Sunday – Wikipedia]

These Coronavirus pandemic times have placed limitations on this celebration as the need for strict social distancing has closed places of worship and our mothers being more vulnerable members of society need to be protected from contracting the virus. It has meant keeping a distance from them. A friend posted visiting his mother where their social interaction happened in the front garden.

For me, I for the first time called my mother to wish her a wonderful Mother’s Day, I was taken aback at the sense of happiness, joy, and gratitude for calling her on this occasion. Then we talked about many other things as we do, between jest, banter, and seriousness. Obligatory prayers and advice, I felt good about it.

Memories of the Mother Church

Before I called, I dug up my Certificate of Baptism, I was baptised 45 years ago at the St Luke’s Anglican Church, Jos on the 31^st of March 1975. The Venerable E. A. Oyetade conducted the baptism and the witnesses, long forgotten now, but friends of my parents and members of the church then were Mrs. C. M. Obasoro, Alfred Olu Amanerimi who my mother said was from the Delta region of Nigeria, and Joseph Ajibade Kehinde.

My Certificate of Baptism with redactions.

Then, the church was in the Diocese of Northern Nigeria, until it was split off into the Anglican Diocese of Jos in 1980. This would be my mother church. It is however different from the church where I was confirmed some 6 years later at St Jude’s Anglican Church, Ijesha-Ijebu. [Anglican Diocese of Jos – Wikipedia]

I can only wonder about what has become of all these named people, whether the venerable rose up the church hierarchy to an archdeaconry or bishopric, I cannot seem to find any other information about him apart from what is on my certificate.

In the faith of my childhood

It is interesting that he wrote in my date of birth rather than my age as required by the column heading. The same can be said of the sponsors, they all have become part of my recorded history, faint memories in the minds of my parents of encounters in their son’s development of faith. People they trusted to stand as witnesses to my acceptance into the communion of the Anglican church.

Obviously, my acquaintance with other strands of Christian faith has led me to accept another baptism with full immersion in a river rather than the sprinkling of water at a font in the church building. To me, both are significant, I see the first like a baptism by John the Baptist and the second in Pentecostal circles as a baptism by the disciples of Jesus Christ, as Jesus himself did not baptise people, according to a narrative in the gospels. [BibleHub – John 4:2]

As I have written before, my wanderings in faith has led me back to the faith of my childhood in the Anglican Church. It is where I belong and find fulfilment.

Happy Mother’s Day!

When the cult of mother becomes a curse

Speaking of the oracles

Òrìṣà bí ìyá ò sí. This is a saying in Yoruba that is not that easy to translate without losing the fundamentals of meaning and context.

Òrìṣà in Yoruba is the core of the indigenous animist culture representing the supernatural, elemental spirits that are varied depictions of polytheistic deities, powerful, revered, worshipped and honoured. In the main, they traverse the early plane in legend as human and the heavenly plane as spirits, they are the mainstay of the deepest cultural identity of the Yoruba.

Only, a decade ago, I had to reflect on who the Yoruba were when I met two Cuban professors whilst on holiday who appeared to have more insight and knowledge of Yoruba myths, mythologies and legend than I ever knew. Steeped in superstition in what Lord Lugard dismissed as a ‘vague dread of the supernatural’, you probably would never understand the Yoruba without being Yoruba.

Blog - Who are the Yoruba?

The enduring hold of our oracles

I might extend that to suggest the Yoruba influence that remains strong in the practices as varied as Santería, Candomblé, Trinidad Orisha, Umbanda, and Oyotunji suggests some fundamental underpinning of the mother culture has been lost to the influx of new religions that have in most cases branded these traditions as savage, uncivilised and inherently evil.

Yet, these beliefs have sustained people for centuries and endure in the spirituality of the peoples and their descendants of the new world who were trafficked in the malevolence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Òrìṣà bí ìyá ò sí. Indicates that the mother or motherhood usually as seen from the perspective of the child is the genre of elemental spirits worthy and possibly demanding of worship, adoration and adulation.

In the cult of mother

Recently, in watching a film and a television dramatization, I was exposed to an interesting dynamic between mother and child, the blood relationship persisted to serve the purposeful hold of the Òrìṣà mother on the worshipper child, but it was progressively damaged through abuse brought on by drug addiction.

A child desires of a mother love, attention, care, protection, maybe encouragement and even guidance, but some children get little of that because the mother’s capacity to mother in a somewhat ideal mothering situation is impaired by personal struggles that distract the mother from that objective.

In the one case, as in the film, Moonlight, the mother only seemed to come to, late in life whilst in rehabilitation and she profusely apologised for being less of a mother than she could have been. It was a time of tears, of hugs and of healing.

Blog - My own #Moonlight story is not a movie

Breaking the cult of mother

In the television drama, it was the 6^th episode of the 5^th Series of Law and Order: UK, called Deal where a drug-addict mother could care less about her son, first blaming her 13-year old son who for years had been told he was responsible for her problems and then when she was owing money to her drug dealer, she sold her son to the drug dealer to abuse as he saw fit.

The Òrìṣà mother bond was kept strong with threats to kill the boy’s mother if he stepped out of line. It is not until he saw that his mother had indeed sold him that the wicked Òrìṣà mother – worshipper child hold and bond was broken.

The travails of mother and child

The Yoruba culture places great burdens of responsibility and duty on the worshipper child to serve and sacrifice to the Òrìṣà mother, which in many cases is a willing and honourable function in the life of a child who has had positive influences of the mother, mothering and motherhood.

We as child strive to do as much as we can to uphold that Òrìṣà – worshipper bond, yet, that bond can be broken, broken beyond repair by agency or acts of either or both mother and child. The addiction that belies incapacity does not have to be drugs, it could be any other activity that brings on the infirmity breaks that maternal bond.

At peace, away from mother

As I wrote in my blog on Moonlight, the case of my mother is an addiction to a syncretism that combines elements of Judaism and Christianity with African-initiated interpretations of scripture along with strange animist traditions enlivened by incantations of the Psalms, rituals and holy waters, the result of which has broken the Òrìṣà mother – worshipper child bond.

Whilst it pains me that there is no relationship of any note between us, I cannot help but see my mother through the prism of those other mother addicts with no prospect of a Moonlight ending, because somewhere down the line she sold that motherhood to her devotion, hoping my fear of it would bring me into line, like the drug dealer’s threat to the boy.

Coming to terms with this has meant that I have decided not to waste precious time trying to make peace, but as I learnt in a conversation with a dear friend, I must find ways to be at peace with myself. I write about these things because I believe I am not alone in this kind of experience, it is also my own personal therapy in resolving the deep conflicts of the heart.

My own #Moonlight story is not a movie

Why I write

I wrote the themes of this blog in my mind and my head as I walked back from the cinema after watching Moonlight, the 2017 Best Picture Academy Award winner.

Normally, I would write a review of the film and from it draw allusions and relationships that resonate with me. However, on this occasion, I would suggest everyone who has the opportunity go and watch the film.

What I have to write below touches on some very personal things that in my own coming of age I feel I must express and I am sorry if anyone after reading this is adversely affected. We bottle up too much of our experiences in silence and hurt, giving no option to expression and lessons to be learnt.

As a child

Moonlight comes to us in three chapters of life, of childhood, of adolescence and of adulthood, the story of understanding sexuality and the relationship between mother and child in the midst of addiction.

As a child, I first recognised issues with my sexuality that began to find expression originally in sexual abuse at seven, and more towards an affinity to people of the same sex from around that age. In the process, there were people who took advantage of me and took their sexual favours whilst I obliged like a catamite.

I was 3 when I noticed my mother’s own addiction, it was religion and the constant visits to prophets and soothsayers, the inclination towards syncretism and the rituals therein, the recitation of Psalms and the invocation of inscrutable angelic beings, none of which inspired confidence in me for what a useful religious devotion could be.

In my teens

As I moved into my teens, I grew rebellious and difficult, the relationship with my parents deteriorated and my mother’s addiction took its toll on her reasonableness, her marriage, our family and consequently her career. My baby sister’s medical condition sunk her under the mesmerising spell of a ‘prophet’ who I considered false, she lost her agency as my sister was shunted between hospital and grotto, my mother finding justification for her actions in such atrocious hair-raising conspiracy theories.

I sank into depression, failed at school, took religion and almost lost my bearings. Meanwhile, I found a different friendship, occasions for a sexual outlet, all guilt-ridden and self-loathing, yet taking a hold I could not deny. I, without a doubt, had same-sex attraction that I could not explain and understand other than beginning to come to terms with who I was and who I am.

I got older

As I entered adulthood, I found some stability and an accommodation for expressing both my religiosity and sexuality, a family that took me into their bosom and gave me a grounding that became the foundation of who I am today. My mother in her own way that done really terrible things to me, things she dismisses but no child can forget.

It irks me when people interfere thinking there are filial duties incumbent on me without any acknowledgement of the deeper issues that necessitate estrangement. My situation is not necessarily unique, but my experience is exclusively mine to understand and that hopefully would be respected by others.

Whilst I was bullied in secondary school, I was saved the physicality of beatings, people exercised power in other ways. In adulthood, before I left Nigeria, I was being blackmailed but I refused to pay up knowing it was the gateway to something beyond my control. I was ready to face the consequences, just as I had years before when I was caught in a sexual liaison with another man.

I accepted myself

On leaving Nigeria, I decided no more to live in the shadows, I reached a point of self-expression and acceptance of who I was and that freed me to enter relationships, find love and develop productive and useful friendships amongst people like me.

Beyond that, I was freer with information about my sexuality in my workplace and it meant I did not have to live a double life. It also meant my managers quickly nipped any homophobia in the bud. I was fortunate to be respected for who I was regardless of my sexuality.

Sex had its attractions, an outlet, a search of companionship, a kind of addiction and a self-destruct button that was pressed more times than I could reckon. In that scheme of things, I became HIV+, developed AIDS, had cancer, lost everything and rebuilt my life from scratch again.

Sadly for my father

My siblings probably do tolerate my mother, I cannot, she has no capacity to reflect and that is to reflect on anything she might have done wrong, she feels entitled and makes demands of entitlement to fealty from her children, failing which we are emotionally blackmailed. I stopped giving in to this kind of manipulation some time ago.

My father who by commission has done little wrong, but by omission failed to save me from the menace of my mother’s caprices sometimes finds himself on the cold shoulder that is given my mother. His ability to reflect and accept wrong is sometimes limited by his inability to empathise with settings in which he cannot find a frame of reference. I probably should be more forgiving of that inadequacy, but everything is quite emotionally draining, it is sometimes best to let sleeping dogs lie.

I don’t hate her

Invariably, I do not think I would ever get to wipe the tears from the eyes of my mother from her acknowledgement of the hurt that I have suffered at her own ‘motherly’ acts. I do not hate my mother, then I cannot convince myself that I love her either. We exist because of the accident of circumstance, not something I had the freedom or will to affect beyond the fact that I was born.

My moonlight is a story with parallels and analogies, it is not a movie, it is my life and the way I have been affected. In my moonlit night, I find the peace and tranquillity of accepting who I am, and in my coming of age, I cannot deny who I am. The pursuit of happiness endures and a better story will be written, either by me or by those who learn something from my life.

To hear the voice of motherhood

Feelings of utter discomfiture

Caught between the vagaries of life and unhealthy resentment, I watched this day approach with some foreboding and trepidation.

It felt like that uncomfortable feeling that greeted my emotions as I returned home from any outing, the long walk to the end of the street that represented the house that did not feel like home.

The building was comfortable, my room self-contained and private, but the atmosphere laid heavy like a cloud of despair, I rarely felt happy returning there.

Just over 28 years ago, that place became a closed chapter, a place I only visited because I had a duty to, but I avoided because I did not need to return for anything.

Reflect and review

Therefore, as my mother’s 71^st birthday approached, I found myself writing, Thought Picnic: To wilfully forget a parent's birthday – it was something I had the capacity to do and I had worked myself up for it – I could be that detached.

However, when I looked on Facebook to see a picture of my mother and a celebratory message from my sister, and the night before chatted to my sister-in-law about my misgivings, it became something I had to face, I must do the needful.

The first call did not get through, but a few hours after, I got through, and she was quite pleased to hear my voice just as I was to hear hers.

Soothed by motherliness

All the knottiness and tension dissolved and the soothing and comforting voice of motherhood in a mood of celebration and happiness became the balm to aches and pains of pent up uneasiness and angst.

We talked for longer than we usually do; mostly in English as we always did, exchanging pleasantries and making each other laugh with incredulity at the things we say and recollect of times past.

Then I wondered why things just soured, it is because there are still many things I have not shared for her to understand some of the tough journeys I have been through.

The little I shared brought prayerful encouragement and empathy. For all our differences and conflicts, she is quite capable of deep understanding and appreciation to show affection and compassion.

Of why and where

Why do we end up in conflict with our parents?

Where is the balance between the familiarity and the distance to make relationships work?

This is difficult to gauge, but it is something we on both sides have to work on, for to cherish and honour for as long as we have them and to forestall the deeper wounds of regret if we do not strive to make amends and make things right.

Even I realise how parent-child dissonance can reflect spiritual apoplexy meaning a lack of fulfilment in many areas of significance to a person’s sense of wellbeing.

I am glad I had the opportunity to reconnect, and I hope I can make more of this as time goes by.

Saddened Poles on Russian returns without other prejudices

Another Pole lost in Russia

The week past had a few things rattle us but somewhat show the amazing collage of life and its events that we live in to experience and contemplate on.

Just yesterday we were greeted with an unfortunate tragedy which cost the life of the President of Poland [1] on Russian soil as he was on his way to commemorate the massacre of the Polish elite by Soviet Russian forces 70 years before.

Our hearts go out to the people of Poland on this great loss, sometimes history pens itself long before have the time to collect the thoughts around us to understand the significance of how it would affect us – but today, it is sympathy and condolences that matter.

The theatre of the caged primate

In the middle of the week, we were offered a glimpse in a future that the ruling party of South Africa would do well to avoid. A youth leader who had become a law unto himself spewing out rhetoric that belongs to times we would rather not remember.

I was compelled to write [2] that Julius Malema was the face of the worst of African youth, many commentators were forced to agree even though the young man seems to have a populist message that appeals to the basest of our instincts with the ability to inspire to the reprehensible and the despicable.

This embarrassment of a person had quite embarrassed the leadership of the ANC that they were forced to release a statement [3] reprimanding the miscreant and they set out a range of principles and views as to how anyone in leadership should conduct themselves for the good of South Africa at large.

One would hope Mr. Malema’s propensity for the theatre of the encaged primate would be restrained for the redeemed character of a probably rational human-being with a sense of responsibility and comportment – my expectations of him are however not that high.

Artyom Savelyev

The story of the 7-year old Russian boy returned like a malfunctioning toy [4] to the “shop of adoption” by a 33-year old [The original news story say she was 27] American nurse still riles and irks beyond comprehension.

The more one reads of the tale, the more incensed one gets as they try to paint themselves as victims [5] in the light of their utterly abhorrent behaviour.

The questions pile up from how two supposedly motherly women (this includes the adoptive grandmother) could have schemed to commit this heinous act to how isolated they are in their community.

In the light of other adoption mishaps [6] of Americans on children of Russian progeny, one can almost thank the heavens for Artyom’s good fortune of not being murdered and buried in the back garden where his toys lay idle [7].

It is amazing that they did not seek professional help to address the issues they raised in their adoption annulment note but with the use of the Internet which is a revelation of the bad influences of seeking information and assistance online probably obtained legal advice and then procured a stranger to help dump the child 7 time zones away from his source orphanage.

A Nobody if not American?

However, what matters the more is the reaction of society to this contemptible travesty of humanity and care – the idea that this child has no rights in the United States because he had not yet been registered as a citizen even though the adoption had been finalised and he had been with his adoptive family for at least six months is inexcusable.

Surely, your life and welfare cannot be insignificant and inconsequential because you are not American, though if he were American the basic charge of child abandonment would have been leveled.

Indeed, it is probably for some of the most particular import to bear American citizenship but in this case, to split hairs about the citizenship Artyom whilst Russians take umbrage and Americans assume a position of indifference and the legal inability to act is just unspeakable at best – meanwhile, that rotten family obtain vindication by default.

I fear, it sets forth a precedent that affords the abuse of non-Americans with impunity and without consequence. There must be some responsibility and accountability for what happened to Artyom regardless of the fact that many Russo-American adoptions are a reflection of failings within the Russian system.

Add your voice to this matter by joining the Facebook [8] page that supports Artyom Savelyev.

Sources

[1] BBC News - President Lech Kaczynski's body returns to Poland

[2] South Africa: Malema, the glaring face of the worst of Africa's youth [akin.blog-city.com]

[3] allAfrica.com: South Africa: Zuma Repudiates Youth Leader Over Attack on Journalist

[4] Artyom Savelyev deserves a loving mother [akin.blog-city.com]

[5] Grandmother: Boy terrorized adoptive family in US : News from the Associated Press

[6] Russia furious over adopted boy sent back from US

[7] In Tenn., Reminders of a Boy Returned to Russia - NYTimes.com

[8] Facebook | Support Artyom Savelyev

Artyom Savelyev deserves a loving mother

It cannot be true

I could not be consumed with greater indignation when I read this story which was pointed out to me by a friend.

The news article headline read – Unwanted adopted boy sent back to Russia [1] – it was the kind of story that drew you into the detail, you just wanted to know why.

Something about our way of life and comforts in the West can sometimes lure us into a sense of entitlement and the drive to acquire any faddish thing that twinkles or sparkles to satisfy a whim.

In the case of Torry-Ann Hansen a 27-year-old unmarried “nurse” from Tennessee in the United States, it took her 6 months to realise that what she wanted was not a child but a Tamagotchi [2], however we now find ourselves in the midst of what by all means is cruelty beyond expression meted out to an innocent child by a selfish, inconsiderate and irresponsible adult.

An excursion to Moscow

This 7-year old child, Artyom Savelyev who apparently has a living birth-mother who in 2008 was relieved of her motherhood rights was adopted from an orphanage in the autumn of 2009, he has now been returned as a unaccompanied child on a 10-hour flight back to Russia with sweets, biscuits and colouring pens in his rucksack and welcomed by a stranger who was paid $200 by Ms Hansen to make him part of her history – a closed chapter.

Ms Hansen is unfortunate to have a name that sounds like that of the boy in the Hansel & Gretel [3] fairy tale but has cast herself most ominously as the evil child-eating witch in the story.

A 7 year old reality of life

There is no 7 year old child that comes with a zero-memory life whose behaviour defaults to a foetus template ready to be moulded like plasticine into some fancy toy perfect kid – even puppies at times need behavioural classes.

Whilst there might have been no clear information as to how and why the child ended up in the orphanage by reason of his mother losing the privilege of parenting, it is possible that it would have had some impact on the child. [Video in news story says the mother was drunken.]

The appearance of Ms Hansen as an adoptive mother might have been like a God-send for the child but the mothering skills of Ms Hansen are now more than questionable, her mental state must be suspect and as a nurse, her professional capability probably leaves patients in danger of serious harm.

Reprehensible indeed

Regardless of the supposed behavioural problems of Artyom, this impatient malcontent of a woman cannot have in 6 months decided that work of parenting was so impossible to dispatch that the motherly instinct that sent her on a journey to the far East of Russia in the Primorye Krai [4] region (Siberia to you and me) had been exhausted.

What this exemplifies is a fundamental flaw in our society which oozes of privilege, opportunity and inordinate acquisition; a shopping-mall complex that feeds the addictive yearning of a shopaholic who grabs at every luxury item without any thought of how it would eventually be paid for until the bills finally come in.

In this case, what was shopped for was a child, once the novelty had worn off the warranty allowed for the return of goods with a valid receipt.

In the bizarre case of life imitating the absurd is the heartlessness of this contemptible woman who subjected this child to a sense of indifferent detachment that would rarely be found in lower forms of life by telling the boy he was going on an excursion, then arranging for a complete stranger to pick him on arrival in Moscow and that was still about another 7 time zones from his native land.

The return slip? “I no longer wish to parent this child”, he lived with her for six months and he is still this child? [Cool me down with a pail of freezing water, please]

A hateful, spiteful woman

She passed the responsibility of return on to others when the least she could have done was to hand him back to the orphanage where she first acquired this bundle of love without consideration of the cost – the cheapest flight by Aeroflot to that region would have cost another $500 but it was convenient to entrust the care of the child to an Internet stranger for $200.

It must have been such good fortune on the child to not have fallen into the hands of traffickers or abusers, though the greatest abuse had already been meted out to the child by twice having motherly care withdrawn from him.

What the poor child could have done to have such great evil befall him from such an unstable person who no doubt is in need of supervised and regimented care escapes me but the saga must not end there.

It is an outrage that this woman would ever think she could walk away from this issue completely exculpated and vindicated; already this selfish action of hers has lead to the Russian authorities suspending the adoption of Russian children by US citizens.

This is right and just because there might really be the need for some re-education about what adoption entails and the attendant responsibilities of parenting which Ms Hansen appears to have lacked.

Justice for Artyom

Much as one would want to rain abuse on the woman, there has to be a criminal dimension to this woman’s actions if she is considered to be mentally stable and in control of all her faculties.

Society, no matter how liberal, tolerant and amenable should not countenance this without the utmost disgust, umbrage, scorn and retribution – NO CHILD – deserves to be treated in such a way and in almost unquenchable ire with exhausting exasperation, I say – Lock this woman up and throw away the key.

And honestly, that does not begin to bring a sense of justice to the plight of Artyom Savelyev.

Sources

[1] Unwanted Adopted Boy Sent Back To Russia - Yahoo! News UK

[2] Tamagotchi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Hansel and Gretel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Primorsky Krai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Im-Palin-g McCain's picket

Cultivating relationships

I have made many acquaintances but have very few friends, in fact, the people I call my friends, I have known for at least 15 years, putting that in the time frame of my last long-term partner, beyond that, it goes back 24 years.

Some 22 years ago, when I was made the class representative and a good representative I was, we were a noisy class and when someone challenged me about being the ring-leader of the noise-makers, I had to say if I did not represent my class in noise-making I would not be representing them effectively.

The real context of this is I left that school with 3 good friends, one of whom I have lost contact with in Russia, one with whom I have little contact in Nigeria and the other with whom I talk to quite frequently in London.

These along with the other friends are people I can trust with a lot, talk to about much and expect to act in my behalf just as if I were there without any fear for their judgement and whilst being assured of the quality of their person and integrity.

I am proud to say that where I have recommended these people on my own recognisance they have been accepted in my person and proved to be just as recommended and better.

I have also entered into business dealings with people through having first known them, known their judgement, their values and realised how we can work together for a common good, I do not take these issues lightly at all.

My congratulations to Sarah Palin

It is on this note that I first congratulate Sarah Palin [1] on being selected by John McCain as his vice-Presidential running mate. Until she was selected, I did not know anything about this governor of a backwater state called Alaska [2] apart from the bridge to nowhere [3] which has since been abandoned [4] by her and the indictments [5] of Ted Stevens [6], the longest serving GOP Senator.

What we read about Sarah Palin is interesting, a mother of 5 children, the last being born only in April 2008 with Down’s Syndrome, she is a devout Christian, pro-life and pro-gun politician who seems to be working at cleaning up Alaskan politics.

She has been governor for less than 2 years and might be implicated [7] in trying to obtain the sacking of her ex-brother-in-law who was undergoing a messy divorce and child custody batter with her sister as a serious abuse of power.

Gay abortions of gun marriage

On the issues that excite the conservatives about her candidacy, I find myself more pragmatic than fundamentalist and agree more with Senator Obama’s views on abortion, gun-control and gay marriage as he articulated in his acceptance speech [8].

The need to work on preventing unwanted pregnancies than jostling with the issue of abortion could mean condoms and contraceptives have a place in society, if we are less emotive about presumed societal decay. People would always have sex, it is probably better we ensure they have it safely and avoid regrettable situations.

Being painted as an Annie, Get Your Gun figure does nothing for me, it fact that gun use in the country differs from what guns get used for in the inner cities; there is a need for balance in enacting laws with due respect to the 2^nd Amendment to protect rights as well as protect lives.

If people have a right to love regardless of gender pairing, that love-relationship constitutes their family unit for those concerned such that sharing, caring and privileges should by rights and fairness accrue to that relationship.

I still contend that it is only those whose heterosexual marriages and relationships are weak that think gay marriage would impact on marriage as an institution. If same-sex couples had basic rights conferred on their partnerships, there would be no need for the marriage debate, but the absence of such partnership rights makes many want to go the whole hog and I see nothing really wrong with that.

Time for the United States of Americans

America within itself needs conciliation through pragmatic analysis of social issues not the promotion of political figures that accentuate the wedge issues that divide the people, polarise the nation and try to make traitors of people who disagree about these things.

We need the vision of a new president who brings together the whole country in the unity of purpose looking to change and grasping unto the edifying message of hope than one who dwells on the divisions that has turned America into one of the most divided countries on social issues.

Conservatives and liberals alike have to recognise that they are all American first and the politics of being disagreeable because of the difference of opinion has to stop – I must contend the Obama offers the healing balm of reason that John McCain cannot deign to offer to his most beloved country.

This is no great thing

Nevertheless, I am not excited by any stretch of the imagination about McCain’s choice of vice-President. It is amazing that after so many years in Washington, his numbered years and the need to buttress areas where he is weak, he has chosen to lay such a responsibility on someone he has only met once before, with whom he has no particular affinity.

Nobody can convince me that this selection is borne of some deliberate and considered thinking that binds people who have developed a relationship of mutual aims, goals and vision.

The fellowship of minds

I have just started a new job today, the company has in the past employed the best consultants money could buy to solve intractable problems with solutions that sound amazing but yield none of the expected results.

The team has now regrouped into one that seeks shared experiences with others who they have worked with before to address the problems with the fellowship of minds that are geared to succeed rather than push a particular solution provider’s agenda which just accumulates hours of expensive waffle.

I find myself amongst people who I have worked with in different companies over the last 5 years, who I know, who I respect, who have a shared vision and acknowledging each others expertise and who have gathered together to be a winning team – we know we would crack those problems because we have developed a relationship of peers and expertise.

After an exemplary life

The choice that John McCain has made is the most cynical ploy to emotively use gender sympathies and religious adherence to befuddle voters into a false sense of thinking sameness brings comfort, it offers the opportunity for a complacency that imagines things would be done the way we believe we would do things. How further from the truth can we be about judgement and the assessment of character?

It is a presidency not a bishopric that is at stake, it is about human government not church government. I would be fearful of an ultra-religious person who dreams dreams, sees visions and reckons that God commands them to take some action without considering all the consequences for the basis of secular government.

America has been too divided along wedge issues to tolerate more of the same again for 4 more years.

I am surprised that no one sees that after 72 years of a rather distinguished and exemplary life John McCain could find no friend, colleague, confidant, mentor or protégé in his long political, social, business or military life and career to join him in the most important quest of his life but a stranger.

No judgment no story

This man has no judgment; he fails woefully at what should have been the culmination of relationships with other men and women he has met in all walks of life; this should have had a history and story that fills us with awe, but he picks someone he met only six months ago.

He is both a maverick and breathtakingly reckless; the levers of world government must never be within his grasp.

There is no greater poverty of spirit and goodwill than to share your greatest stage with strangers rather than with friends, with people you hardly know, in order to prove you are different.

This is exactly what makes John McCain unworthy of the calling to which he aspires, he has made vain a lifetime of experiences to hug the limelight alone and he has dangled a juicy bait that has everyone whooping too distractedly to realise that they are being patronised by a consummate denier of his legacy and his original platforms for the want of power.

A picket not a ticket

It has left the Economist asking Bring back the real McCain [9] in their leader this week, just as John Kerry compared and contrasted Senator McCain with Candidate McCain in his speech [10] at the Democratic National Convention last week.

The selection of Sarah Palin does not present us with a McCain-Palin ticket, rather it is an appalling McCain picket; it is not revolutionary but reactionary, it not inspired but desperate, it is not conciliatory but anarchist, it not cultured but vulgar, it is not considered but rash, it is maverick in its context and reckless to the extreme.

For a man of John McCain’s stature to impose on a nursing mother he hardly knows regardless of her abilities and suitability a responsibility so large as to create the most exacting pressures on her needs to satisfy motherhood and the call of office is in the least irresponsible and at the most heartless.

If the 3:00AM advertisement [11] would ever question the ability of anyone to meet the demands of a great crisis, just imagine accommodating that under the stress of nursing a child that most definitely needs that extra bit of care and having another child away in harm’s way in a war that should never have been started.

I am sorry, this selection is not gentlemanly at all and it proves once and for all that Senator John McCain is probably better a senator and definitely not material for a president by any stretch of the imagination.

The man is just not the man we used to know.

Sources

[1] Sarah Palin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Alaska - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] The Bridge to Nowhere: A National Embarrassment

[4] 'Bridge to nowhere' abandoned - CNN.com

[5] Nation & World | Ted Stevens indicted, longest-serving GOP senator | Seattle Times Newspaper

[6] Ted Stevens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[7] Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[8] Obama: We are better than these last eight years - CNN.com

[9] The presidential race | Bring back the real McCain | Economist.com

[10] Transcript: Sen. John Kerry On Foreign Policy : NPR

[11] Hillary Clinton, 3am commercial White House Ad - Truveo Video Search