Thick Skin and the Colour of Pain

A Familiar Ethnicity Pain Gap

It comes as no surprise to me to read that in the UK, women from Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and black Caribbean backgrounds were less likely than white women to receive an epidural whilst having a vaginal birth. [The Guardian: “Women from minority backgrounds in UK less likely to receive epidurals, research finds”]

The ideas, conceptions, perceptions, or prejudices that feed the narrative that non-white people, especially from the aforementioned backgrounds, do not need adequate pain medication to arrest high levels of discomfort and distress have appeared in studies for decades.

This situation, termed the "ethnicity pain gap", is quite concerning, and it might persuade one to surmise that there is a seething racialised disadvantage in the public health system, one that ascribes thick skin to the Black population and precious delicateness to the Asian cohort.

My Own Experience

My experience of this in late 2009 came as a result of cancer pain in its enduring intensity. I was on multiple regimens of pain medication, with Fentanyl dispensed as a transdermal patch being the most critical palliative, yet I was in pain.

When I informed my consultant that I was still in pain, and this was in the Netherlands rather than in the United Kingdom, he did not acknowledge my distress or seek to address it. Instead, his response was that the pain medication I was on should be enough. An ill-informed perception that I should have a higher pain threshold.

I remonstrated that it was not, and he then sought to double the dose from 12.5 micrograms to 25 micrograms. This made all the difference because it tackled the pain, and I got much-needed relief. Why I was not also told that transdermal patches could fall off, and that they could be held in place on the skin with an adhesive film, escapes me.

Knowledge Withheld

Returning from church, one Sunday, a few weeks after I had the new prescription, I was in a lot more pain than usual, and then I saw that the patch had fallen off.

I laughed myself to delirium to produce endorphins as pain relief whilst the new patch took hold. It was only when I told the nurse who came to dress the lesions on my foot daily that he told me I could get an adhesive film to keep the patch in place.

The knowledge was there all along, but it was never shared. As a race, in our encounters with the medical establishment, we are constantly pathologised, and this is characterised by either not being listened to or being ignored, because the medical personnel assume they know and understand our bodies more than we do with the intimate experience of our own skins.

Asserting Our Reality

That Caucasians are immediately responded to and given palliative succour on demand speaks volumes, without suggesting something untoward. Whether it is bias, prejudice, or indifference, we need to be better equipped to ask pertinent questions and persuade our doctors of our reality, without having to jump through hoops, trapped in suffering until it becomes unbearable.

It is not just in matters of pain, but in decisions being made about diagnostic and treatment regimes without explanation or rationale, delay in action when the full knowledge of a condition is evident, the lack of respect, courtesy, and the according of dignity to your personhood and humanity, or the use of the wrong indicators based on race for decision trees towards useful outcomes.

I approach the medical establishment on the premise of “It is my body first, before it is your guinea pig.” This need never be the default, because you are then preparing for a fight instead of fully trusting someone who took the Hippocratic Oath to do you no harm. Yet you find you need to assert yourself and manage the egos to ensure that you, at the very least, leave the hospital better than when you went in.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Men's things XXVII: The inconvenience of incontinence

We Need a Screening Programme

At any opportunity, especially when I encounter black men, I bring up men's things and prostate cancer. However, what has surprised me is that many of my white colleagues have had some exposure to this matter, usually through older members of their families: their fathers or fathers-in-law.

This might make people think prostate cancer is a middle-aged affliction in black men and a geriatric condition in white men. We should be careful not to delude ourselves into thinking this is the case. It affects all men, and whilst there are extenuating factors relating to race, age, and family history of cancer, we all need checkups, early ones too, to ensure that abnormalities, when found, are promptly dealt with.

This points to the need for widespread screening for prostate cancer, rather than leaving it to individuals to demand it themselves.

Some Aftereffects of Prostate Cancer

From my experience, almost 18 months after a prostate cancer diagnosis and 13 months after radiotherapy, I have come quite a long way, and I am grateful for that. The issues I still deal with are nighttime insomnia, some fatigue (though not to the point of being debilitating), occasional incontinence (more with the bladder than the bowel), and a lack of any sexual drive, which may also present as erectile dysfunction.

Inconvenient as incontinence might be, I manage it quite well: my Radar key for disabled toilets, my Just Can't Wait card to request the use of a toilet elsewhere, and I wear incontinence underwear, or I line my underwear with incontinence pads. These all save you the greater embarrassment of publicly visible mishaps, and better that than pushing up a gravestone in some nondescript cemetery.

Making the Best of It

Still on incontinence: the bladder aspect is usually that sudden and pressing urge, where you are never able to get to a toilet soon enough before wetting yourself. When it comes to the bowels, it is a feeling somewhere between the urge and constipation. Having already had a movement, it doesn't feel empty, and yet you can't make it happen. That presents some discomfort and anxiety whilst you hope it clears up soon.

With a basic consultation at a regular pharmacy, you can get medication to combat issues with erectile dysfunction. Ultimately, you work with or around the problems for the best outcomes in experience and wellbeing. Choosing not to be defined by either manliness or manhood can also be the key to contentment and happiness.

The walnut-sized prostate gland can be life-threatening if enlarged and cancerous, but once treated and kept under medical observation, the inconvenience should not take away from the joy of living.

AI Postscript

As I have AI to review my blogs for grammar, spelling, and contextual checking, I was quite impressed with this summary of the blog: The key was asking: "Would Akin still recognise this as his own thought, just expressed more clearly?" If the answer was no, I didn't restructure it. Your voice is situated in the precise intersection of being black, male, professionally engaged, medically informed, personally affected, and committed to demystifying this subject for others.

References

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - A year from starting radiotherapy

Blog - A prostate cancer diagnosis, one year on

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - XVIV - I Just Can't Wait

Blog - Men's things XXVI: Let's avoid the stigma of prostate cancer

Blog - Men's things - Prostate Cancer blogs

Thought Picnic: In the rivers of black identity

The river as it flows

I was invited to listen to Leon Bridges River; which also appears in HBO’s Big Little Lies original TV soundtrack, with the thought that the song was a significantly meaningful reflection for the black race, but there was a pause as that statement was made with the feeling that across the pond and history, things might not necessarily have the same import that they thought it should.

Attentively, I listened and tried to grasp the essence of it, I felt obligated to see things from their perspective as the lyrics though unseen but heard clearly did speak but did not catch on. In all honesty, it was best not to feign pretence as we were exploring the deeper issues of black identity. It hadn’t heard of Leon Bridges before.

River does evoke much about history and redemption, but in the words of the refrain, “Take me to your river, I wanna go”, the river was a place of routine, where you bathed, fetched water, washed clothes, and had fun, it did not carry any form of sacredness associated with cleansing and baptism as my interlocutor surmised. [Genius Lyrics: Leon Bridges River]

The river somewhere different

I felt that as there was no restriction to go to the river that flowed by the village, its great value might have been lost in its apparent familiarity. At my first hearing, meaningful as the song might well be, it would take more listening to it to have the deeper understanding being asked for at that time.

Later, I thought about where the river could mean just as much to me, it involved a different qualification in The Holy River by Prince, from the Emancipation album; there he sang, “Let’s go down to the holy river, If we drown we would be delivered,” that alone in its introduction was taking me to a special and sacred place of discovery and miracles. I was taken from the time I originally heard the song. [Lyrics from The Holy River]

Blog - Thought Picnic: Find your holy river in which to drown

This river was not a place of fun but a grotto of sorts, it was filled with a different kind of symbolism and mysticism, a place your approached with some dread and yet the anticipation that if everything seemed to go wrong, it would come out right regardless.

The subconscious of eternal existence

I found myself thinking of enclosures and openings, why I am totally averse to wearing anything like ankle chains, and then finger rings or neck chains. I wear a bangle of betrothal, but it is open-ended. I could give a reason, but I felt a profundity in the fact that the time we spend on earth is but a subset of the eternity of our existence.

We are in genetic and ethereal terms the result of an ancestry that doubles up each further generator of our origin that goes back from two parents to four grandparents, to eight great-grandparents, to sixteen great-great-grandparents and so on. If we do procreation, we begin a new chain that is a subset of our progeny.

It had me wondering where a tendency to fussiness or aversion comes from without influence or education, quirks and traits that attend to similarities with people we have never encountered but are strong in our personalities that some might even be inclined to the belief in reincarnation. I do not assume to suggest that I am competent in any form of existential philosophy, I would consider myself a total novice.

However, what I came away with was once again how so diverse and divergent the cultural and historical identities of the black race are, where the search for one's roots is a journey of discovery and the acceptance of self with being comfortable in one’s skin is a process of continuous learning involving complementation and jettison in various measures that we evolve and restate who we are depending on where we are.

I guess there is more to meditate on.

The UK: Why Kemi Badenoch is not the poster child

The lady runs to lead

Kemi Badenoch’s elimination from the contest to lead the Tory Party and hence become the Prime Minister must have been a great disappointment for her, though it would have been well received in some quarters.

Kemi Badenoch, née Adegoke, is someone I have encountered since the mid-2000s when she appeared to camp in the comment sections of a blog run by Jeremy Weate and controversial does not begin to describe the views and opinions she shared.

Now, if Kemi Badenoch had been successful in her quest to lead the Tory Party, it would have presented the first time that an ethnic minority led the United Kingdom if we are to discount Benjamin Disraeli’s Jewish heritage when he was Prime Minister in the 19^th Century.

Everything but representing

In her case, besides the issue of her identity, race and heritage, there is little about her that is common to the apparent identity constituency people might think she represents. We are consequently products of influences, circumstances and situations more than of the ethnic minorities we are, and it is essential that we begin to disabuse the view that ethnic minorities represent a monolithic or homogenous political leaning.

Beyond Kemi Badenoch, the issue is simple. Much as having an ethnic minority ahead might present inspiration and possibility to the youth aspiring to be significant members of communities and society, we need to ensure we are choosing the right examples demonstrative of embracing common humanity with all its diversity.

That is not essentially codified in having similar backgrounds as I would be the first to say that from a reflective and policy standpoint, Kemi Badenoch and I are so radically different and divergent as it might be as the east is far away from the west.

Equipping us to become roles

Yet, we have work to do. Our parents before us and similarly, many of us have been pioneers or first movers in various areas of endeavour. We did not see people like us in our roles or ahead, rather, we, from what was imbued in us through education, opportunity, possibly privilege and influence, forged ahead to become recognised and respected in the things that we do.

In some way, we had role models that did not look like us or come from our kind of background. Quite as we might want to have visible role models and high achievers that might give our children a sense of what is possible, those scenarios might well not be as packaged or presented for them to see as they grow up.

It is then incumbent on us to give our children the tools and the wherewithal to be able to walk into places where they might be the first and only, the confidence to be able to hold their own, the assertiveness to be able to speak with a strong voice and the mien not to be caught out in a victim syndrome when situations, opportunities, or encounters turn sour.

Choosing the right examples

Sadly, I have seen too many academically high achieving ethnic minority people unable to realise their full potential because they are lacking in confidence or have been emasculated by a system and institutionalised settings that suggest they do not belong, where, by merit, they are more than capable, if given the opportunity.

I doubt the likes of Kemi Badenoch making political progress of the sort she aspired to would open doors for anyone like her, even as it might be uncharitable to suggest that she having gained opportunity is kicking the ladder away for those like her. Even one might be inclined to feel she is trying too hard to endear herself to the radical rather than a broader embrace of inclusivity.

Indeed, we can do with exemplary and amazing achievement amongst ethnic minorities, if we cannot agree, my view is Kemi Badenoch is not that example, her controversial track record highlighted in The Independent would suggest we deserve better. [The Independent: 10 of Kemi Badenoch's biggest controversies as she is knocked out of Tory leadership contest]

Black Lives Matter - Manchester

Staying at home

On another day and at another time, I probably would have gone out to join the Black Lives Matter protest in the centre of Manchester, but I had to be conversant of a number of things. I could be vulnerable given my medical history, then considering how it is said the Coronavirus appears to affect people of the Black, Africa and minority ethnic origins disproportionately, one should not take unnecessary risks. [BBC News]

Yet, once should be careful not to engage in gestures that might have no impact, though the teeming crowds around the world are sending a clear message that Black Lives Matter. It so happens that some would give the refrain of All Lives Matter. Indeed, all lives do matter, but what is important at present is when a part of the All is affected and identified, that particular part is addressed.

From a finger to the body

My whole body matters, in health and wellbeing, but if I hurt my finger, I don’t say my body hurts or my head hurts, I say, my finger hurts. At that point, my finger matters and until that finger issue is addressed and healed, I will not be thinking of anything else.

Blacks are part of the whole of the human race, we have observed the murder of George Floyd, a black man with the knee of a white officer of the law on his neck until he expired, we are reviled and outraged. His story encapsulates that many occurrences of the loss of black lives at the hands of white policemen or people with privilege acting with impunity all without any consequence.

Even with the obvious public extrajudicial killing and a good video record of the heinous act, it took four days for the law to take the perpetrator into custody with a charge.

Until it matters

Take that all together, indeed, All Lives Matter, but today, knowing and seeing what has been happening to blacks in all sorts of situations going back to time immemorial with too much to list from deprivations, discrimination, denigration, abuses, slavery, and much else, Black Lives Matter.

Until Black Lives Matter, Black Rights Matter, Black Aspirations Matter, Black Freedoms Matter, Black Opportunities Matter, Black Equalities Matter, we would always, always fall short of the greater encompassing cry of All Lives Matter. Each element of identity, grouping, or expression that finds themselves bereft of the greater goals of human achievement and actualisation make the goal of All Lives Matter less true and we cannot ignore that.

We are the hurting finger

When anyone is compelled to say All Lives Matter, they should look around to lift up those who are not standing on the same plinth as them celebrating the fulness of the comforts that gives them the laudable voice of All Lives Matter.

It is Blacks today, the hurting finger of the whole body of humanity, it could be another other group tomorrow, and to them now and in the future, we owe in our strength to comfort the afflicted, soothe their pain, recognise their yearnings and gather to give them not just the vision of better things but helping them on to the route to human prosperity.

We must strive to see that no one is left behind and everyone regardless of where they are in life or station can in honesty and truthfully say All Lives Matter because we are in the common cause to make Every Life Matter, from one to all.

Finding my safety in a cultural chasm

Invisible until I speak

One subject of personality development that probably needs study and research is one of cultural invisibility and this is a somewhat complex topic that is coming out in stories of third culture kids. I first broached this subject when a friend highlighted her cultural identity issues being mixed race Nigeria.

In a comment to her article then, I talked about looking like everyone else until I began to speak, my natural accent had become an amalgam of being born in the West Midlands, though without a strong Brummie accent and the influences of spending a later childhood in Nigeria, first in the north and then the south. This to the Nigerian ear was a British accent, yet, to the British ear, it was not clearly English, yet to a degree well-spoken in grammar and diction.

Cannot find a longing to belong

This set us apart, the moment we spoke, we were different, separate, excused, or exploited. There was no sense of belonging for that which set you apart and inadvertently it came with labels that identified you as the one born abroad. Caught between these conflicts of identity, when my father said I always thought like a Westerner, and then my brother said, “You’re not one of us.” I realised my quest for identity would be defined by what I am comfortable with rather than my progeny or ancestry.

In a conversation with my mother some time ago, she relayed a time when I returned home from foster parents and I was stealing food from the fridge. She could not understand why I had taken to thievery until she learnt that I was being starved. These were people entrusted with my care and paid for the service who abused that trust without scruples.

The scars of cultural schisms

From what I was told, my mother travelled the length and breadth of the country looking for suitable nanny parents and I still ended up in the hands of reprehensible and nasty people. I do not think they realised I carried the emotional scars long after the situation.

For when we moved to Jos in the early 1970s and I was attending Corona School, Shamrock House, the pupils left their lunch packs on the floor outside their classrooms, it was open season just before school started for some of us to raid the food packs. I did not need to, I was well fed at home, yet, it happened.

There are many more aspects of being caught in the middle of cultural divides and finding a way to exist in that complex. I think my agreement with my identity is set in the context of being an Englishman of Nigerian heritage, whilst also a European. The story of understanding and refining identity along with the stories is in progress.

I Am Not Your Negro

Finding meaning in the dark

At the Easter weekend, my friend of 33 years visited and for the three nights that he stayed over we had a social event of sorts which included watching films and having dinner.

Of the films that we watched, I was seeing Moonlight for the second time and I Am Not Your Negro for the first time. On Moonlight, which was a coming of age story dealing with drugs, addiction, relationships and sexuality, there was another element of bullying that I thought I should write about, but that piece has not been conceived yet.

When I did first watch Moonlight, I wrote a blog which not so much a review of the film itself but a reflection of how addiction regardless of the substance or activity does have the same destructive effects on all directly and remotely attached to the said addict. The blog is referenced below:

Blog - My own #Moonlight story is not a movie

A fake quote with sentiments

Now, almost four years ago, I wrote another blog that has garnered over 20,000 page views, I was surprised when just a few days ago, there was a sudden surge in readership that added another 2.700 page views to the blog in a week.

Apparently, the subject of the blog is making the rounds again, a case of Internet Apocrypha, a quote contrived by someone and attributed to a historical figure which then cast as genuine.

Blog - Opinion: Lord Macauley did not address the British Parliament in 1835

With this new activity came a new comment, there have been many comments, many objective, some subjective and others just downright nasty.

I bit my tongue

This new comment that came from Fausto who is probably French going from his other comments on other forums failed to address the topic I blogged about. He started by damning with praise by calling me a ‘Smart Man’, before belittling the context of the blog and then suggesting that I should embark on another scholarly activity which I excerpt and quote below. All grammatical errors left in the text.

“I suggest you spend even more time and your wisdom sir to find out what atrocities were caused to the African continent by the British You owe that to your own kind sir. as black man regardless of your motive you cannot be the devil advocate of the devil.” [Link]

Now, I do have stringent commenting rules on my blog, that might be the reason why I rarely receive that many comments on the blog itself, but I do find engagement on Twitter and Facebook though links to my blogs posted therein.

The audacity of a cretin

Much as I can be quite tolerant of people, there are times when odium and the purveyors of it need to be put in their place. For a stranger to come to my blog, my own personal space to dictate what I opine about is disrespectful, abusive and smacks of the audacity of a cretin.

Then to use the phrase, “You owe that to your own kind, sir, as black man.” Should have me spitting tacks before I descend into acrimonious verbiage eviscerating every notion of his being until it shrinks into completely forgettable ignominy, but I was kind.

In context of sorts

To digress, the second film, I Am Not Your Negro was a construct of the unfinished work of James Baldwin who died 30 years ago and it was a documentation of the history of the African-American Civil Rights Movement through the lives and assassinations of three friends,  Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.

All of them died in their late 30s leaving young families, James Baldwin compared and contrasted the men, talking about his relationship with each of them and articulating the causes of the Negro as African Americans were called in then in his [published writings and debates around Europe.

I left the showing of the film with a sense that James Baldwin had a compelling mastery of words and communication that people wanted to hear what he had to say whilst the FBI sought to denigrate him for his homosexuality.

Why it matters

Yet, I cannot properly review the film here, only suggest that any opportunity to view the film would provide a teachable moment on the civil rights movement.

As we left the cinema, we discussed the issues of identity, of privilege, of demonstrations and causes and how that affects who we are today.

As the thoughts about the film percolated in my mind for days, the comment left by Fausto seemed to crystallise into what I wrote below, to inform my interlocutor that my wiliness to engage does not confer the right to dictate how I should think, what I should write about, where I should express opinions, what my identity is and how I should express my own thoughts.

To encroach is to invade my territory, disrespect my person and arrogate upon himself an entitlement he could never earn which much be contemned completely, and so my response.

I Am Not Your Negro

The purpose of this blog was to debunk false material being circulated as fact which came within my social media space almost 4 years ago.

Now, I have no idea what the purpose of your comment is apart from attempting to serve as a distraction from that primary aim.

If you had bothered to check other details about me, you would realise that I am both an Englishman by birth and a Nigerian by heritage. If anyone had posted an inversion of the truth about slavery into my social media space, I would have performed the same activity of taking the time to address it as I addressed this matter.

Now, if you have an opinion about what I have written, I would expect you to state those views rather than attempt to project some inferiority complex upon my person.

I am aware of the many atrocities of the British in their colonial fiefdoms and I also have to bear the burden of the fact that I cannot divorce myself from the shared identity of being both British and African.

What I would not do is repudiate one for another to satisfy a victim complex, I am a black man of great privilege and I would not deny who I am.

In the spirit of the recent documentary about civil rights in America, may I clearly state to you without equivocation - "I am not your negro."

South Africa: Is this a black empowerment timebomb?

Conversations, many

South Africa offered me a variety of opportunities for meeting people, making conversation, but mostly, there was much to observe and from that as an outsider draw some conclusions about the society the country projects.

The most engagement was on my Uber cab rides to and from work, from the Gautrain station or out for social engagements. Of the probably 40 or so Uber trips I had, there was probably one uninteresting and disinterested driver, I should have sat in the back and occupied myself with a more interactive reading material, my eyes darting from left to right as I read.

Where our journeys were short, it was quite honorific to have the Uber cab drivers express the desire to meet me again so we could have a longer chat. By osmosis and general interest, I seemed to know a lot about South Africa and its current affairs, along with seemingly alternative viewpoints to the events that occupied the newswires in the time I was there.

Signs and realities

However, it appeared I was only getting one perspective of things until last Saturday I witnessed both an interesting and an alarming incident on the concourse of the Johannesburg Park Gautrain station.

I had just missed the opportunity to go on the Soweto tour and so returned to the station to take the train back to Sandton Gautrain station. At the entrance, I had already seen that the next train was in 29 minutes time, it meant I had just missed a train.

I could have loitered around the station, but there is a sense of safety once you are beyond the ticket barriers. The seating on the concourse is really a design malfunction, aesthetically pleasing to the eye but uncomfortable to sit on, the two metal slats are angled for slouching for the able-bodied and literally unusable for those with assisted mobility or any other kind of impairment or strength, age or nature.

Malfunction feeding resentment

What transpired was the electronic signals on the concourse were not updating to tell exactly when the next train would arrive. What I saw as 29 minutes at the entrance was reading a minute on the concourse and it did not change for minutes.

A white lady then made to ask one of the guards on the concourse when the next train would arrive, the guard indicated it would be about 26 minutes. She then when on to ask why the electronic sign was reading different from the expected time. The guard had no answers, but she suggested the lady check the timetable, a cleaner who was chatting to the guard before the white lady interrupted buttressed the point of the view of the guard.

At that moment, the white lady flared up and rudely told that cleaner that she was not invited into the conversation, and so she should mind her own business. At which point everyone else on the concourse waiting for the next train was alerted to the fact that this might degenerate into an unholy fracas.

This must be one of many

The guard trying to reason with this gradually obstreperous lady, tried to aver that the timetable took precedent if there were problems with the electronic indicators, somehow, the context of the problem took a strange twist when the white lady said, “No problem? We don’t run the country anymore and the very simple things you people cannot make work, everything is a mess.”

Now, that caught my attention as the white lady walked away in apparent irritation at not being taken more seriously and began talking across to the other platform in mock rage and annoyance as if there as someone else listening to her grievance. Well, there was no one there, it was a loud soliloquy looking like the onset of some mental disorder.

At which point, I surmised that this was pent-up Afrikaner resentment being let out, apparently triggered by the frustration of not being in control or being able to control, situation, event or direction.

This in my view could not be the only place where resentment was festering and ready to be blurted out at any sign of ineptitude, incompetence, misdeed or malfunction. In my over three weeks in South Africa I had seen much of this with the impunity, the contempt of institutions and the cack-handedness of the President in replacing the Finance Minister in the middle economic turmoil with a complete tyro, all for political expediency.

Distrust in the rainbow nation

The week before, a survey had suggested that South Africans of different races distrusted each other, there was very little social interaction between the races except in the workplace, in schools or in the shops. It goes without saying, that if there were people of the stature of Nelson Mandela in power with the requisite competence to run the government for the good of all South Africans, there would be little room for resentment.

Then, on my way back from South Africa, as we waited for the embarkation of our delayed flight, I got to talking with a couple that were off to Italy via Paris. They were travelling with three generations of the family, 11 in total, but grandpa and grandma were travelling business class and the others elsewhere.

They expressed frustration at the seeming rudderless direction of the government, the rapid decline in the value of the South African Rand and it was precipitous in the last week besides the fact that the Rand had lost 30% in value against the Dollar in the year 2015 alone.

Bantu education all over again?

However, what concerned him most was the affirmation action that was to encourage black empowerment and emancipation in South Africa. Now, the Bantu Education Act was a rotten Apartheid policy that provided not useful education to the black population as means of lifelong subjugation with no prospect of elevation in life.

“There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?” Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, the Dutch-born architect of Apartheid.

Yet, according to grandpa, during the struggle against Apartheid, the kids of the chief activists went to the best schools elsewhere, whilst the activists instigated the students left behind to burn their schools in protest and insurrection, leaving the students in the midst of the struggle bereft of education and consequently subjugated to the children of the activists who have returned to rule over the masses.

Marking up failures to pass through

He continued by saying, the affirmation system, whilst apparently giving opportunity to blacks to access education and qualifications, none of it appeared to test their aptitude, challenge their mental capacity or equalise their achievement with mainstream standards of education expected of anyone who has passed through an educational system from primary school through to the end of tertiary education.

He said many black South Africans in affirmation schemes were being given a full pass at 33% and conveyor belted through university to have a degree in three years whether they made the grade or not. Whilst I have no proof of this, on an anecdotal basis, I had seen many instances of people being trained and failing to perform when without direct supervision at hotels, in shops and elsewhere, it is concerning.

Dishonesty in presented qualifications

In my time in South Africa, after the scandal that broke in May when I was there that trains ordered from Spain for South African railways were not of the right specification, the speculation about the qualifications of the head of engineering of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) was confirmed.

Dr Daniel Mtimkulu had not studied at the university he said he attended and was not registered with the engineering body that was supposed to validate the qualifications that made him eligible for the role he was in. There no asking how he scaled through the due diligence processes of the people who interviewed him and promoted him to the role he assumed until he was found out when a procurement process was bungled creating serious embarrassment for all concerned.

Likewise, at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the COO was found to have misrepresented his qualifications by a public prosecutor whose institutional responsibility of oversight and regulation was ignored that other parties had to seek orders from the courts that enshrined and supported the authority of the public prosecutor.

Yet, integrity and honour were left by the wayside as the system appeared to give support and succour to dishonesty and fraud in the face of incontrovertible facts.

It does not augur well, at all

All of this will give cause for resentment amongst South Africans, especially when those in power seem to forget the great responsibility of nation-building and unifying a nation bequeathed them by the likes of Nelson Mandela for the politics of expediency and a descent to hedonism and opulence at the expense of the majority of South Africans that placed confidence in their government bringing lasting prosperous change into their lives.

One is appalled to say the least and it simply corroborates what I wrote in another blog titled, South Africa: Rubbish!

There are many stories in South Africa, but if the decline by indifference and indolence of government egged on by comfort oblivious of duty and attention to the purpose for which they were called to serve continues, Zimbabwe will be nothing compared to the disaster that is looking like the charted future of South Africa on this avoidable trajectory.

South Africa: Chance encounters of the uncouth kind

Chance encounters

As a lone traveller and guest in a hotel, I would normally go down to the restaurant with some reading material, usually a magazine. However, I might be fortunate enough to meet another guest and strike up a conversation.

However, at breakfast yesterday morning, having placed my magazine on a table and gone to make tea, another guest took up the table to the right of mine, seeing the magazine, picked it up, had a brief look and put it back.

Not a likeable person

When I returned to my table, I said hello and before we could commence a conversation, an acquaintance of his passed by and they disputed about some matter that required the other person send him an email since the day before which he did not and the exchange degenerated into belittling him and calling the other man ‘full of shit’.

From there, he descended to stereotyping black people as unreasonable and unreliable, that he had never met a black man that either delivered or kept his word. Addressing me, he asked why black men were always like this.

I answered, back saying he should expand his circle of acquaintances because my job is primarily based on delivering on projects apart from the fact that I always keep to time. I then attempted to educate him on cultural differences between the West and other places where time is based on season and convenience rather than on strict adherence to the hour and minute hands of the clock.

Tempering bad sentiment

He should know by doing business in Africa, the cultural differences and adapt to it. At which point he said, he knew two black people who were quite impressive in their attitude to agreements and time before letting on that he had a meeting with a number of white people that should have started hours ago, but they had not yet arrived. I guess that just affirmed the point I made earlier about the issue of the cultural issues of adherence to agreements and time.

The conversation moved on to other things as he observed that I had a Wiko phone which was a competitor to a phone that he had exclusive rights to distribute in South Africa. He was garrulous and in many ways uncouth, the kind of Englishman that irritates abroad with a sense of superiority that needs to be challenged.

A working class oaf pretending to standards and class abroad when at home the only things he might have plenty of will be the gift of the garb, money and the same shit he said black people have. When he learnt I am English too, he toned down his nonsense, I was saved much of additional tripe when another of his ilk appeared and their banter assume a tone best left out of hearing.

They disparage in packs

Later on, I went out socialising in some drearily dark scary part of Johannesburg that I doubt I will return to again. My arranged taxi ride back to my hotel was not available, so the club recommended an alternative service.

As I got my jacket, a group of four men arrived and the mouthiest of the lot saw me and made a rather disparaging remark about me in a language, they all thought I did not understand.

They continued in their banter of sighting people and finding something uncomplimentary to say about them as I watched and smiled before I said in that same language they thought I did not speak that ‘I have travelled the whole world and now I have come to meet Yoruba folk here.’

The shock and horror of realising that their bad attitude was observed and understood was interesting to watch as they made to apologise. It did not matter, I have seen this kind of behaviour many times before amongst the Yoruba and this might be because I do understand the language, and it might well be prevalent in any other ethnic group that believes they cannot be overhead or understood.

There’s always a better way

Yet, the other prejudicial part of this kind of behaviour is a kind of prissy superiority complex that thrives of disparaging and belittling others in order to feel good within oneself. It suggests a low self-esteem with a tendency to bullying others if the opportunity arises.

Genuinely, self-assured people with confidence rarely have the time to belittle others when more can be gained by helping others be better expressions of themselves. Even if there is much opportunity to insult or abuse, there is a better path if one can find encourage, praise and good advice to give.

However, in the two cases above, entrenched preconceptions close the mind to new experiences, stereotypes colour the view and deny the person the wholesome experience of seeing people as uniquely individual even if they easily fit into a group.

In South Africa, many of these elements of prejudice and cultural adjustment show, people lazily belong to group and class, then someone with a completely different cultural outlook and perspective upsets the accepted norms by not subscribing to the stereotype. It can make for interesting conversation and I have had a few of those.

Opinion: On the pejorative of being 'white on the inside'

So he said

Steven Patrick Morrissey who is commonly known as Morrissey and really from my perspective might have been noticed for the fact that the name is recognisable but whatever he might have done and I am led to believe he sings in a band known as The Smiths whose music has had no personal recollection as to be forgettable, appears to have opinions.

Reading the Wikipedia entry as pertains this man suggests for an Englishman that he is apparently controversial as if I care a hoot.

However, I am drawn to comment on a view he expressed to Larry King in a somewhat candid interview, they say, when he surmised in the following words, “So is Obama, is he white inside? It’s a very logical question, but I think he probably is.”

The pejoratives are many

I have never really been sure as how to respond to this kind of view, the many variants of this “white in the inside” pejorative is probably, ‘bounty’, ‘coconut’, ‘not one of us’, or ‘thinking like a Westerner’.

All of these I have been called at various times for having an opinion, standing by a principle, enjoying an interest, stating an objective or daring a particular conspicuousness of appearance.

It is a maligning form of slanderous condemnation borne of you not acting to a type or a stereotype, where your somewhat unique worldview is excoriated as a betrayal of the identity you are supposed to project and accept.

In this case, Morrissey was suggesting Barack Obama was not doing enough for black people in America especially after the globally significant incidents that have affected young black men in encounters with the police.

Barack Obama leads a nation

Maybe it is too much to say that Barack Obama is mixed race and was primarily brought up by his Caucasian maternal grandparents, even if he more or less identifies as black, his heritage is indisputable. Should one also say that he is the president of a very diverse United States of America, representing all peoples and in which the African American population does not number 20% of the total population?

Whilst again, he might have an affinity with fellow African Americans, the level-headedness with which he has addressed these issues is more what you will expect of a leader, he is not a controversial reactionary. In my view, he is not the reincarnation of Martin Luther King Jr nor a Moses that has come in the spirit of Exodus to lead a people away from a history of slavery depicted in the racism and the deprivation that has hallmarked the existence of the African American in the United States of America.

His job is to speak to reason, speak to hearts and minds and get people to contemplate what kind of country they want to live in that represents the theoretically attainable aims of freedom, of justice, of equality, of fairness and of liberty. He does that well and that is why he is also in his second term as president.

We refuse to be stereotyped

Yet, this whole matter harks to a kind of clannish politics of identity where you are expected to think and act in a particular way, hold up placards and lead protests within a stereotypical pigeonhole that you have been allotted but have refused to occupy.

In that, I remember when a friend asked that I give him an academic reference when we both knew I had never held an academic position, talk less of guaranteeing the academic nous of a friend; a serious conflict of interest and opinion. I countered and generously offered to write a character reference which I believed will be as good and any reference he might require.

I do remember that years after that, I did write a character reference for another friend seeking admission to a university and on the strength of that, the admissions officer called me to suggest I was also the kind of person they were looking for to attend their university. That is how I started a postgraduate programme with the University of Liverpool.

Race does not define virtue

Yet, my friend contemned me and abused me for refusing to give him an academic reference and ended his diatribe with calling me a coconut.

Rather than take offence, I understood his inference and responded, “It is not the exclusive prerogative of the Caucasian to be objective.” If I were in his close proximity, I might have been decapitated, but the self-same fact could not be ignored.

Race or identity does not determine virtue or character, and whilst experience and heritage might shape certain views, they do not have to rigidly define you that you become another example of a stereotype or be found to true to type.

Your character is the greater impression

Indeed, there are people who put it on, who have a particular mannerism with its affectations and there are others who are naturally who they are. By nature or by nurture, we are products of different influences that do not necessarily mean we cannot be liberal, be fair, be just, be honest, be true, be objective, be loving, be forthright and be much else.

Your race is not what decides whether you stick to the rules or not, that is a function of your character, the principles you espouse and the impression that you want to make either consciously or unconsciously.

I will not apologise for who I am or what I have become as a result of my life’s experiences, my pigmentation is a gift of nature, my attitudes, however, are not dictated by the colour of my skin, but by the strength of my character – even Martin Luther King Jr dreamt of a day when my colour will not automatically include me in a stereotypical straitjacket when I am just trying to be an understanding and a teachable member of the human race.

To Morrissey, one might be tempted to say, he is ‘blank on the inside’, but that will be to stoop to his primaeval level. Perish the thought.

Thought Picnic: On the politics of adversity and the expectations I refuse to respect

Exemplary beyond words

I was listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme last night titled No Triumph, No Tragedy presented by Peter White who as the Disability Affairs correspondent of the BBC was born blind.

He was interviewing Melanie Reid who in 2010 suffered a fall whilst horse riding and the injuries sustained turned her into a tetraplegic. There were so many things she touched on the subject of life-changing adversity that I could relate to, that I thought I might write something in relation to my experiences.

One particular phrase she used was, ‘The Politics of Disability’, which I understood to be a particular thinking and mind-set that appears to create a community of people with a common experience and agitates to maintain or set a standard for how people in that setting should identify, project, speak or advocate.

The pressures to conform

As a tetraplegic and her stubborn desire not be defined by that condition, she had come against some opposition from others in similar situations who expected her to more accepting of her situation and a more vocal advocate of rights, positions and policies to serve that community.

Whilst, I have had my share of adversity and none as serious as the principals I have heretofore written about, the concept of politics is even broader than that of disability. It covers such areas as the medical, the economic, the social, the cultural, the religious and the familial dimensions of the person, their community and their society.

When you consider race, sexuality, long-term conditions, survival from cancer, attendant chronic conditions and adversity, there has always been some perception and thinking one has had to prevent from encroaching into what is essentially one's own personal story which is not entirely unique.

Expectations I refuse to respect

Yet, I find that from all those apparent groupings that have their loosely agglomerated communities, there are expectations and demands. That I am black, I am expected to identify with a political slant without questioning else I am a sell-out. That my sexuality is a private and not a subject for public discussion, I am considered either lacking pride or courage for who I really am, whereas, that is just part of who I am and hardly the whole.

Other matters on the issue of disease and the management of it, we've had cancer which in some cases is both politics and an institution beyond which it could even become a kind of lifestyle. A resignation to fate whilst the fight continues to survive and meet certain life goals. Last week, I was literally bullied into signing a petition to keep the NHS public, especially when I mentioned I was a cancer survivor, I got a good earful.

Knowing where your loyalties lie

Yet, I owe my survival not to the UK NHS but to the Dutch healthcare services that acted promptly on noticing that I had a serious condition, where they are more interventionist than reticent. A chronic condition discovered for well over two years now in our NHS has had doctors do everything but go for dealing with it. I have been observed and sweet-talked in the notion that the real damage is probably a decade away when we could address the condition now and be done with it.

It is unsatisfactory and it does make you want to find a pressure group agitating for quick decisive action rather than what looks lackadaisical almost to the point of uncaring with the hope that we expire before we cost the NHS anything for our treatments.

Reviewing this situation allows me know where my loyalties lie, knowing those who really did something as opposed to systems that pay lip service to situations they never practically affect in a positive way. In other spheres too, you begin to know that your loyalties must be borne of profitable experiences of humanity rather than have your loyalties determined by default to what pigeonholes you have been allocated.

Know your story and stick to your life

On the matter of adversity, the counts are numerous and only a few people know to any extent what the experience was, the losses were many, yet hope lives and thrives in ways that celebrate the resilience of the human spirit.

There are reasons to identify and conform, but in the end, you have to have your own personal experience written as your own story in your voice and in your time, extricate yourself from being a statistic or a number, not a patient, not a victim, not a mishap or an unfortunate reportage, but a person with a name, with a life and life they are living their own way.

Politics has its place, but the stubborn will to be different is the best story that can be told of any life that has lived on this planet earth. For that, I commend Peter White and Melanie Reid for teaching me more about facing life, not as a triumph or a tragedy, but as life the best way you can.

South Africa: The terrible history lessons we must know of Apartheid

Not on for a role reversal

I do try when I visit places even for work to get a feel of the place, the people, the culture, the architecture and the history.

However, on this sometimes hectic business visit, I have not been opportuned to do much, however, I got out on Saturday and then on Sunday where I did get to see some interesting parts of Johannesburg and what made this city,

The initial plan included a visit to Lion Park, where you can see lions roam free. It probably would have been interesting, but pictures of people in caged trucks thrilled at watching nature was a role-reversal I would better watch on National Geographic than participate in – I declined the offer of doing that.

Now, wildlife conservation is more than commendable, it is necessary and essential to ensuring that the footprints we leave in the sands of time are one of the record that we left this earth a better place than we found it. There is no doubt that parks like Lion Park need custom and will trade on our fascination to continue doing the exemplary work they do.

A differentiator on colour

My history and somewhat cultural lesson came from a ride with my hostess on the Johannesburg Red City Tour bus, between history, story, anecdote, fact and legend, a city built on the discovery of gold and diamonds could have dazzled with the glimmer and glitter of gemstones blinding us to a deeper reality that still defines a lot of what South Africa still is.

There was no better place to scratch beneath the gleam than at the Apartheid Museum where to give an idea of the colour bar in the Apartheid times I was given a ‘random’ classification of “Nie-Blankes” or “Non-Whites” and was by that designation supposed to enter the museum complex through the gate meant for non-Whites.

 

At the non-Whites entrance of the Apartheid Museum.

The absurdity of this whole arrangement became evident when you realise that whilst I am non-White, I am definitely European. To think there were times in Africa where people not historically indigenous to Africa treated Africans as sub-human on African soil, just cuts to heart with great pain.

Chameleons of discalm

The fact that this Apartheid regime was put in place by seemingly enlightened, educated and intelligent people just goes to show that certain elements of basic human instinct are defined by the utterly irrational to the point of risible ridiculousness. Yet, fellow human-beings were subjugated, denigrated, oppressed and dehumanised in ways too unimaginable to countenance.

At the stroke of a pen, within the Apartheid framework, you could be racially reclassified for purposes of convenience except the extreme of white becoming black or black becoming white. People who changed race in this many were known as chameleons.

The Star of the 21^st of March 1986 published a piece that now appears with on a poster in the museum – the news piece started thus: 1985 had at least 1000 “chameleons”. More than 1000 people officially changed colour last year. [Google]

 

The Chameleons of South Africa at the Apartheid Museum.

The example of people

Prominent within the museum were exhibitions of people who transcended this vile aberration of humanity, whose lives we must study as examples of the graciousness and accommodating qualities of the human spirit. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu – there are few people who can stand in stature and meaning close to these men in humility, reasonableness and compassion.

We must be careful never to lose the reality of history and the lessons thereof for the easy talk and ignorance of dismissing the significance of history to our present and future. I still see the scars left by Apartheid in contemporary South African society and I am afraid, I see no men in leadership doing much to lift the majority from the mental enslavement that remains the in the wake of the Apartheid rule that was abolished 21 years ago.