Finding Dignity at Zeitz MOCAA

Finding Kindness

Having done some shopping at Woolworths in the V&A Waterfront, I walked to Silo District past the Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island to hail an Uber back home. The Friday evening rush hour, combined with the impending weekend, meant it was quite busy. However, leaving from this end of the V&A Waterfront cuts out a good deal of the traffic involved in exiting Cape Town.

I did not get an Uber for eight minutes, and when a driver was found, he was ten minutes away. Then he cancelled three minutes into my waiting time. Uber began looking for another driver, just as I realised, I had chosen this location to get me home on time, before getting caught in the traffic I might encounter if I had hailed a cab from the Breakwater end of the V&A Waterfront.

A Pressing Dilemma

It became a battle in my mind: should I wait for a cab or seek the use of facilities? The nearest one was about 250 metres away, up flights of steps that I am usually supported in navigating. But I was alone in town with two heavy bags of shopping and a walking cane I could not use if I needed to balance the load.

My better judgement intervened. I cancelled the Uber and decided to try my luck at the Zeitz MOCAA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, which was behind me. As a total stranger, I would not have been able to just walk into any establishment to ask to use their toilets. Or maybe I have never really had the courage to. Besides the museum, there were two hotels nearby, but we had been fully paid-up members of the museum before COVID-19 struck, and I knew where the entrance was.

Navigating the Process

The first thing was to get my Just Can't Wait card up on my mobile phone, which was running out of battery. I had to put it on Power Saving mode to ensure I could at least call an Uber before it died. I showed the card to security at the door, requesting to use the toilets, and she directed me to reception.

At the reception desk, one of the staff took a picture of my Just Can't Wait card on the phone and then gave me directions to the toilets, which were in the basement. My explanation that I needed urgent use of a toilet because of a medical condition was sufficient.

As I walked to the lifts, another security guard stopped me. I believe he checks for entry tickets, and I did not have one. I explained my situation, and he even offered to have my shopping bags deposited at the check-in desk. But I did not have the time; I needed to be at the toilets immediately. Even the lifts were slow in arriving, but I was soon where I needed to be, as relief and gratitude welled up in me.

People Over Things

My experience with this organisation reminded me of the spirit of their Executive Director and Chief Curator, Madame Koyo Kouoh, who passed away last year after a recent cancer diagnosis, even as she was about to serve as the artistic director of the 2026 Venice Biennale. In the museum's tribute to her, she was remembered for her belief: "People are more important than things," and for quoting the African proverb, "If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together."

We live in communities shaped by experiences and circumstances. Some are so fleeting and yet significant in simply having empathy and understanding for invisible yet critical human vulnerabilities and responding to such encounters without question or judgement. People do not even have to have walked a long, hard mile in another's shoes. Even in South Africa, where basically no one knows of the Just Can't Wait card, a human story becomes the willingness to help rather than the fear of losing one's job.

Not that I want to remember what happened barely a month before, when I was refused the use of facilities with all the desperation written across my face, in my own Manchester, of all places. Thank you, Zeitz MOCAA, for simply being human. It meant a lot to me.

Blog - The Just Can't Wait Card Test

Zeitz MOCAA Staff Tribute to Koyo Kouoh

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Thought Picnic: The stereotype of a hypersexual black man persists

Just trying to help

The first thing that came to mind was whether I had just missed an Emmett Till moment, though the comparison is a bit too severe; England has never been the American South of the 1950s, but some stereotypes are so ingrained that people act on them before reality and modernity can adjust their thinking.

I was walking home when I saw two ladies seemingly in a rush, going in one direction and then the opposite, wondering aloud if they were headed the right way. As I overheard them, and being quite familiar with the area, I thought I could help, so I inquired about which direction they wanted to go.

As I looked back, a man approached me and asked what I was looking at. His aggression was met with equal disdain. "What is your problem?" I retorted. He claimed that I was the problem, to which I suggested he should go home and not look for trouble because I had no time for crazy people.

The stereotypes betraying us

He blurted out, “That’s my wife you are looking at.” A strapping (I guess in the dark, appearances can be deceptive) black man, and I am hardly that, going after and ogling a white woman with rampant sexual desire?

Maybe if I could whistle, but the ladies did not even deserve an anachronistic catcall, but let’s not disparage the innocent. It did look like an Emmett Till moment, as a white man had just suggested I had disrespected his wife by looking lustfully at her.

Where did this kind of thinking emerge from, and how could it even be expressed so strongly in Manchester of 2025? The situation was about to escalate totally out of control if I did not have a response or chose to walk away, which was the wise choice.

Easing the built-up tension

I replied, “I am a gay man, I am not interested in your wife; I was only asking if I could help.” He showed character; immediately he offered a profuse apology, saying he was very sorry for making a wrong assumption. His wife joined him, and they both pleaded for being unnecessarily defensive; they asked for my name and introduced themselves.

We shook hands as they explained they were out looking for their friend, who they thought was lost. They were a bit distressed about it and did not know what to do. I gave them some encouragement and wished them well as we parted ways. I was just a block away from home.

The present is the past

On reflection, I thought about how suspicion and the exchange of coarse words could have led to a fracas and needlessly so. How we are informed by the stereotypes of others until we seek to learn more about their story out of interest and engagement rather than an initial dislike based on falsehoods.

How in the UK, we are fortunate that even the irrational is contained in the exchange of words before it becomes physical, hurtful, and sometimes fatal.

Then, the basic willingness to hear the other out and listen can diffuse the most tense (as I use British rather than American English, "most tense" is the most appropriate superlative for tense, rather than "tensest" in American English) situations; someone had to be ready to play the pipes of peace before we come within the sound of the drums of war.

It was both an unsettling and teachable moment. We might have come a long way, but that basic animal instinct is always ready to impose itself on our unsteady coexistence.

Thought Picnic: Believing better

Thoughts afloat

There are so many things that percolate in my mind about what I want to do ranging from fleeting thoughts, through surprising inspiration, earnest desire, daydreaming, and determination.

I have to content myself with the fact that the factory of the mind which actively conceptualises is not a production line of equivalent tangibles. Much is processed and necessarily delivered. You do wonder if the best use of mental energy is deployed at most times.

Hearing well

Listening is an activity I have devoted myself to more trenchantly, I listen more than I read, it is also easier to listen to something repeatedly because the use of language and the interpretation of context and intent is better reinforced when a turn of phrase pricks up your ears.

Then, maybe it is more than listening and it is hearing, just as observing is a lot more than seeing, as there is a perception within the senses that confers knowing and knowledge, and there is a deeper communication beyond the physical and mental to the spiritual that transcends the limitations of the senses.

Learning anew

It seems harder than it appears to be just as you are recognising that it is easier than you ever thought it was. It is the unlearning and programming that has become like muscle memory that is being challenged. To detach from the old and appreciate the magnanimous grace of the new, the insight that suggests what you always thought things were by way of traditions and practice are in truth what should have been jettisoned, if you knew better.

We all did not know better, we just continued with the tried and tested ways, thus missing out on the kind of revelation that upsets the orthodoxy to which every form and function is tied. I find myself questioning and assessing, wondering and wandering, seeking and searching, understanding and comprehending, that what I once believed is under review to believe better than to believe amiss.

Thought Picnic: Making allowances in support of others

Making every allowance

There is an aspect of character development that I strive to improve that is a work in progress, one where I am ready to make allowances with understanding and latitude rather than immediately assume, prejudge, and condemn.

I guess where I began that journey was when I realised that no matter what experiences I have had and how similar those experiences might be to another person, even if I could understand what they were going through, I could not equate my situation with theirs to the point that I felt my empathy fully embodies their circumstances. I must make allowances for variance and impact, or I risk dismissing their narrative in the context of mine.

Understand then appreciate

Part of that learning has included resisting the attempt to insert my story into their narrative even if I mean well by trying to assure them that they are not alone in their suffering. The art of listening attentively and registering with concern and humanity the experience of another is an exercise in both discipline and self-control we can all cultivate.

For instance, through personal experience, I know what pain is, the pain of cancer especially and the four different kinds of pain medication I took to alleviate the pain. When my pain medication patch fell off my skin, I laughed myself into almost delirium to generate endorphins as pain alleviated whilst the new patch took hold. Yet, pain affects people differently I try not to assume and assert I feel another’s pain just because I know pain, I understand what they are going through, but their experience can be so radically different from mine.

Blog - Laughter follows my hospital visit

Blog - Thought Picnic: My laughter and my pain

Blog - Let's treat the cancer and laugh

Even where I do not understand what is being shared, I endeavour to learn rather than react and negate, it is better I work with my ignorance to acquire knowledge than project the pretence of being fully educated even if that might leave me looking stupid.

Be kind in questioning

That is not to say one does not have doubts or one is yet to be convinced, much as engagement is inadvertently the art of persuasion which might or might not be successful, the line of inquiry should engender a quest for understanding rather than an immediate and brutal antagonism especially where one has a sense of disagreement. I have to appreciate that to whatever extent in depth or superficially and only if I have clear discernment, whoever has engaged me has fully thought through what they intend.

The questions are phrased in ways to help clear the blind spots to provide additional insight I learnt from my professional life where implementations are assessed now on the premise of why they have done something in a particular way, but on whether they might have seen the significance of another perspective. Be careful not to repudiate and put people you would be working with on the defensive.

Exert yourself in support

It brings to mind a question I have dwelt on in terms of certain opinions, ideas, or plans that have been presented to me, how can I best support this person in their quest for whatever they have purposed to do? If at the time, I have nothing supportive to add, I should apply restraint, the least I can do is listen and be neutral, and I could go better with some encouragement, beyond which there are opportunities and a fuller engagement to help them achieve their goals.

Much of this includes having a lot of patience, and a readiness to allow people to move at their own pace while they sort out issues knowing that your support, understanding, and love are present whenever they choose to update you. In some way, I also realise that I cannot expect that from others, this is my personal character development programme, others are also doing whatever they can to relate better to others.

Autism: Where my order is another's disorder

The order of disorder

When I returned home from a month’s holiday to a fresh home, my friend who was my house-sitter in my time away had cleaned up, new sheets on my, the bathroom quite spick and span, my kitchen and the stove hub sparkling, not a sight of dirt anywhere, but sadly, due to my apparent reaction, none of which was verbalised though inadvertently acted out, I lost our friendship.

I recall when I owned a place in Amsterdam that many loved to visit, I had a cleaner, not because the apartment needed cleaning up, but because he seemed to know where to put things that were out of place, I would return to an ordered place with a good idea of where everything is, it is my home, I am comfortable after that visit.

Just leave it there

There is probably a reason why I do not employ cleaners, I lived in a house in Ipswich over 30 years ago. The landlord had arranged for his cleaner to visit every fortnight to do up the place completely unbeknownst to me.

When I got back to where I thought was my home, I noticed from the moment I walked in, I had to run out to speak to my neighbours, things were not where I had left them and the house was rearranged to the landlord’s pattern without my input, I might as well have been in a strange hotel room.

I like order, yet, my disorder is some sort of order in itself, it is my comfort zone, much as it can be unusual and strange. I guess many may not understand why this useful act of ordering is upsetting for me.

I was in a strange place

When I got home in August, within the apparent order was a subtle displacement, things were not where I left them or things were not replaced when used. With my dangerously keen eye for detail where it does not matter to others, I began to see too many things were not where I put them, in the space of an hour of my arrival, I felt I was not in my own home because I did not know where things were.

A few days later, I had to call my friend over to show me where he had put three laptops away for safekeeping. I rarely ever have guests in my home and definitely no parties, my friend does have friends and strangers over, in certain videos he has recorded at my place, I had to be told it happened in my home.

I guess through a series of meetings in the two weeks after my arrival, my friend decided I was hostile, ungrateful, and maybe even nasty, so he cut all contact with me until he needed to collect an important document two months later. Not once did he discuss with me how he felt, I was hurt and implacable when we met. I still think he is a friend, maybe someday we would resolve things.

Coming to an understanding

However, there is an issue that reveals itself in my mannerisms and attitudes, some of which I will write about eventually. However, I am writing this because my best friend called me last week after having watched a programme on television, the night before. He was not sure of how to broach the subject, he then said, there were many things he saw on the programme that made him think that was familiar and it was ‘our Akin’.

For myself, I know I have been somewhere on the autistic spectrum, not necessarily evident or serious, but significant enough to be noticed by others besides the apparent upset I have when my disorder is reordered. I guess even those quirks were somewhat masked by me from my house-sitter friend who lived with me for 6 months, some 4 years ago. I suppose there is no easy way to help people understand that some strange things related to the lower spectrum of autism attend to a part of my personality.

It is no excuse and not essentially a bad thing, I work on a lot of things of adaptation and integration, even if some of my quirks leave me looking so totally out of place. I have learnt to be comfortable in my own skin whilst aiming to be the best person I can be. This is the first of some of the writings I hope to publish about living with low-spectrum autism.

For the simple need to be heard and understood

If only I was heard

When I asked my line manager some 28 years ago that I wanted to attend an assertiveness course, he scoffed at me saying there was no way I needed to be on that course, that I was his rottweiler in tough negotiations and I was more than articulate enough to get my point across.

On reflection, I should have been allowed to attend that course for the simple reason that I might have learnt something about being heard when I speak and being understood when I have spoken.

If only I was understood

There is something missing in my communication, no matter how hard I try to convey a point or a situation, some of my longstanding readers read me through a prism of experience and provenance, it is rarely situational in the context of the particular time and place. Dare I say, they do not capture the zeitgeist and I am left making multiple attempts to be heard and understood.

In some ways, I am heard but not listened to, the hearing or the reading creates a kind of awe of the mastery of language, which might fail in the efficacy of meaning. Invariably, the myth that I am a good communicator is just that, a myth, because everything I have intended has been lost in the superfluity of delivery without delivering the message itself.

If only it didn’t have to be in a rage

I tried in at least three blogs to shout out my helpless situation for which I had concluded that I needed therapy, it did and literally fell on deaf ears, it became a soliloquy when I thought it was broadcast communication from which those who read my runes could reach out to me to offer support and succour.

I must conclude I failed in that simple task of asking for help, getting some time, and eliciting the latitude of patience to allow me to sort my head out. In the end, it all came out in a rage, seething rage, untrammelled with raw emotion and worked up in utter exasperation and helplessness. Sadly, we sometimes just need to hurt a little to know that the pain is real, the truth is bitter and maybe we might just see let the chips fall where they might.

References

Blog - Thought Picnic: Stuck on the absence of desire

Blog - Thought Picnic: In the struggle to resume as I

Blog - Please, be at ease with me

Knowing pain is personal

Pain consumes you

Pain is a feeling that goes deep into your core that could be such a distraction from everything else keeping you in the discomfort that seeks to become the normal of your current existence.

Pain is the moment, it has no past or future, it is now, calling out to every nerve that has any element of response, you cannot be unaware of it being there, a dominating sadistic force of otherworldly provenance.

I once knew what pain was, the pain of cancer and yet in knowing that I am always reticent to associate my experience with that of anyone else, because we all feel pain so differently, it is individual and unique, it is personal for which the prescription, if it can be eased, is particular to that situation.

Pain refusing to go

I was on morphine but after two nights I could no longer tolerate it, I was overcome with emesis they had to try something else. Then, it was oxycontin which worked for a few hours and late at night, I would call the nurse for another pill because the pain was interfering with my sleep.

Before I left hospital, I was given a Fentanyl patch, which was supposed to last a week affixed to my skin, but the pain still seemed to announce itself in my consciousness and this was apart from the three other types of pain medication I was on addressing neuralgia, headaches, inflammation, and fevers.

When I told my oncologist, I was still feeling some pain, he doubled the dose of the Fentanyl patch having first thought the original dosage should have dealt with the pain. I did have a high pain threshold, but if you had fungating tumours in the sole of your foot it was just on another level. Then as the tumour dissipated and necrotised skin came off with fresh skin replacing the once blackened flesh, the pain from cancer remained for months afterwards.

What becomes of the pain afflicted?

At the full healing of my sole, the pain subsided but I had to wean myself off the patch by halving it and leaving it on for longer, a process that took another 3 months. It was a revelation of how opioid pain relief can become addictive.

Just over a week ago, on my Twitter timeline, a physician undergoing chemotherapy for aggressive cancer wrote of the pain she was feeling. I could relate, yet I could not find the form of words to offer comfort, I just knew that somewhere you needed some alleviation and hopefully without the incapacitation that you cannot function at all.

Pain can be arresting, what becomes those for whom nothing can ease their pain? It is of them that I hope beyond hope that relief comes that they might find comfort, peace, and rest. In my case, the consultant also had some confidence that we could see the end of it if I responded well to the treatment and that is how I find myself writing about it 12 years after.

Pain in my blogs

Blog - In hospital to kill the pain

Blog - Getting off the pain train

Blog - Generally responsive and dealing with pain

Blog - Stronger medicine and another course of chemo

Blog - Boldly tell your doctor everything

Blog - Off and back on the pain patch

Blog - Opinion: Where addiction and tragedy can confuse issues

Eyeing the fish on the sign

The eyes have it

Signs with meaning and some that require a bit of research, though I could not ignore one big board as I step out of our apartment complex. It read, “Buy full set – Single lashes R400.”

For the purchaser, they probably know full well what is on sale, a lash of the whip it probably is not, something for the eyes would be a sight to see. I have seen lashes that could sweep streets, long and batting you wonder if the weight of those lashes would require eyelid training to open the eyes before they slam shut.

Single lashes might indicate the lashes for one eye which you have to pair up for the other eye, to match length, colour, quality, lift, just allow your imagination to run whatever course it chooses. Maybe there are cascading lashes, one mounted on the other in an installation of double or triple lashes. Better to be observed than to be tried out.

Fishing in Congolese cuisine

Further on at the bus terminus, a kiosk serving Africain (sic) foods beckons to patrons to come and try out from a list of foods with literally indecipherable names. I thought I will start with the first and then consider if the rest should be studied.

Mbika (na) Makayabu, the first read, which I found out was salted cod with sauteed vegetables, the name already a mouthful before you have tasted the cuisine. I know in my heart of hearts; I am not ready for this smorgasbord of street food. It is probably tastier than the name suggests, and we’ll leave it at that. It is of Congolese provenance, that’s a few thousand kilometres up north.

If you can follow Lingala or just watch the YouTube video, you can serve it up at home too.

Verbal comma

Two words

I wondered what it might be, I am a bit confused, the meanings of words or is it the misplacement of words for which I can receive no further helpt than to exhibit a furrowed brow and let thoughts race through my mind searching for the significance in the context of what might or might not be intended.

This is the confusion of words that one experiences in conversations about random things formed out of the mundane to the serious, intercourse of hearts, souls, and sometimes bodies. The flows and pauses give tense and tension to the moment. Yes, I am left asking myself, what really is a verbal comma, I am not sure I know what I heard to understand what was said. So there. The comer is paused with a comma lest they lapse into a coma.

Thought Picnic: I will be heard

Many words and no fords

What occupies me is a sense of purpose, a desire to experience the difference between things and their purpose. For I have heard a lot of words, but do they have meaning and to what intent have they been spoken?

Even when I speak, I seek to set a watch on my tongue for in its capacity is the speech to bless and even more to sting. For I will speak the truth without leasing and to the hearing of some shall be shock and disbelief, but the truth shall not be unspoken for an uneasy calm to rest upon us like a plague.

Careful of my speech

Though I wish to speak to be listened to and heard without any misunderstanding, it is with difficulty that one has had to address some men to whom I have allegiance and relationship, be they filial or marital.

I do not arrogate to myself speech that creates universes, but I feel the crashing sound like plates of Chinaware dropped from a great height to the ground, the clatter of dishes broken to pieces as the scramble begins to probably put it back together but never with its original undamaged self again.

I love agreement and detest conflict, but to the apparently stiff-necked, there must be a deployment of voice and strength, of consideration and force, of assertion and assertiveness to ensure that you have not been heard wrong the many times you repeat yourself to their hearing.

I am not tongue-tied

In one day alone, this cup from which I would refuse to drink was brought to my table twice in the thirst of times when I would have preferred to fast than to quench it. From it, I drank twice for what was to be said had to be said and for a long time it was brewing for a showdown.

My silence has been taken for being dumb, for no one knows the wells of memory from which I can draw the waters to speak the unpalatable and inconvenient truth. It is not something I want to be practised at, but when it is called for, you will hear me to the hills that would reverberate with echoes that would deafen. I have not come to speak for nothing.

The father in me on Father's Day

I could have been a father, I’m not,
For that, I have no regrets,
Not that I can do anything about it now,
Good old chemotherapy coursing through my veins,
Carried the sentence I probably knew it would,
You cannot by yourself create new life,
It was not something to cry about,
For it is my story to tell.

I do have a father, he’s a man of 80,
For that, I am utterly grateful,
Not that we do not have many disagreements,
Good old desires that a son turns out differently,
Carried through life objecting to your control,
You wonder if he indeed is your son,
It is something in which you agonise,
For it is your story to tell.

I know I am like my father, I do,
For that, I’m ambivalent,
Not that we know enough about each other,
Good his integrity and community spirit shine through,
Carried by his sense of great responsibility,
You ponder on if things could be better,
It dwells on the matter of father and son,
For it is our story to tell.

I could be a grandfather, for my age,
For that, there are no answers,
Not that it matters than much even to me,
Good that situation did not complicate another life,
Carried away from the required sense of tradition,
You think of the message of Father’s Day,
It is one of love and appreciation,
For it is a story to tell.

I wish I had a child, I don’t,
For that, it is not an issue,
Not that the child would have suffered neglect,
Good that I would have eyes, ears, and heart to care,
Carried on the wings of great possibility,
You know it would have amazing relationships,
It calls for a different fatherhood,
For a new story to tell.

Blog - Father's Day on my mind to be continued, at some time.

Father's Day on my mind

Some reflections on fatherhood

On this Father’s Day, it has been difficult to get hold of my dad on the phone. My reflection on it is deep and strange, for within my heart I have much love and much hurt, both have shaped many elements of my outlook to life, to relationships and to the world.

In many ways I see some traits of my parents in the things I do, and in others, we can be so different because of the generational differences and the radical influences of time, manner, and place.

A journey to travel

I am walking towards a better reconciliation and understanding, I appreciate that when my dad learnt clearly of my sexuality, even in his deepest misgivings and regret, he did not reject me, for that I am very grateful. Thinking of this, I wrote a poem of my intimate views of fatherhood from many perspectives, if I tried hard enough, all these paragraphs would be in the poem. Maybe, it is a task for another time.

The job of fathering is never fully done, so, the work on this is one that is in progress. After I left my home for boarding school at the age of 10, everything after that was one of recognition rather than disposition, we have drifted far apart and come close many times, it never mattered to me anymore whether I made anyone proud, I lived my life and tried to do my duty.

I cherish my aged dad; he is a fine gentleman of a certain persuasion. If I had nothing more to say, I still can wish him a happy Father’s Day.

Thought Picnic: An ambivalence on acquiring knowledge

On the things I am sure of

Twice I have been asked when I broached certain plans for the future whether I have considered the viability of the opportunity and if the decision is one that has been made with a full set of the facts.

In both cases, I averred that I was convinced of my determination to act and I have the good faith assurances of the other party in the enterprise we have agreed represents our common future.

Obviously, these matters are not ones for which you have prognostication that presents a well laid out route, but there is the hope that some prescience and good judgement has informed the circumstances necessary to agree to the terms.

On the things I am unaware of

Then I remember that there are questions that I have never really had answers to, probing questions those friends asked to measure and gauge the sanity of a prospect. For all my curiosity I do realise that I exercise much reticence as not to be that intrusive. There are things I do not know at all that became known either in conversation or writings, it makes me wonder if more due diligence is required.

There is no reason in my mind to have doubts or reservations, but it could be exercising the abundance of caution to be less reserved so that any inquiry is addressed to the satisfaction of the inquirer. For a commitment of this sort, the fair-minded would expect that more intimate knowledge engenders compatibility and common interests.

On the things I think I have deduced

There are times I have attended interviews and when directly prompted about whether I have questions declined the offer. Some might think this the lack of preparedness, whilst in the art of conversation, you can elicit and deduce facts, getting questions answered through direction or distraction, the other party unwittingly divulging what they might not willingly accede. Now, even when moot, I produce a question, usually something left of field.

I will confess, there are still many things I do not know, probably none is that important, I cannot tell. I doubt it is one for which the question, ‘What do you want to know?’ will suffice, because there is no idea of where to start.

On the things I might learn of

Some things are too deep-seated to be eased out in a confrontation, they will only be teased out in affinity, sympathy, or empathy, where a personal recognition of experiences trips a light switch to make a hidden thing visible.

For this, several intercourses are expedient, the meeting of hearts is a foregone conclusion, the meeting of minds is a process of continuous learning and the rubbing of minds for the building of lasting relationships. I know what I do, some unknowns need to be known and on the things that might be categorised under whether I need to know or not, that would be on advisement. My thoughts are for now in the embryonic stage.

Thought Picnic: Don't mistake a troubled child for a bad one

Not a conversation

By happenstance, I was recently privy to a conversation and that is in the broadest terms between an uncle (Julius) and his nephew (Fabier) on the nephew’s birthday. There was probably a case of me eavesdropping, but it provided the opportunity for some reflection.

The first part of the conversation which we agreed in the end, was not a conversation covered the general issues of the vociferous against the tongue-tied. Julius in what looked like a conversation asked seemingly leading questions and Fabier in cantankerous mode answered in striking monosyllables in either the negative or affirmative.

A stifled freedom to talk

Now, I have experienced that with my niece times before where my labour of attempting to get her to string a 5-word sentence together at the minimum was literally ineffective. The fact is, these nieces and nephews are neither that shy or tongue-tied, we just have not developed the setting for a free-flowing interaction and communication that comes with the freedom of our younger relations to express themselves without fear or inhibition.

I find the need to work on this relationship building activity the more because there are critical elements of the childhood development experience that we might miss which could have lasting consequences on the life and outlook of the child.

I say this because, the questions veered into areas of Fabier’s school, how he was enjoying classes if he was making friends and whether he was settling in fine, all which Fabier suggested in his monosyllabic answers was alright.

Fabier is a bad boy

Fabier passed his phone back to his mother (Mary), and there Mary regaled to Julius her brother how Fabier was really not fitting in at school, his personal hygiene levels had declined to the point of concern and excoriation, the report gave Julius the leverage to demand a change in attitude from Fabier or else Fabier would lose the promised presents and possibly some goodwill of his uncle.

The long and short of the second exchange where Fabier literally said nothing and Julius said everything was Fabier had been, a really bad boy.

The telling off of Fabier would have been pleasing to Mary, but I do not think in my heart of hearts that it helped Fabier one bit.

I was Fabier again

That second conversation between Julius and Fabier was a replay of a similar conversation I had with many elderly relations of mine 40 years ago when I was sent to a secondary boarding school half a country away from my parents in the hope of my parents that I would be toughened up and will learn more of our culture, language, and traditions.

My first term was hellish, I was consistently bed-wetting, I took no baths seeing that we had to fetch water from a forbidden grotto in the forest just before dawn, my night was disturbed by apparitions and ghosts that had me reciting Psalm 23 hundreds of times in the night. My life was a nightmare and it was a nightmare to my fellow schoolmates.

I know that of all the real help I needed, I got nothing, there were mental, psychological and emotional issues at play that received no professional help, I was supposed to be like others, stoic, responsible, able and applied to the duty to which I was called, to excel at school.

Not one solution worked

The solutions proffered included animist rituals, spiritualist entreaties, amulets, and shamanist cuts into which concoctions of varying potency were applied, none of which addressed a fundamental issue.

A child who had suffered emotional trauma some months before who had already for the first time spend 5 months away from the structured environment of home where again the matter of child sexual abuse by the servants never got addressed, was now flung to the winds for fend for himself and you expect him to perform to expectation?

A child does not bed wet just as an act of rebellious vandalism, there are fundamental psychological issues at play, using shame, disgrace, deprivation of comforts or corporal punishment, as weapons of dissuasion might appear to work in the immediate term, but it also internalises unresolved issues.

Can we try something else?

In most cases, what a child needs is understanding leading to encouragement to express themselves freely of their fears and their hopes, not the full weight of adult imposition exacting punishment and price to force them to do our bidding.

Children are in and of themselves free and independent moral agents, they are no mules. They are can be positively moulded with affirmation and approbation over criticism, comparison and condemnation.

Whilst in the face of the labours of parenthood, parents might not seem to have time to attend to the emotional needs of a child, those are probably the most critical needs of a child above anything else and it rarely gets addressed.

In the quest to make our children fear and respect us, we have lots an essential channel of communication that sometime in the adulthood of that child would be an unrelenting indictment of the kind of parenthood they endured.

Some parents wonder why their children are estranged and a lot of it points to the things they considered insignificant, in mistaking a troubled child for a bad one.

Are you the playful adult?

It goes without saying that a child needs at least one playful adult in their relationships, one whom they can trust, in whom they can confide, with whom they can find the freedom to be themselves and know that they are not only being listened to, they are being understood, encouraged, given advice and helped along in the most difficult times.

40 years ago, I was not a bad boy, I was a troubled child who needed more help than anyone was able or ready to appreciate or understand, and today too, Fabier is NOT a bad boy, yet, he has been cast as a recalcitrant and irresponsible boy, we as uncles, aunts, parents and guardians repeating the mistakes of generations past where the child was only to be seen but never heard.

Stop the generational abuse

I cried rivers of tears for Fabier as that ‘conversation’ developed, he was not going to get the present promised him if he did not change and his mother was going to report the progress on his conduct for further action to be taken.

Let’s stop the generational abuse pretending to child rearing and upbringing already and humble ourselves to stoop to the eye level of the child, offer a hug, offer comfort, offer assurance, offer to understand, and offer a listening ear, the time for standing over and talking down to the 'miscreant' is over.

We had tough parents, it does not excuse us being tougher obdurate parents, guardians, uncles, aunts or older relations too.

Give the child the chance to glow and blossom, this will only come with giving them full personhood and respect for their individuality, views, and circumstances.

Postscript: I asked the permission of Julius to write this blog, we had a discussion on this matter and he agreed that there were valid issues to discuss.

Thought Picnic: On a journey they cannot understand

Understanding my journey

As I was reviewing my Facebook timeline yesterday, I came a across a quote that I could relate to in every way, with respect to being afflicted and maybe not so much as it reflects on others.

I have paraphrased the quote a bit and having done a search, the providence is unknown.

“Not everyone will understand your journey. That's fine. It's not their journey to make sense of. It's yours to live your own life.”

My own journey

My journey as a life has been easy at the start, exciting at other times, interesting and intriguing at certain points and I dare say, difficult and challenging in the recent past.

My journey has literally and exclusively been mine even if I have walked part of the way in company or have been helped along to the way to reach the milestones that dot the road to a destination yet unknown.

Many parts of the journey some fully appreciate and other parts people are literally completely clueless, they are the secrets and recesses in life that have happened and become what I usually refer to as the story.

My hidden journey

Most interestingly, the greater part of my journey is literally unknown to my blood relations. For the affinity we might have, the truth is they cannot even begin to understand the difficult and challenging parts of my journey. Where some might have been interested in my journey, they seem to have a path they expect me to ply to a destination they have chosen and hope that I put my vehicle on that road without quibble – one such journey is the one of marriage.

I put paid to that suggestion in one clear statement in a conversation with my dad a few weeks ago, I categorically stated, it is not my life, the vehemence with which I made that statement seemed to both shocked and have effect, but it might well not be the end of that matter.

There were parts of that conversation that felt like checking if my balls had already descended into my ball sack, the ignorance of three decades of this journey will provide accommodation for disrespect and contempt, it comes with the territory.

My private journey

The truth is, the parts of the journey that they even think they know is hardly the journey that was my reality, there are elements of depression and sexual abuse that I have only better understood long after I was a victim in the care and the protection of people assigned to care for us.

However, one journey that has never been understood at all is the one where my life was almost extinguished by cancer in 2009 and the process of losing everything within three years of that.

They might have an inkling, probably an idea, but hardly the knowledge not the experience. It is not like anyone asked the questions that will elicit the responses that will intimate them of the reality of things. Yet, if this knowledge were shared unprompted, it will almost read like a pity party.

My unknown journey

Then again, in my leaving one of my homes, for my homes are many, I probably abandoned them and conversely, I should feel no hurt even when in my hour of need I felt I was somewhat abandoned. A stoicism and desire to chart my own course has always driven most of what I have sought to do and so in my rise and my fall and my rise again, I am just living my own life.

The truth is, they probably will never understand my journey, I do not expect them to understand any part of my journey, but where conflict does arise is where in their journeys which for each individual is unique and different, they forget that as long as you are not walking in the same shoes, on the same road, with the same mind and in the same person as the other, you might catch a glimpse of that journey, but you may still never make sense of that journey.

Opinion: For meetings that work

For meetings that work

Normally, I would tweet about this, but it behoves me to write a blog to accompany what the basic tweet would not do as efficiently as I would like it to.

A few days ago, you might have read a blog that appeared to suggest I hate meetings, having compared and contrasted the Dutch and English culture of office and team meetings.

Meetings do have a purpose, for interaction to create some familiarity between people, to share knowledge, gain understanding or give clarity and purpose to some venture so everyone appreciates intent, desire, context, theme, tone and drive of any undertaking.

Make clear with example

These meetings begin to lose their purpose when they have no agenda, when people ramble on and there is no control or when the simple language of communication is obfuscated with jargon.

Now, I tend to use very basic analogies to create a picture in the minds of the listeners to gain some effect, it is my way of carrying everyday experience into the seriousness of a situation with the hope that listeners would gain immediate realisation without wasting too many words. Probably, they get overused, but in many cases, I would see heads nodding in some understanding of what was said.

Not the English we know

What gets to me is jargon, the superfluity of endless nonsensical jumble of words that have become the stock of many management-types who have learnt this odious communication slant and threaten to bring everyone into speaking with the same vocabulary.

I was in a taxi cab with two work colleagues the other day, we were brought together by the need to share a cab since we were going to the same place, the conversation could have been as casual as any if they attempted to speak in plain English, but it was not long before I was lost to incredulity and bafflement.

I heard words I could for the life of me begin to understand even if I were to use the context of the sentence to elicit what the word pertained to. They were English words alright, but not used in the way standard English dictionaries define them.

Jargon is not cool

The conversation was suffused with business jargon that I was as perplexed as to wonder if people did have to go out and learn this stuff to sound knowledgeable and express a level of commendable expertise in some subject.

In my view, nothing beats the command of English that makes proper use of words, idioms and sayings, all of which the well-read would understand and the less so can at least reference somewhere and gain understanding.

That this kind of rotten jargon has crept into interviews has been a headache for me, some encounters have been so uncomfortable just because I do not speak the lingo. I state here with as must clarity as I can, I do not want to learn the lingo much as I do not use expletives that people are shocked if certain circumstances lead to my blurting out one.

Banish its usage

How much I would have liked to contribute to The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary, but I do not have an inkling about most of the jargon I have heard in the past few months.

There probably is no shame in asking a direct question or when washed down with a torrent of jargon, ask just what they really mean. “What do you really mean by that?” If after a couple of attempts there is still no clarity, then ask for a plain English explanation not forgetting to say, without the jargon.

Consign to oblivion

The curators of The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary have said, “We can only hope that you're not here to actually add buzzwords to your vocabulary.” This is not the time to impress with stupidity.

Meanwhile, if anyone knows what ‘steer’ in business jargon means, add to this dictionary. I know it does not mean to control or direct (verb) nor does it mean a castrated male bovine animal (noun), yet in context, I have heard it used as a verb and a noun. It is so annoying.

Let us work to consign jargon to oblivion.

Thought Picnic: Losing anger to gain more understanding

My little troubles to their deep grief

Just two days ago, I was about to write one of my stroppy blogs having been irked by an event as I returned home from work.

The first piece of news I read as I returned home, shocked me beyond words. At that point I realised that whatever level of pique I had could not in any way compare to the deep tragic grief people most affected by that news could be feeling.

A young mother of two toddlers, the mother who could easily be my daughter had in unexplained circumstances been pronounced dead.

No blame

This woman had only 14 years before lost her mother to unfortunate and tragic circumstances in an inadvertent suicide leaving a 4 daughters, the youngest, the half-sister of the other three, became an orphan, she had lost her father to suicide just a couple of years before. The pain was palpable for even the distant to feel.

Peaches Geldof had died. Yet, in the stories that followed her demise was something so profound about a short and one time wild life, haunted by tragedy and grounded by new reality.

In an interview in 2012, she said of her mother Paula Yates, “I don’t blame her, I’m not angry with her, I understand her… I honestly understand what she was going through.”

Between anger and understanding

The emboldened part of that quote was more prominent to me and says a lot about some of the fractured relationships we have with our parents.

With time, I have understood my parents better, yet, some memory crosses my mind at certain times that still brings forth some seething anger.

Then again, Peaches never had the opportunity to talk things over with her mother, to go over the issues that would have pained or haunted her about her mother’s death, she worked through the issues without the option for engagement and got to a point where she could understand well and yet neither blame nor be angry with her mother.

Unresolved to resolution

It behoves us to realise that there are some things we would never get to chat to our parents about, about the past, the present, their decisions, their influences and even their mindsets as they move into the sunsets of their lives.

We however must begin to live our lives out of the shadow, the hauntings, the hurts and the unresolved anguish of being either the fortunate or the unfortunate offspring of our forebears.

What has happened has happened, whether we have been accepted or rejected as we strive at times to live up to the expectations of others limiting the scope of what is the pursuit of our own individual happiness and the lives we have built around ourselves quite separate from those who brought us into this world.

Finding purpose

There is a blessing in finding a way to move on, moving on from blame, extricating ourselves from the clutches of anger and getting to a point where we know nothing in perfect, but perfection comes from ability to adapt, to appreciate, to understand, to accept and to embrace the fullness of our humanity in our relationships with those close and afar.

It is time to escape the imprisonment of anger and walk into the freedom of understanding. With that little lesson from Peaches, I pray that she find peace wherever she is and that those that survive her might find strength and the fortitude to bear their very tragic loss.

Rest in peace, Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof.

Thought Picnic: Your virtuality may not be my reality

Distance acting

We all enjoy to some extent, the comfort of abstraction, a little distance from the reality of things, colouring our perspective and affecting a deeper expression of empathy.

Information Technology does not make it any better by offering virtual proximity without the experience, we are deluded into thinking the keyboard and screen is the new reality and hence we are fully engaged with the situation.

None of this offers the truth of walking a long hard mile in the shoes of another which might be ill-fitting, uncomfortable and not suited to our uniquely shaped feet. Reality is always a different world.

Try a little understanding

We cannot always find the means to sympathise or empathise, but we should at the very least be willing to learn and understand so that we do not fall into hubristic omniscience thinking we have full knowledge, second-guessing the circumstances and thereby acting foolishly where our senses or our limbs have had no tangible interaction.

Be it drawings that would never get off the board, road signs crafted light-years away from the traffic, advice given to a circumstance we are completely oblivious of or projecting unto ourselves experiences we have never lived, we slowly lose the integrity of our humanity when we deign to extend beyond ourselves and extrapolate imponderables.

Learn first

That way, we open the door to the unreasonable, the consequences of which might be quite dire for others affected by what we do.

If you have never lived it, learn first before you command or commend and do not let your virtual insight rob others of their stark reality.

Decade Blogs - Mister Mobility - Not all those who wander are lost

Decade Blogs

Mister Mobility is a pseudonym and the preferred public identity of a man I have known from the blogging world many years ago when he was a no-nonsense exponent of biblical hermeneutics. I agreed with many of his views and some were compelling enough to force me to comment on some of his blogs.

At the same time he was what I would call a mobile phone propeller head, having owned over 100 devices, he is a compendium of knowledge on mobile device usage and usability.

Then again, he has one of the most grounded heads of my social media interactions, smart, wise and reasonable, he is definitely someone I would love to meet.

I am highly honoured to have Mister Mobility write for my #YourBlogOnMyBlog Series commemorating my Decade of Blogging.

Blog - To Celebrate My Decade of Blogging

Simplicity, fun and humour belie a seriousness in the messages and witticisms he shares on social media tweeting with the Twitter handle @Mister_Mobility and blogging at Mobility.ng.

In this article, takes the ordinary and gives it deeper significance, our version of the truth might not be the truth. There is much to learn from this.

Not all those who wander are lost

“There is no-one that I cannot speak the truth to!” Those were the words of my number one mentor some weeks ago when we sat down to discuss certain issues. As I sat there, I reflected on several situations in which he had supposedly spoken the truth to people, and how he had been off the mark to certain degrees, and how his biases had shown through each situation. There is no question about his being a bold, straightforward man. No, his boldness was not the question. Where the question mark lay was what he considered the truth.

I am only in mid-life, but I have seen and heard enough in life to now be amused whenever an individual arrogates sole possession of the truth to himself. More often than not, what he holds to so tightly is his version of what he believes to be the truth. And usually, that version is soiled in some way. That version may largely contain truth, but his outlook and upbringing are likely to have tainted the picture in some way, such that he is missing a key element. And this excludes no-one.

For example, even historical truth is largely a question of who you are reading or listening to. Consider also for a minute, a married couple who have had an altercation, and when each party tells recounts to a third party or counsellor, their two versions do not line up. Yet, neither set out to lie about anything. They have spoken “the truth” to the best capacity of their faculties. Frail, faulty human faculties. They have only recounted the episode as their mortal minds perceived that it happened.

Two pastors might pick up the same Bible, and even though they belong to the same denomination, and perhaps were taught by the same theologian, they still differ to varying degrees on certain subjects. Yet, each believes that he speaks the truth.

Oh, but I am a believer in truth. I believe that there is always a truth to every situation and to every subject. It just seems that God has designed the world and life to mock us each time that we get as smug as to think that we have become authorities on to what is and what is not in every situation. Perhaps He sits and laughs at the frailty of the human mind and our sense of capacity. I have long resigned to that. Perhaps He designed things to make sure that no-one knows it all, has it all, or has it all together. But then, my position might just be off the mark too.

Now, I live at peace with myself, secured in the comfort that I do not have to know it all or have it all together. I remain a learner and keep seeking truth at every point, exploring this huge universe, sometimes threading where others fear, sometimes hitting a wall and then retracing my steps. Life is certainly adventurous that way, though sometimes it hits had. But then, life hits us all hard at some point in time or the other. What do I have to lose? Life as an ongoing adventure works much better for me than life locked up in a mansion, no matter how magnificent and well equipped.

I stumbled upon a phrase some years back, and fell in love with it instantly. It has become one of my rallying cries, a slogan to live by. It is a line penned by J. R. R. Tolkien from the hugely successful The Lord of the Rings. Here is what it says:

"Not all those who wander are lost."

This is the summary of who I have become, the person that I have embraced and the life that I hope to live till my last breath. Perhaps there is another angle to Mister Mobility beyond the field of mobile phones. This is life on the go.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

From the poem, All that is gold does not glitter in Chapter 10 of the Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings.

My congratulations to my egbon on his 10 years of blogging.