To consider what God wants for me is the best news

Consider your situation with contemplation

In the sermon I heard in church yesterday, the preacher asked what each of us would consider the best news ever to receive. Thoughts raced through my mind like someone who had met with a genie that could grant three wishes. How we can so rashly lose advantage in the face of a great bounty.

The child in me was ready to blurt out an ephemeral desire, but my better angels constrained me to think deeply about what it is that is indeed the news that would best be fulfilling of a desire, a wish, a hope, the news that would keep me beaming stronger than the midday sun in the tropics.

In the scheme of things, some would desire winning the lottery, so much money coming into your possession, it neither defines wealth nor health, many have had more money than can be counted and have had no peace, no health, no happiness, or no contentment to enjoy what they have. They are miserable and miserly, depressed and full of despair, the momentary thought of things taken care of can also be the suddenness of the better things taken away.

Something life-threatening suddenly solved

No, it was not the lottery I wanted as the best bit of news for me, useful as it might be, I saw a story I never wanted written about me. He won so much money and had no life with which to live and enjoy it. Cecil John Rhodes was said to be probably the only commoner apart from the royal family that could bring London to a standstill when he visited. On his deathbed, despite being one of the world’s most influential men of substance of his time said, “So little done, so much to do.” [Quotes: Cecil John Rhodes]

His health failed him at the age of 48, he had won the stupendous lottery of money, but it could not save his health.

Which brought me to another thought, I am facing prostate cancer, a condition that somewhat exists in a place I can neither see nor access. It presents no pain or discomfort, but the doctors in their conversations among themselves without telling me, until I read it in their notes had assessed it as malignant. Heck! It is cancer in a seemingly little place that can so easily kill you too.

You can imagine, I then thought having dismissed the good news of winning the lottery that I wanted to be totally healed. In one moment, every trace of cancer and infirmity obliterated in an instant and wholeness, nothing missing nothing lacking nothing broken – this being the full meaning of Shalom that we usually translate glibly as a greeting of peace. If only we knew in truth what peace and the peace of God really meant.

Surely, there is more to desire

Yet, I felt something was still missing from this thought, it was desire fed from my situation and circumstances, no less valid but still wanting. I could have my full health but then have no means or capacity to do the amazing and pleasurable things of life. I find myself thinking many times that there is more to life than this.

Jesus hung on the cross for more than just us getting by and still we barely enter the fundamentals of the goodness of why God gave His only begotten Son for the world, but we should dare to personalise it. If the King of Heaven thought I had this much value for Him to willingly sacrifice Himself, how is it that I am desperately failing to understand and appreciate it?

It might seem I was so long in thought, but I soon realised where I should set my hope, my desire, my need, and my fulfilment. It is in the Word of God, saying what God thinks, says, and desires about me. It came to me in these words, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” I was thinking in King James English, and it had much to say to me. [Bible Hub: III John 2]

It has unparalleled completeness

It addressed everything I could ever desire for the best news, a full life of blessing in spirit, soul, and body. Another translation, the New Living Translation, says, “Dear friend, I hope all is well with you and that you are as healthy in body as you are strong in spirit.” How can you not want wellness in your soul, health in your body, and strength in your spirit? The prosperity of the soul includes the fullness of your years too. There are more reinforcing translations of the same text to confirm purpose and intent.

I will take that every day and be thankful for every moment of the goodness and mercy of God following me all the days of my life. The Psalmist concludes the 23^rd Psalm with, “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” [Bible Hub: Psalm 23:6]

The import of that message is as grand as we so easily dismiss its meaning. Nothing can touch you in the house of the Lord even as you are well cared for and catered for by the very best that the universe has ever had to offer.

To think it alone is mind-blowing and yet there is every means to live it from this moment onwards.

Men's Health: Do the important and intimate checks

Looking forward

I have noticed an enthusiasm with which I talk about becoming 60, I am hardly 2 months into being 58, yet, next year is the golden jubilee. I first noticed this when I attended a group session that involved yoga exercises, I could not help but notice my apparent flexibility as compared to many of the younger participants. Our yoga instructor herself is 60.

However, it is not just a matter of age but one of wearing it well, the whole body positivity discourse also involves a bit of work on our part, it should not be a license to just let everything go. Indeed, we should be happy with our bodies, especially with the things we cannot change, things we can change with regards to losing pounds/kilos, healthy eating, a bit of exercise, and basic medical check-ups must be attended to.

Screenings galore

Those things have had my medical minders harping on about what should be checked and noticed so issues can be caught and dealt with promptly. The other day, it was the NHS sending a bowel cancer screening kit that required a sampling of my stool for analysis to be sent in the post for a result that thankfully meant there was nothing to be concerned about. This, I am informed, would be checked every two years.

Another range of issues that have come up have to do with blood pressure, diabetes, prostate cancer, liver and kidney function, and cholesterol checks. Most of these I have twice a year under my regular clinical checks apart from the prostate cancer prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. This has come up in a few discussions in group sessions and even closer to home but has been left unattended to.

Blood tales

When the results of blood tests came in just over 2 months ago, I found that my mean corpuscular volume (MCV) and mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) were reading beyond the normal range on the high side and indicative of both Vitamin B12 and folate (Vitamin B9) deficiency. This would mean despite my consumption of red meat and other aspects of diet; I was not getting enough from food and even supplements. All other indicators are normal.

This issue of Folic Acid Deficiency Anaemia came up about 7 years ago and I took supplements for it that subsequent readings came within range. It is the symptom of peripheral neuropathy in my right hand, that got me a bit concerned that I had to call my GP surgery for a conversation, and this meant I was in the surgery early this morning to give blood for a whole battery of tests to assess basically everything.

Eye on the future

It is not only for peace of mind, the knowledge about how your body is performing can allow for the necessary adjustments to keep you well and healthy. I know it is difficult for men to broach and discuss intimate health issues, but what is worse is leaving it to a point when you literally have no other options apart from facing terminal and possibly managed decline.

Having once had life-threatening cancer almost 15 years ago, I am aware of the need to be informed and understanding of the conditions in my body. There are probably times I have been fatalistic thinking I did not have much time left and did not effectively plan for the future. There have been such great advances in medicine and outcomes, then the good results of tests conducted over a decade that would suggest that I have been miraculously blessed to have better health, fitness, and strength than I have had in decades.

This calls for apprehension and anticipation, regulation, and planning, even so, the consideration beyond self to others with whom one shares life, experiences, hope, and a future. If anything is to be learnt, it is, health is wealth and men need to do the healthy to remain wealthy.

The sheer humanity of Cecil and Wilhelm

Destiny to an end

I found myself thinking about the men I wrote about in my blog yesterday and how men of destiny can be undone by the uncertainties and the inadequacies of our humanity. Something to reflect on, if only to put things in perspective about how to live life and relate to others.

There were just 6 years between the birth of Cecil John Rhodes and that of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the former, the 5^th son of a country clergyman and the latter, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the grandson of the first emperor of the German Empire and Queen Victoria, destined for the throne and the power that it portended.

Privilege and fortuitousness

Cecil John Rhodes was a sickly child sent to South Africa in the hope that it might help his health, he became a man of the right time in the right place when gold and diamonds were being discovered in large quantities in South Africa and by deft business acumen, political power and economic heft became one of the richest men in the world.

Kaiser Wilhelm II was a spoilt brat, the eldest of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren, but hardly well-liked for his demeanour, arrogance, megalomania, and self-belief that he was more capable than his ministers and diplomats. In time, his quest to expand his empire with the advent of WWI led to his forced abdication in 1918 and the end of the German Empire.

Our limitations as humans

Cecil John Rhodes could have been anything, he was ambitious if not power-drunk, and Mark Twain wrote of him saying, “he is the only unroyal outsider whose arrival in London can compete for attention with an eclipse.” [Mark Twain: Cecil Rhodes]

Yet, it is his health that failed him, for, at 48, he died with these words recorded from his lips, “So little done, so much to do.” Kaiser Wilhelm II was emperor for just over 30 years when he went into exile at Huis Doorn in The Netherlands where he lived another 23 years probably ruing the decisions that lost him the empire. A man who could only reminisce of the life and glory he once had when he died of a ripe old age of 82.

The dead stay dead

Kaiser Wilhelm II leaves a legacy of being the centre of WWI and presiding over the falling of the major monarchies of mainland Europe, he lies in repose in a mausoleum built by his exiled residence at Huis Doorn.

Cecil John Rhodes, the imperialist and every other epithet he both deserves or not is the benefactor of the Rhodes Scholarship and many memorials to the whitewash and sterilised part of his biography. He lies under a slab of stone at Matopos Hills in Zimbabwe at a place he called World’s View.

Just a thought

You can have so much power and lose it, just as you can have so much money and not live to use it. Who would have thought a sickly child from the English countryside would rise to become one of the most powerful and richest men in the world?

Conversely, maybe Kaiser Wilhelm II might have sustained the German Empire and ruled for 53 years and taking the House of Hohenzollern into its 4^th Century of power, but he squandered what was bequeathed to him.

“The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.” [Bible Gateway: Psalms 103:15-16 (NIVUK)]

Blog - Huis Doorn (1999), Rhodes Cottage (2019)

Essential Snobbery 101: To serve and be served reveals a mindset of wealth

A fictional pandemic life

The different perspectives journaled of lives during this Coronavirus pandemic have given some insight into the way we deal with situations somehow out of our control. The organ grinder of our government’s spouse created a veritable work of fiction about the Coronavirus experience of their family situated in London when in reality, they had driven up to stay in Durham.

All on the premise of the need for childcare, which left us reeling from realising some people were above the law. Lest we forget, Make Wakefield’s family does own a castle; they are too established to follow the rules. [iNews: Mary Wakefield Spectator article: How Dominic Cummings’ wife’s coronavirus story differs from his statement]

A wealth pandemic life

A few days ago, we were brought to luxurious Kensington, a large house with enough space to invite other occupants to sequester as part of the enforced quarantine process. What followed was a life lesson in the power of wealth to insulate you from the common that the exclusive almost begins to grate.

Now, I have no issues with the piece Shruti Advani wrote for the Financial Times, it was a window into the cares, concerns and priorities of those who do not have to bother about the means to get anything done. Self-absorbed and lacking in self-awareness as it might seem, you begin to realise that you have to find ways to create your own bubbles in a turbulent world. If wealth gives you that opportunity, then so be it. [FT Wealth: The awkward lessons of my luxury lockdown in Kensington]

Accommodations of orderliness

What places her in this exclusive situation is borne of many things: she inherited wealth, used to edit a magazine about private wealth, and her husband is a venture capitalist. She retained a sense of order around the house, tripling the delivery of flowers, and when she found that kiddie arithmetic was a bit out of her league, she hired a private tutor for her son, whose educational challenges appear to be between schoolwork and chess, forestalling the future need for a psychiatrist.

There is a method to the whole narrative. Engaging in some conversation on Facebook, someone noted that she was name-dropping. The names dropped were those of helpers rather than of friends or colleagues. It exudes, in my view, a sense of confidence without a hint of social climbing; the designer or brand names simply mirroring her comfort zone. Obviously, she has a personal shopper.

Reality is at the door

Yet, her world is not devoid of reality; the pandemic bears weighty risks, death being present and threatening, with the recognition that wealth offers some protection, but it is not a talisman. The pandemic spread around the world, and the rich has inordinately affected the poor and ethnic minorities more.

The undercurrent of the writing still points to the many pressed into service to make our lives bearable, the nanny, the florist, the delivery men, the private tutor, the house help that cooks, the personal shopper, the police, and the ambulance crew. Eliminate those you cannot afford.

I came away with two thoughts: if I were ever to be affected by it at all, that wealth is a mindset and something you need to be conditioned for and that it is a nice life if you can afford and live it with any sense of guilt or apology. We are not called to carry the world on our shoulders; there is usually enough on our plates.

Thankful for the privilege my parents created for me

As Pharaoh.

A thankfulness reappraised

Sometimes, I just want to appreciate and be thankful for some of the things that have become the stories of my life.

In a life filled with privilege, opportunity, good fortune and blessings, or is it sheer luck, you can only be grateful. I was watching a programme on television yesterday title Rich House, Poor House on Channel 5 which is a documentary-style reality television programme that follows two families from opposites ends of class and wealth divides swapping their homes and lives for a week to experience what the other side lives.

On an abstract level, it was just entertainment, but it was also a social anthropological study to which one can begin to relate and understand the broad spectrum of society, the depth of empathy, the ability to reflect and the willingness to adapt.

Money helps but there is more

In yesterday’s show, you saw the amazing dynamic of community and neighbourliness in what one might call the deprived, yet the absence of means did not define them as lacking in humanity, love or the sense of belonging. The lack of money is not necessarily being bereft of happiness.

On the other side, where there was hardly any neighbours and a weekly spending kitty ten times what their counterparts in the exchange had to live on, the father of the house had cut down on life as an executive for health reasons and his wife reflected on how he could have worked himself to the death and whether life would have been worth it to be a rich widow. It is not all about money.

Yet, I could see privilege and opportunity in different guises in both families, the aspirational in terms of exposure and the inspiration in terms of experience ministered to me as lessons in life.

The lessons outside classes

What amazing luxuries that accompanied my early education in an international setting of races from all ends of the world in Nigeria, I born in a foreign land and those, not of Nigerian parentage born in Nigeria, we all equal and the same without one being favoured over the other.

The daughter of the headmistress once pinched me and when I returned home to tell my parents, my dad said I should never let anyone take advantage of me, I should retaliate. So, the bully who was older and bigger came again and I did to her what she did to me, she went crying to her parents. Her father was the head of the company where my dad was a middle manager.

A conversation ensued between her mother and my father, they settled on the fact that she was the bully and I refused to be bullied. She never tormented me after that and we became friends. The lasting effect of that encounter cannot be discounted.

Of privilege and access

My extra-curricular activities after school like being driven to art classes and my sister to ballet classes or when I was Pharaoh in our school’s production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, exemplified the richness of education unquantifiable in examination scores but trenchant in character building, self-affirmation and confidence bordering on exuberance. You find the ability to express yourself in places where normally others would be tongue-tied.

The parental quest to toughen me up and give me a sense of my cultural roots was sending me off to boarding school hundreds of miles away from home. In some ways, it was a hellish experience for the first few years, but I adapted.

I had other classmates who travelled by train from the north of Nigeria alone, catered for by strangers until they made it to school and they endured the same on their return home. I was put on a plane, there was someone to pick me up and ensure I was delivered safe and sound to the care of the housemaster. I also had relatives close by for the short holidays as well of visitors who when they came to visit their wards made it a duty to see me too.

Knowing who you are

I was raised in a bubble of sorts, an idyllic existence in Rayfield, Jos and in Tudun Wada, Kaduna, desperately shielded from many influences, though some were unavoidable due to proximity or circumstance, they became defining moments of exposure to sexual abuse, morbid fear, extreme religiosity, encounters with fetish priests and much else. All this is part of the narrative that has become my story.

In many ways, I have retained the accoutrements of privilege which have given me the various instances where I have been able to seize upon opportunities. It does not mean that I have not been visited by failure, infirmity, incapacity or misfortune, but they are not definitive of who I am, rather they are parts of the journey of life for which I have been grateful to traverse, survive and thrive.

I owe the grit and the suppleness to the exceptional upbringing I had and one more thing I would never repudiate is that I have been a child of privilege, not necessarily born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but given the tools and the means to navigate wealth and class in having both or neither without losing the quality of the person that I am. I have my wonderful parents to thank for that and I am always grateful to them.

Other members of the cast including me at different times in the musical play.

Note: All the pictures were taken of our performance of the musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Sacred Heart Primary School, Kaduna in December 1975. I was Pharaoh of All Egypt.

Thought Picnic: Seeing like our spirit does

Wealth in knowing

Discovering the wealth we possess is sometimes the most difficult knowledge to come about in the lifelong quest of knowing oneself.

Even those who appear to be so self-assured and self-confident to the point of being self-conceited bordering of nauseating arrogance may just be wearing a mask of extraversion that is hardly emblematic of who they really are or should be portraying of themselves.

Wealth is not just money in the bank even though it matters, however it should matter because it allows one to stretch and reach rather than just hoard for some fear of poverty suddenly mowing down our ramparts and laying us bare. We are blessed to be a blessing for an open hand is a hand that is open to receive.

Driven to succeed

The greatest wealth however is insight, knowledge that fuels expectation, that undergirds hopes and fills you with the kind of purposeful resolve that where you are at is transient and the journey ahead, adventurous and fraught as it might be, leads to a destination that will make it all worthwhile.

It is what gives joy to living well and strengthens the will to latch on to the affirmative in the midst of the negative and the uncomfortable, it drives you through that valley of the shadow of death assured of the fact that you will not faint but arrive at the summit to bask in the light of being an overcomer.

The amazing spirit in us

Time and again, I see people draw strength from deep within to do things that look like the miraculous, all because they believed and believed themselves enough to dare.

Fighting adversity with a tenacity that tells a thrilling story that sometimes never gets told, the spirit of man is amazing to behold, it takes him to places his senses are yet to fathom or his mind is yet to fully comprehend, but like the engine of a vehicle; take the breaks off, put it in gear and depress the accelerator – and where you are becomes where you were as where you want to be gets to become where you’ll eventually be.

In difficulty, we once again find the simplicity to completely understand things so easily.

Homeless! My exciting life takes a new chapter

A roof

And so I read the story of a homeless man who had helped keep crime out of a neighbourhood cemetery who had now been rewarded with a trailer, the first roof over his head in three years.

I have been blessed beyond measure by the generosity of many who have since I lost possession of my home given me shelter, succour, space and sustenance.

However, what does it really mean to have a roof over your head? It means you can and do pay the rent or mortgage, you can and do pay the bills and most importantly you are not under the duress of situations that require that you vacate a place for more economically viable persons. I forgot, you’ll have an address too.

Friends beyond need

What would I have ever been able to do without friends, friends near and far who have poured kindly into my bosom to help me back to a semblance of life lived in independence.

Homes opened, hearts opened, hands opened and much more, I have not had enough time for a pity party or for a day to cry because they overwhelm me to a point that I worry that my reality is far from my discovery – I am in fact a homeless man at the mercy of lots and in the kindness of innumerable people who have been too wonderful for words.

Things

Then a decision came just over a week ago, the power of things and what things do to your ability to move on, many things that I have I do not need for the things have no place to be things I could cherish anymore. Those things I have to let go of to allow me do other things and hopefully as things look up those things lost can be replaced.

So, as the week runs out, I find myself with a bag and arriving at a place after a long journey that started three years ago with the onset of cancer, the recovery of health and the seemingly long and sometimes impossible recovery of wealth.

Homeless!

Yes, the truth of the matter is, I am indeed a homeless man. There are probably many we see on the streets today who long before they ended up there have stories to tell but never get heard because we see them in the state they are in rather than on the journey they have travelled.

Somewhere in our hearts and minds we hope we will get to tell a different story altogether with these chapters fully detailed with what some people will call experience.

Note: I have received some messages with regards to this blog and some have asked how they can help, amongst other things, you can use the Paypal Donate button to the top right of my blog. I have also realised that some countries do not have access to Paypal, in which case using a Money Transfer agency or a Bank Transfer might suffice - you can contact me on forakin (at) gmail (dot) com for details or for address to send gifts in kind. Thanks.

Thanks for your help and concerns, I am grateful for all your kindness.

Nigeria: Abba Abacha sues the Swiss for Nigerian loot

Speechless and more

I read it with a sharp intake of breath, the effrontery of it all, the shame-faced boldness of hereditary impunity that started from leaders the generation before ours, is perfected in their children and beyond belief in their offspring.

One can only wonder what drives these people, so despicable, exuding of privilege and unearned entitlement with the means to buy the hearts and souls of those who would pawn their beings for filthy lucre.

Yes, Abba Abacha, the son of the despotic and heinous Sani Abacha [1] who plundered Nigeria till she was bereft and squeezed her till her pips squeaked has taken the Swiss to court [2] to challenge the order to return ill-gotten assets to the tune of $350 million.

Brigandage to the extreme

It is conservatively assumed that Sani Abacha as Brigand-in-Chief robbed Nigeria of $2.2 billion, of which the family after his death returned about $700 million.

That was not in taxes and definitely not in restitution, they were just so blatantly open with their kleptomania the momentary tinge of guilt that extracted that return now seems to have faded away completely.

In making a claim for the return of the moneys, I would suppose Mr. Abba Abacha has hired a crack legal team that might be offering services on a no-win no-fee basis with their greed latched onto a percentage of the returns, if any.

The lies would amaze

The perjury, perfidy and falsehood that would consist the weight of evidence in this case might make the devil innocent, because one can only wonder what business activity or providence might have created this largesse of wealth for the Abacha family without any noticeable commercial entity to back the sources of the wealth.

The gall of it all is breathtakingly beyond belief, Abba Abacha has grown so accustomed to the bilking of Nigeria that he can see no wrong in having his hands on stolen moneys and is ready to defend to the utmost the right to be labeled a thief as his father so obviously was.

There was a time people would hang their heads in shame and not be seen in public for the disgrace of dishonesty, lies, treachery and distrust – now, if you have the money, you can never be wrong no matter how bad you have been.

Swiss roll him into jail

Mr. Abba Abacha has been refused a visa to Switzerland to attend the hearings, but I should expect if he does return, the Swiss should happily accommodate him in gaol on the technicality of having rescinded the suspended custodial sentence he received in November 2009.

Everyone has the right to fight for what is right, but this is wrong, it brings unnecessary opprobrium to an already battered reputation of Nigeria and Nigerians, he as a member of a criminal organisation now needs to face justice and hopefully the return of most of what allows him to strut about with outrageous arrogance.

Sources

[1] Sani Abacha - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] BBC News - Son of Nigeria's Abacha challenges Swiss $350m order