Ìrírí - How our brotherly love could have blossomed

Pre-term brothers

Just a few minutes ago, I ended a conversation with my father that took us down memory lane with comparisons of realities of life that left me in surprise and shock bordering on rage.

There were many stories but the one I never knew was about my half-brother who before he received a given name experienced the misfortune of being born into an avoidable situation exacerbated by systemic failures in Nigeria.

My half-brother and I were born over 40 years apart, in literally similar circumstances but in different lands. We were both prematurely born, he arrived at just over 7 months, I arrived in 6 and a half months, somehow, we were delivered in maternity homes without facilities to cater for the prematurely born that we had to be moved to better equipped hospitals and that is where our stories begin to diverge.

Our separate lives

On the cold morning in 1965, after I was born, arrangements were made to move me to a major city hospital where as my father recounted to me, I had all the hallmarks of royal treatment – spacious, well-ventilated room, with nurses and medical personnel at my beck and call, I did not lack for care, comfort or succour – I am 47.

My half-brother, let’s call him Ìrírí (Yoruba for experience) was born in Ibadan which at one time was famed to be the largest city in Africa along with many firsts.

He was rushed to University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan the premier teaching hospital in Nigeria where a philanthropist had previously donated 6 incubators to the Paediatric Unit to cater for premature birth.

Five of six, down

Ìrírí arrived to find that five of the incubators were out of commission but was fortunate for a few hours to have the only functioning incubator temporarily vacated for him to at least have a fighting chance to lay claim on a Nigeria of our dreams.

However, alternative arrangements had to be made for Ìrírí, so when he had stabilised, the decision was made to transfer him to an incubator installed in the private practice of one of the UCH consultants, also in Ibadan.

Ìrírí made it to that practice but at the same time, he became an everyday Nigerian at the mercy of too many things out his control. The incubator was vacant and available but the public electricity supply was down and as if fate had colluded to deprive Ìrírí of an inalienable right, the backup electricity supply could not be provided because the generators will not start.

Ìrírí rests

So, Ìrírí mustered all the strength he had to survive, he wriggled and writhed, panted for breath, desperately hoped that his heart will hold out and many other organs that were not fully developed for earthly experience strained at the limits of their ability without the support they all needed – after trying so hard, they decided this earthly experience was not worth it.

There, Ìrírí drew his last breath bidding the earth farewell but leaving a most indelible mark on the lives he has touched for the short while of just about 36 hours that he was with us – over 40 years after Akin was born in England, Ìrírí could not survive similar circumstances in an independent Nigeria in its 6^th decade.

Time, manner and place

Then my father drew comparisons between Ìrírí and myself; as a poor student just about to take up a job in a sorting office for Christmas, I was born just 2 days after they had moved house, my mother’s labour probably brought on by the stress of moving house, I had the best of facilities provided at no cost at the behest of the government and here I stand.

Back in our home country of Nigeria, everything had to be paid for and it made no difference to the outcome, the experience was harrowing, the prognosis was dire and either as a microcosm or snapshot of the Nigerian experience, the short life of Ìrírí exemplifies so many things that are just not right with Nigeria.

The premier teaching hospital in the country had 5 out of 6 donated incubators out of commission, this does touch the matter of pre-existing incubators or what might have caused a philanthropist to make those donations.

Murder by proxy

Then the matter of usage and maintenance that led to the failure of the incubators that none of the management thought it prudent to either seek new funding from the donor or go on a fund-raising drive which contributed to the murder-by-proxy of Ìrírí.

I do wonder what the philanthropist would have felt if he learnt that the equipment he donated to the hospital had fallen into disrepair that the purposes for which the incubators were acquired could no more be served.

Then think of the many like my dear Ìrírí whose experience of this world was truncated by a system that serves nothing but rank incompetence, mismanagement, corruption, malfeasance and worse.

It ought not to be so, but that is one of the realities of Nigeria today.

Dear Ìrírí, Rest in peace, my half-brother, Nigeria did not deserve you.

Thought Picnic: Your Local Website is a Global Shop Window

You are out there

I fear that many businesses that have a web presence are missing out on an essential bit of public relations that is well beyond their control.

Beyond the presentation facade, there is the experience and the opinion dimension that has now become integral to the product.

If you are an airline, a hotel or an outfit that offers services, develops products or even compares things, activities and circumstances, you are now at the mercy of the real life views which can be anything from seriously positive to downright negative, the matter of honesty is a variable that is indeterminate, it is taken on trust.

You cannot choose your audience

In the first instance, except where the establishment decides to restrict viewing by filtering or challenge/response engagement, any website, no matter where uploaded and regardless of the expertise of the designer has global scrutiny.

The traffic from outside your locality might not be great, but be assured that it is viewable by all. When I look at my blog, it has a Netherlands registered URL, I am resident in the UK, I write about personal and activist issues in my locality and in relation to my heritage which is partly Nigerian but I get the largest audience from China, then the United States, followed by Norway, the United Kingdom comes 4^th, the Netherlands 7^th and Nigeria 10^th.

I cannot explain why the greatest interest in my blog comes from those locations and I cannot control the access that this audience has to my opinions.

You local website is a global shop window

I make this point because I feel that many Nigerian websites of the government, educational institutions, businesses and much else fail to recognise that their audience is well beyond the myopic confines of who they traditionally think will visit their websites.

This morning, I found myself commenting about the website of a premier Nigerian University, the first observation was though it provided a unique service, the design was poor and the copy was full of spelling errors.

In my view, that was just unforgivable, one expects a tertiary academic institution to apply itself to rigour, correctness and exactness. For a university of that standard not to exploit the services of its languages departments and proofread copy before publication is just beyond belief.

It behoves one to ask, if out of interest in Nigeria for all the good that is known of the country some prospective student were seeking admission or some organisation wanted to bestow a chair the first view of the university being the website shoddily presented will lose the university custom long before the prospects are given the opportunity to explore further – we do not have the attention spans to maintain interest after the disappointment of avoidable sloppiness.

We assess and discriminate better

Then to hotels or other services, forums on the web all seem to come with easy access to review and critique based on experience. Between mood, fairness and honest opinion, by the time a few reviews are read you get a good idea of the product, the service, the people, the ambience and immediately come to some conclusion as to whether you want to use that service or not.

Whilst price can be a differentiator, it is hardly the main variable in the decision making process, there is no point going to an affordable place if you will be treated with contempt and levity, you want to be able to shop with a sense of security.

One discriminating factor I used in choosing a hotel recently was that for the same price point in 5 places only one offered the option to cancel with charge, some were charging up-front with the option to cancel and one even had a non-refundable no-cancellation policy – all for the same price – I chose the most flexible option for my security, safety and convenience – I will never trade those variables off if I could help it.

The reviews make all the difference

When it comes to mobile applications, we are met with choices that are never fully explained but in the experiences of others – more 5-stars than 1-stars and you think it is probably a good product, equal stars for the top and bottom rating, you try to find out why it excites such divergence passions and wonder if your experience will be for the better or the worse. Too many low ratings and you just don’t waste your time trying to be a charitable user of what everyone hates.

At the same time, you can control all the levers before you are exposed to ridicule; this requires planning, consideration, service, responsiveness and proactive remediation, this will always eventually boost rankings or ratings, leave any of these to lie fallow and your business will be pulled down by the negative – you cannot afford to have a stubborn resolve even if you are the only show in town – people will find something else to do than suffer your service for a second.

Think well about what your product is, what your service is, work on customer satisfaction and make sure your web page is an honest portrayal of what you do because nothing irks a customer more than to be lied to.

Thought Picnic: Contemporary Remote Viewing

See afar

My day is upset by the irregularity of agendas and purpose. Technology has made the world a smaller place and in the process robbed us of the day cycle because centralisation means that people way outside your time zone will place demands on your services and expertise to resolve their local issues.

We have now become modern-day remote viewers from the ability to remotely access systems to divining from accumulated logs the circumstances, status and situations that brought about a failure or a success.

Divining and prophesying

Sat at our screens completely squinty-eyed we peer, we think, we dispute and we discuss the issues with peers and not so peers, all this does not include the politics of management who what to know what is going on without exactly being interested in why it all happened – they have schedules and you simply have to recall you half-serviced crystal ball from Madam Silvera the medium and come up with answers that present even more questions you don’t have answers to yet.

The follow-the-sun myth has been reworked into being in one location and using working shifts to reach to the West and to the East, taking its toll because putting a shift into the day is not really compensated for in recovery time to adjust your body clock or biorhythms.

A shifted day

The day ends late, it means there is no sense in waking up early for breakfast or any of those chores, but if you are naturally an early riser who gets by on just about 4 to 5 hours of slee,p you can to be sure to need some sort of tonic if the mundane occupies most of your day before the rush and the panic sets in from afar.

The honest truth is, there is no particular productivity gain in this arrangement apart from bending to every whim of the Project Manager who can at times be aware and readily oblivious of the issues you have to deal with from the technical which can be quite easy to the people who God bless them have to communicate what they can see and experience in languages they hardly speak – none of us here are polyglots except in the multitude of words of our mother tongues and lover’s tongues – if you have bitten on one.

For order to the wonder

Besides, the devil is in the detail and there is an ongoing obsession to bring order to the chaos, I feel like those early days of Internet chatting when we all exchange pictures of each other like new-age pen-pals only that everyone labelled their pictures ME.GIF; by the time you have got 100 ME.GIF files, you are no better than someone collecting pebbles or sea shells from the beach – fun it might seem at the time but lacking in distinction or discrimination.

The novelty soon wears off and drudgery creeps upon you like slime with a life of its own to engulf and suffocate you to death.

It isn't really that bad, you get there and at the end of the day, whatever you have achieved is fulfilment enough to make tomorrow another day, if you can find it in you to just switch off after work.

Thought Picnic: Political regain from office pain

Wants and needs

It was like entering a bazaar of the bizarre. My engagement extended just a few weeks ago had someone asking if I still required the privileges I had to do what I was brought in to do.

Immediately, I replied ensuring my manager was copied in that the privileges are essential to fulfilling my role – that should have been the end of the story.

Apparently, that was not the case, as the week began, I noticed that certain ordinary things I was once able to do, I could do no more.

Lose to lost

Sometimes you ignore the little issues because at the time, the situation is not as significant as to warrant further investigation, some other things I needed to do, I could do all because I was still registered with the environment.

However, yesterday, I decided to check why exactly a restriction came into place only to find out that literally all my privileges had been revoked without notification.

This is the sort of unnecessary frustration of activity and productivity that one sometimes encounters in the workplace that it borders on an atrocity.

Find the wind

Usually, on occasions like this, you settle into forensic mode, obtain earlier requests, approved implementations and compare those with the current state of play before the matter gets escalated up the chain for a speedy resolution.

Speedy it had to be, but not before the email church of scores of meaningless power plays that fail to grasp what needs to get done until someone up there bellows and suddenly there is someone to assume responsibility to resolve the issue with alacrity.

Just two hours later, things seemed to return to normal but it would tempting fate to want to determine the how and why of the loss of my privileges apart from the apparent lack of processes to ensure that such events do not happen willy-nilly.

Room to bloom

Where you find you are about to fume and fulminate, you take 10 sharp breaths, type with consideration without letting go of the piece of your mind you desperately want to express and allow the system to adjust itself as the responsibility chain that depends on your services sorts out the politics to get the technical issues resolved.

As you drum the desk with your fingers, don’t forget that you are still charging for the time you have been made idle by forces within the organisation that should have been facilitating your greater productivity.

Thought Picnic: Thoughts to Decline

Thoughts to decline

Every once in a while in the quiet of my world a thought of dissatisfaction crosses my mind. It usually comes as a bundle cracked open to reveal a dissatisfaction with where I am, what I have done, how I am doing, things I have left undone and other issues that seem to want the attention I have not yet found time to handle.

One must not let the thoughts linger giving depression the seed and ground to germinate. More often than not, I remember there is much more to be grateful for than I can ever fully fathom.

Thoughts to espouse

That is enough to banish thoughts of ingratitude and seething anger for a sense of appreciation for the blessings, good fortune, provenance and luck that has come my way even when I have been the least deserving of all of that.

Things may never be perfect, but I am always nearer a sense of fulfilment than the foreboding of catastrophe and like I have said many times before, life is for living and I had better start living it well, after cancer, you cannot afford the cancer of dissatisfaction to rob you of the will to not just to survive but to thrive too.

The first step to happiness is acceptance, contentment, thankfulness and calm – what can be taken care of will be taken care of and what if beyond me should be beyond bothering me. 

Thought Picnic: Aborting peristalsis

A lunch-time malfunction

Suddenly caught within the travails of thought, taste, smell and food which was triggered at lunch this afternoon.

I had ordered beef stroganoff and rice, at the time of the service, it appeared the rice was hot, or maybe the plate was hot because I was getting uncomfortable as I stood at the till to pay as the till broke down.

I settled at the table and spooned the first and second mouthful at which point the mechanics of peristaltic movement seized to function, a massive paper-jam, in my throat.

Tearful choking

I took a few sips of my drink with the hope of eventually easing the blockage without much success; I could breathe but at the same time I was choking.

At which point, I had to run out unto the patio where all I could cough up was the drink, but the choke was still painfully there, I was already in great discomfort and in tears, my colleague that the table completely oblivious of what I had suffered.

Another drink of water did not help, as the time-out for regular peristalsis loomed, the process of ingestion could not be completed, I had to run out again and every that had gone in was seen again as the natural had been aborted for survival – Relief, but that was the end of lunch, I could not believe how much that experience had exhausted me, I was tempted to end the day at work.

Much, much later

Hungry as I was, the next intake I had was some tea about an hour after that, then two pygmy bananas before I returned to my hotel with the hope for supper.

The entrée of taramasalata and warm flat breads went down well but the main course after the second bite suddenly went off to my taste and with the collusion of my memory and my thinking exciting a feeling of nausea, I was in the gents the next minute and that was the end of dinner – I can only wonder what the whole problem was before I begin to worry.

Should I be bothered?

In the first instance, I could surmise that the rice was not really as hot as the plate felt and that could have the tendency of choking you but the event 8 hours after left me more concerned than it was comfortable to be.

One needs to see what tomorrow brings before panic sets in, puréed food or a liquid diet – let’s not go there yet.

Thought Picnic: What a trip

Navigating to Jupiter

I arrived at my hotel this evening first being worried about something I might have misplaced with the hope of finding in a day or two but worse still was the 10 mile journey from Chester.

Usually, when I get a taxi, the driver has a good idea of where to go and only once before have I had to give the driver the post code because he needed the aid of the satellite navigator (SatNav) to get to our destination.

By now, I have a good idea of the route and if I keep aware of my surroundings, I can tell if we are somewhat off-course.

So, I told the driver where I was going and he asked for the post code which I had to call the hotel for, he keyed it into his SatNav as it is called for short and there began this amazing journey.

Strange turns in wild places

I noticed he took an unusual turn and then he turned back because he had missed a turn, he said he was following the shortest route according to the SatNav, I wasn’t impressed, as I said he could easily have taken the dual carriageway and turned off – I was about to grab the edge of my seat.

At a T-Junction he drove on the right to turn right and then before we knew it, we were on a dirt road, forded a stream, passed between a walled avenue with barely enough space the cab to pass through, bumpy and disconcerting, I could only wonder if I had gotten into a cab to some eerie place never to return to civilisation again.

This was not helped by the fact that it was dark, cold, remote, quiet and we were strangers, it was not one of situations where you would have shouted out to the driver, “Stop! Already, or I’ll call the police.”

Not short by half

Between the urge to panic with hysteric abandon and the adventure of navigating the Welsh back roads to oblivion and beyond, I kept my cool until the side road came out unto a road more familiar to me – I knew, that even in the broadest daylight, it wasn’t something I would have ventured.

Anyway, we arrived at the hotel and though the route might have been shorter according to the SatNav, it still came to the same price – it made no difference.

The driver came to open the door almost too aware of my unexpressed displeasure when he offered a reduction from the metered price, I was not about to take the generosity without an opinion.

Who are these people?

So, I told him, the last time I had a back road safari like that in the dark was probably too far gone in my memory to remember, my nerves frayed already as if I could do with a stiff drink, I stepped out took my bags into the hotel to be met with new faces everywhere – Hotel California?

No, Mother’s Day had more staff hired and it so happens that the regulars were away or off duty, it was not until my bags in storage were brought to my room before I saw a familiar face – if I learnt anything, you cannot live in a parallel universe, the difference will be too disconcerting to be healthy or peaceful.

I’ll rather stick to the usual route no matter how long it is and see the people I am most familiar with in a hotel that I have stayed in for the past 8 weeks.