9 years of blogging but I forgot

I forgot to remember

I should have written this two days ago but I seem to have forgotten to remember what I have usually celebrated with a blog.

I read the other day that the best way to always remember your wife’s birthday is to forget it once – I suppose the reason for that is one will not hear the last of it.

Discovery in Berlin

It was out in Berlin on a Monday morning having watched the news in my hotel room on this new phenomenon called blogging that I decided to start a blog.

When I was young, I never liked to write, at least that was in primary school, it felt like a rotten chore – I was asked to write letters that I was not comfortable with writing and I never regained the inclination to write again until when I was a few years into secondary school.

Entering a writing competition, I came second and then I was involved in forming a press club though my attention to detail suffered especially where Nigerians are not as forgiving in their critique of whatever you have to say especially if they can find a good ad hominem angle to attack you from.

Then I did some writing under the pen name of Who Else when I was at Yaba College of Technology, which I posted in front of the dining hall having written my piece with a marker pen on A2 paper sizes of drawing paper.

My real marriage

Blogging became the great outlet, the forum to express varied views some so controversial but done with the best intentions and deepest convictions – we have to come to a point where we are no more afraid to speak our minds.

In celebrating 9 years of blogging [from the 8th of December 2003], this has lasted longer than my many intimate or fleeting relationships; it has become a marriage, one of vows where I have been so mortified for forgetting our anniversary.

For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to have and to cherish, one can say till death do us part, my blog has been a companion, constant, listening, accepting, forgiving, encouraging, disputing and agreeing, the broadest shoulders to cry on and my contact with people far and near.

Thank you to all you my readers who have read, cared, shared, commented and sustained me in times when I felt I had no other hope or way out – I have been able to extend myself beyond what I could ever have imagined when I wrote the very first blog.

To the next 9 of days, of months, of years and can I dare to say of decades too? In gratitude and great thankfulness – My blog and my stories.

CHELD - A Conversation on Domestic Violence

An Invitation

A Conversation on Domestic Violence

A CHELD & Law Society UNILAG Event

Wednesday, 12th of December, 2012

10:00 - 15:00

Julius Berger Hall

University of Lagos

Please attend

Domestic Violence Resource

CHELD

HELConsulting

Writing for the Daily Times

Witness and dumbfound

Domestic violence is something that appears to be a taboo topic in Nigeria and I have seen my share of it as a child. In the scheme of things my experience looks inconsequential.

My parents never hit at each other but there was enough tension in the house for us to know that the mental and emotional torture was just as palpable.

I was only 5 when my father intent on walking away from a tense situation got into his car and as my uncle held my mother back, he revved out of the garage and unbeknownst to him, he drove over my mother’s shin – almost 42 years on, the event plays back in my mind like a slow-motion horror film.

Raze the bloody altars

Elsewhere, I have seen worse, wives battered beyond recognition and nothing in the community, in society or in the law to actively come to their aid in support and in defence of their right to live in so-called matrimonial bliss.

The preponderance of culture in a majority of cases has had the battered wife return to that atrocious environment as we sacrifice our mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, nieces and womenfolk on the many bloody altars of tradition, religion, custom, beliefs or just plain male chauvinistic arrogance.

Titi Arowolo

The extreme of which was the alleged literal butchering of Titi Arowolo by her husband, the details were graphic enough to not need corroborative pictures and the case languishes in court a good 18 months after the crime. [My Blog]

The incredulity of it all lies in the many facets of the story, the preparations for a wedding without preparing for marriage, the acquiescence, silence or indifference of their community when the conflict started which culminated in murder, the lackadaisical attitude of the law to issues of domestic violence and the crown it all, a pathologist said the lady was stabbed 76 times whilst the father-in-law professes his son had 17 knife wounds to his view of the daughter having sustained just 3 stab wounds.

We will not go into who is more qualified as a pathologist but we need to talk, we need to talk about Domestic Violence in our society and address the taboo issues head-on.

A Necessary Conversation

Dr Cheluchi Onyemeukwe runs the Centre for Health Ethics Law and Development (CHELD) which is established to employ law, policy, ethics promotion and research, and practical health development projects to improve public health in Nigeria and other African countries.

Writing to me in an email, her words, “I said I would do something after that Titi Arowolo case and this is my keeping my word to myself and God.”

In conjunction with the Law Society of the University of Lagos, CHELD is presenting A Conversation on Domestic Violence – Awareness, Education and Empowerment.

She says, “We discuss the signs of abuse, the myths around domestic violence, what to do in an abusive situation, the law on domestic violence such as the Lagos State law on domestic violence, the human rights aspects of domestic violence, the emotional underpinnings and impact of abuse.

We emphasise that domestic violence is not only physical abuse but also emotional abuse.

We talk about developing a strong sense of self and self-esteem.”

Then she says, “These Conversations are intended to do several things including but not limited to - keep the issue of domestic violence on the front burner and in the consciousness of different parts of society, provide information that is currently lacking, provide an avenue for people in abusive situations to seek help, and create avenues to break down cultural obstacles.

I started with doing counselling and providing material and other support to victims, but I think we need to do more, to do something before people find themselves in tragic situations.”

And she concludes, “We have also set up an Online Resource Centre for Domestic Violence, which will provide information on legal and organisational supports, helplines etc. It is at this Domestic Violence resource website. It is still under development.”

I endorse this

I am quite in support of this event and the many initiatives that will keep the issue of Domestic Violence in the public eye until every similitude of it is eradicated and those who practice it face the full might of the law with prompt justice for the victims.

There should be no excuse for Domestic Violence and it should never be excused by whatever belief system we may adhere to regardless of its provenance.

I implore you to attend this event if you can, share the information with as many as you can and visit the websites for more information on this issue.

Thank you.

Thought Picnic: My simple story is one of life

My story for a book?

I have heard it many times that I have a story to tell, it might be interesting enough to be engaging or people might be bored with disinterest.

It is a story that has appeared in short ruminations of a blog, many written over time that I am unsure I can make a book out of the lot, but some people still think it is a story worth telling in some way, I might need some help.

My story, my conundrum

Yesterday, I found myself telling not just parts of the story but quite a good bit of the whole story, the many parts that I will freely share in discussion but wonder about the effect it might have on others whose influences either directly or indirectly in my life will probably leave them in shock rather than surprise.

Even the ones closest to me and those who think they know me well will suddenly realise that even for themselves their life stories are like prisms put up to the light and depending on where observers stand the observers see just a perspective, never everything.

That goes for my parents, my siblings, my long known friends, my new friends, my many acquaintances, colleagues in other walks of life, interactions on social media and anyone else.

My story is my lesson

I am both a simple person and a complex personality with everything you can find in the broadest spectrum of that scale, but in telling my story yesterday, I learnt something more about myself.

Despite what I have been through, I am too fiercely independent that the help I sometimes would get by default is rarely offered. I then find that I suffer great privation for long periods of time until the realisation dawns on me that I could do with some help.

Having been diagnosed with cancer, gone through treatment and survived with the amazing help of friends around me, the affinity towards my once nuclear family is looser and the need to that much desired companionship they have wished for me is so less convincing – when you come through that alone, you cannot be persuaded that an alternative could be so significantly better.

My story of life and death

And finally, whilst I was fighting for life, I was surrounded by death, a sentence delivered in a result over a decade ago and as I was recovering, the loss of two dear friends I would have loved to share the life of survival with, they were not so lucky and I am so saddened by that.

In the end, what happened to me was not merely a story, but life, life happened as experience, as disaster, as loss, as recovery and still recovering, but most of all, I have found that the story is one short mantra – Whilst I am still living, I will live the life I have, to the full and as happily as I can – I will not burden myself with things that will sap my zest for life. 

Thought Picnic: In Support of Activism

Causes without course

Recently, I have found myself attending meetings where the ideas discussed are far from mainstream.

From a pragmatic perspective, there is no reason for those ideas not be part of the package of the good life of humanity but for all sorts of reasons due to history, culture, traditions, creeds, tenets, laws, religion, beliefs or politics people suffer unmitigated and unnecessarily bad consequences.

The voices are many

In such cases, the cause might well be lost for the individual but it does not have to be lost for society.

What keeps that cause alive is the voices, the many voices of those in favour, those against and those somewhat indifferent but available to be persuaded of the arguments of all sides.

Now, I know that certain voices are extreme, strident, aggressive and uncomfortable but that is the nature of activism and the drive for change.

The method is insignificant

There are times I have not agreed with the methods used but I very well appreciate the broader intentions, which are to achieve a goal that would do humanity a lot of good.

We have seen this in the rights movements to enfranchise the masses, women and then minorities, the activism to extend rights to the underprivileged and much more.

The battles are diverse and unceasing, but the victory for humanity even after great setbacks is only in a matter of time.

Channelling the inconceivable

This brings me to an interesting case of historical literature published in 1868, in the novel Phineas Finn, there is a recorded conversation as to how public policy is formulated and it is interesting that in the political arena, this seems to fetch true all the time.

Attributed to Anthony Trollope, this how the conversation went and I highlight the words that show the progression from inconceivable to essential.

"Many who before regarded legislation on the subject as chimerical, will now fancy that it is only dangerous, or perhaps not more than difficult. And so in time it will come to be looked on as among the things possible, then among the things probable; – and so at last it will be ranged in the list of those few measures which the country requires as being absolutely needed. That is the way in which public opinion is made.”

“It is no loss of time,” said Phineas, “to have taken the first great step in making it.”

“The first great step was taken long ago,” said Mr. Monk, – ”taken by men who were looked upon as revolutionary demagogues, almost as traitors, because they took it. But it is a great thing to take any step that leads us onwards.”

The initiators were not popular

The previous two paragraphs indicate that the discourse about a cause must never die and apparently the first step leading to the adoption of such policies would normally have been planted as a seed by those at the time of conception society might have castigated, excoriated, persecuted, prosecuted and even martyred but that is for history to discover and eventually document.

It is why I am never discouraged when a greater cause hits the buffers because of the political discourse of the day, it will never be the end and much will change over time to bring the good to bear of what is currently unacceptable but tolerated.

The Overton Window

Joseph P. Overton then came up with an aspect of political theory that illustrated the narrow window within which an idea might gain acceptance and consequently evolve into policy. This became known as the Overton Window.

The degrees of acceptance in increasing order of acceptance was listed as follows:

• 1.    Unthinkable
• 2.    Radical
• 3.    Acceptable
• 4.    Sensible
• 5.    Popular
• 6.    Policy

Someone will always have to think the unthinkable which with time after convincing others might be seen radical but over the course of time the argument is persuasive enough to be acceptable and might well become sensible enough to be offered as a popular choice by which time there is enough support to make it policy.

Change is inevitable

There are positive and negative trajectories to this but I believe the momentum for change will be for the better if amongst the articulate and prominent voices we have, those who are able to convey with great conviction the reasonableness of an idea that the unreasonableness of the status quo will have to be abandoned.

That is why I am in support of all forms of activism, some could well be counter-productive but in that quagmire the ideas will eventually find refinement and any reasonable person engaging logic with critical thinking and objective discernment will become an ally in the cause for the advancement of humanity, in communities, in societies or in nations at large.

The two-state solution for Palestine and Israel is not inconceivable, having women ordained as bishops in the Church of England is not impossible and the notion that homosexuality is unafrican has a course to travel from unreasonableness to a fact of reality – it has always been part of humanity.

World AIDS Day: Banish the Ignorance

On HIV/AIDS

Today is World AIDS Day and it is important that we review where the discourse is going with regards to how it affects us either directly or indirectly.

Much as we reflect on and remember the many who have lost their lives to the disease prominent amongst whom is Fela Anikulapo-Kuti of Nigeria who we celebrate as a seer and keen observer of social issues that remain relevant today, there are people who live with HIV/AIDS and even many more who do not know that they have the virus.

How come this?

It is against this background that an article that was sent to me this morning written by a correspondent of the Nigerian Vanguard newspaper incensed me.

I have no reason to question the credentials of Dr. Nwokocha who apparently is the medical director of Hosanna Medical Centre in Lagos but I have great persuasion to question his reasoning.

On World AIDS Day, one will expect that news organs in Nigeria will find ways to educate the populace on the issues surrounding sexual health and the cause of the statistical disaster that suggested that there were up to 3.3 million diagnosed cases of HIV of which there were 220,000 deaths in 2009 and counting.

Predominantly heterosexual in Africa

Much as it is lazy and weak to moralise and get obsessed with the issue of HIV/AIDS and sexuality, the demographic in Africa is radically different from that which we find in the West, because it’s prevalence is driven by a heterosexual population in the former.

Obviously, the absence of the homosexual population from this data can be accounted for because of the cultural stigmas and homophobia driven by political opportunists and religious dogma – none of which helps any of the affected people regardless of their sexuality.

A medical emergency ignored

It goes without saying that there is a medical emergency to tackle amongst those who know they are infected but do not reveal their status, those who are infected and do not know they are and the innocent ones who by reason of being in diverse relationships with the other groups risk falling into either knowledge of their status or dying of brief but unexplained illnesses.

Amongst women, beyond maternal mortality there is also the risk of the transference of the infection from mother to child one would expect Dr. Nwokocha to be a very busy man.

Errors unforgivable

Looking at the article, I have to wonder if the horridness of the copy is journalistic incompetence compounded by medical quackery of the order that should call into review the medical nous Dr. Nwokocha has.

The introduction talks of “heterogenous sex” when heterosexual sex is intended and HIV/AIDS where HIV is Human immunodeficiency virus but referred to as “Human Imuno Deficiency Syndrome Virus” infections/AIDS, whilst hepatitis is spelt as “haptetis”.

The syndrome is related to AIDS and it quite different from HIV, which is different from other sexually transmitted infections of which there are viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites and protozoa. The learned doctor goes on about bacteria as if his knowledge is stunted.

Bad Medical School

Then he veers into the causes of homosexuality with unfounded and fantastic claims that reads like mumbo-jumbo of quack snake-oil merchants that stand at street corners fleecing the gullible with confidence tricks.

It begs the question what aspect of medical school he missed that his blinding ignorance reinforced by our obsequiousness to lettered idiots allows him to profess knowledge where he evidently has none.

As human knowledge has progressed in technology, medicine and other elements of human endeavour, we have changed and adapted to use the knowledge to advance humanity.

It is not a mental disorder

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder and this new knowledge has progressively been accepted by other mental health organisations until it was fully declassified by the World Health Organisation in 1990.

It would then seem, if a doctor were to overturn this body of expert medical knowledge and study, he might well be vying for the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine after having had his thinking and hypotheses peer reviewed by the best in the field or else he is just plain ignorant.

We can have all sorts of moral debates on the issue of sexuality but I would contend that if the Wright Brothers who invented flying were to see the aircraft we put in the air today, they would not be remiss in considering the art and science of flying today as witchcraft.

An irresponsible doctor

The biggest danger posed by Dr. Nwokocha’s assertions is in offering uneasy comfort to heterosexuals in Nigeria who are most affected by HIV/AIDS and consequently everyone else by suggesting homosexuals and so-called homosexual behaviour are the vectors for sexually transmitted infections.

That is at first utterly irresponsible and reckless but you are left to wonder why those with the means flee Nigeria for medical treatment when charlatans like Dr. Nwokocha are allowed to touch living things where rats will find better succour in the gutter than visit his medical centre for cheese.

It goes without saying that people might find certain sexual conduct abhorrent but for supposedly educated people to use that platform to foist reprehensible views that have no academic quality portraying some moral justification to promote stigmatisation and persecution is beneath contempt.

Reconsidering World AIDS Day

I am saddened that the Nigerian Vanguard did not rise to any standard of responsible and educative journalism and to have given the likes of Dr. Nwokocha a World AIDS Day forum to postulate atrocious fallacy in the face of more pressing HIV/AIDS issues in Nigeria just shows how we embrace ignorance over useful knowledge and what we need to see better for ourselves and those around us.

This World AIDS Day should have us reflect and give no space to stigma, prejudice and negative propaganda, there are people out there, suffering and dying, when you begin to single out people and groups, how long will be before you get to the woman, the child, the neighbour, the relation, the family and finally ourselves?

Let us do the needful and the rightful, get tested and support every initiative to understand and appreciate how humanity great and small is affected by HIV/AIDS – Dr. Nwokocha’s kind of thinking has no place in this better world.

Burning Up The Rapist's Manual

This is my contribution to 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Say No – Unite to end violence against women.

Loving rape

This topic always gets to me and it has become one of the ones I have returned to write about again and again.

The issue is rape but worse still, it is the justification of rape by reason of what some might call indecent, ungodly, improper or provocative dressing.

This school of thinking that included an Attorney General in Nigeria suggests that the rape victim is almost entirely responsible for their rape because their dressing provoked the rapist to act uncontrollably such that the rapist had to satisfy the jungle animal lust presented by sighting a provocatively dressed object of desire.

Animals, we are not

I could well agree if this happened amongst animals but out there in the jungle animals are not in clothes and essentially they are not human-beings.

In fact, even in communities where nudity exists as a matter of course, I doubt those societies violate the bodies of each other without consent, as human-beings we are civilised and one element of civilisation is self-restraint in the face of serious provocation.

We are equal

Another issue I want to address is that of relationships between men and women in society. From a moral standpoint there is a tendency to dehumanise and objectify our womenfolk with the idea that the male gender collectively and individually automatically have lien over all women to such an extent that men believe they should have control on all issues that affect women.

That is why we still have to content with issues of rights, rape, abortion, trafficking, abuse, harassment, dressing, mutilations and much else with the law almost giving perpetrators the licence of impunity without consequence.

Women have rights

I contend that beyond the primary sphere of influence if there be one that subscribes to the primitive view of the inequality of the sexes, the woman out in the street minding her own business in whatever state of dress she might be in is in her own right an individual, equal before the law and she should be able to make the decisions she deems fit for how she presents anywhere she have the right to be at.

We cannot because we are men attempt to control every woman as if we are husband, father, son, brother, nephew or relation to suit some preconceived notion of some play being honour and dishonour requiring violent sanction.

No licence to violate

Basically, no man by nature, by law or by divine instruction has acquired the right and licence to violate another person for whatever purposes they might want to use to justify that heinous act. This applies to rape, sexual abuse, physical violence or harassment and we need to address whatever allows us to condone any violation forthwith.

In a series of tweets that I have collated into a Storify titled The Rapist’s Manual, the total sum of my compelling argument is found in this tweet - Let me as categorical as I can ever be. There can NEVER EVER be any grounds or mitigating circumstances for rape.

If I were to leave my readers with one analogy framed in a question it would be this – If a woman is responsible for her rape because of her indecent dressing, are you responsible for an armed robber pointing a gun at you?

Further Reading

A Hard Look At Violence Against Women – The Resurgence

3 commissioners suspended for improper dressing in Ebonyi State, Nigeria

Violence Against Women Online Resources

Thought Picnic: Gosh! I have a black face

Is it …?

Maybe there isn’t much to read into this but I do remember about 15 years ago planning to visit a young family and I found myself asking whether their two boys have ever seen or met anyone of my race.

I just had the feeling that they having lived in a somewhat expatriate community in the United States and then moving back to Suffolk they might not have been exposed. Those silly assumptions fed my imagination with pictures of two kids under 5 hiding behind daddy’s legs and stealthily coming round to poke me to see if I will react before scurrying back to the protection of daddy.

My makeup is permanent

That is what I think prepared me for an episode yesterday at Upminster station where I was waiting to board a train into London. The waiting room has a heater on timer so I always go in there to get some warmth considering it was raining cats and dogs with blustering wind to boot.

There, I saw a man probably in his late twenties and his son, maybe not even 3 years old yet, sat in his buggy. I switched on the heater and as I stood by taking in the warmth, I looked at the boy and this conversation between them ensued.

Son: Look, he’s got a black face.

Father: He’s a man.

The appropriateness of that conversation can be left to conjecture as I smiled pretending not to be shocked by it all.

In 2012?

The boy had just been picked up from spending a week’s holiday with his grandparents and Upminster for all intents and purposes is not entirely out in the sticks and completely beyond civilisation. If the boy lived anywhere in London and from whatever baggage they had, they were not travelling far; one can only wonder how and why the boy could not have noticed and realised that black faces are not all that rare.

Kids have a way of learning fast and learning well from their environments. I would hate to think that influences around the boy had negatively coloured his quite impressionable young mind. It is not like we are in the 1960s when the sight of a person of colour was so much a curiosity as to be cause for amusement, surprise and fear.

Really?

All the knowledge the father could impart to the child was that I am a man. It made me wonder if I had a red face or a green face, dare I say a yellow face or a blue face and by the time I have a grey face, I might well be a weather vane.

If anything, for the sake of the well-being of that child, they all need to get out a bit more and if they have been saying silly things, that child will be growing up in a society that will be radically different from what he has been hearing or been fed and maybe next time, I will roll up my sleeves and pull up the leg of my trousers just to show that I not only have a black face and it is not a paint job either.