Orlando!

He hated himself that much

My thoughts are many, many for the innocent who in the midst of the celebration of life were snuffed out by someone who might well have wanted to have the freedoms he saw, but through possible self-loathing and self-hatred decided what he could not have should be destroyed in others.

Much as he pledged allegiance to a hateful pox of a group that is antithetical to our common humanity to give some validation to his cause, it is very likely that it was a cloak for some inner turmoil that he never found the will or the courage to deal with.

He ended the lives of 49 people, harmed many more and blighted a community, a nation, and humanity, but in his hatred, he also expired in a hale of the atrocity he meted out on others.

He will not be remembered as the souls of the departed will be remembered, he will not be celebrated as the memories of families, friends, lovers, acquaintances or the good of our humanity and kindness will be celebrated.

He is of the ignoble, the unexplained evil, the heinous and the demonic, leaving us with a deep repugnant feeling that we will not visit for any longer than is necessary, for the remembrance of a terrorist is of the accursed and the worthless, the unloved and the unlovable, that if there were a hell, its jaws would open to its widest girth to receive him into the bowels of suffering unprintable.

Our common humanity loves

At this loss, we gather, we hold hands, we embrace, we mourn, we reflect, and we determine that no person in the expression of their lost cause, the hatred for happiness and the good things of life will take away our laughter, and if we shed tears it would be for those we love and we care for.

Much as life goes on, it will with a unity of purpose that those with whom we shared the joy of living will not have died in vain. Was it the sight of men kissing that disgusted him so much to kill? Then let us kiss the more that it becomes as commonplace as it should be – the expression of love, latching onto hope, living our dreams and holding hands fearless and bold to face the storms of life. Are you reviled by this? Deal with it.

Everyone needs love, who they choose to love is immaterial as long as they are adults and it is with consent. It brings to mind the many other places that use religion, traditions, culture and laws to persecute and prosecute difference, minorities, the poor, the powerless, the infirm or any other distinguishing thing that can be used to accentuate division when there is a greater call on our human spirit to celebrate our unity in diversity.

We have the greatest love within us

The fight must continue to serve the cause of our humanity and elevate that to one where our common cause should be the respect for each other with the freedom to be ourselves and to love ourselves in the expression of the greatest love of all.

Where some talked, the ones that mattered were the people invested themselves, the first responders, the first aiders, the hospital staff, the many who queued up to give blood not concerned about who it is going to, the people who gathered to remember and the many more who contributed to causes to help the victims and communities that suffered loss. That is our shared humanity and long may we continue to see that goodness amongst us.

We are all Orlando!

Opinion: Lagos to London: Britain’s New Super-Rich

And so

I really had no intention of writing anything about the mockumentary that was shown on Channel 4 last night titled, Lagos to London: Britain’s New Super-Rich, but I was asked about it at work this morning.

There are a lot of Nigerians in the UK, my association with the UK was borne of the fact that my parents were here as students in the 1960s and I came along, born in the UK, but of Nigerian heritage and I am proud of that mix and makeup of my life.

Now, the Nigerians that appeared on that programme are rich, wealthy, educated in some of the best English schools, but somehow seemed to have missed a quality of educational finesse that combines the understated with sophistication.

They had cash, they were brash, they had lots to flash and very little class. It goes without saying that that essential component of comportment seems to have evaded their sensibilities by a country mile.

Of sensible Nigerians

There are Nigerians who graft it here daily to make ends meet, there are other Nigerians who are professionals of high repute with exemplary accolades and dare I say, probably the majority of the unseen Nigerians have more sense than money and I think that is a good thing.

The best education I got from my parents is one of contentment, this gives me the perspective and grounding to live my life successfully and happily without the encumbrance of trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Looking at some of the commentary on Twitter last night, some people were carried away with the acquisitive hedonism, the ostentatious show of wealth that has people groomed for appearance with little or no substance. Life has a lot more to it than that.

Indeed, we would all love to have the means to do anything we liked, yet we have a self-awareness, a sense of responsibility, considerable consideration, discipline and perspective to what we do that is a function of our stability and salvation from depression borne of envy, jealousy or covetousness.

The butler comes

Now, of the people who were showcased on this meat rack of vulgarity, one can commend Alexander Amosu for rising from a council estate to hobnob with the outrageously rich and he has apparently cornered a market to feed the constant one-upmanship that consumes people of that ilk.

Yet, with all that association, the minutiae of essence that comes with knowing was evident, limousine, chauffeur, sharp suits, gleaming cuff links and the ultimate faux pas; a matching tie and pocket square. Class is probably passed down and there is only so much finishing school can do.

Kids on the skids

On the matter of the daughters of the billionaire oil tycoon and the twins with a law degree from some midrange university, whoever sent them to public school should be asking for a refund with interest, none of the English norms seemed to have rubbed off on them, they spoke like silver spoon braggarts.

Many of us would rather keep our inflective Nigerian-English accents than to decline to a South or East London accent, especially after that kind of education. Come think of it, I seem to have gotten more out of my Nigerian-based multi-cultural education than they did from public schools in England. Their spoken English was quite below par as to be somewhat appalling.

The Daily Mail had a spread on the girls and one look at the comments shows they would always be celebutantes of the Kardashian or The Only Way Is Essex genre of trashy reality television until they find a vocation that is of service rather than self-serving.

The twins who spewed philosophy like it was going out of fashion, were planning on making their mark as lawyers, I won’t scoff, but whilst they looked good for a posse, looks do not a respected advocate make. Much privilege and given to spoilage, one might aver.

Beyond the zoo

Like I said before, there are a lot of people of Nigerian heritage in the UK, very few of us would like to be paraded as vacuous showpieces of opulence bringing on disgust. It was a mockery of the uncultured without a filter for self-restraint.

They do not represent the, as it were, sensible Nigerian, not in any way. That show was a zoo and one visit to see the animals was enough.

Prince said it about style, there was much on show and nothing that resembled style.

Style is not something that comes in a bottle
Style is more like Jackie O. when she was doin' Aristotle
Style is not a logo that sticks 2 the roof of one's ass
Style is like a second cousin 2 class.

Style – Emancipation (1996) – Lyrics

Àwọn adití ajá - Deaf dogs

The Facebook forum

Facebook presents an interesting forum for interaction, the exchange of views and ideas, but there is also a very unpalatable side of the Facebook discussion.

It is probably not a discussion as such, the broad church of social discourse is generally friendly, however, when we begin to challenge the norms, espouse the liberality of expression and fight for the expansion of human rights, for the open-minded, it flourishes, but it also gives vent to the primal and uncouth tendencies of others.

Nowhere is this matter as volatile as one that involves religion or more particularly homosexuality.

He stands out

I am a Facebook friend and a personal friend of a gay rights activist whose shares a lot of views that many might term controversial.

There is no doubt that I have felt sometimes uncomfortable with some of his views, but I appreciate that we can have differences and different perspectives, my occasional disagreement will never tend to disagreeableness, that is the function of respect we have for each other, we can agree to disagree without damaging our relationship.

He stands out as someone who has always had the courage of his convictions and has never been afraid to express them boldly, forcefully and forthrightly.

On controversy they feed

Then, there are people who contribute to his page who for whatever reason, out of envy, jealousy, rage, inferiority, bitterness, nastiness, bigotry, hypocrisy, you name it, they cannot stand him, they revile his homosexuality and his freedom, yet they congregate to fulminate, to vituperate and vitiate the atmosphere of free human expression.

Mostly, they are religious fanatics of no scholarship apart from what they have been spoon-fed, who are versed in the letter but have no spirit in themselves, hypocrites seeking validation in places where they rush to be offended, they ogle liberty but are caught in the limitations of their thinking.

Offence sates them

On one occasion, my friend posted a status where he both excoriated and baited them, they came in droves to drink their poison, to which I wondered why anyone would choose to seek where to have their sensibilities offended when there are other places to have salubrious engagement with like-minded people, I left a barb at the end and it snared them.

I had touched a raw nerve and with that came a pack of dogs laden with abuse and invective. It became funny and pitiful and they railed and cursed with reckless abandon. Poorly written sentences and much else, I decided to deliver a rebuke in a language they hopefully will understand or seek someone to interpret this for them because a few appeared to be of the Yoruba tribe.

So as not to be misunderstood, I wrote with the exigency and scrupulousness of diacritical marks and accents, quite necessary for remove ambiguity from clear intent.

A ticking off

Ọ̀rọ tí ta wọ́n lára, wọ́n ti yẹ̀kẹ́ èébú. M'bá ti só fún wọn kí wọ́n lọ sílé lọ gbèsì wá, ṣùgbọ́n ọmọ àbíìkọ́ niwọ́n, wọn ò lágbà nílé láti gbẹ̀kọ́. Àwọn mọ̀lẹ́bí adití ajá tí ò lè gbóhùn olúwa rẹ̀ mọ́.

This translates to - "I had touched a raw nerve that they have now become abusive. I would have suggested they seek homely advice before responding to me, but they are unschooled and have no mentoring guidance from home to have had the benefit of any good manners. They are a horde of deaf dogs completely oblivious to the master's voice."

The context carries best in Yoruba and if any of them had any gumption, the very least that should result from their reading this is to reflect on themselves with an utter sense of shame.

Europe: We should remain

I’m a Europhile

Having lived on mainland Europe for almost 13 years, there is no doubt that I am much of a Europhile. It did take a while before I could bring myself to think of living and working outside the UK.

My first foray outside the UK was in 1992 when I visited the Netherlands, it was a bus trip that included a ferry ride to the north of France, through Belgium and up to Amsterdam. I felt lost, but it was somewhat an enlightening experience.

Then in 1995, I flew out to Berlin and with that began my love for mainland Europe, soon with my partner it was Paris a few times and Barcelona. In 1999, having acquired a strange fear of flying, this affecting someone who first flew at 5 between continents and into my teens flew a number of times in Nigeria, I went on a tour.

The Imperial Tour

I booked what was the Imperial Tour [The Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium to be completed in 2 months.] from Liverpool Street Station, it was one of those crazy ‘have a credit card, will travel’ adventures that I planned within 10 hours and was a ferry ride to the Hook of Holland and over 3 weeks I was in the cities of Amsterdam, Hannover, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, Zurich, and Brussels.

Earlier in the year, a 7-year relationship had ended and with that was the exploration of possible job opportunities on mainland Europe, I concentrated on Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, I interviewed in Germany, but eventually, the best offer came from the Netherlands in May 2000 and I left for a new life and experience.

Life in the Netherlands was laid-back, the quality of life was high and there was means to extend travel to Portugal, Poland, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and further afield.

We have our identity

The ties with the UK were still strong, but with each election season came a spot of bother, the growing Euroscepticism that threatened my status in Europe, you just didn’t know what to expect.

Having returned to the UK for almost 4 years, I am no less a Europhile and my love from Europe is borne of deeper consideration than the political talking points of immigration, economy or sovereignty.

The Netherlands is by many factors a smaller country compared to the UK, yet I never felt the Dutch were losing their identity nor sovereignty from being in the midst and centre of the European project.

What gets to me is this incipient exceptionalism exhibited by the #BREXIT camp and sometimes in the #BREMAIN camp that suggests the United Kingdom has no control of its borders, can’t make their own laws, are being held back by Europe and many other supercilious and superior sounding arguments as if Europe is an imposition by the other 27 members of the union.

We’ve done ourselves in

Herein, is our problem, we are in a group that we have railed and carped about since the times of Margaret Thatcher, a setup that requires agreement and consensus, but we send people whose starting point is to antagonise rather than negotiate and we expect to win the argument when there is a difference.

In my view, we have a place at the table, but we have the worst representatives at the table, for instance, we have the highest number of representatives in Europe from Ukip, we are constantly in some sort of détente and suspicion thereby having none of the engagement that can carry anything even if well-reasoned in our favour.

We have become a nuisance in Europe and then expect a better deal from Europe, we are the cause of our own European handicap in the main, the rest is a matter of consequence.

We are not superior

I feel quite threatened by the prospect of #BREXIT because we are not necessarily better or superior to our other 27 partners in the scheme and the people who front the somewhat isolationist stance have not promoted any new thinking of a great future beyond denying, debunking and rubbishing the ideas and advice of others.

The thought of the UK cast adrift in the hands of an untrammelled Tory leadership whose austerity and government ideas have brought many into mystery. The whole concept of cutting costs by surreptitiously granting autonomy to schools and hospital trusts, thereby shifting responsibility elsewhere and burdening the setups without adequate means.

We belong in Europe

The laws and directives are not made with us excluded, they arrive because we are not participating enthusiastically enough. I do not believe the money that comes back from Europe will go back into the services that are under strain.

We live in a more tightly integrated world, I think we need to belong to global and regional blocs for us to project strength and clout, we belong in Europe and that is where we should remain.

The Terrestrial Church of Cacophony

Out of sight, but an earful

I first learnt of the Celestial Church of Christ, an African initiated church in the 1970s when I spend short school breaks at my cousin’s in Sagamu.

The church was situated at the end of the road with a stream running by the church into a dense forest, they could have been unnoticeably ensconced there without disturbance.

Yet, it was impossible to ignore them, at almost half a mile away, their daily rumpus or dare I say worship was loud, agitated and quite a public nuisance.

Embrace silence

It came to a head one morning when the head of the house sent a cease and desist notice to the church to maintain a sense of considerate neighbourliness in their activities by lowering the volume of their orgies. God, we must appreciate is not hard of hearing.

Now, that was courageous, daring and bold, for anyone to challenge a religious establishment in that manner. It worked, they were quite amenable to the idea, probably under duress and with the knowledge that the aggrieved was a lawyer.

Mind the fine

Later, towards the end of the 1980s, I was a ward of some senior members of the Celestial Church of Christ, they were quite obliging to allow me attend the church of my choice rather than force me to align to their tenets, for that, I am exceedingly grateful.

However, the reason why we have this recollection of events past is because this morning I read in the newspaper that the pastor of a Celestial Church of Christ branch in Grays, Essex had been fined a total of £1,241.50 including costs for conducting unbearably loud services four times a week well into the early hours of the morning; 4:00AM that is. [Metro]

The neighbours had endured this public nuisance for months and one really wonders why any religious activity needs to be broadcast beyond the confines of the walls of the meeting place except for the need to use the sound to keep the members alert throughout the interminably long services.

Just unacceptable

More pertinently, what this suggests is a lack of understanding that what is tolerable and allowed in the hyper-religious Nigerian society borne of Lord Lugard’s suggestion that we have a vague dread of the supernatural, is hardly acceptable in many Western societies.

People are not as religiously imbued and those who have any sort of religious affiliation tend to go about their devotion with consideration and moderation, too high a bar of expectation required of an almost fanatical claque.

If this sanction does not serve as a deterrent, the council has suggested that the church might have to lose its sound equipment. Knowing that I have lived in a part of Essex where there was at least 6 non-establishment churches within 500 yards of our apartment, I was fully persuaded to veto an application to site another church nearby just because the existing ones had already exercised our tolerance to the point of intolerable.

For all the celestial aims of the church, there are terrestrial norms expected of any gathering for any purpose they might be persuaded to pursue. This one like many that have yet to be called to order around the UK has become a congregation of the Terrestrial Church of Cacophony.

Thought Picnic: The thoughts of a child rescued from a gorilla

The talk is much

Much commentary has been made about the episode where a toddler ended up in the gorilla enclosure of a Cincinnati zoo.

When I first commented on the matter, I put the blame squarely on the parents and in some ways I have not been too persuaded to excuse the matter. As far as I was concerned, a child in the care of an adult in a public place, that adult being the mother and by some happenstance, the child became a rag doll in the hands of a beast dragged twice through the gorilla’s play pool.

After what transpired, there is no doubt that the gorilla had to be shot for the protection of the child and that should end the matter.

Parents are generally good

However, the wringing of the hands of some parents who suddenly feel hard done by, by reason of the view that certain parents can be careless, negligent or even worse at standing up to their core responsibility of being parents will not wash with me.

Now, parents can be generally loving, genuinely concerned, rarely negligent, sometimes understanding, committedly responsible and suffocatingly protective, they deserve credit and gratitude for their parenting.

From the eye-line of the child

Yet, let us view things from the perspective of a child for one moment, the child is safe, but what are the consequences of that event on the long-term health and wellbeing of the child.

I was barely over 5 years old when an altercation between my parents led my father to leave the house and get into his car to drive away, my mother ran out as my uncle attempted to hold her back. There before me, the car tyre rode over my mother’s shin and to this day some 45 years after, that event still plays back like a film in my mind.

The abuse of trust

At 7, someone my parents were guardians for, took me into the toilet and sexually assaulted me, that was the day I lost my innocence. Though nothing happened between us after that, we had other man-servants who until I was 10 years old took sexual favours off me as if by entitlement. These were people to whom my parents had entrusted our care and they abused that trust.

When I left home for the first time to attend secondary school entrance exams, an older distant cousin took advantage of me, the matter vivid as can be. Meanwhile, having been away from home, the man-servant moved on to someone else. Nothing was revealed to my parents until I returned and I was informed by the abused that something had been done. My parents were informed, yet, no other questions were asked of others whether any one of their wards had been tampered with.

Long term effects

No, I do not think my parents were negligent, but the singular episodes that might have left them distraught cannot compensate for the lasting damage done to the child after abuse and without therapy. The scars remain even if the wounds have healed.

So, before parents genuflect with self-pity and defensiveness, they are not the only ones affected, the children, many of whom clam up and withdraw into themselves as a self-preservative measure, are just as affected and quite deeply too.

Many children never gain the voice to say what they have experienced or what they are going through, from abuse, through harm to depression and worse. Sometimes, there is no atmosphere that engenders the necessary communication the child needs to have. Parents take out their exasperation and frustration in an aggressive and accusative way that the problem is compounded and the child then gets labelled the problem.

This is the plight of many children and most will never get the help they need, the few of us who come into adulthood fortunate enough to have survived our many ordeals are yet to tell our stories to anyone will and able to listen.

What is safe?

There is much to write about the voice of children unheard, their fears unseen, their lives invisibly terrorised and their pleas ignored, much of which, I am afraid, parents have to answer for, despite that fact that they are trying their best. For a fact, parenting does not come with a manual, but it carries great lifelong responsibility. How a child turns out is a product of the presence or absence of that relationship.

And so I ended with the thought, whilst the child is safe now, you wonder if the child is really safe or what happened at the zoo was indicative of a deeper problem that an unfortunate accident.

The police are on the case: Police investigate parents of boy rescued from gorilla. [Fox News]

The mistiming somnambulist

Unslept

Quite much of an early riser that I am, the clock alarm serves no other purpose than to confirm the arrival and the passage of time. There are very few times when I get woken up by the alarm clock, my body clock seems to have the essential biorhythms for diurnal and nocturnal existence whilst being tuned to abort somnolence at the appropriate time.

Yet, it does not serve much purpose to the insomniac that gets to sleep well past midnight or more happiness slipping into dreamland with the lullabies of Sailing By and the Shipping Forecast.

[]

Overslept

Sleep arrives probably before 02:00AM and I will probably have 2 or more wakeful times by the time it is 06:00AM, BBC Radio 4 keeps my mind ticking away as I roll over trying to get a bit more sleep which altogether may not total more than 4 hours in the night with the 2 hours I have in the early evening.

Then yesterday, my eyes popped open at 7:16AM and my train was leaving the station at 7:17AM, how did I sleep through the alarm? It meant a day of working from home as I cancelled my pickup from the destination station to the office.

Had a health check and the prick of a needle in a number of places before the day was over and I looked forward to the next day. The night fell and I went to bed.

Underslept

The dawn broke with the imprint of the last day; did I miss the alarm again? It was light, the light of an early summer’s day and one glance at my watch and I saw 7:00AM, jumped in my trousers and in 7 minutes I was in a rapid trot to the station.

The streets were eerily quiet for the time of the day and as I got to the station and looked at the clock on the noticeboard, it was 5:13AM. I smiled, got my ticket and sauntered back home for a lie-in.

The memory, the drugs, absent-mindedness or the simple blurring of the sight that gives the mind the wrong information to act on. I looked at my watch at least 4 times before I saw the time on the station clock, all the time, I saw a time 2 hours ahead on a watch with hands until the digital display at the station reset my perspective to see the right time.

Some made fun of me, I chose to ignore them. It was a lovely day.