Thought Picnic: Stood Up

Messing with my agenda

Calmly and without much emotion the conversation on the phone ended the plan to meet up for an afternoon that had been arranged and anticipated.

For one who flees the country at a whim, there was some expectation for the weekend; guests and friends require preparations and lots of it.

The mind in overdrive about what to serve for drinks and what to cook for food, have a set menu or prepare for choices and a marathon cooking session to sate nostalgic palates.

Choosing the latter, the fridge door could hardly close for its load to be lightened in hours; all was set for the afternoon.

What to serve

In the bush, cauldrons would have been set on tripods with the firewood lit underneath ready for the first condiments and ingredients. A sixth sense intervened to exercise caution, these guests could be choosy and everything laid out might go to waste.

At the liturgical none when the doors to the humble abode would have greeted the arrival of the honoured and esteemed, there was none to greet for they had not arrived.

Halfway towards the 10^th hour, came the notice, a surprise situation had happened leading to a cancellation and yours truly at a very loose end.

Not again in dreams or reality

It makes you wonder if you can lay any stock to such arrangements and the accompanying inconvenience with the unexpressed annoyance at terminating a rendezvous without notice and selfishly on my part without consideration.

Just when I thought my scales were tipping at the wrong side of heavy, the nightmare of heavier looms.

One must not boast of being the best host but the prospect of a new date is as good as toast.

Oh! It must have been a nightmare, my banquet laid out for invisible guests was a dream, a deep yearning for company, and surely, I cannot have in reality been stood up. Surely, not!

Nigeria: Is the Senate bribing the military?

Golden parachutes all round

Sometimes, it is just not clear whether the Nigerian legislature has any clue about their purpose and the function they are to serve in Nigerian democracy.

Recently, they approved a bumper state pension [1] for former military Heads of State and their families having previously resisted [2] the granting of that emolument to them some time ago.

Now, there might be probable cause for offering a stipend to those who have ruled the country either by the will of the people or by the sheer force of guns.

Reservations on rewards

However, it is important that having ruled Nigeria there should be standards of review that allow for a scrutiny in posterity of those tenures with some basis for considering if those regimes have served Nigeria well or not. For instance, whilst General Sani Abacha did run the country down as a despot, it would atrocious to reward his descendants with largesse for his maladministration.

At a time when it has been proven [3] that he and his family plundered the country to multiples of billions of dollars stashed away in foreign banks and most notable of which is the case that his son brought to retain stolen billions in Switzerland having pain the Nigerian treasury almost in a billion dollars in restitution, this is certainly the wrong message to send to every Nigerian with or without the means to seize power.

Whilst I am not aiming to create a report card of past military regimes, it goes without saying that the politicisation of the military has not served Nigeria well and such governments have not engendered development, peace or prosperity for the country.

A contradiction in terms

It smacks of incredulity that the chairman of the Senate Committee on Information and Media can aver that this is no invitation for a military takeover of government and it is laughable that he offers that the Senate would resist any would-be coup plotter.

I am left flummoxed by this statement, “We are not sending any wrong message, the message we are sending actually is rather a strong message that assumption of political power by force of arms is anachronistic, undemocratic, out-modelled. It is out of fashion and I think that it is something that will even make anybody attempting it to look stupid and out of place.”

There are truths to the part about the assumption of power but contextually, the looking stupid and out of place calls for a clean mirror in front of that speaker.

Accountability confers legitimacy

There are democracies where the clout of the Senate might carry more than a warning to those who might be inclined to overthrow a representative democracy.

The sovereignty of Nigeria should and must belong to the people, but this only derives from the people not being disenfranchised when they exercise universal suffrage through free and fair elections and from their representatives being truly accountable to the people throughout their terms rather than just at times of electioneering.

It is debatable that Nigeria’s democracy is representative and accountable which infers the Senate may not have the underpinning and force of legitimacy to prevent a military takeover or become the engine for revolution or insurrection that leads to the people to deny prospective military rulers the usurpation of power.

Pensions already exist for legitimate service

Obviously, military personnel who have ended up leading the country have also risen to the top ranks of the military forces in which they have been commissioned and a pension is already accruing to them for that military role, it would be belabouring the point that many also had their hands in the till when they were in charge; there is absolutely no need for the extra pay for adding an unlawful political dimension to their military service.

If anything, this sends the wrong message to our democracy, to our people and to those who might think the military route to power could be a shortcut to ensuring a good retirement package when past ones professionally useful years.

The offer to the families simply fosters that class of louts and miscreants who as spouses and brood have shown little exemplary conduct in their hubris and hedonistic tendencies, projecting megalomania well beyond that which the principals in power ever dared to exercise.

Looks like bribery to me

In what can be seen as an abject waste of parliamentary time and priorities, if as the chairman says, “that the new law did not provide any new special benefits to all the intended beneficiaries, as they were already enjoying pension.”

If the intended beneficiaries already have a pension and there are no new special benefits, why is a law being promulgated to give the same people the same thing?

Maybe the act of the Senate is to deepen the nation’s democracy but that cannot be achieved by paying off the military and bribing a rival politicised structure of the military into ineffectiveness – what deepens democracy is accountability, responsibility, leadership and a modicum of common-sense.

I dare say, with this announcement, all those four qualities appear to be lacking in the Nigerian Senate and that is quite unfortunate.

Source

[1] » Ex-Heads of State Pension: Senate warns coup plotters::Vanguard (Nigeria)

[2] allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Senators Kick Against Remuneration for Ex-Military Rulers

[3] BBC News | AFRICA | Banks freeze more Abacha millions

Thought Picnic: Through Sibling Eyes

My buttons are just right

She asked me to button up my shirt to the top, in fact, she commanded me to do that. Immediately, I felt a tone of authority that I did not expect I should have at home.

Indeed, she has every right to see that we are well turned out, something that was lost in that communication was that we also had just as much a vested interest in ensuring that she was turned out well too.

However, that moment had created a conflation of roles, at work she is a teacher/principal, at home she is my mother – the words came out of my mouth as I refused to button up beyond a certain button-hole, I am not in your school, and you cannot treat me like your students.

Understanding each other well

There was a time when the swipe of a backhand would have connected with my face at that daring effrontery but an unassailable truth had been shared, the boundaries of her school authority should not encroach on the moat of existence within which our home is situated.

Having been in boarding school, I was not going to allow my home to become an extension of that regime, I think we understood each other well at that point.

Sometime after, she was prepared to go out and though we did not barricade the door, we the kids made our views known; there was no way she was going out like that (Mama Cordelia was the name we coined for that look) – for the simple reason that we would not be able to show our faces in the neighbourhood for people knowing that our dear mother had made an appearance we could not abide.

We prevailed and she did change into something we felt was acceptable and indicative of the status and air we expected our mother to carry as a mother and a respected member of the community.

In some ways, we had to duty to ensure the emperor did not appear in public in the proverbial “Emperor’s New Clothes”, the case had been made.

Siblings and quibblings

Having shared some deep and secret things with a sibling, there are reasons why that closeness of trust and candidness has been cultivated and nurtured.

As individuals we live quite different and separate lives with varied outlooks to our present, future and for some even the perspective of eternity holds sway – I cannot begrudge the strength of faith, belief, avowal and religion but a question lingers about what the basis of the relationship is.

In my conversation with the hospital chaplain – a catholic pastor this morning, this matter of conflated roles came up with the possible conflicts of interest – you might have a sibling lawyer but should that person be your advocate? If you had a sibling doctor their advice might be very valuable but would they be too close in helping you deal with very serious illness by playing the role of doctor?

Only with sibling eyes

The concerns of my sibling are well intentioned and much appreciated, well read and we are quite aware of the way our theologies differ but we need to be clear about the roles and relationships avoiding the situation where the bonds of our sibling unity are weakened or frayed by external influences that do not define the original affinity.

I crave a closer relationship with my siblings; I had flown the coop long before they grew old enough to know about big brother, if there is any fact to share and understand of each other, it should be clear and simple.

My sister is my sister and definitely not my priest, she need not play that role and neither do I want to play the role of supplicant or flock which just seems to complicate the basic brother-sister interaction introducing concerns that do not engender the ease of communication, just as many relations tend to conflate their genealogy with their professions and confessions creating uncomfortable scenarios.

Sound advice is good but not to the extent that we lose the bond that creates the relationship, I am sure we can just get along fine without the extraneous, the encumbrance and what else.

Thought Picnic: Bedfellows with pain

A pain again

Now I am thinking, maybe I do handle pain a lot better than I thought I could. For weeks, I have suffered this niggling pain in the regions of my sole where cancer lesions thrived just over a year ago.

For a while, I ignored the pain and refused to let it bother me as I surveyed the area regularly to see if changes were appearing. For my eyes, I could see no changes but there was some hardening of the skin so I applied lashings of moisturising balm to ease the tightness and in some cases it was soothing too.

The typical off-the-counter analgesics did not seem to get to the pain at all so I did not bother popping those pills anymore, they were not working, the pain was somewhat deep-tissue and affecting my walking.

See me and observe it

So, yesterday, the discomfort was at a point where I felt I should call my treatment advisor as well as call in sick at work, I could think but the pain was becoming a distraction.

My treatment advisor spoke to my treatment consultant and arranged for stronger painkillers to be dispensed by my local chemist by fax, we also agreed to have me visit the hospital just to have a look at my foot as precautionary observation.

I biked to the hospital this morning and soon had my socks off showing my foot. It felt tender, slightly discoloured but on advice there was nothing to worry about. Apparently, there are occasions during the healing process where the pain might subside or return, since I had no fever and there was no sign of blisters or skin atrophy we just needed to monitor the situation.

Small pills for much pain

I had a long chat to the catholic pastor I had not seen since late spring, a topic for another blog and then picked up my prescription from the chemist.

Small white capsules for much felt pain; three a day, to kill the pain and the management to reduce the dosage over time.

All considered, I thought about how I had learnt to accept pain without much fuss; some experiences just have a way of becoming the norm.

Deconstructing Maison Tropicale - Introduction

The event

Last week Thursday I attended an event [1]organised by the Prince Claus Funds [2] and African Architecture Matters [3] in Amsterdam featuring the launching of a book on African film by Manthia Diawara [4], the screening of Maison Tropical [5] which he directed and appeared in with Ângela Ferreira [6] after which he was part of a panel of discussants with Joe Osae Addo [7] engaging the audience on the matters highlighted in the film.

I was a guest of Dr Jeremy Weate [8] at the event and this occasion could easily have been topical or a conflation of varied perspectives from architecture, through modernist architecture, culture, heritage, politics, development, history, colonialism to a social commentary on values and appreciation in contemporary Africa.

The context

Not being an architect or in any design vocation, I did not know anything about the work of Jean Prouvé [9] but in context, he was commissioned by the French government to help with a housing problem in the African colonial territories that would have been the building of 10,000 housing units.

Jean Prouvé created 3 prototypes, of prefabricated aluminium parts to be assembled into houses, these parts were flown to 2 locations in Africa, with 2 prototypes erected in Congo Brazzaville and the other in Niamey what eventually became the Niger Republic.

The story

Ângela Ferreira tells a story [10] in the film Maison Tropicale where she identifies an increased interest in the work of Jean Prouvé in Europe in the 1990s which lead to some curator discovering the Maison Tropicale properties in Africa, buying up the buildings, dismantling them and carting them back to Europe in 2000 where two of the prototypes were refurbished, put on display and eventually one was sold at auction [11] in New York in 2007 for almost $5 million.

She attempts to reconstruct the prototypes but after laying out the constituent pieces displays them as sculptural deconstructed parts of the building - the roof, the walls, the blinds and the doors with a container depicting the sense of transition that conveys the context of the buildings coming to Africa from Europe for 50 years and then being returned to Europe.

The controversies

The action of the removal of the buildings offers a complex mix of histories, of colonialism, modernist architecture, economics, politics, social discourse, African perspectives and controversy – the architecture simply becomes a medium to relay and tell a rather intricate story.

I will try not to review the film as a critic but rather offer my views of the things we discussed after viewing the film addressing the undertones that speak about Africa’s colonial history, our appreciation of heritage and the prospects for a changes in thought towards things African.

I would name a series of blogs – Deconstructing Maison Tropicale and attach a focal point that I would try to address at length what was discussed and what I observed.

Deconstructing Maison Tropicale blogs

Deconstructing Maison Tropicale - Introduction

Sources

[1] AAMatters, Invitation for an evening with Manthia Diawara and Joe Osae Addo

[2] Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development

[3] African Architecture Matters

[4] Manthia Diawara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Jean Prouvé - La Maison Tropicale - Presented by André Balazs

[6] Ângela Ferreira – MAISON TROPICALE / e-flux

[7] Joe Osae-Addo - Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction

[8] Dr Jeremy Weate’s blog

[9] Jean Prouvé - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[10] YouTube - Angela Ferreira on her film project the Maison Tropicale

[11] The Prouvé Prototype Maison Tropicale Sold for $4,968,000 at Christie's | Home | Art Knowledge News

Youtube references

YouTube - La Maison Tropicale

YouTube - Jean Prouvé – 3D Animation construction of La Maison Tropicale

La Maison Tropicale Series

Maison Tropicale film in Amsterdam

Deconstructing Maison Tropicale - Introduction

Maison Tropicale - Ownership

Maison Tropicale - Heritage

Maison Tropicale - Corrupt enterprise

Maison Tropicale - Grand Projects

Childhood: Atọ̀ọlé

A part of my childhood

Atọ̀ọlé I heard it many times, fingers in a direction that looked like I was being pointed out. It was not a jeering though a song could be made of it.

The shame that encompassed you because you had done something wrong, maybe not normal, maybe lazy, maybe stupid, dare say heinous.

You could not make your bed in the morning without someone coming to check what you might have covered up. The rising tide of compounds of ammonium assailing your olfactory organs, all day long, but not the guarantee of a cooling on a hot night.

Earlier meals and no fluids, the sleight of hand, the deprivations inflicted by those who thought punishments and scolding would help, in my little mind; it simply aggravated the anxiety, the fear, the tortuous expectations of rebuke – did they also feel an inadequacy amidst my shame?

Did my parents help?

My thumb-sucking sister suffered no less at the abnormality of our foibles, good parenting should probably come with manuals and best practices – the keyword being understanding what your kids might be going through expressed in seeming anti-social behaviour.

For years, it was my problem and no one else’s, maybe now there is knowledge of the psychological travails of an Atọ̀ọlé, why one would become an Atọ̀ọlé in some places and not at others.

Months of staying away from home at 10 were a break from my role, I was the principal in my play, I said all the lines and was the spectacle of a few if not the envy of others. A pause from the gardening at home was punctuated by a visit from dad.

He invited me to stay at his swanky hotel and asked if I still did it – going from the evidence of almost 4 months, I didn’t but that night I did again.

It continued exceptionally

What could it be? Why was it happening? Apparently, there was no medication for it and therapy was the hope that I would grow out it. It was probably another 3 years before it seemed that I had ditched the role of Atòólé.

Before then, as I started secondary school, there were 3 of us who seemed to have our bedding subjected to the scorching livelihood of sun-dried tomatoes – the tropical heat serving as the drain for waters that should have been given elsewhere.

Mattresses like beached whales starved of the comfort of their beds; thankfully, beyond the punishment of shame and the put-down, no one exerted corporal punishment for it.

No definite answers

Now we know, Nocturnal Enuresis [1] (NE) to put a glossy medical term on a subject so personal put me in the 5 percentile, a delayed developmental issue that could have been due to stress, sexual abuse and other unexplained matters at home and amongst my family. Going through stages of Primary Nocturnal Enuresis and Secondary Nocturnal Enuresis, it might even be genetic, perish the thought that my parents ever heard Atọ̀ọlé shouted in their direction.

If I did have a child whilst I would hate to see them inflicted with the Atọ̀ọlé moniker, I would hope that I would be considerate, understanding and helpful in helping them through what could be as traumatic and very shameful without having anyone to turn to in time of great childhood need.

Yes, I have a history, I was a bedwetter and the endearing term for that in Yoruba was Atọ̀ọlé.

Sources

[1] Nocturnal enuresis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maison Tropicale film in Amsterdam

Meeting Jeremy Weate

I had the pleasure of meeting Jeremy Weate of http://naijablog.co.uk on Thursday on his visit to Amsterdam to attend an event organised by the Prince Claus Fund [1], a charity named for the late consort of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and the African Architecture Matters [2] organisation.

Jeremy has a doctorate in philosophy, has lived in Nigeria since 2004; a veritable commentator on Nigerian affairs who has probably more than many indigenous Nigerians travelled the length and breath of Nigeria, seeing lots of unappreciated sites national importance, heritage and culture whilst running together with his wife a publishing outfit called Cassava Republic Press [3].

I dare say, Jeremy has almost unchallengeable claims to being quite Nigerian and for his birthday present just about a month ago desired having his own Nigerian passport – the irony was not lost on the fact that many with a Nigerian heritage could not see why he would cherish such an association whilst they had rejected theirs by exercising rights to other nationalities but Nigerian.

Jeremy was one of the founding proprietors of the Nigerian Next newspaper [4] which has a well visited online presence, he has since left that company to concentrate on other progressive and development ventures in Nigeria.

In any case, I received an Facebook message from Jeremy that he was coming to my city, I could not miss the opportunity to meet him, so I offered to meet him at the airport and help him round the city to his hotel, the venue of the event and possibly a vegan restaurant – we ended up at an Indonesian restaurant where we were well catered for addressing our opposite palates with tasty cuisine.

Modernist architecture and the Maison Tropicale narrative

The event Jeremy was attending brought together elements of colonialism and modernist architecture in a film featuring Ângela Ferreira [5] called Maison Tropicale [6] directed by Professor Manthia Diawara [7]; a perspective of prefabricated architecture prototypes of aluminium by Jean Prouvé [8] built in Niger and Congo Brazzaville between 1949 and 1951.

These buildings after much neglect and enticement coupled with collusion of African government officials were dismantled in 2000, refurbished, reassembled and put on display in London with permanent exhibits at the top of the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris and in New York where the one from Congo Brazzaville sold at auction for almost $5 million [9] in 2007.

The programme [10] for the evening at De Brakke Grond [11] included an introduction by Manthia Diawara launching his new book , African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics [12]; the screening of his film, Maison Tropical after which there was an open discussion with Manthia Diawara and Joe Osae Addo; a Ghanaian architect of international renown.

It was so easy to miss the import of the film and the issues covered because the obvious reference to modernist architecture and interest in architecture and the work of Jean Prouvé could easily have masked the societal, cultural, heritage and contemporary attitudes to things we should treasure but fail to appreciate – those matters I would address in a series of Maison Tropicale narrative blogs besides this one.

Afterwards, I met with lots of people from all backgrounds, many architects, had my copy of Manthia Diawara’s book signed by the author himself and found that I was not that much a dabhand at networking as Jeremy was. It was a fine evening and was glad to have been there.

Sources

[1] Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development

[2] African Architecture Matters

[3] Cassava Republic Press - feeding the African imagination

[4] NEXT: latest news, sport and views from Nigeria

[5] Ângela Ferreira – MAISON TROPICALE / e-flux

[6] Jean Prouvé - La Maison Tropicale - Presented by André Balazs

[7] Manthia Diawara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[8] Jean Prouvé - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[9] The Prouvé Prototype Maison Tropicale Sold for $4,968,000 at Christie's | Home | Art Knowledge News

[10] AAMatters, Invitation for an evening with Manthia Diawara and Joe Osae Addo

[11] Brakke Grond - English - Language no problem

[12] Amazon.com: African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics (9783791343426): Manthia Diawara

Youtube references

YouTube - Angela Ferreira on her film project the Maison Tropicale

YouTube - La Maison Tropicale

YouTube - Jean Prouvé – 3D Animation construction of La Maison Tropicale

La Maison Tropicale Series

Maison Tropicale film in Amsterdam

Deconstructing Maison Tropicale - Introduction

Maison Tropicale - Ownership

Maison Tropicale - Heritage

Maison Tropicale - Corrupt enterprise

Maison Tropicale - Grand Projects