Folate, I must, lactate, I can't

A 'Don't Worry' Call

A couple of days ago, I saw a message on my phone. The doctor's surgery had called with a message from the hospital, I was to contact the surgery for a chat, but it was nothing serious for me to be concerned about.

There is a psychology to delivering news pertaining to health, and as long as it does not appear to be a life-threatening emergency requiring immediate action, they do well to allay your fears.

So, I called the surgery yesterday morning, where the conversation revolved around calling in to see the doctor for another few check-ups but for the fact that we could not find suitable scheduling since I spent the weekdays working in Scotland.

My lifelong gestation

The alternative was to have a quick chat to the doctor and see how things go from there. A few minutes later, the doctor picked up the phone and the conversation pertained to the results of the blood tests from the HAND analysis I did last month.

Then, the consultant ordered a battery of blood work to eliminate possible and manageable causes of my perceived short-term memory issues and attendant matters.

Apparently, I have Folic Acid Deficiency Anaemia, Folic Acid which is Vitamin B9 is also somewhat related to Vitamin B12. These two vitamins are essential to forming red blood cells, they help nerves function properly, Folic Acid is also essential in forming genetic material in every body cell, hence enabling perfect replication.

Knowing the reason why I forget to remember

Now, my knowledge of the use of Folic Acid supplements was for terms of pregnancy and though I have never seen my own period since before I ever knew what they were, I did wonder.

However, the deficiency explained the tiredness, insomnia, the occasional lethargy and the forgetfulness that I had highly compensated for through aide memoires, double-checking and reticence in proclaiming logical conclusions at work. That the cause could be dietary was also worrisome. I am working away from home and hence have no luxury of home cooking.

To make amends, I have to introduce cereals fortified with vitamins into my diet and I will consider supplements, yet I must be careful at over 50 not to run in excess of my daily allowance.

In three months we'll have some bloodwork done to ascertain if the deficiency has been remediated. I may not naturally lactate, but I must folate to keep well.

Thought Picnic: Pearls of my heart trampled on by swine

After much reflection

I have been thinking about this for a while, aspects of the heart and mind in relation to people I have tried to love and build some sort of relationship with.

There are times I have wondered about why finding people with whom to have lasting, rewarding, happy and beautiful relationships has been difficult, if not impossible. Do I attract a certain kind of personality with flaws that are beyond tending, caring and nurturing to the point of individual self-fulfilment and mutual benefit?

Open heart, open hands

I am a hopeless romantic, quick to invest time, means, resource, heart and soul in people I find attractive. Many of whom are in essence really beautiful people until some situation exposes the baggage, the insecurities, the self-loathing, the illnesses and much else.

Yet, I do have great capacity to manage any of those issues, my arms are wide open to embrace, my ears ready to listen, my heart open to accommodate and in all, it seems to lead to heartbreak. I live by the view that an open hand is one that is ready to receive too.

I appreciate that I have had such experiences in life that many would never encounter regardless of whatever they achieve. I make no apology for the fact that I have had a life of opportunity, of privilege, of class, of access and much else.

I mean, I make no apology

That I manage simplicity and sophistication with ease is just part of my make-up and I do not intend to pay some vicarious homage to any sort of asceticism of socialist equality when even looking at my hands, I can see that my fingers are not equal, but of different lengths to make my hands grip and grasp effectively.

I love people for whom they are and my somewhat strong personality would tend to lift anyone I have within my purview up, it does not preclude me willingness to try new experiences, even as there are standards that one maintains simply to redound quality to the joy of living.

Damaged people with unmanaged issues

My search for useful and true love needs to move out of the cohort of those who are too engrossed in battling their own demons to see the possibility of good things ahead of them. The few I have loved who have turned out to be unlovable, the complimented that cannot countenance honest praise because their lives are infused on criticism and excoriation. It has forced me to hold back when there is a lot more I can do.

One would hate to think there is a seething jealousy that inhibits them from showing and receiving affection, it is part of what I have seen. In much that I have been taken advantage of, I cannot condemn myself in the things that I have allowed. I offer love unconditionally and give everyone the chance to be themselves and even a better version of themselves, because that is how I was brought up.

My pearls trampled by swine

To give everyone the benefit of the doubt, think the best of everyone, give them all the chances to find the best of themselves, help them with every resource I have at my disposal to get beyond themselves. What it does for me is radical and amazing, it gives me stability and the platform from which to improve myself too.

However, back to the original thought, I have been wasting my time with men who do not deserve me. I have to return to loving myself the more and in the process begin to understand that I deserve better than casting the pearls of my heart and soul to be trampled on by unlovable swine.

Edinburgh: MaDeb African Shop

Out on a discovery

I stepped out of my hotel this evening to go for a meal and thought I’ll walk to a group of restaurants around London Road and Leith Walk in Edinburgh. However, instead of walking up London Road, I had a sense of adventure to go down Easter Road where I had noted from Google Maps that an Italian Restaurant might be open.

Half a mile down Easter Road, the restaurant was closed and I am beginning to realise that some restaurants and takeaways are closed on Mondays.

Unsure of what else to do, I decided to take a side road that I thought would get me to Leith Walk even if my bearings thought I was on the wrong path, I did end up on Leith Walk, one of the longest stretches of road in Edinburgh that seems to have so many names, you better not look at the road signs.

A homely wonderland

I crossed the road and walked upwards into town as my eyes caught the sign of an African goods shop, my curiosity got the better of me as the two ladies in the shop beckoned to me, and so I yielded and walked into the shop. All indications were they thought I was from Eastern Nigeria, but I introduced myself differently as my eyes darted around the stocked shelves to see familiar goods and wares that excite the West African palate.

I could not decide what I wanted when I was informed they had frozen jollof rice and stew, and if I had access to a microwave oven, that would do just fine.

MaDeb African Shop had only been open two months and whilst for me it was a chance discovery, it might well be the only purveyor of goods and wares the West Africans would only be too familiar with. The African Flavour Restaurant that I wrote about over a month ago had closed, it was a bad business that failed to take advantage of the monopoly it had to serve a particular clientele and that is just a shame.

More and more

The list of things to get from Madeb African Shop is almost inexhaustible, the shop uses three areas, the main shop, the back where perishable goods are kept and refrigerated and the basement with cosmetics and hair products.

In the main shop, there are spices, flours, canned foods, dried and smoked fish, Agege bread, ingredients to various stews as Egusi, Ogbono, bitter leaf, fermented peas (iru), mint leaves (efinrin), palm oil, kola nuts, plantain bananas, tubers like yams, sweet potatoes, suya packs, Nigerian drinks and beverages. Ointments like Robb and Aboniki, this is your perfect nostalgic corner shop.

For those who prefer their West African dishes ready-made, the shop provides a cooking service as well as preparing meals for events. I have the feeling this outfit would be a better replacement for that lackadaisically useless restaurant.

Get there and shop

The ladies were humorous, pleasant and nice, on getting back to my hotel, I defrosted my jollof rice, added some stew and downed it with a can of Afrimalt, I must be tipping the scales on the wrong side of zero.

MaDeb African Shop,
5 Croall Place,
EH7 4LT
Edinburgh

Photos

The UK: What can she do? How justice was served in this Human Trafficking case

Empty promises to exploit

The matter I write about today should be a salutary lesson to anyone who has power, influence, authority, means or privilege and is tempted to use that as a means to exploit those over whom they can wield it.

Iyabo Olatunji was a 29-year-old secretary working for a local government authority in Nigeria when she was persuaded by the Adewakuns to leave her job in Nigeria for the UK to serve as a nanny to their two young children.

Iyabo, as a young teenager, was a housegirl servant to an earlier generation of the Adewakun family in Nigeria. This would indicate she was already known to them, and there was some trust already established to persuade her to seek a new fortune in the UK.

Doctor a contract to nurse abuse

Mr Abimbola Adewakun is a nurse, and his wife, Ayodeji Adewakun, is a medical doctor. Through a contract of employment, they engaged Iyabo Olatunji for a salary of £450 a month, working for 6 days a week. She came to replace a Hungarian au pair who left a week after Iyabo Olatunji arrived in the UK.

Whilst the impression of bettering the life of Iyabo Olatunji was what persuaded her to leave Nigeria, the reality of her life in the UK from February 2007 to June 2009 was anything but. [Court News UK]

By May 2009, Iyabo Olatunji had only received four payments totalling £350, and when she asked for proper remuneration, she was physically abused. She worked 18-hour days, was not allowed to use the modern conveniences, including the washing machine, but had to wash clothes by hand. The Adewakuns were cruel, terrible, nasty and horrible employers. [Daily Mail]

With the help of a family friend, with nothing to go to, Iyabo Olatunji escaped the intolerable employ of the Adewakuns in June 2009.

Slow but sure justice

Sadly, it took ages for the wheels of justice to start turning, during which time Iyabo Olatunji’s status in the UK would have been under threat, apart from other issues that might have resulted from her escaping from slavery.

Her case was then referred to the Modern Slavery and Kidnap Unit of the Metropolitan Police by the Migrant Legal Action, and in January 2015, both Abimbola and Ayodeji Adewakun were interviewed by the police. They were charged with trafficking for the purpose of exploitation in November 2015 and appeared in court in May 2017, where they were both found guilty of the charges.

Abimbola and Ayodeji were sentenced to 9 months and 6 months imprisonment respectively, and they are to pay £10,000 in compensation to Iyabo Olatunji as well as £2,520 in court costs. [Metropolitan Police]

She is a person

The Adewakuns were people of privilege and means who thought they were untouchable and unreproachable by virtue of Ayodeji’s professional standing as a doctor and Abimbola’s secured status in the UK. In their minds, Iyabo Olatunji was a nonentity, an insignificant person, a house-girl servant from a Nigerian backwater whose questionable status in the UK left her open to the exploitation they fully took advantage of.

It would never have occurred to them that Iyabo Olatunji was first a person, and every person deserves to be treated with respect, with dignity, and with fairness, regardless of their status in the UK.

They had allowed their sense of entitlement to their own money, which was being wasted on a Hungarian au pair with rights to be clouded by the possibility of exploiting a house-girl servant from Nigeria without any rights in the UK, living in fear of deportation if she dared seek help from the authorities.

Don’t look away

How they must have miscalculated in their atrociously evil scheme. They are now being made to pay up and pay a very high price in reputation, status, and freedom. If they are anything but natural-born citizens of the United Kingdom, they risk being deported back to Nigeria in ignominy.

They belittled and contemned Iyabo Olatunji, treated her as dirt, and this has now washed up on their faces.

However, there are lessons to be learnt from this unfortunate situation, and they must be well learnt.

• Anyone residing in the UK has the right to be treated as a person, a human being, with respect and dignity – regardless of their status in the UK.
• If you bring a person over from the sub-continent to work for you, if you are not paying them a fair wage, you’re exploiting that person, and the law frowns on every kind of exploitation.
• If you know anyone who has employed someone through trafficking for the purpose of exploitation, you have a duty to inform the authorities about what is going on. Failing that, let the employer know it is wrong, and they should immediately make amends; failing that, help the employee escape to seek help from the authorities.
• Do not let any abuse go unnoticed, unreported or unpunished.

They ruined their own lives

I take no joy in writing about Abimbola and Ayodeji Adewakun, but this kind of abuse happens a lot in Nigeria; that it has been imported into the UK is utterly reprehensible and must be excoriated in the strongest terms. Nowhere should people be exploited in this way, and if it takes going to jail in the UK to make that a lesson for everyone in the UK and abroad, that is a good thing.

I put this situation down to greed and entitlement; it need not have happened. The seriousness of the matter is indicative of the fact that Ayodeji Adewakun has been suspended from practising as a medical doctor, as has her husband, Abimbola Adewakun, from practising as a nurse in the UK. As the attached graphic indicates.

Related Links

GP and her husband ‘trafficked a Nigerian woman into the UK to work as a babysitter for just £20 a week and slapped her when she asked for more cash’ [Daily Mail]

GP Only Wanted To Better Lowly Paid Babysitter’s Life [Court News UK]

Pair jailed for trafficking offence [Metropolitan Police]

Take Action

Modern Slavery Human Trafficking Unit (MSHTU) [National Crime Agency]
Modern Slavery Helpline 08000 121 700

Modern slavery and human trafficking [National Crime Agency]

Migrant Legal Action [The Law Society]
53 Addington Square
London
SE5 7LB
020 3150 1470

Courtesy of the General Medical Council, searched on 25/07/2017

Courtesy of the Nursing & Midwifery Council, searched on 25/07/2017

Innocence lost!

The end of the matter,
Was the beginning of a flutter,
Crutched in secret,
Not too discreet,
There on a prompting,
A decision found wanting,
To stick it in,
For her was a win,
He did not know,
What was on show,
At an age twice of him,
A tryst on the whim,
In a backroom then at home,
With little scope to roam,
When the deed was done,
His innocence quickly gone,
To lure a boy of seven,
Is to close the door to heaven,
The tales still gets told,
For what happened can never go cold,
Of taboos tasted raw,
No distinction to draw,
Therein is a cause,
To save other from that curse,
His purity thus polluted,
His young soul fully looted.

Appearing for the defendant, Dammy Krane - A sketch

The boy living large

Until he made the headlines a few weeks ago, I had no idea who Dammy Krane was and I have not yet ventured a listening to his brand of entertainment. What I have been able to glean about him is, he is a somewhat successful musician.

Dammy Krane, born Oyindamola Johnson Emmanuel is 25 and he apparently got a record deal at 20 but is not the reason for my blog today.

On the 2^nd of June 2017, Dammy Krane was arrested in Miami, Florida for having booked private jets with stolen credit cards, the company that was about to be defrauded then alerted the law and when they were about to board the flight of luxury, he was nabbed along with a Chukwuebuka Ilochonwu who apparently has an existing rap sheet of fraudulent activity.

He’s on the money

Now, Dammy Krane has protested his innocence and in keeping an open mind, I probably should hear him out. He released a YouTube video apologising for being caught up in this mess and thanked all who have supported him through this rotten ordeal.

Now, Opa-Locka to the Miami International Airport (MIA) is just a 15-minute Uber ride costing about $20 and from MIA to Washington DC flying American Airlines one-way and non-stop is 2:37 hours at a cost of $82. Dammy Krane’s preferred mode of travel would have set him back $10,943, if he had the money in the bank, I cannot begrudge how he spends his hard-earned money.

We need to develop an urgency of the mentality to tailor our need to show-off to the honestly acquired resources we have to dispose of, you do not have to apologise for being a hedonist given to crude and ostentatious displays of wealth in the vulgar assertion of your manhood. Everyman has a right to be highly fed and lowly taught.

The trouble I saw

However, I know how on my decision to resettle in the UK in 1990, Danny Krane wasn’t even born then. Some Nigerians here before me had crashed the reserve of trust in Nigerians that you had to try twice as hard to be accepted as honest, truthful, qualified and able, all because of credit card fraud activities by people that included one of my close friends from secondary school.

He went to prison for it and when he qualified as a lawyer, that blot on his record meant he could never practice law in the UK. He eventually had to return to Nigeria waving as it were, a clean slate and bill of honesty and integrity.

You’re in deep shit, boy

However, Dammy Krane seems to have some explaining to do, because news reaching us suggests seven stolen credit cards were found in his pants (trouser) pockets, or more directly his wallet. Whilst this presents some difficulty, I offer myself in service for the defence with a number of questions I believe if answered accordingly might well exonerate Dammy Krane from this sordid affair. [Miami New Times]

I would think using the airport baggage check-in protocols, Dammy Krane only has to affirm, deny or plead ignorance to create enough reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury that he is being unjustly persecuted and prosecuted.

In court

Me: If it may please your lordship, I am appearing for the defendant who is in the dock and I am here to prove that he had nothing to do with this criminal activity.

Me: [Looking towards Dammy Krane] Mr. Dammy Krane, can I call you Dammy?

Dammy Krane (DK): That is fine by me.

Me: Thank you. Now, tell the court, does the wallet belong to you?

DK: I think so, it looks like one I bought for $15,000 a few months ago.

[The court gasps, but I move on swiftly]

Me: Do you recognise any of the contents of the wallet?

DK: The dollar bills and the platinum credit cards are mine, those other ones with strange names I have no idea of.

Me: One would assume you would know all the contents of your wallet, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and I hope the jury would too. Did you at any time leave your wallet unattended where it could have been interfered with?

DK: That is quite possible, my agent usually does all my business transactions and bookings, however, since I was going up to Washington D.C. for a few days, I picked it up from the ivory table in my penthouse suite on the morning of our travel none the wiser about it.

Me: Did you at any time put any of the said stolen credit cards in your wallet, maybe not the seven, but at least one of them?

DK: I do not recall doing any such thing.

Me: Are you saying you did not notice your wallet was a bit weightier than before?

DK: Music is my passion, I don’t do much on the money side of things, that is what I have an agent for.

Me: So, tell the court who booked the Tap-Jets flight to Washington D.C. from Opa-Locka.

DK: I think my agent did, I am not sure if he asked for my wallet, but when I was leaving my penthouse suite, I was under the impression that everything was sorted.

Me: I recall Tap-Jets did ask that you present an alternative payment option because they had issues with your card. What happened there?

DK: I simply thought they had misheard the credit card details so I just read out the details of another card and they did not say anything to me that the transaction did not go through.

Me: Now, that is interesting, you mean they accepted your booking, sent you a confirmation and then ensnared you with a police bust at the airport?

DK: Yes, that is the case, I am still quivering at their underhand tactics, all they should done was tell me they had issues with my payment and I would have made good the arrangement. I am not that kind of person, I was brought up in a God-fearing home where my parents imbibed in me the dint of hard work, honesty, integrity, and responsibility. I would never have been involved in this racket, I am a successful musician with a thriving career.

Me: Indeed, I see that, it is so unfortunate that you have been a victim of entrapment by unscrupulous businesses as Tap-Jets. That will be all for now.

DK: Thank you.

Judge: The defendant may step down and the court is adjourned until 9:00 AM tomorrow morning.

Postscript

In view of my questions, how would there not be some reasonable doubt as to Dammy Krane’s culpability in this criminal enterprise?.

It would take a Houdini of an attorney acting out a Wallender tight-rope walk over the Niagara Falls in a Force 10 gale to get Dammy Krane off the indictments against him.

Seriously, who does Dammy Krane think he is fooling?

The plot thickens …

Dreamscape: To Japan on a bicycle

Seeing my guests off

We had a wonderful evening together, friends and strangers about to be friends, and then it was time to go home. They had come a long way and we set off to the station.

There were two bicycles, that is what they apparently rode on to visit as we made for the station. It was late, we had to be quick. On getting to the station, I was in charge of one of the bicycles and we had difficulty going through the gates or finding the right platform.

In the process, we lost sight of each other and I was left with one of the strangers, in the confusion, as we ran up and down the escalators, one of us walked the way down an escalator as it was rolling up, I could not do that with a bicycle. We finally found our platform, two trains leaving at the same time, for Japan.

A toilet wonder to behold

I got on the train and found a seat as the stranger did beside me, only to be disturbed by a hawker who through the whole journey was selling snake-oil remedies using the context of Japanese fables of old, nothing that I heard was worth parting with my hard-earned cash for.

Meanwhile, the technology on the train could not be ignored, I could push a button, very much like the stopping bell of a bus, to initiate a bowel evacuation by wireless means, fascinating it was, that no one could tell who was filling the toilet with waste, it could really have been anyone else.

Time and station stops late into the night, we got to last stop and alighted. Then it seemed our none of our other company made any of the trains, they were stuck somewhere incomprehensible as we spoke on the phone.

A cab to nowhere sensible

I thought I could ride the bicycle back home when I realised I had left it on the train, the train that already left the station taking the staff with it. The other trains were pulling out that I just could not summon the courage to tell my friend that I had lost her bicycle.

The matter of getting home from Japan became a pressing issue, I had to get a taxi, the first shop had unhelpful people who pretended to offered a service of indifference and mockery, they did not care. When I found the cab office, the faces all looked familiar but I was not sure, the drivers unperturbed in every state of lackadaisical abandon until the controller was pointed out to me.

He asked where I was going, my home was a place I had not been in 27 years, the cost I could not meet because I did not have enough money and as I was thinking of booking a hotel room for the night, I did not have to do any of that, I was saved the ordeal.

REM - Rapid Eye Madness

For between Edinburgh where I am, the London Underground where we boarded trains for Japan, probably a suburb called Japan-town very much like Chinatown, a cab office that seemed to have Nigerian drivers to wanting a ride to Isolo in Lagos, Nigeria, I was caught in the landscape of vivid dreams, where distances are shortened and problems can be quite insurmountable.

I had jolted out of my sleep as the background activity coming from my computer playing Channel 4 on BBC was broadcasting the Japan season ended. Phew!