Celebrating 12 Years of Blogging

My story’s in my blogs

Twelve years ago, I was in a hotel in Berlin when I wrote my first blog as I began blogging just to express all sorts of opinions about topics that I found interesting, engaging or needing a perspective completely different from the mainstream.

Over time, I began to tell stories, mostly personal or relatable stories, I do not think I am good at writing fiction and I have rarely dabbled in that genre.

Whilst I am not as prolific as I would have wanted to be and in many ways I have been lazy at writing or even suffered writer’s block, what my blogs have become are tales of experience and life where sometimes something so ordinary and seemingly inconsequential can gain significance just because it becomes part of a story.

Maybe we can celebrate

I have found that blogs that tell personal stories have the most resonance and whilst I have watched bloggers come and go, and there have been many, I still believe everyone has a story to tell, in their own voice, in their own words to enrich our humanity.

I had hoped to celebrate this landmark anniversary leading on to my 50^th birthday in less than two weeks with getting people to contribute to my blog as I as did with the Decade Blogs of two years ago, but have been away from home and been quite preoccupied to many other things to give it much attention, it might yet happen.

However, I do ask, if you do blog and do read my blogs, please write a story, one of life and experience in commemoration of blogging and having a voice speaking loud and clear about the joy of living, the pursuit of happiness and the zest for life, because despite many other blogs I have written, I think those three themes do light up my blog.

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who have supported me through reading, commenting, added expression, given inspiration or just browsed on their way to something more engaging. I hope to do better at this thing called blogging, thank you for 12 years of stories.

My blog masthead remains the purpose of this blog, “Essential similar to what is known, compatible to what is expected and related to the unexpected …” It is a redefinition of my name ‘Akin’ and how my stories begin.

South Africa: Rest In Peace, Reeva Steenkamp

Talking Uber

I have the most interesting discussions with Uber drivers who form the basis of my regular mode of transport in Johannesburg.

Usually after the exchange of pleasantries, a question or two about where I am from, I make an observation during the journey and the deeper conversation begins.

What I find amongst the drivers, either the economy UberX or the luxury UberBlack fares are inquiring and inquisitive minds with questions and an openness to new thought and angles.

South Africa in the time I have been here, has presented flux and frenzy in the socio-economic and political world that we have a surfeit of topics to cover.

They are usually quite amazed at how much I follow South African current affairs, but that is the creature that I am, I try to keep abreast of things.

Justice many times denied

Before Oscar Pistorius appeared in court yesterday, on my way to work I was asked what my view of the situation was.

I lamented the fact that the courts had not given much succour to victims of violence citing Reeva Steenkamp and Anni Dewani as examples of where the men allegedly behind their deaths got away literally scotfree.

However, my only hope this time would be for the judges to ask themselves one question in coming to their decision. All arguments exhausted, where is the justice for Reeva Steenkamp in all this?

Yesterday, evening the answer came in a 53-minute unanimous ruling that the act of Oscar Pistorius on that fateful Valentine Day's morning constituted murder regardless of who was behind that toilet door.

Now fix this

Whilst we find ourselves referencing the Latin dictionary of legal terms that Judge Thokozile Masipa compelled us to acquire when he was sentenced to 5 years for culpable homicide it would appear her ladyship read her own annotated copy erroneously.

We have now to be schooled anew on the application of dolus eventualis to this case, that shooting four shots into an enclosed place regardless of the state of mind of the shooter can only lead to death and there is no reasoning to suggest the shooter, Oscar Pistorius did not know that death will occur after those shots.

The Supreme Court of Appeal which is the highest civil court in South Africa thereby found in favour of the National Prosecuting Authority that was dissatisfied with the ruling of Judge Masipa's court.

With Judge Masipa suitably scolded by superior legal opinion, she has been offered a second opportunity to balance the scales of justice to visit the crime of murder with a suitable punishment that hopefully takes consideration of the indisputable fact that a life was brutally extinguished at the hands of a thoughtless gun nut.

It is no doubt as Judge Eric Leach said, that this is a human tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, but the greatest justice will only be served when the sentence says, Reeva Steenkamp, we're sorry, now rest in peace.

South Africa: Rubbish!

Rubbish everywhere

As an outside observer in South Africa where every day seems to present scandal, impunity, ineptitude and corruption as headlines, nothing better exemplifies a fundamental dysfunction in this society than the sight of refuse strewn over the streets in Johannesburg City centre.

For weeks, there has been a workers’ dispute with their employers, the waste management company, Pikitup and basically, no waste or rubbish has been picked up for quite a while.

The problem is not so much that the rubbish has piled up on the pavements and at lampposts, but that to exacerbate a seriously deteriorating situation, some agents of anarchy have taken to a kind of muck-racking that involves spreading the heaps of rubbish out onto the roads in a deliberate attempt to accentuate the inconvenient sights and create a reprehensible eyesore.

Rubbished heads

Yet, all is not at ease in South Africa in what appears to be a problem with placemen in charge of various organisations who appear to have lost the confidence of both their staff and the public.

At South African Airlines, the South African Broadcasting Corporation and the South African Weather Service, people have been demanding the heads of the chiefs and none either by the hand of the government or by plain indifference in defending the indefensible is ready to leave.

In another dispute, the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) wants its money back for a train deal that looks as murky as it is incredible along with their attempt to reclaim all remuneration paid to their ex-chief engineer who allegedly falsified his qualifications within the broader issue of the trains being ordered not suitable for South African train lines.

The list goes on about falsification, misrepresentation, dodgy deals, corruption, incompetence, ineptitude, lethargy, obfuscation, impunity and the comedy. Yes, the comedy most exemplified in President Jacob Zuma laughing off the seriousness of giving an account of his stewardship in parliament that it has become part of a skit on television where the idea that leaders are solving the people’s problems is met with that laughter.

Rubbishing legacies

It makes you wonder if this is the same South Africa that gave us such world respected figures as Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Invariably, it appears people are being promoted beyond their competence, others are unable to grow into the responsibilities they have assumed and there is a crisis of leadership that ensures disputes become the norm where no amount of arbitration is possible except where it leads to disaster until the parties exhaust themselves in the squabbles.

I watch South Africa as a land of great promise on the verge of a greater disappointment and loss of opportunity, the symptoms are deeper than anyone is ready to accept, yet, one must commend the judiciary, the public defenders and the watchdogs who seem to be the most able preservers of the democracy at play in this country, loudly seeking accountability and responsibility of those who hold power in all spheres of society.

What South Africa needs the most is great minds given the opportunity to steer this amazing country, but as long as politics, expediency and mediocre minds shown up by more competent people remain in charge, you can expect that the rubbish on the streets is only a symptom of the rubbish in the deeper recesses of the national psyche, and that is a great shame.

World AIDS Day: From a person with AIDS to just living with HIV

The result

One morning thirteen years ago on the 13^th, he walked into the clinic almost sure that the news he did not want to accept might be the truth, will be the news he will hear.

For years, he took the test but always asked that he never be informed of the result, the burdens of many enforced and reinforced beliefs militating against the workings of a rational mind until a time he could not escape the truth of what it might be.

That first result was yet tentative, like the first urine sample of a doping test is, he had to wait another week for the confirmation of what had been learnt. On the 20^th of the month, a day that seems to have gained a coincidence of significances in a lifetime, it was crunch time.

The power of hope

When his pastor asked of what might be going through his mind, he averred that he was ready for what the result might be, life had to go on from knowing the truth about the present.

The nurse holding the paper of the confirmation was distraught and literally crying, it was hard enough that he was there to receive news that they usually advice be received in the company of friends or confidant, he was alone, absorbing the news and comforting the nurse.

As he left the clinic, he was handed a pamphlet that was to identify with those who had that result, the covered the emotions of anger, despair, denial, depression, pity and much else, but it did not include the word that would have mattered the most to anyone with such a diagnosis – Hope!

Without hope, there can never have been another day, yet he put it behind him and continued life as if it mattered little. He returned to university, embarked on new journeys, made new friends, even found love, the love of a sort that was trouble and fun, crazy and really crazy, but love it was.

Daringly stupid

Years passed and he fell into the delusion of being inviolable and beyond vulnerable, yet coursing in his veins was a sentence of death, one that was coming and that which others began to see. He, however, lived in denial and his health began to deteriorate and rapidly so.

Soon, he sought succour in alternative medicine and the possibility of a miracle, he was seeking a health jackpot to spring him out of the grip of death. He became desperate and grasping, as pain took a hold that was indescribable.

Then like a slap in the face, his reality dawned and he when to see his doctor, she did not give the signs a second look, before a referral, then another referral and by the third within a week, he was in hospital a very sick man given just five weeks to live if the medicine did not take.

From PWA to PLWHIV anew

At that point, he was a Person With AIDS, his immune system so seriously compromised, it was the miracle of medicine that brought him back from the brink, the same manifestation of complications due to HIV that killed Fela Anikulapo-Kuti some 12 years before.

He recovered and recovered well to tell the tale of facing death square in the face and returning to dance in the land of the living.

Many lessons learnt:

• ·         Always go for check-ups.
• ·         Take the results of your check-ups seriously if you must go on treatment, do it as soon as it is recommended.
• ·         Own your condition, your situation and your decisions.
• ·         Medicine knows a lot more about these things, avail yourself of the science and the knowledge fully.
• ·         Never stop your medication without medical advice, you are not cured until medicine gives the final verdict – your pastor is NOT your doctor.
• ·         The medicine contains the virus and allows your immune system to recover so that you are not beaten by opportunistic infections.
• ·         There is always help for your condition, social, emotional, obviously medical and much else, despite the stigma that associates with being a Person Living With HIV.
• ·         Seek therapy at any opportunity, it works.
• ·         Things might be difficult after an HIV diagnosis, but it is not the end of life, see it as the beginning of a new life, knowing your vulnerabilities and gaining new strengths.
• ·         Your friends are closer than you think they are.

And finally, until you’re dead, you’re still living and if you are still living, you’re here to say once again – Happy World Aids Day!

Nigeria: Time to bring accountability to sexual assault in all forms

Let’s talk about sexual assault

Two very notable and important stories appeared in recent weeks and pertained to accountability coming to men who had either been accused of or indicted of acts of sexual assault. The men concerned due to recent events were about to assume high political or academic office and it is my hope that neither do, as a sign that we are beginning to recognise that sexual assault in whatever guise is unacceptable and punishable too.

I did not comment much on any of the cases in particular, but I had decided to write about that one that did not hit social media like a storm, eliciting commentary from all and sundry, reflecting how society still finds itself scandalised to the point of silence, acquiescence and the acceptance of sexual assault as the norm.

Not knowing how to begin the blog for days, I let the idea percolate in my mind until this morning when through a direct message on Twitter, I was asked my views about the rape story and the following messages formed my impressions of the matter.

Expressing an opinion

I am more interested in the UniUyo sexual assault one which I have been trying to write about, but in a few tweets yesterday, I expressed my frustration with how victims are victimised many times over if they share their ordeal.

I believe a young girl was taken advantage of by people who had an entitlement to impunity and the audacity never to be made accountable because of their status and how society protects them from sanction.

I guess my blog has begun.

To the comment that the current case was confusing, I responded.

I am not confused at all. Consent has a wide spectrum just as rape does. A student can consent to sex with a lecturer under duress with the threat of failure, whilst the student willingly engaged in the act, the method of obtaining consent comes into question. In my view, an act in the rape spectrum has occurred whilst the law terms it sexual harassment.

With power and influence the poor girl was trapped in a situation she had no control over, she was already on a slippery slope to sexual assault the moment she encountered dishonourable men and they took advantage of her naïveté to satisfy their lusts.

That this what I have to say in general about the case that has consumed social media as I begin to discuss the one pertaining to the University of Uyo.

This abuse of power was egregious

I was interested in the University of Uyo sexual assault case because, the man at the centre of the issue is now the prospective vice chancellor and the outgoing vice chancellor, Comfort Ekpo has asked for this appointment to be suspended until the matters at issue are properly resolved.

As it transpired, Enefiok Essien allegedly demanded sexual favours of Linda Onyebuchi Essell who was accused of examination malpractice by the then Mr Essien who is now a professor in 1995. However, it appears Mr Essien might have gotten his way at some time and then threatened to ruin Ms Essell’s academic career if she did not accede to his proclivities.

Invariably, having manipulated the university system against Ms Essell and the courts found that he was involved in utterly reprehensible and disreputable conduct, having stood as accuser, judge, jury and executioner leading to Ms Essell’s expulsion from the university in 1997, one must commend Ms Essell for fighting her case through the courts to win at the Federal High Curt and the Court of Appeal in 2005.

Does anything matter here?

Her victory set aside her expulsion and she eventually went on to complete her degree at the same university, but the court also found and indicted Mr Essien for forgery and sexual assault. It is staggering that a man with such as reputation slur should have remained in academia, been promoted through the system as a professor of commercial law and had become the dean of the faculty of law at the University of Uyo.

It is either both reputations and indictments count for nothing or victims of sexual assault, no matter how egregious especially when it also involves the abuse of authority, power and office are irrelevant in the scheme of things.

Either way, it is astounding that any man accused of forgery by the indictment of a high court, even if he was presumably absent in the UK working on his Ph.D. will be considered for higher office on the one hand and that he on returning to Nigeria will do nothing to clear his name.

This smacks of complicit ineptitude

Professor Kimse Okoko who is the pro-chancellor of the university and headed the committee that appointed Professor Essien the prospective vice chancellor of the university says he only received notice of the standing indictment after the appointment was made, which really beggars belief, because the university and Mr Essien were co-respondents in the cases brought by Ms Essell, and it was the university that took the case to appeal where they lost again and had to rescind their decision to expel Ms Essell.

Now, either the university is completely lax in record keeping that suggest a reputation-shaping case just 10 years ago was forgotten or they like society had acquiesced to the view that the powerful and prominent are never answerable for sexual assault criminality that they must be excused and the victims further victimised by further approbation and vindication of perpetrators of sexual assault.

Is there any justice in this world?

In a just world, Professor Enefiok Essien should not only be dismissed on the basis of that indictment of 2005, he should be stripped of all honours and then made to face the courts for his alleged dishonesty, abuse of process and sexual assault which I might be persuaded to belief did not just involve Ms Essell.

If Professor Essien does become the vice chancellor of the University of Uyo on the 1^st of December 2015, it would be a travesty and the battle that many victims of sexual assault fight to get justice would have been setback seriously, rubbished and lost.

For the very first time, let society speak up for the victim and speak loud and clear that there is no statute of limitation for making anybody accountable for sexual assault, no matter where that person is placed in society and what time has passed since the event happen. There is no statute of limitation of the lifelong damage that is done to the body and the soul of a person violated sexually, neither should there be one for calling the perpetrator to account.

I hope she is doing well

Finally, all the laurels must go to Linda Onyebuchi Essell who challenged the pre-eminence of a system that is rarely made to account for its accounts in a country where the pursuit of justice comes at a high and almost unaffordable price to the many. I hope she is doing well and I hope her fight for justice will not only be recognised, but commended by more.

The least of all in recognition of her should be that Professor Essien is never inaugurated as the vice chancellor of the University of Uyo.

South Africa: From Sandton to Melrose Arch through Sandton

In any case

There is a more important blog I wanted to write that I have been ruminating over for days already and have not been able to write the first word of a sentence, yet it is working and forming in my mind as it is not ready to be birthed and given the light of expression.

On a lighter note, however, I hailed an Uber ride from my hotel to Melrose Arch, the driver decided to take the back roads through Sandton and it was quite revealing.

I would have loved to take pictures, but this might have been considered a security risk and probably endangered my life before I was given the opportunity to explain my interest.

Prisons of defence

Whilst I find the security at my hotel a bit superfluous and cumbersome because it requires all drivers of vehicles into the grounds sign in apart from the fact that gates are manned and have barriers, what obtains in residential Sandton is quite enhanced.

Literally all compounds have high walls topped with barbed wire fenced that I believe is also electrified. To my English mind, the affluent literally lived in the equivalent of prisons, if not fearful, at least, concerned about the world beyond their walls that is violent and so far removed from wealth and access to opportunity.

The walls themselves are architectural pieces and there are some notices that suggest that there are armed response units ready to tackle any trespassers.

Overwrought oasis

On arriving at this apparently exciting Melrose Arch that exudes affluence so alien to the generality of South Africa served by many from the townships spruced up to slave in genuflection to the presumably sophisticated or nouveau riche, it looked very much like an oasis in a vast desert, the appearance of Melrose Arch from the motorway read true in reality.

I first stopped at Sunglass Hut where I asked for lens cleaners having forgotten to pack any for my journey and the store assistant quickly offered a luxury case with a refillable spray cleaner, a washable ‘Microfiber’ cloth and a jeweller’s screwdriver. Meanwhile, he offered to clean my glasses.

When it came to paying for the goods, he could not operate the till, and after fumbling for minutes, he called his boss who was out of the shop on some business and he immediately appeared to sort things out. Why Sunglass Hut needs to have a mobile phone number to conclude a transaction escapes me, and if not because I felt a bit amenable since I was paying cash, I would not have parted with any information about me.

Cavalier cravats and more

My view was almost coloured by this experience until I was accosted further on by some affable gentlemen who looked rather dandier than I was. They run the Cavalier gentlemen’s fitters shop where for once they seemed to have everything that exuded class, taste and sophistication.

They had seen me walk by and came out to compliment my dressing and even averred that they have never seen someone as smartly dressed as I come by their shop before. They had me when they said they also had day cravats. This considering that last time I asked for cravats in Sandton, I was presented with a Velcro-fastened bib. The horror.

The variety of colours and quality of the stuff, I could not resist, yet I restrained myself, I left with two beautiful cravats, and to their recommendation of getting matching pocket squares, I intimated them of the fashion faux pas of matching pocket squares to ties, it should never be done.

Yet, I did like the way they wore their pocket squares, much like a blooming origami rose, I should have asked to be shown how to do that. I might well be inclined to have a bespoke Savile Row suit made for South African prices made for me. We’ll see.

After shopping at Woolworths a brand that looks a bit classy in South Africa though long since extinct in the UK and probably never really related to the one that once rules the shopping precincts of the UK, I hail an Uber ride back to my hotel having learnt again of the great disparities that ail South Africa.

Postscript: I have since learnt Woolworths of South Africa is modelled after Marks and Spencer of the UK and has never been related to the old Woolworth’s brand in the UK.

South Africa: Uber despite the annoyances

Uber knows

Being in a strange city or a foreign country, apart from airport shuttles to my hotel, I have been quite confident to use the Uber taxi service to get around town.

In Johannesburg where places could be so obscure, and some addresses are at best a guess rather than a precise location, that relying on the Uber navigation aids is very useful.

However, whilst reviewing some of my journeys to and from our offices dotted around Johannesburg and the suburbs, I could not help but think I was being taken for a ride in some sort of disadvantageous collusion between Uber and the driver against me.

Uber throes

Some journeys just seemed to be twice as long in the distance without really making up for time or missing the traffic and with that an unexpected tour of the periphery of Johannesburg, the cost, no doubt outrageous.

It got to a head that I had to register a complaint with Uber about my trips, because to my mind I was being unfairly taken advantage of, either through design, some Machiavellian scheme or the quirks of technology having a mind of its own. My complaint:

I am unhappy that on a number of journeys between Randburg and Sandton, I am taken on unnecessarily long journeys via the freeway doubling the distance that would have been covered without the need for a bypass especially when there is light traffic going into Sandton.

The idea that the distance from Randburg/North Riding to Sandton should be 33km is outrageous and a total rip-off.

One would have expected Uber to provide options of the shortest and probably the most optimal journeys rather than defaulting to the longest possible marathon coverable between 2 points in Johannesburg.

I have no problems with the drivers, but between Uber and the guidance offered by your navigation systems, this customer relationship is not only badly served, but seriously fleeced too.

Please do not spam my mail box with requests for comment, just sort this matter out.

Thank you.

Uber blows

Uber eventually apologised and offered a ZAR 50 compensation that was deducted from my next journey and whilst it appears things have been a bit better, it does not half ameliorate the fact that I have been well and truly rogered and ultimately fleeced.

The additional annoyance is that for every comment I leave, I get more spam from Uber asking me to comment on my comments, I really do not have the time for more small talk, just have the service delivered with professionalism and consideration.

I guess one other thing that will not go amiss on the Uber app is giving me the list of my most recent locations and destinations as well as not generalising street names when there is a possibility that there are many occurrences of that street name in the same city.

Uber glows

On such event was where there were two Industrial Roads in Johannesburg, the one we first arrived at was not right and in one morning I had a 66-kilometre ride on Uber for what should never have been more than 18 kilometres just because I trusted Uber to know better than I did about where I was going.

Besides all this, I will still happily use Uber, even if drivers end up on the wrong side of the road and I have to hobble across the wide and dangerous Johannesburg roads, cane in hand to join my ride.

For better for worse, Uber is here to stay, it, however, should get better at precision, direction, instruction and value.