The Return

Okay, Okay, Okaaaay!

I know it’s been like forever since I last blogged. So many people have BB’ed, sent sms and called to chastise. Well, you know, every once in a while one needs to take time out, right? Well, this has been my time-out. Forgive.

OK. Sorry. Abeg, as we would say in Nigeria. It’s been an eventful couple of months. If for nothing else a reminder that life is a marathon and not a 100 meters sprint. After the zeal of starting new projects and initiatives early on in the year, some time or the other one needs to take stock and slooooow down – if only for a short while.

So I am back on line!

My nephew brought me this book from the UK – The Personal Shopper. I thought nothing of it when he gave it to me – said it came with the shoes I had asked him to purchase. OK. Then I read the back of the book to get a gist of what it was all about. It reads like this:

Meet Annie Valentine: stylish, savvy, multi-tasker extraordinaire. As a personal shopper in a swanky London fashion emporium, Annie can re-style and re-invent her clients from head to toe. In fact, this super-skilled dresser can be relied on to solve everyone's problems...except her own. Although she's busy being a single mum to stroppy teen Lana and painfully shy Owen, there's a gap in Annie's wardrobe, sorry, life, for a new man. But finding the perfect partner is turning out to be so much trickier than finding the perfect pair of shoes. Can she source a genuine classic? A life long investment? Will she end up with someone from the sale rail, who'll have to be returned? Or maybe, just maybe, there'll be someone new in this season who could be the one...

Cheeky so and so.

Never read a book so quickly before. It really made me laugh. But there is this notion in the book, and at large really, that people who are well-off have miserable lives/are boring people, and those who do not have so much money are a lot happier. The ‘money doesn’t make you happy’ notion.

Well you know, I want to refute that. I am sure we all know a bus load of people who have bus loads of money and live lives just as fulfilling or unfulfilling as those that don’t. I rather go for the notion that it’s your relationship with money that might determine your level of fulfillment.

I don’t know if Jesus had cash-in-hand when He was on planet Earth but He sure had access to wealth and He was definitely happy and fulfilled. I guess because His wealth was not His focus but His faith and hope in God was. I think what I am saying is that the pursuit of happiness through the primary and relentless pursuit of money may lead us to a Judas experience. The end result being the loss of being.

Anyway, enough deep thought for today.

Ciao everyone!

Canoe

Every so often life throws something so surprisingly comforting and so delightfully glorious your way. And it is normally in simple pleasures.

I have found one such comfort in my quarterly readings of Canoe magazine. Published by Ghanaians, with an increasing number of West African contributors and writers, Canoe is a celebration of all that is relevant, apt and timely in Africa. A spectacle of how far we have come, and a trailer of what our tomorrows may be. Afro-centric to the core, afropolitian in content, resurgent Africa in attitude and afrochic in style, Canoe makes me so unreservedly proud to be African.

Whilst the majority of our governments and leaders have spectacularly frustrated and disappointed us, what a publication such as Canoe inspires in me is that in rising above the challenges we face day in day out in the underdevelopment of our nation, social and economic infrastructures, we choose to experience that abundant life our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus promised.

And this is our hope: that Africans can discover, exhibit and manifest the fullness of the creativity and intellect surrounding their God-given skills, abilities and talents in their generation.

On the eve of my nation’s golden jubilee celebrations I remain astonished at our limited progress. That I have not posted a note on the blog for over a month is testament to the daily and constant challenges one faces in day to day living in ‘this our great nation’. Few hours of electricity a day, five hours in traffic a day, over-priced goods and services (for most goods in Nigeria are over-priced not expensive – diamonds are expensive), reduced productivity, and the list goes on. But yet, we do and yet we do go on. We do go on demonstrating resilience, exhibiting hope and demonstrating ambition. This is what makes Africa so great – the attitude of her people.

Canoe’s creative director, Kweku Ansah, put it this way in the February 09 edition, naming that attitude ‘The Obamian Complex’:

An inspirited state of existence that propels a person to optimize their potential and utlise their opportunities in pursuit of higher goals, based mainly on merit and braced with courteous audacity, but free from stereotypical expectations and other self restraining inhibitions.

Welcome, the African Renaissance.

So, The Art of Living subscribers, I may not have been blogging, but I have been reading – marveling at all that is afrochic, afropolitican, afrocentric and Obamian around me; and praying that I will be partaker of the brilliance and splendor of Africa. Won’t you sign on?

Sixty Second Interview

I’m in Brighton this week. And, what, with 24hr electricity, TV and enough cafés and restaurants with a view of the seafront, I’ve had time to relax my mind.

Well, since some have said that my blog is a bit on the heavy side, and because I’ve been reading proper, I mean, proper newspapers and broadsheets all week, I once again came across the Sixty Second Interview and so I thought I’d try one on Ms TheArtofLivingRuka:

What do you know for sure? That God is.

Favorite book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Nobody should live and die without reading that book.

On a desert island who or what would you want with you: The Holy Spirit and my BlackBerry

Where and when you recently knew complete happiness: Lagos, November 2008 – an old friend, now based in Dubai and who I had not seen for a decade, visited. We had lunch with two other mutual friends at Piccolo Mondo – hugging, crying, chatting, laughing, and reminiscing. It was delightful. Those were three hours of my life that I would repeat over and over and over again.

Favorite place: Honestly? I’d have to say Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, both in Tanzania. Dar is for me the location of bliss, delight and pure comfort. The seafront eating places, the quaint buildings in town, the easy going generally quiet pace, and of course my ‘family’ in Dar (friends from University days). And Zanzibar? My goodness. What words? Un-spoilt, beautiful and traditional almost to a fault, and yes, very quaint.

The peculiarity you most dislike in yourself? Gosh, so many! The most? What about being excessively guarded and deliberative?

The trait you most dislike in others? Arrogance and self-importance

What do you most guard? My peace and joy

If wishes were horses, next leisure destination? The Mount Nelson, Cape Town, South Africa – preferably during the next Cape Town Jazz festival

Favorite restaurant: Sky Bar and Restaurant, Lagos; La Taverna Tropicana, Accra on a Friday or Saturday night; La Chaumiere, Accra; and the New Federal Palace Hotel, on the terrace, on a lazy Sunday afternoon

What gets up your skin? Social injustice

What draws you to a person? Sincerity, warmth, kindness, honesty and intellectual depth.

Motto: fight the good fight of faith

Who would you pay to spend an hour with: but you know I spend every second of every hour with my Father, right? So long as that's understood! Besides Him, at this moment, only Jimmy Dludlu comes to mind. He doing his stuff on the guitar, me listening and thanking God for the moment. But then of course there’s Bishop Desmond Tutu, Oprah Winfrey, Bishop T D Jakes……

What is your latest trivial worry: I am exercising harder than I've ever done (well, to my mind I am) and yet it takes like forever to lose one kilo...

The Legal Dissolution of a Marriage

Maybe it’s something to do with me being on the eve of my fortieth year but everywhere I look and everywhere I turn too many friends and loved ones of the same age world over are on the edge. Marriage-edge. Joyless and troubling unions leaning onto separation and divorce.

Disquieting. Really disquieting.

What is more disturbing is the emotional trauma that is attendant with this edge: for some are literally battling with the decision to separate and divorce even in the midst of their Christian faith and desire to honour The Word that says “God hates divorce”.

Divorce and Our Easter Reflection
Over Easter I discussed this same issue with a dear, dear, dear sister. Divorced herself, she takes that stand that what God hates is the process of divorce. The physical, emotional, psychological and of course spiritual angst that precedes divorce – and for some that may mean decades.

My sister and I could not fathom the thought that Love Himself would want His child to remain in an emotionally or physically tormenting marriage union. Surely this could not be one’s appointed end? This pain-filled, soul wrenching union? Joy sapped day in day out; hope and dreams suspended year in, year out? Surely His intentions for us and good and not evil? Surely He does not want us to suffer unrest day in, day out in a so-called marriage union where spouses are not even on speaking terms, let alone sharing the same bedroom and yet, they are supposedly bringing up children together ‘in the way of The Lord’? Surely that is a sure, sure guarantee of producing generations of dysfunctional adults and marriages?

Jaws, the divorce lawyer
It was just the other day that I heard a renowned divorce lawyer (aka Jaws) interviewed on the BBC World Service. A hitherto pre-global financial crisis young NY city resident with a well-paid professional job and an affluent, materialistic lifestyle had gone to court to re-negotiate the terms of his divorce. The terms and conditions of his income had taken a deep slide and he needed the terms of his divorce settlement with his wife to reflect this new, declined income.

What was Jaws’ take on this? The next couple of years are going to see more pre-nups and post-nups. We are going to be seeing ‘marriage’ in a very different format. ‘To have and to hold; for richer, for poorer’ has gone out of the window. Selah. His take was that over the years he had seen clients who married for a whole lot of reasons outside of affection and companionship. Money counted for one of these reasons, as did status. But many, he said, just simply got it wrong when it came to choosing a life partner.

And the Christian Church?
Where does that leave us in The Christian Church? What should we be doing to support our members, our body, crying out for help before and after marriage?

I certainly don’t have the answers but what I do know is that we must do better than we are doing here and now. How so?

Well, there’s the one of Priest X or Pastor Y, suggesting that a spouse should just learn to accept that their other half will have mistresses, for that is just the way things are. Yes, and I should risk AIDS and all other STDs?

And the one of Priest X or Pastor Y retorting that society would render one an outcast one divorced – for divorced women are simply irresponsible. Note, no mention of the God-factor in all of this, just the issues of what society will think? Yes, so I should rest in this fallow land of a life-sapping union all the same till death do us part?

And the one where Priest X and Pastor Y reminds us that The Bible records that is better to marry than to burn with passion and sin. As such better marry and legitimately fan the flames of your passions, less you sin. Yes. We’ll see you in post-marital counseling in six months time when flames momentarily fanned you realize that, well, you and this spouse ain’t got not one thing in common.

Accepting that these are quite sensitive issues to discuss let alone resolve, it’s been so excruciatingly distressing witnessing the pain of loved ones who have gone through or are going through this whole process. Believe me, I have sobbed one too many times with and for friends over the past few years on this very matter.

Personally, I am more inclined to resolve that what my God and Father hates is the process of divorce –the season pain and sorrow that His children go through before and after the act divorce – and not necessarily the act of divorce itself. No, not the legal and radical severance of closely related people, though that in itself may be tortuous.

I may be wrong, but as for today, that is my personal conviction.

Preez's Kite Runner

And at 12.50am, as I read the last sentence in the pages that opened before me, I wept. I had just finished reading The Kite Runner.

I wept for those I had known and those I would never know who had suffered at the hand of injustice. The injustice that prowls like a lion seeking who it might overwhelm and or overcome in every life, every family, every city, every town, and every nation. I wept for the very apparent lack of simple humanity in the hearts and mind of many who wage deceit and war in the name of God and or ‘Me-ism’.

What had happened to our world? What had happened, I pondered again? What had happened to me?

Cancer
Raw on the emotions side, I was distressed and disturbed. A few days before I had heard news that a dear friend, with who I had looked forward to sharing decades with in friendship, had passed. Cancer.

There’s a word for you. Malignancy, growth, tumor, malignant cells. All words used to explain the evil. I wept for my friend. Wept for the solitude with which she had come and gone; and I thanked The Lord nevertheless that she was at last in a place where there is no more sorrow. I thanked God that she had died in Him.

In my numbness at the weekend I picked up The Kite Runner. An acclaimed piece of writing. I had bought a copy of the book over a year or two ago but was yet to read it. Once I read the first paragraph, I found it difficult to put the book down.

The Kite Runner
I deliberated at the apparent ease at which life could sometimes deal you a deep blow; a deep injustice.

As I read through The Kite Runner, I guessed that I may just as well have been reading about a family in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Zimbabwe or Angola. For although the setting of the pages that lay in my hands was Afghanistan, I knew that a similar injustice, a similar cancer, had permeated through individual lives, families, towns and nations all around the world.

The injustice in the decisions made by national and international leaders to claim and or reclaim a nation; to attain and or remain in power illegitimately; to overthrow a legitimate government; to deny a people asylum in a safe country because their ‘papers’ are not intact even though the very apparent reason someone might want to receive asylum was precisely because their very perpetrators were those in authority and who they could never approach for legitimate papers.

I thought of families broken and separated. I thought of family generations thereafter suffering deep mental and emotional trauma as a result of the very negative and very deep externality of physical war and conflict on a parent. The broken relationship that such a parent might then have with their spouse and or their children – for which man or woman would not be broken having suffered rape, having suffered the violent and sudden loss of all the things that gave you surety and comfort, having witnessed the murder of members of your family, and having lost hope in amidst of all of the above?

Visiting cancers of the fathers to the third and fourth generation
The children who then grow up not knowing the love of a parent, nor the comfort of a ‘normal’ family home where mother or father is not suffering from schizophrenia or any other mental or emotional illness which means he/she cannot hold down a wage and thus a living. Children then traumatized by the world around them as a result. Looking to comfort and acceptance in the awkward places of the bottle, the brothel; pot or needle.

The broken children that they themselves might then bring up within and without marriage....

A friend who is a psychiatrist once told me, having just returned home from a prison visit where he was assessing mental health of inmates, the world might be a better place if all those who had serious mental illnesses were denied the right to reproduce.

And all the human rights lawyers cried out: ‘foul play.’

Foul Play
Foul play it is. But foul play it also is when such offsprings, perhaps following years and years of counseling which has given them some respite, then seek to make a better life for themselves in a second country and all they get in response from the officials at the other side is a firm: ‘I am sorry.”

Worse still, they get thrown in a detention center. Worst still they are fortunate enough get out of the detention centre and secure employment as a menial labourer and all the people of that nation cry that foreigners are taking our jobs. We don't want foreigners.

Cancer confronts the abused and confused immigrant yet again. Better to, I say, for those who don't want foreigners to confront their political leaders and demand that their foreign policies and international relations promote peace, not war. Peace has many synonyms: justice, responsiveness, transparency, accountability, democracy.

Yes I cried for the injustice all around us. The cancer all around us and the cancer that had taken away my friend. The cancer all around us that, if not detected early can spread to other vital organs of the body – particularly the mind and soul, rendering the body to succumb to a life lived in iniquity, misdemeanor and malignancy, for indeed sometimes the cancer we fight, the war we wage is not in battles fought with all forms of missiles, bullets, shells and AK47s.

Deliverance and thanksgiving
And I pondered yet more. I had a deep need to appreciate God for all the misfortune He had ensured that I escaped. For all the misfortune He had protected me from; and for all the misfortune He will pull me from. I thanked Him that in every situation I have always known peace and hope in Him, and yes: I always knew mercy.

I was reminded that there could always be a meeting place, a respite and a rest even in amidst cancer of all forms. For me that respite has been Him, Christ Jesus. He was also my late friend Priscilla’s respite.

Many times in the midst of her pain whenever Priscilla called me or I called her on the phone she always, always, always comforted and encouraged me. Forgetting all of herself, all of her pain and all of her needs, she always focused on and enquired about me, my wellbeing and the well-being of my family. She joked once when I had called her that she couldn’t really talk right now and that I should call some hours later - so many people were with her in the hospital room, but she knew that I was driving home from work in the Lagos traffic and she would have loved to have kept my mind off the Lagos traffic in conversation.

Christ Jesus: Priscilla's Kite Runner - He can also keep and numb your mind and pain off the traffic of the world that threatens to envelope you with all sorts of cancer.

Resilience

I’ve been particularly upbeat this week, but for no apparent reason – actually perhaps it was because someone I liken to the young Omar Sharif unexpectedly popped into town this week.

I see you smile!

But honestly, it’s been a week full of joy.

My Christian Scriptures had laid unread for a while and I remembered that this ought not to be the case. So I began my read of it, I believe, on Sunday evening. Jonah 2 verses 8-9: they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving….salvation is of the LORD.

I smiled. Faith leapt up. Hope stirred within, and yes the love of The Almighty God encompassed all around me.

Better not to observe, better not to dwell on, the lying vanities that surround. The lying vanities and false gods that say to you day in, day out that you life is without purpose and fulfillment; that you and your spouse are ill-matched; that your marriage is failed; that your life is a failure because your bank account cannot even smell let alone purchase a Birkin bag and yet your contemporaries and friends carry them like you carry your beloved, what is it now, DKNYs. Your life is a failure because you can only afford a holiday abroad every three years.

Hmm. The list goes on.

I have concluded that I cannot, quite literally, emotionally afford to observe the lying vanities all around me for indeed I would be forsaking the mercies of God to date on each and every area of my life.

Is it the vanity that says that at this time I ought to have had at least 3.2 children? Or the one that screams: if only my income afforded me the extra finances to have liposuction on my thighs, butt, stomach – erm, you name it. Or the vanity that yells, what now, erm, that I should be my own boss by now? If you care to observe them, there are scores of lying vanities that threaten your sanity day in, day out.

But you know what? Forget that, I say. What I have I am grateful for and what I will have and I will become, by the grace of Almighty God, I look forward to with exuberant expectance. Oh yes.

Then this afternoon in doing some work related research on Leadership I stumble upon this wonderful piece:

Learning from Jonah's in the Belly of the Fish Experience
Aha! That’s what Jonah was talking about. Resilience. In these tough times? Better be resilient.

Don’t go off the wagon, I say. Weeping may endure for a night, but but but but but - joy comes in the morning.

In the above piece, Jim Murray puts it like this:

resilience is the capacity to "bounce back” after disappointment, setbacks or even disasters. It is a leadership attribute that is crucial in unpredictable times or in the face of tough circumstances. It is rightfully acknowledged to be a critical component in one’s emotional health.

He goes on to say:

Resilient people can detect the seeds of opportunity and the enormous potential for learning in difficult and trying situations. They can resist being swept up in the anxiety or panic of the moment and are more willing to adapt as creatively as possible to seemingly daunting challenges.

And when this adversity is conscientiously dealt with and subsequently overcome, resilience is strengthened

Aha – I say again. Rejoice.

Car Bumper Stickers - Lagos Style

The ones from here are absolutely and definitively out of this world. Full of religious insinuation, but many are mostly religious claptrap. Harsh? Well, try this.

GOD PUNISH THE DEVIL.
All words written in bold capitals, the second word is in bold red.

Now tell me, what is God punishing the devil is got to do with anyone? Indeed, does God punish the devil? I don’t know. Anyone who does, let me know the answer to that question. Please.

Why would anyone put such a sticker on their car bumper anyway? Well, it beats me also but I think I can guestimate. I figure it’s something to do with this. Hmm: our religious belief that the devil is our greatest enemy. So far so good. Then, the further belief that this devil is the cause of most if not all of your woes. Then the further, further belief that this devil has colluded with other human beings to frustrate your life. So, God should punish the devil for imposing on your territory.

So you go round announcing to everyone you meet that God should punish the devil.

Never mind that God is omniscient, omnipotent, kind, gracious, loving. The God asking all those who are weary come to Him so that He can give them rest. His mercy is everlasting, as is His love.

Why not focus on worshiping Him in obedience to His Word? Why not focus on the greatness of the love of this God as opposed to asking Him to punish the devil? Why not?

GOD PASS THEM.
The other bumper sticker that caught my attention.

Okay – I actually think everyone of west African descent would understand this statement. Never mind the grammer.

But, for all others, what the sticker is saying is this: God is omniscient and omnipotent. Amen to that.

And, the bumper goes on in implication, that being the case, God is greater than all those pursuing me for evil. Amen to that also.

Come to think of it, that bumper sticker is actually apt, deep and extra.

Selah.