Feel the fear but do it anyway!

‘The Unexpected Homecoming’ has officially been released today 30/09/2015 and I thought of marking the moment by reflecting a little on what the process of writing has been for me.

You sometimes hear people say: ‘I didn’t choose politics, politics chose me’ or ‘I didn’t choose football, football chose me’ and the story goes! Not having dreamt of one day becoming an author, I suppose I could say the same thing: ‘I didn’t choose writing, writing chose me’! But is it as simple as it sounds?

Far from being a subtle way to make people marvel at what’s been done or achieved, the impression such talk have on listeners is that of an effortless mapping out of one’s pathway. One of those things that we do not see coming but you just wake up the next day and all we have to do is open our eyes and discover it hidden somewhere.

The potential effect of that is the attitude that ‘if it’s there, I will see it and if I don’t it means it’s not there yet’. The trouble is humans can get quite impatient that when the time comes and nothing is there yet, we begin to find or manufacture some explanations. While those in the religious estate would perhaps argue that ‘God has not yet willed it’, those inhabiting the superstitious village would perhaps blame it on the next door neighbour whose witchcraft is diverting all the good fortune destined for you in exchange for their misfortune.

Now, if all that seems surreal, it probably is and that’s where, I think, YOU come in! ‘I didn’t choose this, it chose me’ was never meant to do away with YOU, the subject with all your abilities, disabilities, talents, worries and fears.

As a writer, I came across countless obstacles that had to be overcome. Will I pull off writing a book in a borrowed language? How do I write a story that you cannot change the course of action but still hope to engage a reader thousands of miles away? Will anybody care at all? These were just some of the questions I had to grapple with. In the end, it boiled down to this ‘why do I care at all about writing?’ Such an inward question brought out two things: the first one is the recognition that ‘there is a story to tell or share’ and the second point was more of a question ‘how do I tell it in such a way that would engage the reader?’

The first point focuses on the ‘what’ question. It is essential, I found, to not only have an idea on what to write about but also experience a strong conviction in there being something that would be of interest to those one wishes to reach out to. As soon as I resolved the ‘what’ question, came the second point: the ‘how’ question. In my case, I had plenty: spellings, strange expressions that most people that have read anything I’d written would say, and all the mechanical things associated with writing times 100. Above all was the worry of writing in a second, third language: English?

It first seemed impossible and I felt as though I was not up to the task. ‘People will see through it, they will pick up on it when they see unusual expressions etc.’ At this point I hit my ‘fight or flight’ moment. My record of drafts began to worry me even more. But in the process, the story began to flow. But as a reader you only see the finished product which may seem like ‘I didn’t choose writing, it chose me’. But rather than being a divine intervention, it’s instead when YOU matter, not so much as an instant winner but as a persevering subject even in the face adversity. In the end, today, ‘The Unexpected Homecoming’ has been released by Austin Macauley Publishers to a worldwide audience that I hope will enjoy reading it. Whatever happens, my favourite catchphrase will always remain: ‘Feel the fear but do it anyway!’

Share this piece if you think it will inspire someone else and if you can spare a minute leave us a comment.

The African bodies

RACE immediately comes to mind when asked about the African body. Asked further about the history of the African body, the black race and most often than not, slavery, colonisation, racism will be fronting the thought line. The slave traded, colonised and racialised African body is a common narrative that we either take with us or follows us wherever we go.

Yes but, let’s just put the above ever-present-past of African body lingo to one side for a moment. A group of youth was challenged to do just that and think of the African body in another way, perhaps in a very African way, in a history that Africans seem to have created for themselves. Then uncertainty set in prompting Swipel to undertake a 2 day investigation trolling through archives dating back to wherever luck could take us. And the results are quite revealing.

Next door to or far away from you somewhere in Africa are documented tails of cultured bodies, feared bodies, tortured bodies, impure and pure bodies, faceless bodies, rainbowed bodies, commercialised bodies, ritualised bodies and many more. The clue for what some of these mean is in the name itself and Swipel will leave you to do that part of your brain work. What you however will find as you begin to figure out what the different practices involved that have brought people to come up with the above categories is that, some of them will evoke positive feelings while others might be revolting, just think of the Rwandan genocide where African bodies were tortured for example.

Far from trying to unsettle your moral nerve, Swipel wants to first state that the above categories are not imported; they are what Africans have created as the history of the continent has evolved. Secondly, it is curious that you will find yourself in one place that is the worst to have a woman body due to rape (Eastern Congo); while in another the woman body is celebrated. Why is it that in one place the African body is celebrated as rainbowed (allow me to use that to mean multi-coloured) while in another it is tortured? It cannot be a matter of coincidence!

It’s not like Africans must put their house in order first before they can become race conscious to the outside world as this is an ever-present-past, but the above examples also show that no one will respect your African body and that of your neighbour if you don’t do it yourself. It is Swipel’s belief that there is something much more fundamental that can explain the deterioration of the African body by Africans in some places and its celebration in others. Over to you now, have you got any thoughts that might help solve this conundrum?

Pope mobile and you!

The public fascination with a pope on a pope mobile is immense and the sitting pontiff who has been visiting Cuba and now the USA is arousing excitement from beyond the borders of the two nations, one of which (the USA) has had its Catholic population almost double since 1960s (full story here). Not, in the least, attempting to downplay the popularity of Pope Francis and all the issues that he cares about, but you will agree that popes come and go but pope mobiles are a scene that will stay with us for many years. So, why not try and make sense of this peculiar vehicle! A much recent trend since the late 1970s, Popes never used Pope Mobiles, as we know them today (full story here). But this is not a post about the historical evolution of this unique Papal vehicle but rather about its purpose and how you and I make sense of it!

The American president, for example, uses ‘Air force one’, ‘the Beast’ and other leaders/common people may have theirs with names with a particular significance. The point of pope mobile is about ACCESS of the Pope to his faithful and vice versa. The age of the occupants, the length of the journey/tour, the security concerns have certainly affected the design and they can sometimes represent ALIENATION rather than ACCESS.

Now, why is ACCESS (to information and people) such an important thing? Swipel cannot possibly claim to provide an exhaustive list of reasons, but if the question is asked in a negative way then may be a few clear reasons will emerge: ‘what would happen if we didn’t have access to information and people we want?’

1. Connectivity: access in the way of physical presence establishes a connection with old and new friendships. If you are running a huge organisation like the Catholic Church or any country, access is essential for connectivity and networking. It is not surprising that social media is such an inevitable success just for its ability to connect us to old and new people. As well as the pope mobile, the Vatican has become ‘social media mobile’ too!
2. Transparency: some say that data is everything, hence making available data accessible increases transparency. The truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa is one such example even though in some cases, for example the Ashley Maddison cheating data breach it rather impinges on confidentiality. Others even argue that everything is data and therefore to fail to gather data on some key aspects of life of a people diminishes transparency. For example, in some African countries where HIV, census, voters, pregnancy etc., data are not available increases the possibility of malpractices and inability to plan, budget, govern and even prevent certain illnesses. The question in relation to the Catholic Church therefore is ‘does the Church conduct itself in a transparent way to deserve the popular excitement for pope mobiles?’ Like in all organisations, there is both transparency and lack of it (Swipel has already raised concerns about the lack of transparency on some issues in the Catholic Church(full story here).

So, whether it is Pope Mobile, air force one, the beast etc., that you are waving at, if you are nowhere near feeling connected and seeing some transparency on certain issues, then is it worth the excitement? Are you an accessible person or an alienating one, do you live in an accessible environment/country or in an alienating one? And what are you going to do about it?’

Ebola: the weirdest contradiction

Panic not, as this is not about an outbreak exclusively being announced here. But now that you are not worrying about this deadly disease, it may just be the perfect moment to reflect on its contradiction.

With an incubation period between 2-21 days, you could, if infected, find yourself moving from feeling feverish to bleeding internally and externally and ultimately succumbing to death within a fortnight. The science on Ebola will certainly continue to illuminate us on the different strands of the virus but Africa seems to be its hotbed. Particularly, the people of Zaire (currently known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) have endured other encounters with the monster Ebola since it first visited the mammoth country in mid-1970s.

With experience comes expertise in the field and so the recent Ebola outbreak that affected West African states was a perfect opportunity for the Congolese government to dispatch its experts to help to control and eradicate the disease. The worst case scenario, for a disease that spreads through direct contact with human body fluid, is to see those infected mingle with those who are not. So, as well as treating those infected, contact tracing in order to put individuals and geographical areas under quarantine is quite crucial in limiting the rapid spread of the disease.

But remember the adjective ‘RAPID’ can scare you if you are living in a developed world with diversified state of the art transport infrastructure that may allow people to move from place to place perhaps not as fast as the speed of light but fast enough to decimate millions in just a month’s time. The adjective ‘RAPID’ can also elevate some governments into the level of experts when in fact it’s the level of degradation of the transport systems that acts as a natural quarantine so much so that the Ebola virus can be trekking a 10 kilometre distance for months without affecting millions as one would fear. The experts however would still ‘rapidly’ move in to get the situation that was partly under control thanks to poor infrastructure.

A life lost because of Ebola virus is one too many but it seems that when a country is underdeveloped, it becomes easy to control certain diseases such as Ebola outbreak whereas when a country is developed it becomes easier to eradicate them. Such is Swipel’s weirdest but plausible proposition especially when it comes to the deadly Ebola and would like to argue that development and good standards of living are the only effective solutions to eradicate the disease. As the medical fight seems to cool off, the political leadership fight should be going several gears up. We will know who has not been doing a good job the next time it breaks out!

SPECIAL Short term memory planet

Amnesia is partial or total memory loss and that’s just part of the story here. It’s a completely different matter when your mind is recording the totally of the information available but only of a recent past. Let’s take this to mean ‘short term memory’ which may not be an illness but just the way some people are. Try to remember exactly what you did a year (month) ago today and you will get a sense of what is being said here. Can’t remember? Well you are not alone and with that brief experiment, we can conclude the condition is a common one from Chile across to Iraq and from Norway down to South Africa.

However, in SPECIAL short term memory planet, things can be different. Here, you can kill, rape, decapitate today and tomorrow you could be honoured as a lord by the planet’s monarch or be fast tracked to sainthood by the planet’s pope as subjects wouldn’t have a recollection of the horror caused to them by new brands of lords and saints in a distant past.

People still have long term plans for the future and they can sometimes be ambitious. But as soon as those ambitions crush into a wall of predators, the shattered hopes are sent flying into a forgetful memory landscape. When things don’t go well in the present, they bury their heads into the same ground of forgetfulness hoping for ‘memorable’ flashbacks. And the results can be startling:

Yesterday’s brutal dictators, like Mobutu of the DRC, Pinochet of Chili and Saddam Hussein of Iraq start turning in their graves as they are fondly remembered by some as the best that their country ever had. Hard won peace and stability are slowly eroded as stubborn dictatorial moves (selfish military coups, police brutality, corruption, and constitutional changes) continue to threaten democracy that they claim to defend.

Uncomfortable with the thought of being branded sanctimonious, the question often goes unasked: instead of burying their heads into the sand, what does it take for a people to hold their heads up, set even higher standards, and demand more from what they got previously without conspiring with choruses of handclapping for small favours even when they are entitled to more?

 

A great African leader?

He may be the oldest but is he the greatest of the whole bunch out there?

Mugabe’s silence can only mean one thing: ‘I am not sorry I read the wrong speech!’

Notoriety can elevate some people to the status of subjects we love to hate. To the notorious, the rest of the human species will stand accused of misinterpreting facts, victimising, bullying, colonial, domineering etc., And the deadlock could last for years and even centuries. However, for a country’s president to read the wrong speech, the one that he’d delivered to the same audience a month earlier, at the official opening of parliament flies above petty political rivalries to posing serious questions about the state of a nation.

Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe did just that. Human/clerical error or age might be cited to absolve whatever happened but a disinterested observant cannot fail to notice just how far Zimbabwe has travelled the road to flippancy and inefficiency. In the same vein, it would not be surprising that the human/constitutional rights, food, financial, job securities of the common man and woman are frivolously trampled upon.

And in all of that you’d be lucky to get ‘I am sorry I read the wrong speech!’ alongside the vice president submitting, at a later stage, the speech that should have been read (full story here). Expect vilifications aimed at the West on homosexuality, colonisation etc., to mask personal and institutional frailties and still propel himself as ‘a great African leader’. All notoriety and colonial accusations and contour accusations aside, Mugabe should expect to be lambasted as the world joins Zimbabweans in venting their dismay, frustrations you name it!

How would you sum up your feelings: frustrated and dismayed or something else? Share your views! In any doubt, Swipel would like to refer you to earlier post about the way ahead for Africa (including Zimbabwe, click here to access the article)

 

Big brother: defining moment!

‘She doesn’t break no matter what you throw at her!’

The first reaction towards something or someone that bothers you is to fight back with equal or superior strength to crash or simply silence them! This is so true of some reality television clips of a programme called Big Brother airing in Great Britain right now. A cocktail of limelight hungry celebrities seeking to resuscitate their fading careers give up their daily routines to live under the constant watchful eye of close circuit television for a certain period of time. Clips are edited and then relayed to the national and world public.

This year has been particularly unique in that organisers have pitted the Americans (of the North) against the Brits. One personality that cannot fail to catch your eye not only for her glamour and beauty but also for the venom that oozes out of her mouth is the American Farrah Abraham. Aged 24, the young American television reality star has unsettled her housemates with her touchiness, foul and aggressively relentless language.

In response, the disquiet among fellow contestants soon gave way to a barrage of mean-hearted comments from some fellow housemates while others simply mounted some legitimate stand-up-for-yourself verve. Astonished by Farrah’s resilience, Rosie and Natasha took time away from the rest to attempt to decipher the mystery around Farrah. ‘She is unbelievable, isn’t she?’ one said only for the other to respond shortly after with this ‘she doesn’t break no matter what you throw at her’.

Now, there is the difference between the likes of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, Dalai Lama, and Mahatma Ghandi who used a different kind of weapon to fight what seemed to bother them and rest of us. Unlike us who think the only way to extinguish fire is by lighting more fire, they stood firm to show their principles without necessarily resulting into the same harsh methods used by those that bothered them. You may not be a fan of Big Brother, or that you are and intend to carry on watching the program. The moment described here is Swipel’s defining moment of the entire program. Over to you!

Nature of big mysteries!

Let’s make sense of nature and science a little: your iPad and your eyes.

Common knowledge has it that there is an age for constant questioning and there is one where you constantly seek answers. Less than 10 years old are known to keep asking questions while the older generations are expected to have answers to all the questions. But don’t we all ask and answer questions at some point in our lives!

Anyway, an 8 year old girl was intrigued by one small fascinating fact that most of us tend to ignore. She went up to her dad and asked: ‘Dad, why is it that we can roll our eyes around but never able to tilt them?’ It was as if she was instructing her dad to experiment for the first time what he had been doing for years (you might want to do the same). The dad rolled his eyes around and it was established human eyes can roll around. He then tilted his head to 45 and even 90 degrees and confirmed that the body had titled/moved but the eyes were fixed in the same position and could still see normally.

‘You see, I’m right but why?’ the daughter insisted. The father then grabbed his iPad as if to google the answer. Suddenly, as if he was seeing it for the first time what he’d been experiencing for years, the screen of the iPad kept tilting every time he moved it around.

The father too began to wonder: why do eyes roll and never tilt in the same way that the iPad and smart phone screens tilt every time we move them upside down? The mother who is a biologist and the older son who is an IT wizard came to the rescue with explanations of the internal processes of the eye and the iPad. That’s complicated, the 8 year old replied and went on to add: remember the question was not about ‘How’ but ‘Why’ is it that we can roll our eyes around but never able to tilt them? The person who had asked the question was now the one to provide an answer that might just be part of the little mysteries in life.

The daughter said: Could it be that the iPad’s screen tilts because it has to adjust to suit the position of the user, to respond to his or her wishes whereas our eyes, our values remain the same whatever the position we are in?

Pleasing others, as an iPad would, was never the vocation of humans who had to remain true to themselves no matter the circumstances, no matter the tilting! Nature of big mysteries!

Out of the bin and into the byn: what J Corbyn must do to avoid being binned!

The labour party in Great Britain has a new leader in the name of Jeremy Corbyn taking the reins of this workers’ party after former leader Ed Miliband’s disastrous election stint. With Corbyn comes a not only a new political direction but also an early Christmas present for satirists to unwrap and poke fun of. It’s still early days if Corbyn’s trademark beard will catch on or whether all facial hairy dead cells will get a constant slash!

But that’s common practice in the image driven world keen to impress the bookies but detached from what is really going on. And what has been going on is that people have become fed up with constant power driven squabbles within the party and politics in general that you hardly find someone who would tell you like it is without spinning and someone who does what they promised to do.

It’s still a long way for Corbyn to set up a team and develop policies in a various areas of local, national and international concern ready to move from a party leader to the leader of Great Britain. As that process begins if it hasn’t started already, there are a few things Swipel would recommend if Corbyn is to avoid being binned.

• Your election represents a significant shift in people’s aspirations, so
• Do what you promised you’ll do,
• Changing your mind is allowed but with honesty not spin,
• If it doesn’t work in the end, people can always find someone else!
• Good luck!

True story: Cultural debrief of an old African lady!

The world we live in: Living in a world that is increasingly relying on service economy, a lot of emphasis is rightly placed on schooling in order to acquire the necessary skills to cope. Otherwise, we won’t be able to compete individually and as nations. So the qualification rush becomes an endless pursuit that it becomes even possible to imagine a world where a teacher will need further qualification to become a teaching assistant and perhaps the same for a nurse who wants to become a nursing assistant. The pertinent question therefore is: are we qualification mad or obsessed that we forget some of the basics that make the world go round? Do we even go as far as considering those without the ‘qualifications’ as insignificant?

Think twice as educational qualifications happen within a world that demands the acquisition of not only technological and scientific skills but also cultural skills. And I’m not just talking about having a taste for fine wine and stylish designer outfits. It’s about the sensitivity to a people’s way of life and learning from it to advance human civilisation. Such capacity is sometimes not taught at school, you just learn it, say, from travelling? Talk of travelling, one famous French philosopher Descartes once abandoned everything he was doing to learn from travelling.

One recent example in early 2015: one NOT so famous lady from Luo land in Kenya made a similar move from Kenya to England but for different motives. After a month’s stay basking in a unique type of sunny summer that only Yorkshire can offer, she returned to Luo land/Kenya, the family gathered around to welcome her back and so the cultural debrief started in earnest.

‘I begged to be driven to a destination where the white man had ran short of cement to pave the road leading to Mr Smith’s house so that I can see the swirls of dust that I’m used to’ she told her attentive audience who smiled at first but only to be asked ‘so when are you going to put an end to scores of undiagnosed asthmatic patients who inhale the dust here?’ then smiles turns into pensiveness.

But then since she had a cracking sense of humour running through her veins, she turned to her son’s household back in England.

‘I was just settling in and my son would sometimes serve me food, instead of her wife doing so all the time. I couldn’t understand the point of the role reversal! I looked at him and noticed he’d put on a little bit of weight but there was nothing strikingly obvious underneath the silk shirt he was wearing to suggest he had man boobs. They took me to another Luo man’s house (apparently for her every black person is from Luo Land – Swipel’s italics); the men there were also getting their hands dirty to help out. Of course I was served by my daughter in law whose dishes tasted even better than when my son had the remotest involvement, oh I mean my son’s cooking was ok but the point is – isn’t marriage a partnership?’

As if to say ‘I’d enjoy that sort of partnership given the opportunity’, the 77 year old stunned her keen listeners when she joked: ‘I almost gave in to Mr Smith’s flirting but before I knew it, my son had packed my bags and it was time to come back here!’ She earned herself some sympathy as her listeners turned to the British based son in protest saying: ‘you didn’t have to do that!’ Ok, let’s put that down to a generation gap then. The debrief session continued around a barbeque (nyama choma) and plenty of orange juice for the kids and adult’s liquor. The African lady was of course happy to be back home but this time enriched and determined to talk about her experiences and get others, especially her closest relatives, to enjoy the benefits of a reflective life. Now you have it, with some snippets of humour that are loaded with intense cultural lessons.

The Luo lady’s world: It’s not so much about an isolated story you have read here but very much about our attitude when looking at other people’s way of life. Was the lady in question so naïve that she couldn’t grasp that there is domestic violence in some homes in England? Swipel thinks not. She was rather able to see beyond it to highlight something worth talking about. So, if you can’t bring yourself to see any good thing in what you see, is it time you tackled pre-existing prejudice and hopefully end up being culturally rich?’ This does not apply to extremism, of course! But ‘has someone failed to see the good in your culture?’ We want to hear from you!

Swipel now decorates the Luo lady as a Doctor in cultural skills, an honour that she will, of course, share with all the wise mothers out there!

Dr Luo Lady

Dr Luo lady is a fundraiser; her next project is to gather funds to contribute to the building of her local church in Kenya