VALENTINE BLUES

                                             

We live in a Planet filled with so much hate and strife. There is history of genocide caused by people as mad as hatters like Hitler and Pol Pot, bitterness flying like arrows during the hundred years war. Stories of bloodletting during maniacal events like the Spanish inquisition and the witch-hunt practise of the Zulus. Endless wars in Sudan and Angola. Terrorist acts in Pakistan. Tribal conflicts in Rwanda, Jos and other areas of the world are a daily staple. Marital altercations that make a WWE ring seem like Eros’ haven. Amongst all this, February the 14^th pops up like a jack in the box and we all supposedly go love mad. I think its all pure baloney.

Suffice it to say that irrespective of my being an incurable romantic, I am not a Valentine day’s freak (sorry St Val). I think it is pretty comical that a world like ours suddenly goes nuts like starving squirrels released into a field of acorns over a particular day dedicated to the whimsical antics of Cupid. It is like watching the feeding frenzy of voracious sharks fighting for scraps of bloody flesh.

Beyond the nobility of the Valentine idea, this day is generally subjected to a lot of misuse and abuse. It is a day that a lot of guys put in the sickle to the blood red flowering blooms of hapless damsels that are not meant for them. A day that generates tension for those who don’t have enough to cause a splash and leaves the poison of envy within those who are like rejected islands, surrounded by the plenteous water of those who have too many gifts. This green eyed monster sometimes infects homes where a spouse feels her mate didn’t go beyond the whole nine yards. Ultimately the explosives of bickering and squabbles are set off and the fall out from these are felt for many days thereafter. Everything becomes covered in soot and smoke. Hearts are shattered, limbs are sometimes fractured and some relationships might be nursed in the intensive care before they are restored, while others pass on from there. This demise usually leads to hell.

Would you call this love? What will we say about a politician who spoils his mistress rotten with all manner of valentine treasures but in his constituency are hundreds of kids dying of malnutrition. His beau would most likely feel that he is Cupid’s twin but the truth is there is as much love in that relationship as water in the heart of a flaming effigy of Guy Fawkes. I would tell that lady to run. Such a man can’t love. He is the most selfish being alive.

It is flabbergasting how we work ourselves up into frothy seizures for one day of the year and the next day we are back to square one. In this environment, you see people lunging at each others throat like wired jungle cats. What’s the point of flying your partner to the Caribbean’s on a private jet, give her enough flowers to cause a world wide-plant-a flower-today panic, buy her enough chocolate to cause a one week shut down of Swiss factories, get enough wine to make grapes scarce in Bacchus’ garden and the next day you are back to your old ways. Fighting and brawling in a way that would make a gladiator seem like a pacifist.

The whole event is a repulsive parody which I believe even leaves a sour taste on the Saint’s mouth. I am sure the whole pantomime leaves the good man bedridden on his day after so much puking because if we are as loving as we claim to be on Val’s day, most of the wickedness associated with our world would have by now gone the way of the dodo.

I think the problem is, we have a lot of misconceptions about what love really is. Love is certainly not sex, saying it is would be like saying that the leave is the tree. The leave is an essential part but an off shoot of the tree. Romantic love is an off shoot of love. In the Greek, it is known as Eros and certainly leads to errors in our perception of love. If romantic love were real love, then a lot of the most romantic unions we know would not crash into the flames of hate and conflict which actually makes one think that love is war.

Real love is agape. It is sacrificial, not selfish and pure like water from an artesian spring. Love is not a perfunctory function, it is real. It originates from God. God is love!

Remember the Good Samaritan? He did not make the pages of the greatest book on earth because he gave away chocs and flowers (these things are great and there is nothing wrong with them) but by caring, by showing kindness, demonstrating affection and paying someone’s hospital bills while the thieves who waylaid the man would have gone to buy all manner of goodies for their paramour if it were the 14^th of February. For the Samaritan, love wasn’t a one off thing or something reserved for special days but a way of life. He loved his neighbour as himself. He gave all to a stranger in dire need. He made someone he did not know his neighbour. Love was coming out of Mr. Samaritans pores for a dude he did not know from Adam. If we could all love like this man our Earth will be a better place for it.

Okay, St Valentine fans, kindly remove your boxing gloves and let me shoot straight with you. I am not trying to rain on the Saints parade or spoil your fun instead I want to make him more famous. A day’s celebration is not enough for him and the essence of his being. His way should become our culture. LOVE SHOULD BE CELEBRATED EVERY DAY WITH GENUINE KINDNESS AND CARE FOR EVERYONE!!! SELAH!!!

 

THE AFRICAN MIND

                                              

There was an inscription emblazoned on a T-shirt that stuck to my mind like a barnacle to the hull of a ship years ago. It read “IT’S A BLACK THING, YOU WONT UNDERSTAND”.

The African mind is one of the richest on this planet. It is so rich that bulrushes could grow on it like they were on the Nile bank. It is one of the brightest lights of our solar system but paradoxically it is covered by a cloak of stygian darkness (both mental and in the case of Nigeria, physical).

What is it about the average African mind that makes it as impenetrable to erudition as a diamond to the digging efforts of a toothpick? Why is it that we receive tons of certificates, enough degrees to make a thermometer self conscious, yet all the education doesn’t translate into literacy? What is it that makes the exposure of most of our leaders to the western world’s progressive way of doing things seem like pouring water on the backs of ducks?

Sometime in the past, I heard of a professor of obstetrics and gynecology who married a second wife because his first didn’t provide him with a male heir (amazing, considering the fact that he is an authority on the fact that man determines the sex of a baby by his donation of an X or Y chromosome). What about the PHD holder who throws away his learning to become a juju priest. Mindboggling examples but they are just a tip of the iceberg.

I graduated from a medical school where lecturers act like gods strutting around Olympus. They look down on you, insult you and even send their registrars on errands that a dignified house boy might not do. God help you if you don’t kow-tow to them because that might mean the end of your training or repeating a class. But the surprising thing is that most of these people graduated from schools abroad where things are done differently. Places where mutual respect and preservation of dignity are a culture.

This trait is not limited to the medical circle alone. It permeates every area of our lives. People who are privileged to be in lofty positions look down on others like they were scrapped faecal matter from the heels of a hobo. People treat their helps like a southern farm owner treated his slaves before the American civil war. When they go on their shopping trips abroad, they see doormen, bell hops all treated with respect but it does not positively affect their thinking patterns when they get back home. Subjugation, tyranny and domination remain the way of life. The victims on the other hand, swallow it as destiny while going about arse kissing and bootlicking to be in the good books of the oppressor while wishing for their own turn (thereby ensuring the continuous spinning of the vicious circle).  This is the reason life term presidents are a norm in Africa even when they have made a hash of things and the people under them are going through great affliction. Unlike their European counterparts, power is seen as a birthright. They steal, kill, destroy (like the devil) in the bid to acquire leadership powers and never realize that leadership is about service even when they have gone through a Cambridge/Oxford/Harvard leadership course.

We all want to work for multinationals and NGO’S mainly because of the benefits attached to them but in our own businesses, we pay our workers peanuts that a self respecting monkey will snort at. The crazy thing is that the paltry sum comes with the kind of burden that Pharaoh laid on the Hebrew slaves. Work load that will make Atlas feel like he is having an ice cream party in a park. Absolutely amazing!

In his book, “From third world to first world”, Lee Kuan Yew said he couldn’t understand Africans because during a meeting of the worlds leaders, their lifestyle was the most profligate yet they were the ones asking for world aid. That is a paradox that can cripple a normal mind.

What makes Nigerians commit ritualistic killings for money? Why do we languish in poverty when we have been blessed with so much resource? Why are rich people sacred cows that are above the law because they have money?

Amongst black Americans, the incidence of drive by shootings, single parenthood, usage of hard drugs, unemployment is more than among whites.

On the Nigerian road you will find well dressed graduates reduced to fists and cuffs because of minor altercations.

We believe so much in witchcraft and demonic forces causing every kind of ill when we are the culprits. Like the Yoruba adage that says the insect eating the spinach leaves is on the spinach. The church which is supposed to be our last bastion of hope does not even help issues on this front.

It is a huge conundrum that makes me wonder whether the cause stems from Noah’s curse on his son Ham (who is said to be the originator of Africans). I think one of the main reasons is that the deprivation and lack that is so rampant in this country has scarred the landscape of ours minds so much, spawning greed and rapacity in the process.

To me, the hue and cry that all our problems were caused by the white man is all poppy cock and persecutory delusion. We traded human lives for trinkets and stuff. The surprising thing is that we are still doing that today. The reparation theme is all hogwash.

We trade the future of our children for accounts in Switzerland; we sell tomorrow for foreign currencies and drug money.

It is all so mystifying and for me like a puzzle presented by the Riddler to the Batman on which rides the survival of a whole race.

I am desperately looking for answers like a lost desert traveler looking for an oasis but I believe a major panacea to the diseased African mind is love.

That will be the story of another day but in the interim let’s ruminate on this and send in answers on how you think we can heal the African mind because it is truly a black thing and isn’t easily understood.

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