I haven’t been away, changed my mind about blogging or suffered writer’s block. I have just been overwhelmed with life’s many contradictions; joy, sorrow, and all the myriad emotions that consume one on this journey.
Dafur
First my cousin was posted to Darfur which brought home the fear, the insecurities and our inadequacies as a people (Africa) in facing headlong the cancer (racial/ethnic cleansing) that’s in our midst. His stories from the front made my heart break for the people caught up in the conflict. Because it is not at the fore of media attention, most people are not aware of the extent of the genocide. Then the hypocrisy; the AU in choosing to align with the Arab governments (to checkmate the west) willingly turns a blind eye. Unfortunately, history is replete with tales of the same goings on in large parts of Africa. If there’s rape and anarchy in your neighbor’s house and you choose not to intervene, one day the trouble shall become yours. We are holding live embers of charcoal in our belly and to make sure it does not erupt into a fire, we must speak up. I feel ashamed that when marches were held recently respecting Darfur, I was not present, where were you?
ADC
The plane crash in Nigeria. In the midst of the sorrow and the anger directed at the Nigerian government, I felt a sense of shame. You know the proverb that when you point your fore finger at someone, the remaining fingers point at you. We carry a weight of responsibility. When the railway system fell apart, we didn’t worry too much, after all we never took the trains. When the accidents and the armed robbery reached alarming heights on the road transport system, we took to the skies; its all back to haunt us. It’s like a tiger, chasing after its tail. There’s no escaping the fact that the solution lies with us as a people. Ever heard of the saying ‘Never complain about what you allow’ or ‘you choose how you want to be treated’.
And I digress.
100 percent English
I am sorry I haven’t learnt to work out links et al but I watched a program on ITV on Monday on the above subject. It was quite illuminating. A group of white people, selected (at random?) who knew in their hearts that they were English through and through were asked to give DNA samples to test their racial composition. One of them said that for one to be English, ones family should be able to trace their ancestry up to a thousand generations in England. The interesting bit was that although they were all positively European,they were not of pure nordic ancestry. Instead they were a mix of south Asia (India etc), middle eastern (Saudi Arabia anyone) North European (most of them seemed to want to have this alone ascribed to them) and I’ve forgotten the last group of Europeans but suffice to say all of them were (not pleasantly) surprised. One of them was eight percent sub Saharan African! The fun bit was how, when those who seemed mildly racist (is there such a thing?) reacted when confronted with the results that they were not purely Nordic. One of them after seemingly accepting the report we were told later threatened to sue the program. Another who had earlier said that a black player for England should never be considered English (even his subsequent generations) back tracked and said maybe he should.
To be fair to the participants, it had me wondering; in an earlier post, I had mentioned I can trace my ancestry to the twelfth generation. With hindsight, what if one of the grand mothers had, in ‘naijaspeak’, played an away match? After all dey no dey write am for person forehead. Consider this, if the same test is carried out on your DNA sample what tales would it tell?
