ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Opinion category.

A Nigerian Tragedy

There comes a time when talking about the same kind of tragedy, or idiocy, over and over again becomes a futile act. Once is an aberration, twice is a trend. When it happens a third time, it has definitely settled into a most horrific pattern. I speak, of course, of the terrorist acts in Nigeria committed by a small radical Islamist group*, as well as the inability of the government to respond in a satisfactory way. It has almost become an annual Christmas idiocy.

In 2009, just around Christmas, the idiot from Katsina Abdul Mutallab got on a plane from London headed for Detroit, and almost took all the lives on an airplane. He put the country’s name on the world map for terrorism, and the outrage from citizens was unprecedented. “He doesn’t represent us”, we shouted, as the United States placed the country on a terror watch list. In December 2010, a bomb blast in Jos killed about 32 people and wounded dozens more (along with another one in October sponsored by the Movement of the Emancipation of Niger Delta, to mark the October independent celebrations). This year, bombs placed strategically in churches where faithfuls were celebrating the Christmas holiday has now claimed another number of innocent people.

However, beyond the deserved rage against the deranged people to whom violence is an acceptable way of making a point, and the gross ineptitude of a government unable to provide adequate security for the citizenry when they need it the most, I have realized that what should be most deplored is also the lack of fast and competent emergency response. A common sentence to all the news about the recent attacks is a variation of this: “Nigeria’s Emergency services acknowledged they didn’t have enough ambulances immediately on hand to cope with the wounded.” If the government entrusted with the security of the country could not provide that security, it should at least provide emergency help whenever crises happens. This one did not, and thus the tragedy. I am outraged.

NEMA should either be made efficient, or be disbanded and its funding money given to non-governmental organisations that will provide real emergency response whenever citizens need help. It is anyone’s guess how many lives would have been saved if there was prompt emergency response by capable people on the ground rather than finger-pointing and vain tough-talking rhetoric by an incompetent government. When I’m in an accident and dying on the street, I do not want my government on television saying “(this is) a dastardly act that must attract the rebuke of all peace-loving Nigerians… These acts of violence against innocent citizens are an unwarranted affront on our collective safety and freedom” as Mr. Jonathan did last week. I want a president that directs all emergency vans to my help as soon as possible. I don’t know about you, but I would appreciate that a whole lot more.

* The crises in the country are not caused only by radical Islamists. Other radical minorities like the said Movement of the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) have also been credited with many acts of violence on innocent public structures, and killed countless innocent people. Then there are vehicular accidents, maternal mortality, and armed robbery. An undeniable fact is the decline of that country into chaos. A more heartbreaking one is the ineptitude of government response either in prevention, and in crises management.

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On Poetry as Science

One piece of prose floating from the fading memory I have from reading Czeslaw Milosz’s Visions from San Francisco Bay occasionally come back to haunt me in my still moments. It asks amidst a whole lot of other questions what the purpose of words are beyond their ability to convey meanings. In one recent interview with Stephen Colbert, Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson compares the inconsequentiality of our presence on this planet to that of a billion (and some) bacteria living in the walls of our intestines whose number is equal to almost three times the number of all human life that ever existed and died. Like those bacteria, he suggests, who live without the mental capability of understanding the dimension of their inconsequentiality when compared to six billion other intestines walking the earth (with the multibillion units of bacteria they carry in them), we may not possess the mental flexibility to understand our insignificance (along with our equally possible random relevance as evidenced by our current existence).

Milosz asks as if to himself what makes it so that words, in their utmost insignificance beyond immediate use, lends themselves to entendres, rhyme and poetry. Did there exist on some magical plane a predestination for the word “apple” to become the symbol of ultimate taboo, pleasure and sin? In which realm of serendipity did “gain” and “pain” acquire the paradox of their rhyming complementarity. Sure computers may not write poems now (and I have no doubt that this is false), but the lexical matrix of today’s world endows us with a gazillion ways of expressing thoughts in inventive ways. The order in which I have written the last couple of sentences in this post (with almost a 100% certainty) is an order in which these words have never ever been arranged and never will anymore by anyone else. There is something to that. The process of writing poetry, for me, taps into the science of this randomness. The art resides in the chance of success – that moment when meaning, form, and words meet at the tip of the writer’s hands. See below:

I balanced all, brought all to mind,

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death.

from W.B. Yeats’ An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

This concise beauty, and an underlying deceptive simplicity that wows, has always defined for me one of writing’s unreachable bars; the place where science, art and meaning collide with the earnest needs of the present.

Conversations with Neil deGrasse Tyson

America’s most famous astrophysicist dropped by campus today for an event of the SIUE Graduate School. Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and the recipient of the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest award given by NASA to a non-government citizen. He is also the author of The Pluto Files and Death by Black Hole (and other Cosmic Quandaries).

His talk, titled “Our Past, Present, and Future in Space” focused on the regression and eventual end of the US space program, and the contribution of public and political apathy to this end. Those who have heard him talk will already be familiar with his worldview: a passionate defense of imagination and a unified, inspiring public policy for science. The end of the space program, according to Mr. Tyson, is one of the worst things to have happened to America in a long time not only because of the now total absence of motivation among young people, but also because of how the general apathy has now negatively affected the status of the country in the world. In a preview to the visitor’s speech, Dean Aldemaro Romero of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences had this to say: “While I was growing up in Venezuela and told my parents that I wanted to be an astronaut, they told me ‘You have to be either an American or a Russian.’ Now, many decades later, as an American citizen, I have found out that to go to space, I’d either have to be Chinese or Russian.”

There was a lot more. The maps of the world, when plotted on a chart on the basis of resources spent on science (and, on another chart, on the basis of scientific progress/development in the last decade) shows the African continent virtually invisible. What concerned Dr. Tyson however – as well as the members of the audience – was the shrunken shape of the American map as well. Even Brazil, and Japan, on this map showed far more encouraging progress, to the dismay of all who have previously believed this country as being on the farthest frontier of future advancements. Many things are wrong, among which is the absence of a political will and imagination.

At the reception party arranged for him, I asked for his opinion on the absence of scientific advancement in Africa, and whether the frontier had irrevocably moved westwards. He disagreed, opining instead that like every great civilization had come and gone, the continent would have its turn again at some point in time. There is a particular initiative at the moment in South Africa, he said, where scientists have begun training young high school students in order to be able to produce the next big scientist (of the stature of Albert Einstein) and a Nobel Prize in Physics from the African continent. What did he think of Physicist Richard Feynman? “He’s as brilliant as he has been described,” he replied.

Known among young people in America today as the man who relegated Pluto from the status of a planet to that of a mere floating astral rock, Neil has contributed to the progress of modern science and astrophysics in popular culture than most people in the world today, and continues to do so. It was quite an enlightening event. His autograph on my copy of his book simply read: “To Kola, welcome to the universe.”

His book, The Pluto Files details in a fun manner the arguments and debates surrounding the relegation of the former planet Pluto, including also letters from angry young children and cartoons from the media weighing in on the many sides of the relegation debate.

Previous guest speakers at the Arts & Issues events here include Maya Angelou, Ken Burns, and the Basie Count Orchestra. I recommend this video, by the way, Dr. Tyson in conversation with Stephen Colbert. (H/T @loomnie)

A World In Intolerance

Saturday evening found me in a bar downtown Edwardsville for a quick drink. One particular conversation with a mere acquaintance present there with a few other friends eventually turned to discussion about careers, mine, and about what I would like to be doing as soon as I’m done with a Master’s degree. It then returned to him and what he was doing at the moment. He’s studying to be a health scientist and he would one day love to work on the African continent. “I would have gone to Ghana in the summer,” he said, “but I didn’t have the money”. “Great,” I replied. “I know a program called the Global Health Corps which sponsors interested health workers/scholars from the United States to parts of Africa in order to make a difference doing what they love. It’s fully funded, and it’s perhaps precisely what you need. As a matter of fact, my fiance lives in Uganda at the moment because of this program.” He was immediately enthusiastic for one second, and then stopped. “I can’t go to Uganda, Kola. They’d hang me there.”

It took me about two seconds, and then I got it. He is gay. This was my first time of hearing this admission directly from him. He was apparently already familiar with the laws in many states on the continent today demonizing that kind of difference. I recovered from my double-take and tried to assure him. “You’re a foreigner. Foreigners are usually more protected especially when they’re volunteering… Maybe your presence in local communities saving lives will be enough to help change minds… Or maybe you don’t have to wear the tag on your forehead…” No, he said. He doesn’t have anything to hide and would never live where he is forced to deny who he is. The conversation went on for a little while more with me asking a few more questions I’d always wanted to know from a self-declared homosexual: How long has he known? Has he ever kissed a girl and loved it? Has he ever had sex with a girl? etc It was surprisingly an open conversation without any awkward moments where the young man opened up with his fears, hope, dreams and pain at the kind of society that demonizes difference. I expressed my empathy to him, just a few seconds before I informed him that he wouldn’t be able to live in Nigeria either.

A few days ago, last week, a new law was passed by Nigeria’s Senators penalizing “homosexual activity” for up to 14 years in jail, and up to 10 years for those who support, conduct or witness homosexual marriages and association. Many things make this law stupid, but this makes it curiously draconian: there has never been a clamour for homosexual union/marriage in Nigeria. If anything, the derisive societal attitude has been previously enough to keep those with same-sex attraction in the closet. Societal acceptance – if it ever happened – would have been a very big leap forward. Many pundits have already written about this, and the conversation about the scourge of this state-sanctioned intolerance has already taken centre stage in the media, which is good. Looking through the various arguments put forward by citizen for the support of this legislative measure has however convinced me of the long way that society still need to go to overcome intolerance.

Back to America, at around the same day, Congresswoman Michelle Bachman of the United States House of Representatives was telling a group of voters that she has no problems with homosexuals or lesbians getting married, as long as they get married to people of the opposite sex. Read it here. Here is the summary then: If you live in Nigeria or in the US as a gay person, you risk being criminalized except you get married – to the people you are not attracted to. If you live in Uganda, there’s one step further, you may be brutally murdered by a mob of intolerant activists (as was the case of the human right activist David Kato). There is much more to say about the hypocrisy of these expressions of sadistic intolerance, but I will end this post here – a minor contribution to the dialogue. There are a lot more we can do to bring peace to the world than spending time demonizing other people because they are different from us. A lot more things we can do with our conscientious energy.

Exceptionalism is Overplayed

There is this weird notion that Americans are exceptional among peoples. It is one of the oft-repeated catch-phrases one would most likely find among politicians these days. Something like “unlike our president who believes that we’re just like every other country, I believe that as Americans, we are exceptional.” I have paraphrased Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, but he’s not alone. Heard repeated again and again, it often begins to sound something like this, between two children on a playground: “My daddy will beat the hell out of your daddy!”

Here is a problem though: the vapid mantra has been taken so seriously by many citizens that a leading politician now thinks that it is something with which to impugn the credibility of an opponent. “Hear that America, he thinks that you’re human like everyone else. I, however, believe that you’re supermen. You’ve always been.” Before this post is accused of being anti-American, let me give a few more examples of these delusions of exceptionalism as I’ve found them all around the world:

Nigeria is the giant of Africa (said to a tone/attitude of superiority derived from nothing else than the fact that one in five persons on the continent today is a Nigerian or that the country has produced some of the continent’s most accomplished citizens.)
We are the chosen people (an oft-repeated phase associated with Judaism and Jewish identity. According to the bible, this conviction could be traced to hundred of wars and pogroms in the bible led by the leaders of the nation-states acting on direction of God. It is also a source of immense national pride).
A ji sebi oyo laa ri… (a saying from the Oyo people in Nigeria, translated fully as “Oyo is known only to be emulated. Oyo never emulates anyone.”)
We’re the superior race (from Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich)
Arab Exceptionalism (“a phase that prescribes that Arab nations are immune to economic modernization and democratization, or that these concepts form part of the ‘clash'”)
Polygamy is an integral part of our culture/Homosexuality is not a part of our culture. (One of the many vacuous polemics that surface around the African continent whenever any of those issues are raised in public discourse).
“Rang de Basanthi” (Hindi: “Colour it saffron” – a badge of nationalism, pride and racial exceptionalism among Indians to the exclusion of everyone else).
Once you go black, you never go back (A disgusting racial aphorism. Use google.)
I’m a man: that’s what we do/Don’t tell me what to do/What do you expect? (Gender exceptionalism?)

There are many more across different world cultures that I have come across but now forgotten. A thing common to all of them is the belief in a particular world outlook accepted as superior and as defining of the people who hold onto them. American exceptionalism, of course, falls into the same category as all of those above, and it is the reason for this post. The concept is usually defined this way: “Here is a country exceptional in its creation and survival, as well as its role in world affairs.” It is usually bonded with a demand for indemnity from all accountability. “Can’t you see? I’m American!” American television personality Chris Matthews, in debunking the Republican “slight” of anti-American exceptionalism on President Obama, often uses this defence: “Can’t you see? Didn’t you listen to the man’s election speech? He said that only in America was his story possible. President Obama himself is a product of American exceptionalism. Look at where he came from and where he is now…”

Where Chris Matthews got it wrong however is the better end of the same spectrum of Mitt Romney underhanded sneakiness. While America is really no more exceptional among other countries of the world with less colourful starting histories or world presence nor its people any more important than people in more obscure parts of the world, it is also not exceptionally unique just because a bi-racial young man from a poor home and a single mother could become its president after a long history of slavery. I agree however that these make for a very spectacular (albeit empty) polemics. There are a few more examples of such exceptionalism: Mother Theresa moving from Albania to live in India in service of the world’s poor, or Susane Wenger – an Austrian woman, who spent all of her creative life in the groves of Oshogbo learning and teaching art and spirituality (and in dying there become one of the forest’s eternal goddesses).

The undeniable fact is that humans will always thrive wherever they find themselves. The story of Steve Jobs making it out of an almost hopeless beginning to become an accomplished entrepreneur could equally have happened elsewhere (perhaps with much less flair). The son of a carpenter from a victimized culture becoming the most famous, venerated, victim of capital punishment (by crucifixion) is as much a story of Jewish exceptionalism as is the story of a black African from post-colonial Kenya making it through the ropes to become a PhD holder in the United States a case of Kenyan/African exceptionalism, as is the story of a previously obscure princess from a repressive patriarchal culture growing up in the world’s ugliest war finding herself, due to a series of coincidences, as the queen of a large empire on which the sun never set – a case of British exceptionalism. Here’s Brazilian exceptionalism: defy all odds of a third world/developing country and win gold in (almost) every World Cup in which your country participates.

My conclusion here – as might by now be clear – is that there either is something of a human exceptionalism – defined by great success in spite of all odds – common to every culture and people on the face of the earth, or there is no such thing as exceptionalism, and we’re all just as unique as we are different. Nationalism and patriotic/religious credos are usually more disingenuous than the words in which they are couched tell us, and they have not always led to an improvement on the condition of human well-being. Politicians should therefore find something more stimulating to spend their time talking about, as should all blindly-following fanatics.

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