A pale-male’s tale of trepidation, trumpeting

By KEITH BELL
I’m a 40-something pale-male. A few years ago I had the opportunity to work and train journalists at BusinessDay newspaper in Nigeria. I hated Lagos. It’s a dark, grim poverty striken city of 43-million (the population of South Africa). I hated being away from home and my loved ones. I hated the black oily pollution of Lagos. I hated seeing burnt bodies next to the road (victims of mob justice). I hated the traffic-jams (sitting in a car for seven hours to and from work … pictured above). And I was terrified when I contracted malaria three times and typhoid. But I never felt unsafe in Lagos. Nigerians are good, friendly people … fighting everyday to survive. I’ve never seen people who work so hard.



I loved my colleagues at BusinessDay (Lagos). Beautiful friendly, generous, loving people … people like Charles Ike-Okoh (a life-long friend), Enam Obioso (who still phones to this day with his “how-now” pidgeon English), Monday (my friend, savior and driver), Friday (no joke … that’s his name), Nicholas (who took care of me when I had malaria, bringing me lemon tea), Kirk (who would shake my hand with a firm grip that I would wince in pain in anticipation of another handshake), Funke (a stunning journalist), Amaka, Anne, big Stan (a Kenneth Kaunda look-alike, who at first intimidated me … but wept and queezed the breath out of me when I left … pictured above) and BusinessDay (Lagos) publisher Frank Aigbogun (known for his dazzling smile, bright green, pink and blue shirts … and even brighter ties). I digress, but one day I joked about Frank’s dandy atire … the next day he arrived at work with a beautifully gift-wrapped present. Inside? A dazzling blue shirt … and an even more dazzling blue tie. I miss my friends in Lagos.

source:http://blogs.theherald.co.za/pitch/

It’s useless knowing, is it?

Few days ago, I decided to visit the cinema, after a somewhat long break. The Palms was its usual busy self, as it was a little bit difficult to manuvoure through the teeming crowd. There was a queue at the counter when I arrived at the Genesis Deluxe Cinemas, even though I was unsure of which movie to see, I just joined the queue.
Eventually, I settled for Knowing, the one I thought would be most interesting to see, considering the other options on offer.

The movie opens with an odd, little looking girl in 1959 putting a page full of numbers into her school’s time-capsule that is going to be opened in 50 years time.
Similarly, in the same year, as part of the dedication ceremony for a new elementary school, a group of students is asked to draw pictures to be stored in a time-capsule. But this mysterious little girl, who seems to hear whispered voices, fills her sheet of paper with rows of apparently random numbers instead.

The movie is fast forwarded 50 years to the present where a new generation of students has to examine the contents of the time-capsule and the little girl's cryptic message ends up in the hands of young Caleb Myles. But it is Caleb's father, Professor Ted Myles, played by Nicolas Cage, who makes the startling discovery that the encoded message predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years.

As Ted further unravels, the document's secrets foretell three additional events - the last of which hint at destruction on a global scale and seem to somehow involve Ted and his son.

Ted's attempts to alert the authorities fall on deaf ears, and he takes it upon himself to try to prevent more destruction from taking place. Through happenstance, Ted has his attention drawn to a certain string on the page which seems to have predicted the World Trade Centre 9/11 tragedy.

As he looks up the numbers, he finds that the predictions are all accurate, and there are only three left. Becoming instantly obsessed, Ted tries to figure out the meaning behind the unbelievable numbers, which eventually leads him to the daughter and grandchild of that original mysterious little girl of 1959.
It also leads him to an attempt to prevent one of the tragedies, which doesn’t go quite according to plan. Of course, there are also the mysterious and foreboding people who suddenly seem to be stalking Ted and his son.


This gripping supernatural thriller charts one man's faltering steps towards belief in the ultimate order of the universe, even as he finds himself surrounded by mounting chaos. With the reluctant help from Diana Whelan and Abby, the daughter and granddaughter of the now-deceased author of the cryptic prophecies, Ted's desperate efforts take him on a heart-pounding race against time until he finds himself facing the ultimate disaster-and the ultimate sacrifice of leaving his only son in care of aliens.

Whatever one’s thought on the ultimate story that is played out in Knowing, it’s a film that everyone should see even though the rationale behind the script writer’s conclusion was very much unclear.

For me, the movie seemed to be giving some sort of unclear answers to the questions it raised. It’s just asking questions. The story paid homage to the age-old battle between those who “know” and those who just keep asking questions.
Socrates was the gadfly in that school of thought in Plato’s Socrates Dialogues, because he kept asking questions from those who “knew” until he discovered that those who claimed to know in reality knew nothing.

Most philosophers wonder if there is any physical world at all, and what implications that there might be if there isn’t. Scientists, lay people, and other philosophers scoff at such thought and go on being merry.

The next thing they discovered is that the physical world is nothing like it seems, but if we only ask so many questions we get answers we can more or less deal with.
Philosophy, religion, and science keep asking more and more questions that have led to some kind of bizarre ideas and discoveries, as answering the questions is neither here nor there. In the movie, a curiosity of the religious debate is that “it’s either there is God, and there’s no free will, or there is no God and there’s free will. If God knows everything, he knows everything that is going to happen, hence there’s no free will.”

This may be a hard question to tackle, as we all know there is God but that free will may not be absolute. What does knowing mean if man does not have control over anything and he has limited knowledge?

Someone who is trying to do some real work on figuring out life might ask, suppose there is a God and he knows everything about the future of your life. Would we act differently? And, what does that imply for a general outlook on morality? What if there is no physical world? Where is God in that case? Could he show up here? The answer is, but there is a physical world. Someone might as well dismiss the idea that a few of us were captured by aliens and taken to another world where our identities were implanted into us, and we run around like rats in mazes.

If you pay attention to what Knowing is all about, you will find it’s really a great movie. It’s intense though, engaging, intriguing, crafted with brilliance and subtlety. It also features some remarkable special effects sequences, many of which are brilliant and beautiful for their non-realism in something like the way you might think of a darling.

If you sort of pay attention to what it’s about, it’s a fun trip, even if it’s a crazy kind of ride. If you really focus on what it’s about, it’s either tremendously stupid, or mastermind. But, the first rule of knowing is that you can’t deny the hypothetical. But the movie left me to resolve the riddle of the existence of a physical world and a God whose power is beyond human knowledge.

The MJ that never was

I did not get to hear of Michael Jackson’s death until the early hours of last week Friday. It was an impolite shock to me, as it was like a dream, some kind of a nightmare. And I still can not believe that MJ is no more. His figure still looms large on the international music scene even after his death, and this will remain so for a long time to come.

As we all can remember, MJ lived a life full of controversies, one that was rooted in inferiority complex created in him since early childhood. Michael once stated that he was physically and emotionally abused by his father from a young age, enduring incessant rehearsals, whippings and name-calling. His father reportedly nicknamed him Big Nose. This attitude from his father had a lasting but damaging effect on his person, yet he credited his father's strict discipline as playing a large part in his success.

In one dispute as the story goes, his father held him upside down by one leg and punched him over and over again, hitting him on his back and buttock. Joseph, his father, would also trip or push his male children into the walls.

According to a report, one night while Michael was asleep, Joseph climbed into his room through the bedroom window, wearing a fright mask screaming and shouting. Joseph disclosed later that he wanted to teach his children not to leave the windows open when they went to sleep. For years afterwards, Michael admitted suffering nightmares about being kidnapped from his bedroom. In 2003, Joseph admitted to the BBC that he had whipped Michael as a child.

It is believed these disciplinary measures taken by the Jackson ’s father had a negative effect on his son who died a lonely man. Perhaps, this inferiority complex made him wanted to become a white man through and through. He asked that his nose be reshaped and his skin bleached.

MJ lived as a man who wanted to be accepted in a racist American society, and in spite of his world acclaimed fame; he still suffered from social acceptance. Perhaps, he thought the only way he could do this was to become white since that was the condition provided by the then segregated American society. Michael was born a cute African-American guy; normal, if you will permit me to call him that, and very talented. Despite the current, sad stories about his lonely, sad childhood, Michael grew up surrounded by famous people and an adoring public.

It is reported that Michael first spoke openly about his childhood abuses in a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey, noting that during his childhood he often cried from loneliness and would sometimes start vomiting upon seeing his father. In his other high profile interview, ‘Living with Michael Jackson, 2003,’ he covered his face with his hand and began crying when talking about his childhood abuses.

Michael recalled that his father sat in a chair with a belt in his hand as he and his siblings rehearsed and that "if you didn't do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you.” The loneliness he suffered from as a child affected him adversely, even as an adult and the closest person to him until his death was his producer.

If MJ had been brought up by a father who was able to balance leniency and great disciplinary measure may be he would have still been alive. May be he would not have suffered so greatly from loneliness in spite of his vast fan base; may be he would have had a stable marriage; may be he would have struggled with his facial features, and there would have been no need for the several plastic surgeries that marked all the stages of his life.

He would have been a very handsome proud African-American, and not have strove to become a white man.

‘No African time, please!’

How possible is it to live in a country where you have to schedule weeks ahead to have a dinner date with a friend? A country where you may not be able to build your dream house without getting approval from the ministry of housing? Also, in a country where employees are paid up to 50 percent income tax and where shopping malls close at 5 pm and don’t even open on public holidays?

It may not be an interesting place to live in, not with the kind of lifestyle I am used to in Nigeria . But, that is the kind of lifestyle that The Netherlands has to offer!

It is this precision for every thing, time in particular, that struck me the first few days I arrived The Netherlands.

One particular evening, I was in a store and it was few minutes to five, their usual closing time, when one of the attendants signaled the one attending to that it was closing time. I was shocked because I was not yet done with my shopping. And I was amazed at how precious time was for the Dutch, and not the money.

Back home, the money counts for a shopkeeper who would not mind staying extra hours if there are still customers in his shop. This is one aspect of The Netherlands that I find fascinating. Their precision for time; they are always on time.

“Is satisfaction measured by such a boring routine or well-structured system?” asked Claire, a journalist from Kenya . “Don’t we always need friends around, reachable anytime? What about the freedom to your own house, have access to the malls, cinemas, and coffee shops 24 hours a day, or at least till bedtime?”

“But that rule does not apply here, it is only applicable in Africa ,” I answered. “Privacy is key here. They don’t interfere in other people’s affair. They close on time because they don’t believe they have to be overworked, beside some of them are paid hourly, so staying extra hours may not be compensated if there is no arrangement for that.”

“In Lagos , it is possible for me to pick a bus at any point and at any time on arrival at the bus stops, but Holland does not afford me that luxury of moving at my own pace. It has to be at the tempo determined by the bus schedules,” added Mary.

Nigeria , as we all know it, is a country where bus drivers and their conductors beckon at prospective passengers, announcing their routes. Walking by the road side is enough to attract their attention, as the bus drivers and conductors compete to be the first to get a passenger on board.

This is not the norm in The Netherlands, as you dare not try to stop the bus after it has left the bus stop!

In The Netherlands, schedules are strictly observed because people want to have their privacy to do the things they want to do. This is not the practice in Nigeria . A friend or relative can visit you without prior notice, and most times we take it in our strides without expressing any kind of displeasure. We inconvenient ourselves because we want to be polite, and that’s not the case here, as displeasures are voiced not hidden.

Timeliness is a practice that cuts through all aspect of the Dutch society. The trains and buses are always on time. Most times in the mornings, I see people running to catch up the train or bus as soon as they spot it from a distance, as no bus or train will wait for you.

Everything is about punctuality because it has to be at the next stop where other passengers are waiting. And if it would arrive late, it is announced. This is not a country where you have bus conductors shouting at the top of their voices for passengers. Each bus has its route and the time it must be at the bus stop. If you are one minute late, it will not stop anymore as soon as the passengers are on board.

The situation is not different with the offices. Every worker gets to the office on time, closes at 5pm on the dot. I could recall an incidence that happened last week when Joeri, one of our course instructors, deciding to stay a little late teaching us. “Joeri, you are still teaching. It’s weekend,” observed Abi, the course leader, as she walked into the room. “I know,” replied Jeori. Jeori is just one of the few who stay back for an extra minute or two.

The Dutch have a balanced look at life. The 40-hour work week is strictly dedicated to performing their jobs. The rest of the time is devoted to rest. Weekends are devoted to gardening or attending family or friend’s affairs, as travelling is also part of their yearly itinerary.

In The Netherlands, no African time, every thing is programmed!

In the belly of the earth

The rumbling sound of the approaching metro jolted me back to life after we have had a long walk through some streets of Paris . Walking up and down the metro station was an excruciating task for a tired soul, but I did not have a choice but muster enough strength to carry on.

“We have to hurry,” I managed to tell Nadine, my host, Mary, Toili, Farooque and Hammed, my friends. I don’t want us to miss that Metro just arriving.

“Don’t worry about that,” replied Nadine. Metro arrives every five minutes. There’s no need to hurry before we climb down the stairs another would have arrived.”

Climbing up and down the flight of stairs added to the tiredness, and I was left wondering how France was able to construct its metro numbering about three levels. Paris has one of the best metro systems in the world, as it is possible to go to any part of the city within 30 minutes with proper knowledge of the metro.

It could be really confusing for a first time tourist who may be at a loss on which route to take. To make things worse, all the information on the schedule boards were written in French. Almost everyone was holding a map, including some residents of Paris !


On a particular afternoon, Nadine, Mary and I almost missed our way, even with Nadine a resident, with us. After climbing several stairs, we realised we were taking the wrong exit to board the metro, and nothing could be more hurting to climb the flight of stairs again. On this wing, there were no elevators unlike what we had previously seen at other stops, as the number of minutes it took us to walk around the station was enough to get on the next metro.

Hence that evening, the somewhat long walk at the metro station, added to my tiredness. When we arrived at the foot of the metro, it was packed full. Yet we managed to secure a standing position in one of the coaches.

“This is Molue,” exclaimed Mary. “This is a re-enactment of what we have in Matatus in Kenya ,” added Toili.


We were all surprised at the possibility of having an overloaded metro in a city like Paris, a town in the heart of Europe . We thought that was only possible in Africa , a continent believed to be synonymous with every negative thing you can think of.

However, that was not the only negative thing we discover about Europe . Nadine had earlier warned us to be careful with our bags, as there were bag snatchers and pick-pockets, or call it pick-bags in Paris .

On a typical metro, like the Danfos and Molues in Nigeria , there were all kinds of people with different faces. There were beggars, as well as those who played musical instruments for money. On a particular day, we ran into a young boy with needle marks all over his arm, begging for money to eat.


According to him, he could not get money from government to feed himself and was unable to get a job too. His story was interesting to me because I felt he was still very young and should have been in school. Obviously, the needle marks on his arms showed he had been into drug. Nobody made any attempt to give him money, except an old woman who dropped a coin into his palm.


For me, Nigeria is not the only country where hawking or begging in buses is common, as the Paris example has shown.

With this scenario in a town termed the world’s most beautiful city, it is therefore not right for Western nations to keep labeling Nigeria , or even any African country, as bad. I saw some people who did not even have metro tickets jumping over the security bars.

To access the metro, you have to slot in your ticket through a hole. As soon as the machine reads it, the bar turns, giving you a right of passage. But there were commuters who blocked the bar with their stretched legs because they had no ticket, which is a criminal act.

Although, it is always possible to purchase metro-season ticket to travel, this is cheaper. The Paris metro tickets are available for full day, one week, 10 days, one month, and so on, but these people just refused buying.

Therefore, Nigeria is not the only country crime abound, it is everywhere.


Going underground in a metro took me into another world, a world different from what was happening above, in the open air.

I was able to see another side of Paris , the reality of what goes on in the belly of the earth.

In a city called Romance

In the beginning...
A few weeks ago when we arrived Holland, Abi, our training group’s course leader, sold to us the idea of visiting Paris, which we toyed with for a while. Last weekend, about seven of us finally agreed to embark on this adventurous journey, travelling by road to Paris from Amsterdam ! We spent close to eight hours on the road because the bus had to make some stops along the way.

After the long hours on the road, we were all surprised it wasn’t a tiring journey, as we arrived Paris the early hours of Saturday morning.

Since it was dawn, the weather was quite friendly. It wasn’t therefore much of a problem waiting for nearly two hours for Nardine, our host, to pick us up at the bus station. “I’m really sorry guys for arriving so late to pick you up,” she apologises. “I was held up in traffic.”

We later discovered that the traffic was bad in Galleini that day because of the construction work going on in the Metro line for that route.

After refreshing ourselves, we hit the road almost immediately. The first point of call, of course, was the famous Avenue des Champs-Elysees. It is a very long avenue, lined with trees on both sides. On this road also is world famous fashion designers like Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton, among others, and this is also where the rich and famous in Paris live.

From this avenue, we moved towards the great Eiffel Tower , Paris ’ hallmark. The week before, I saw a report on CNN on the refurbishment of the tower.

Hence, when we arrived there that evening, the tower stood tall in its resplendent glory. The paint was still shining and there was a long queue of tourists waiting to climb the tower.

We were told the maintenance of the tower includes applying 50 to 60 tons of paint every seven years to protect it from rust, and this happens to be the seventh year. In order to maintain a uniform appearance to an observer who is below, three separate colours of paint are used on the tower, with the darkest at the bottom and the lightest at the top. Occasionally, the colour is changed, as it is currently painted in a shade of brownish-bronze, and named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel, an engineer, and it is the tallest building in Paris and the fifth-tallest structure in France as a whole.

There were many people milling around the tower when we arrived, and it was not a surprise therefore to know that more than 200 million people had visited the tower since its construction in 1889, including 6,719,200 just in 2006. This makes it the most visited monument in the world. It has a 24 meters antenna and the structure itself is 324 metres high.

The first and second levels are accessible by stairways and lifts. A ticket booth at the south tower base sells tickets to access the stairs, which begin at that location. At the first platform, the stairs continue up from the east tower and the third level summit is only accessible by lift.

From the first or second platform, the stairs are open for anyone to ascend or descend, regardless of whether they have purchased a lift ticket or stair ticket. The actual count of stairs includes nine steps to the ticket booth at the base, 328 steps to the first level, 340 steps to the second level, and 18 steps to the lift platform on the second level.

I was able to arrive at this figure because the step count is printed periodically on the side of the stairs to give an indication of progress of ascent. The majority of the ascent allows for an unhindered view of the area directly beneath and around the tower, although some short stretches of the stairway are enclosed.

We exited through the lift on the third level, as we could not continue because it was late. It was past ten in the evening, although the sun was still up! Nature played a trick on us there as we thought we had all the time in the world!

The wait, the hurry

It was only a few minutes past 6 am when the aircraft touched down at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam . It was a very comfortable flight, I must confess, such that we couldn’t even explain how the hours flew by. Imagine a seven-hour flight seeming like just an hour or two hours journey.

For most of us who were lucky to have our seats close to the window, honestly, we did not know the kind of weather that awaited us as we peeped out of the window. The weather was bright and the yellow rays of a May sun was what we thought was a promise kept - of a good weather; but we were wrong. After getting off the airplane, it was a different story altogether. The weather was very cold in spite of the shinning sun.

It was a bit of a walk from the foot of the plane to the arrival hall, considering the fact that Schipol is a rather big airport, one a friend considered perhaps the best in Europe . I had to do some metres walk before finally arriving at the customs post. There were four long queues and I had to look at the instructions on the board to know where I actually belong, considering the kind of passport I was carrying. “All Passports” “EU” reads two well-lit black coloured notice boards. There were two lines each for those carrying passports of other nations except the one for the European Union (EU) while there is another for citizens of the EU.
I took my time to look carefully at all the people on each line and I discovered that there were more whites on two of the lines than blacks.

I was also surprised at the manner in which the few blacks on the line conducted themselves. They were completely different from the Nigerians I met at Murtala Mohammed International Airport . It was as if they were not the same people who were in a hurry to get on the plane when it was delayed for some minutes in Lagos . I couldn’t believe that they have refused to jump the queue here in Amsterdam . At the customs point back home in Nigeria , they questioned the authority of the KLM officer who asked that the elderly, pregnant women and parents with young children should be the first sets of people to board the plane.

This incidentally is the practice anywhere in the world but our ‘Naija’ brothers would hear none of this. They were bent on getting on the plane at all cost even though they were very sure the waiting craft was theirs and would sure accommodate all.

“Me too, I be above sixty o,” joked one middle-aged man. “Don’t mind him, jare, forty-something no go enter too, abi which one you dey, oga?” teased another man.
The exchange between the two men went on for some minutes before the officer called those travelling on Business Class and Premium. This caused another discomfort for our dear gentlemen who went into another long exchange, joking about the discrimination.

Even though they are aware there was no basis for their arguments. “Passengers with seat numbers between 44 and 20 should go on board,” announced the officer again.
“What is all this again?” asked a woman who had also been angered by the whole process. “Is economy not economy and what has seat numbers got to do with it?” As expected, the other two men joined in and the “rebuke” continued once again, only to last for another few minutes. My sympathy, funny enough lies with the officer. For me, there’s nothing wrong with the method he adopted. He’s just trying to prevent the expected obstruction caused by passengers whose seats were at the front for those whose seats were at the rear. It’s just a smart way to make boarding faster and easier for all.

But trust Nigerians, we are always in a hurry to get things done, and in most cases, we don’t care how we get them done, we just want them done.
So, when the same people who were eager to get on board by all means in Nigeria patiently waited for their turns at the immigration point in Schipol, I was too surprised at the new spirit which had suddenly taken over them. Here, in Europe , there was no room for such untoward behaviour, hence our people quietly stayed on the line.

My ‘Naija’ experience was not the last I would encounter on my trip. Last Monday, as we journeyed back to the guest house after classes, I had another funny experience with other African folks in the group. Tony, one of the course instructors, had earlier educated us on the code of conducts and some rules governing transportation and road usage in Hilversum . He told us the route number of the bus we were to board to and from the guest house, so that we would not find ourselves on the wrong bus.

And so, after classes, we got on the right bus actually and got off at the right bus stop. But shortly, after the bus drove off, more than half of those of us standing by the roadside crossed to the other side of the road without taking the Zebra Crossing which was further down the road.

“Stop right there!” shouted Mary, another Nigerian from Voice of Nigeria who was also a member of the course group. ‘That’s not how to cross here,” reminded Harry, another journalist from Senegal . “Africans, when are we going to change?” I screamed at the group of defaulters who were already almost half way onto the other side of the road. “It’s not only Africans, the Pakistanis are there too,” corrected Harry.

That was how we made it to Hilversum with our impatient attitude. It’s saddening that we were too impatient as a people to walk only a few metres down the road to use the Zebra Crossing which the Dutch themselves use. It is just a disciplined society too organised with law abiding citizens. I just hope that some day, as a people, we would realize the importance of keeping to law without unnecessarily defaulting as a result of our impatience. I do hope that someday, the disobedient ones won’t get arrested by traffic officers before the end of the course.