Dear Brother Adeshina:
Thank you very much for the beautiful prose, the writing my late father would have described as "Zikism" at best, but Baba Ijebu (my sagacious Landlord) would axiomatically have called "Awoism". Yet, they both answer or make the same clarion description or call: Excellent prose!
In fact, any time our late father wanted one of us (from his 48 children from his six wives) to write a letter for him to send to the QUUENDOM (UK), which he expected to have a beautiful prose (like what you propounded below), he insisted that the would-be letter writer MUST look for and to bring the then hard-cover green edition of "Oxford English Dictionary", which he also said was full of "Zikism". Do you remember that dictionary, brother?
Our father grew up in the Gold Coast when Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was editing a newspaper in the then colonial enclave, the vibrant newspaper that got him into trouble with the British colonial leaders, who charged him with sedition; after that ordeal, he left for Nigeria, but our fathers and mothers, with their limited formal education, still made us aware that our own schooling or studies must produce in us ZIKISM.
Your treatise below (with its ZIKISM-cum-AWOISM touch) did remind me of how many Catholic priests of yore also had sway with our parents in West Africa; several of us, therefore, became Catholic Church mass servers and, sometimes, I thank God Almighty (or Allah, the Merciful) that these priests never took "undue sexual advantage" of us. Instead, they made sure that we went to school, studied well and attended catechism classes on Fridays, and also that we did not eat meat on Fridays in honor of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Last year in June, our family back in Ghana and also overseas lost our nephew (former University of Ghana Vice-Chancellor Kwadwo Asenso-Okyere), who was part of the Catholic mass-serving crew in the early post-colonial years and, as I read his obituary at a Catholic High Mass at Legon (near Accra), I smiled (instead of crying for the heavy and irreparable loss) because -- with our nephew being a faithful Catholic mass server -- I believed that he was already in Heaven holding the keys to let us inside the golden gates when we get there one day.
Well, brother, house servants in West Africa are not worse than what my 24-year old niece was to suffer in Kuwait: she and eleven other young Ghanaian women were enticed there to work as Nannies and female house servants for wealthy Arab families for agreed-upon salaries. Upon their arrival, they saw that their job descriptions had been altered to include "satisfying the male employer's fancy". My niece got the hint and, therefore, escaped; she is still in hiding and working illegally in Kuwaiti City to raise funds to bribe her way out of the place. She hears about the other eleven cohorts, who are being "used very well" by these rich male Arabs, who in fact allow them to sleep only in their garages! Well, they pay them $50 more each month for being "obedient"!! How did they get to Kuwait? A Ghanaian company charged a fee of $1,200.00 each, and ignorant mothers and fathers entered into such "suicidal" contracts for their young daughters to be sent into modern-day slavery. Do these suffering young women have the opportunity to murder their horrible male employers? No! How sad!!!
I sincerely believe that Professor Ilemobade treated the two criminals and their families well. And his reward was to be murdered in cold blood! This is why I salute a cousin (a Lawyer) who looks at beggars with scorn! His motto is: "If I am sweating, go and sweat too!" Of course, I see your point, but those of us still living should be guided by the suffering of those, who have paid the price with their lives as well as by common sense, but not what Baba Ijebu would call: "Book long!"
A.B. Assensoh.
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2015 4:00 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Cc: anthonyakinola@yahoo.co.uk; Afoaku, Osita; gohiwerei@njcu.edu; titilopes41@gmail.com; BGWAMNA@GMAIL.COM; eobekoe@gmail.com; stephenagyepong@gmail.com; andohs1@southernct.edu
Subject: Re: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Prof Ilemobade's killers must face full wrath of law —Mimiko
| Dear Prof., I salute you! As usual, Baba Ijebu's wisdom derives from the burden of experience that comes with age. I cannot quarrel with that. I am in the process of gathering my own. But then, what happens to the very idea of the human society if social reciprocity is allowed to atrophy because we have had series of terrible experiences? Let me illustrate sir. I have a terrible phobia for househelps. And my phobia is motivated by a sense of moral indignation. I don't know, but it seems to me that there's a thin line between child abuse, child trafficking and the trade in house helps in Nigeria and Benin Republic. Yet, my moral indignation wavers when one confronts the complexity of the entire practice. First, the children are sometimes willingly released by their parents when confronted with stark poverty in stilts. Second, some of these children find themselves in homes where there is a genuine concern for their welfare and future. Third, there are also homes where they are essentially instrumental means to several ends. And in these homes, they suffer indignities. Fourth, these children are also at the mercy of the child traffickers who have eyes only for the gains accruing from constant retrievals and relocations. Thus, even when these children manage to find themselves in good homes, they are no sooner settling down to enjoy the comfort of parental care and love even as house helps than they are brutally yanked back into the trade. There is a fifth dimension: children or older house helps who are purely evil. There are several reasons for such description. These children may be coming from a terrible background such that no amount of goodness from the employer will assuage. Or: they may have become so hardened by their constant juggling from one house or zone or state to another that some kind of irreparable damage is done to their psyche. Remember the recent case of the mad house maid who nearly killed a child in her care? Those are the types that killed Prof. Ilemobade. But then, again, should that blind us to the possibility that we may somehow contribute to other people's upward mobility in life? For those of us here, we know it isn't out of place that the murder could have been committed by very close relatives of the professor. The emotional trauma would still be the same. Society runs on social action (in the strict sociological sense) and social reciprocity. How could the professor have known that these two would turn against him? Does anybody ever get such sociological early warning? Shouldn't kindness possess the capacity to deaden any diabolical intent? How much of kindness and goodness can really do that? The point is that we cannot stop helping or responding to others. What happens to the sense of who we really are? This is the real question. Would Professor Ilemobade take the entire step that led to employing those criminals all over again if given the chance? We will never know. Adeshina Afolayan Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
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