"What a great story! Even though Anselm, seems to have forgotten that he did not exactly abide by the letter of the law when he tells migrants to "obey the law and do the right thing"!
So does this mean that the spirit of Christmas has infected even Ikhide?"
Ayo
Dear Ayo,
It is a great story, I got it for you, warrior! 😎
Seriously, it did speak to me. However, while I understand how it is seen as an immigrant narrative, especially that of one of color, the tragedy of classifications, is that they create walls that bind and blind the ignorant away from the light.
As an educator, I would love to share this story with all the adults - and students in the world's classrooms, white, brown, rich, poor, whatever. Today, we are invested in the lie that all children should attend college, and we mostly pay lip service to the reality that many children would be happy with rich and satisfying careers right after high schools.
The unintended consequences for this abusivr paradigm are too numerous to list: kids, dropping out of high school, kids ending up back at home, unemployed, with or without a college degree BUT with thousands in loan debt, and my favorite peeve, children of color been branded with the pejorative "academic achievement gap" because our expectations for their success are skewed in all sorts of ways (in addition to the bigotry of wrong expectations).
I have talked about this elsewhere in an essay, but there are times when I wish my son who is now headed to Engineering school in some university would take up locksmithing. He is good at it. At the end of four years at the rate they pay them, guess how much he would have accumulated in pay. If he doesn't get a scholarship, guess how much we are going to owe. SMH.
As for the charge that I am a nattering nabob of negativity, I reject it all, IJN. There is a method to my madness; I am very high on our Africa, specifically on Nigeria, that space that cradles my umbilical cord. And there is no day I wake up that I do not want to defend her fiercely. I was the one that stood up to African writers when they started profiting from poverty porn - nonsense stories about Africa and disease and war and gore, because it was profitable in the West.
African writers fought back and still do, but I am a relentless soul. We are making progress, I have been reading some real fiction lately, written with confidence and dignity. The stories of Africa, as in elsewhere should be about the sum of our lived experience. I am proud of my work in that respect, how can that be a negative thing?
I am proud of what our people are doing in the private sector in the absence of robust structures. Go to Computer Village in Lagos, go to electronic centers like SLOTS, go to some banks in Nigeria and the only conclusion you can draw is this: Adjusted for the lack of many things, we are geniuses.
My rage is focused almost exclusively on the government of the day. To say it is perennially underachieving is to dignify that carcinogen. I am also focused on those who prop her up, the politicians, the civil servants, and intellectuals, many who are on this list. The lack of structures of accountability empowers and enriches them and so they will fight to the death anyone who tries to hold them accountable. The APC and her goons have held me in their sights and have tried to rein me in with all sorts of juvenile antics; I am still standing, and I am not headed anywhere anytime soon. 😹
And don't you worry my favorite intellectual, my ogbunigwe is not trained on you I have exempted you from my objective analysis, it is my great hope that my sons and daughters grow up fulfilled like you, and a few others on this list, and not end up a broke-ass rascal like their papa (me!). AMEN! We shall see!
And Esu smirks!
Doxology.
Your favorite rascal,
- Ikhide (but of course!)
> On Dec 21, 2015, at 9:14 AM, Ayo Obe <ayo.m.o.obe@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What a great story! Even though Anselm, seems to have forgotten that he did not exactly abide by the letter of the law when he tells migrants to "obey the law and do the right thing"!
>
> So does this mean that the spirit of Christmas has infected even Ikhide?
>
> Ayo
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