Baba Kadiri,
I ask Habibi,
what is empathy?
I didn't hear her complaining, but out there in Edgware, my mother Adekumbi had a British heavyweight boxer (Lee Thompson a friend of my two youngest brothers) work her garden – it gave him a little exercise, he told me, all in tune with this piece of advice which I too have taken to heart:
"So, when you see your neighbour carryin' somethin'
Help him with his load
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road" (The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest)
Sure, you are/were not suffering from amnesia or Alzheimer when you can't remember ever complaining to me that it pains you to take care of your garden and the snow in front of your house. You ask, why then do I need to feel sorry for you?
The answer: Even if you are as patient or as long-suffering as Job, do you have to complain about pain for me to feel sorry for you? To pray for you? To wish you good fortune, long life and prosperity, or do I have to witness a decrease for me to top my best wishes with a "May your tribe increase"?
"I suppose that he told you everything
That I keep locked away in my head." ( The Master Song)
There's so much poetry and quiet wisdom in these Leonard Cohen Lyrics
I respect the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's not that I am wrong and you are right. I mostly respect the rest of all that you say, just as I respect and to some extent understand our differences, the difference between you and Adepoju, between you and me, between me and the Fulani herdsmen, some of the disagreements between the poets, and physicians, between the experts and the authorities, e.g. between the Shia and the Sunni. Really.
On Monday, 11 November 2019 19:21:47 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:
Dear Rabbi Hamelberg,I don't see any connection between my garden and snow in front of my house and the topic, THE BEAUTIES OF LAGOS, symbolized by Mr. Adepoju's two pictures of a faceless woman with enlarged buttocks. I can't remember ever complaining to you that it pains me to take care of my garden and the snow in front of my house. Why then do you need to feel sorry for me? That aside, let me go straight to some of the issues you raised.
You claimed that I have told you that there was no Yoruba word for what you termed (prostitution) the world oldest profession. If you have not forgotten, you will remember that I told you there are equivalent words in Yoruba language for, a male, a female, a woman, a man, a husband, a wife, a daughter, a boy, a concubine, and a bastard. Of course there is also Yoruba word for polygamy. The word prostitution became known in Nigeria after the first World War, when Nigerian soldiers who were recruited to fight in Burma by Britain returned to Nigeria. Thereafter, there were varieties of names for prostitution in all Nigerian ethnic languages. Even in Sweden which you referred to, the proliferation of prostitution was traced to 1864 by HJÖRDIS LEVIN who in her 1986 book wrote thus, In 1864, the law that criminalized sexual intercourse between unmarried man and woman was abrogated, except that the man was fined 100kr in case fatherhood trial found the man culpable to obligatory maintenance. With the abrogation of the law prohibiting unmarried man and woman toto engage in sexual intercourse, the Church and Teachers carried nationwide propaganda that masturbation was harmful to men. This propaganda according to her, probably contributed to the proliferation of prostitution in Sweden. On prostitution, Levin wrote : A thing which on one hand is equated to satisfying the need of nature is on the other hand considered suitable to establish as a profession. She then fumed that if prostitution is approved as a profession because it serves the call of men's nature, then, shitting and sleeping must also be approved as professions. (TESTIKLARNAS HERRAVÄLDE av HJÖRDIS LEVIN; roughly translated to, HEGEMONY OF THE TESTICLES. I agree with Hjördis Levin that prostitution is not a profession even when decadents think otherwise.
I have clicked on the worse link supplied by you and found the Ivory Coast woman, Eudoxie Yao flaunting her 60 inch bum in imitation of the American celebrity, Kim Kardashian. Whatever opinion one may have about her bleached physical features she is responsible for her own publicity. Unlike the pictures in Beauties of Lagos, the photographer tip-toed like an old-fashion thief behind a woman to take pictures of her buttocks without her consent. The woman is involuntarily advertised as a sexual object by the author of the Beauties of Lagos who specifically point at her buttocks as treasure. Those are the differences. Nevertheless, there are fat women all over Africa and in Nigeria wearing the indigenous attires make both slender and fat people look elegant.
Imagine when I tell my son Ola Nathanael that I'm going to arrange his marriage to a nice Yoruba woman. He politely reminds me that ''we're not in Africa!"- Rabbi Hamelberg. Many things are concealed in the expression, 'we are not in Africa. In Europe and America, there is something called gender neutrality, where an individual decides its gender regardless of what is in between the legs. In Africa, the genitalia determine who is a male and who is a female. In the Swedish Journal of Social Medicine, nr 9-10, 1993, a professor of Social anthropology, Kajsa Ekblom Friedman, authored an article titled, Central African View on Male Sexuality (my translation from Swedish to English). The purpose of the article was to confirm the accusation against Africans in Sweden as the main spreader of the HIV in the country since they refused to deploy condoms in casual sex engagements. She wrote : My own research has, to great extent concerned societies and cultures in Central Africa. I have, beside from 1985 and upwards, at different periods, done field work in Congo. The otherwise view on sexuality which I am going to present here is valid of course in the first hand in this part of Africa, but there are clear indications that such practices exist in other parts of the Continent South of Sahara (p.484). She continued : For a Central African it is not easy culturally. He is firstly heterosexual and beside he has a view on sex which runs counter to the use of condoms. …//… Sex and the deposit of sperm in her is one and the same thing. Potency lies self in the sperm. Homosexuality is very scarce in Africa South of Sahara. That can be explained with elder men's control over youth's sexuality. The youths were married away at young age and were not allowed to decide themselves. Homosexuals were there but they had no possibility to live out their homosexuality. Although African women were in 1993 projected in the West as not having control over their sex and being oppressed by their men, professor Kajsa Ekholm Friedman narrated a story she heard during her research sojourn in the Congo. *A man who had stayed a long time in France, and from there got new ideas, tried to practise oral sex with the woman he married with on returning home. Rumour spread immediately within the quarters, the woman did not understand at all his behaviour and she sought as usual counsel from the neighbours, who advised her to report to the village head. What was he really attempting to do, was he trying to eat her, or what was the question about? There he stood with tears running along the cheeks as he tried to explain himself before dumbfounded audience (pp 484-485). Long before European incursion into Africa, every part of human body had indigenous name in our different languages and physiological functions were ascribed to them. Mouth generally is supposed to be used for eating, drinking and talking and it is not a sexual organ. As professor Friedman narrated her story, she was rebuking the African woman for not knowing that sexual intercourse could be performed with the mouth contrary to the description of the ancient Yoruba euphemism : ADÙN MÁ DEEKÉ roughly translated to sweet that is not felt in the mouth.
Finally I have nothing against Oluwatoyin Adepoju but series of coprolalia he has committed on this forum. For instance, on Thursday, 6 September 2018, he posted Julian Phillips and Ideals of Manhood. Citing one Taiwo Makinde, Mr. Adepoju wrote, Motherhood as a source of empowerment of Women in Yoruba Culture describes the goddess Iyamapo as associated with the water from vagina, a part of which is considered as the place harbouring the secret of woman's power. I least expect a son of a woman to write about water in the female vagina as Mr. Adepoju did. It does not make sense, biologically, physiologically and anatomically to talk about water in the vagina. Not being done, he cited one Adeyinka Bello in Yoruba thus, "Ìbà okó t'o d'orí kódò ti ò ro; Ìbà òbò t'o d'orí kodò ti ò s'èjè. Mr. Adepoju then went on to translate the two verses thus, "I pay homage to the penis that is hung without bringing sperm; I pay homage to the vagina that has stopped mensturating. Adepoju's coprolalia was wrongly translated into English because of his obsession for vulgarity and perversity. The correct and right translations should be : Homage to the penis that hangs down without whittling; Homage to vagina that hangs down without bleeding. The Yoruba name for sperm is ÀTÒ and I pay Homage in Yoruba is MOJÚBÀ. I point this out just to expose how Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, the man from Okpameri has been counterfeiting Yoruba culture in other spheres.S. Kadiri
Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com > för Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 9 november 2019 18:39
Till: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com >
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Beauties of Lagos: Meeting Kantinthe MetropolisGloria In Excelsis Emeagwali,
Many thanks for saving my xss.
Well, there's Akintola Wyse, the wise. He was a Methodist. I guess he still is. We were very close friends, classmates 1958-1965 and college roommates 1965-1966. I was also his lookout man. On Sundays (visiting hours) I used to vacate the room for him. Me? I'm still yours truly, Cornelius Ignoramus.
My plan was that I would silence Baba Kadiri, since, prude that he is, he would not like to see anything "worse" than the photo Adepoju posted - which means in effect that he would not click on any link that says "worse". So, I'm sure that the blessed virgin did not click on that link. Maybe he did, and like Paul, he was temporarily struck, blinded by what he saw.
Heaven forbid that anyone should downplay his competencies. The man is a true African: According to his own self-confession, it looks like when Oluwatotin Vincent Adepoju saw her behind/ saw her from behind, it was like lightning struck. In which case, one would have expected that he would do the follow-up, go up and talk to her – introduce himself, "Hi babe, I'm new in town, I'm Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, connoisseur of feminine mystique and now star-struck by your eminence, the prominence and sheer beauty of your booty. Believe me babe, when I first saw you from behind, it was like lightning struck! It was so sudden and so overwhelming and it's so difficult to explain. It's now an idée fixe. You know, that which is created through thought, is beyond the power of thought to fully understand and express. You know something else? We could be so good together, you and me."
At which point the great Adepoju invites her for some coffee/ a cup of tea, maybe, even some pepper soup.
Fast forward. He goes beyond the Germanic.
A few weeks later
He could be singing
Hopefully, since Baba Kadiri did not click on the link he should not be able to/ be in a position to attack me on such grounds, telling us all that I'm worse than Adepoju for posting that link in celebration of Lucy's granddaughter entering the Guinness Book of Records for what in Ebonics/ Black talk is known and appreciated as "big booty"
Two, three things that could be helpful, if we understand:
1. There's the generation gap. Stiff upper lip Baba Kadiri is some years my elder, but I think that we belong to the same generation, representing the old order. You and Adepoju and some of the folks here belong to the generation after ours. This was forcefully brought to my attention about two decades ago when I saw a theatre performance of "Tickets and Ties" featuring some actors from Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone ( about the problems between immigrant parents from West African and their children born in England) and also recently ( about six weeks ago) when Stevie Nii-Adu Mensah did his theatre monologue It's cold oo about his father, Chief Mensah an important music culture patriarchal personality, one of the early Ghanaian immigrants to Sweden. You can factor in culture when talking about a generation gap. Imagine, when I tell my son Ola Nathanael that I'm going to arrange his marriage to a nice Yoruba woman. He politely reminds me that " we're not in Africa!"
2. I'm (as always) very impressed with Baba Kadiri. Imagine, he has spent more than fifty years of his life ( 50 years) in Revolutionary Sweden, without swimming like a fish in the Mälaren or getting stuck in the mud or snow. Right now I'm feeling a little sorry for him, because just like last year, he will soon be having to clear all that snow, from his front door, with a shovel. Good exercise. IN the summer and autumn, he spends a lot of time gardening. Maybe we should buy some land and start farming. More exercise. Baba Kadiri's strongest point is his ethical stance. As you historians know, a general moral collapse generally presages and precedes the downfall of a civilisation. We are forewarned.
3. Some of the esoterica and allied concerns that Oluwatoyin is busily promoting is merely a cog in a much bigger wheel. This is eloquently explained in Seraphim Rose's seminal Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future ( parts 1-14) and summarised in the Epilogue to the Fifth Edition : Further Developments in the Formation of the Religion of the Future by Hieromonk Damascene – available here in pdf Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future ( pdf)
Some music: Junior Delahaye : Movie Show
On Saturday, 9 November 2019 14:30:13 UTC+1, Gloria Emeagwali wrote:Cornelius the Wise,Thank you for that last link.The DNAgeneticists are going to be on her trailand would eventually market herbutt genes- without her consentof course.Adepoju is probably onhis way to Ivory Coast, right now.But Kadiri, let us be fair. Adepojuhas his weak points. I went stronglyagainst him in his anti- Fulani rantsand I agree with you that he is guiltyof not even asking for permissionfrom the subject of his butt eulogy -and much more.BUT let us not downplay his brilliance.He has the capability to go beyondthe Germanic.
GE
Sent from my iPhoneDear Baba Kadiri,
As you may have noticed, I have not called you since I posted that which you quoted. I have not called you because my conscience has been accusing me of having touched a very sensitive or a very sacred nerve, when I wrote that "Baba Kadiri (mature holy virgin up to a late age) offers a different perspective, that too has to be addressed, appropriately"
The conscience was pricking me because I know how highly you elevate Yoruba ethics , Yoruba morality and Yoruba sexual morality to the extent that you believe that in the pre-colonial period there was no Yoruba word or even euphemism for the world's oldest profession , for the simple reason that nobody belonged to that professional guild anywhere in Yorubaland.
Anyway, I'm sure that you've heard of the Biblical Rahab
I really shouldn't have said anything about "mature holy virgin up to a late age". Too late. It was only after I had pushed the send button that I began to realize that had I written thus about e.g. Mr Inyang ("heng-an-dey") our geography teacher in the third form ( he was of Efik ethnicity, from Calabar) – I'm sure that he would have reserved a special cane with which to deliver a dirty dozen on my thinly, Khaki-covered buttocks, as a result of which I'm sure that I would not have been able to sit on the aforementioned bottom for at least a week – and of course, as a result of which – and indeed, that would have taught me, I'm sure , that I should never ever say such a thing again. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" was probably the motto from the jungle that he came from. (The "Heng-an dey" was the nickname that we had given him, because back then he wore Michael Jackson style trousers, with the hem hanging about six inches above his ankles/ shoes. He also had a unique way of pronouncing "vary" as "vah -ri")
But concerning "mature holy virgin up to a late age" – with regard to a woman, plain or beautiful, she would have been regarded as an "old maid". With regard to Baba Kadiri, to begin with, let me tell you unequivocally that I really admire your personal feat of maintaining your equilibrium - defeating lurid temptation ( and "provocation is next to madness" – my grandmother used to say since I assume that many a Swedish Eve must have flaunted her charms at you many a time – on the dance floor, at the beach, at her place, at your place, not least of all in what some boast was the sexually liberated Sweden of the 1960s in the midst of which I believe you arrived as a very masculine Yoruba youth in the full glory of manhood – surrounded by an endless bevvy of hungry young and willing damsels.
Concerning modesty, about a year ago the Orthodox Rabbi in Stockholm ( Amram Maccabi Hayun) when extrapolating on a certain section of the Shulchan Aruch advised that in all modesty, the male should undress under the blanket (at which precise moment I thought, " but the Almighty Himself can see through any blanket, anyway ")I understood the rabbi to mean that in the name of modesty the male should not go around waving his penis at his woman, like a serpent, or slapping her face with it, that he must undress under the blanket. (I almost wrote "under the carpet"
Indeed, I believe that orthodox Judaism would agree with you fully about what you say is the purpose of sex – not merely enjoyment, but more importantly, procreation. The very first time I met a conversion rabbi ( circa, 1997) the very first thing he said to me, even before "Shalom", or "how are you?" and other pleasantries, the first thing he said to me, almost shouting at me, was " You must be fruitful and multiply !" – at which point I also thought, " Yeah! Stay on the scene, like a sex machine! Indeed, we must replenish the earth, especially after the Holocaust during which world Jewry lost six million souls - not to mention earlier and later pogroms."
Well if you want to really know how it's supposed to be, by all means, you must watch this documentary : Sacred Sperm
One last thing Baba Kadiri: methinks that you are being too hard on Oluwatoyin. Thou shalt not exaggerate. In my opinion and relatively speaking, that is a photograph of a rather modestly dressed female. I'm sure that in this day and age, for all your puritanical, holier-than-thou talk about "large buttocks stuffed inside trousers", you have most probably seen worse.
On Friday, 8 November 2019 23:09:41 UTC+1, ogunlakaiye wrote:Baba Kadiri (mature holy virgin up to late age) offers a different perspective, that too has to be addresses, appropriately - Rabbi Hamelberg. I have never proposed that virginity should be kept up to late age. What I said , rather, is that sexual intercourse, whether for pleasure or procreation, should only take place between a married or cohabiting man and a woman. It is in marriage or cohabitation that a man or a woman should lose his or her virginity. Writing in her 1999 book, A RETURN TO MODESTY, Wendy Shalit informed her readers that ''Modesty isn't about snubbing men, but about postponing sexual pleasure until the time is right (p. 84)."
The subject being discussed is the Beauties of Lagos epitomised two pictures of a faceless person depicting a woman with large buttocks stocked inside trousers. I regard the pictures as a pimp's distorted view of women being sexual objects. The display of sociopathic lifestyle conveyed by the two pictures of a faceless woman stocked in trousers with protruding large buttocks has nothing to do with IFA or OGBONI cult. When glaring defamation of Nigerian womanhood has occurred it is the duty of those of us, sons and daughters women, who are not nurtured or natural fools to register our objection and protest strongly. Wendy Shalit noted in : A RETURN TO MODESTY thus, "As one 27-year-old Orthodox (Jewish) woman put it to me, with a toss of her long black hair, 'there is a saying that goes *Ein b'not yisrael hefker.* It means that the daughters of Israel are not available for public use (p.131)." Similarly, I say to who ever it may concern that the daughters of Nigeria are not available for sexua
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