--Lord Obadiah Mailafia,
I lost my younger brother Patrick Johnson at three a.m. this morning. He was sixty years old, survived by his wife Debra and his daughters Abrah, Lisa, and grandchildren. I was not in Sierra Leone when he was born (April 19, 1955) so I got to begin to know him a little later and he gradually became my favourite brother. Our youngest and strongest brother, Michael passed away a few years ago. I have a younger brother remaining – Ola - lives with his wife in the Hague where he is still surviving, coping with prostate cancer and diabetes. And a younger sister Helga, in Florida.
The only greatness I really want to talk about is the infinite greatness of Our father in Heaven and His Infinite Mercy and Compassion…
Other matters. I'm touched by your "deep affection for the Swedish people and their culture" – an affection that I share with you. My wife ( my Better half) and the Swedish part of our family - by far the bigger half, are the best representative of the Swedish people that I know and love. When she talked to Patrick's wife this morning she was weeping uncontrollably. I am still calm.
I'm impressed that part of your graduate education was at Uppsala University - Sweden's in fact Scandinavia's oldest university and university town. The second oldest and very famous is the University of Lund - also very much a university town and of more recent vintage the University of Stockholm where I learned a little about research methods at the English Institution approximately forty years ago - at which time I proposed illuminating Derek Walcott but was simultaneously deterred by a whining inner question: "But Who wants a doctorate in English from a Swedish University?" Well, Stockholm University produced e.g. Stefan Jonsson who did an interesting doctoral thesis involving Soyinka and cyclical time (and no it was not him either, who organised students into the first anti-apartheid movement at the University of Stockholm)
Another passing thought : Assuming that 140 universities are insufficient for the 170 million souls in Nigeria – a university is not a merely a library and standards have to be raised and maintained at all levels from primary school upwards, of course.
Excellence is excellence - this means that the worst among us do not pass off as the extra-ordinary best and now I know where you're coming from far from any poverty of spirit or the psychological need for self-aggrandizement let us give thanks to the Almighty! Those are great names that you lift up whether in connection with pan-Africanist ideals, working to create a better world , the usual little free speech tittle-tattle whether about Trump or about joining or not joining NATO, fighting against the proliferation of nuclear weapons , fighting poverty and fighting for peace and love in the world of a United Nations - in the order in which you have mentioned them,
Björn Beckman and his wife Gunilla Andrae ( who are our friends from Ghana)
I'll now return to reading Ezekiel and later making a few phone calls.
Very best wishes to you
Cornelius
On Thursday, 3 March 2016 00:50:33 UTC+1, Obadiah Mailafia wrote:Lord Cornelius,Olof Palme belonged to a long tradition of Swedish internationalism that began with the great Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal and his wife Alva Myrdal, both of them Nobel laureates. We cannot forget the immortal Dag Hammarskjold, a highly learned economist, intellectual and mystic, who became UN Secretary-General. I recall memorable six months spent in Uppsala as a graduate student under the wings of Bishop Bengt Sundklar, missionary, theologian and Africanist. The Swedes have done very well for a middle ranking northern European country. Even at a time when it was not quite popular, they were unequivocally against Apartheid; remaining stalwart anti-colonialist defenders of African liberation. Lars Rudebeck was a friend of Amilcar Cabral, Samora Machel and Agostinho Neto in the Portuguese speaking territories. Olof Palme hailed from that rich tradition of progressive internationalism. Later there were younger academics such as Bjorn Beckmann and his wife Gunilla Andrae who taught some of us as students at ABU Zaria.I have deep affection for the Swedish people and their culture. From my little flat near the Linnaeus Gardens in Uppsala I used to walk on foot to the great university library, Carolina Redeviva. We lit candles in the great Cathedral to remember Dag Hammarskjold, who remains for me a model of intellectual culture and international service. Hammarskjold was the most brilliant student of his generation, with degrees in Literature, Law, Economics and Political Science. He was fluent in English, French, Spanish and German, in addition to his native Swedish. A friend of philosophers such as Martin Buber and poets such as W. H. Auden, he was a man extraordinary brilliance and mindfulness who put his talents at the service of humanity. Floreat Sverige!On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 7:17 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:--Olof Palme was very popular in Africa and the rest of the third world. To what extent our world could or would have been different if he had not been brutally assassinated some thirty years ago is for a competent political scientsist to assess or speculateThis is something else:
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index. html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com .
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout .
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da – the world as it is, goes on after Olof Palme
Dear Dr. Hamelberg:
Accept my heartfelt condolences on the passing of your younger brother. I do not presume to know how his death cuts deep into you, but I know how I felt when I lost my younger brother years ago. This kind of event really hurts; it leaves one of the deepest cuts in life, reaching even to the abyss of the soul and bone marrow and violently shaking the spirit. May the good Lord strengthen and comfort you and the whole extended family. Take care, Sir.
Nimi Wariboko
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment