On Thursday, October 26, 2017 at 4:02:31 AM UTC-7, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:
Brother Okoth Osewe has a Fidel Castro quote emblazoned at the top of his Facebook page, a quotation that I assume is some kind of motto for an African's life's endeavours:
'A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past" (Fidel Castro)
As we know, there are many revolutionaries among us, many of them, armchair revolutionaries, from on high on their bed of roses, in their lofty ivory towers, directing some of the troop movements on the ground. I used to go to a pub on Vasagatan and sit at a round table with a whole lot of East Africans, some of them Marxists and ex-Marxists who had studied planned economy in the then Soviet Union and at the time what I thought was most remarkable was that they were still talking as if the cold war wasn't yet over…
Okoth himself knows that revolution is not a bed of roses, as I remember almost thirty years ago, a much younger revolutionary Okoth, a friend and comrade -in-arms of my son Nathan, spending some time in bed at our home in Vasastan in Stockholm , recuperating from a broken leg, after some racist skinheads had attacked him viciously, brutally breaking his leg.
Okoth knows that revolution is indeed not a bed of roses and that often, a man has to pay his dues in order to sing the blues. It is from that time that I started referring to him as "the young lion of Kenya" a title wholly unconnected with any Safari idea and well deserved when several years later he started an online petition that he needed his Kenyan passport . The authorities were dragging their feet, but they young lion was not denied his patrimony and he eventually got his passport...
What I remember most about this period of his recovering from a broken leg is that he was down in bed but his spirit was not down and when I started telling him about the glories of the Holy Quran he sat up and pointing his finger me assured me that the holy book was just a "document" and subject to critical scrutiny just like any other document or book, and so , me, thinking of F.R. Leavis, I thought that we had better terminate any discussion about revelation right there so that he doesn't go to the next stage/ page of saying something like "and the author or prophet Mohammed is just a man" after which there could be the possibility of entering the territory of uncharted waters, the unholy waters of blasphemy.
Recently, I asked someone the same question : "Are you a Muslim?" His answer which I thought was evasive, was:
" I am a human being!"
As some of the pious among us know, it was St. Paul who said, "When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things"
Among us also there is surely more than one person that belongs to the category of "Big Youth", seasoned minds still young at heart...
Curiously enough, after reading this little topic below sent by an Edo brother this morning, it was not Alexander the Great but The West African Youth League came to mind.
Anyway, without any further delay here it is for your perusal.
He is 31 years old
Austria today made history by electing the world's youngest president who is 31 years old.His name is Sebastian Kurz, he is just 31 years old and with him is his girlfriend Susanne.Before today's election, he was the country's foreign minister.
While our youths are contented with being ass lickers, praise singers and Special assistants on social media in Nigeria, youths elsewhere are disrupting the status quo, pushing for innovation, changing the narrative and pushing for new frontiers.
From Facebook to Snapchat and Taxify, these tech giants were founded by millennials who are youths.
Mark Zuckerberg is just 32 years old and the youngest billionaire in the world.
The bar has been raised in Austria that elected a 31 year old man as her leader today.
A 31 year old man in Nigeria is probably in his parents house, unemployed and broke, eating free food and not bothered.
The 31 old Nigerian man is feeling big supporting politicians (who directly or indirectly put us in the mess we are in) on Facebook without seeing the nexus between the failed leadership and present unemployment predicament.
I weep for our youths many of whom are wasting away forgetting that time waits for no one.
The condition in Nigeria is not helping matters though and then the current generation if youth is not ready to push for change.
Those who have bank jobs think they are on top of the world, forgetting that the owners of the banks were billionaires at their age.
The women get married and drive their husband's cars and think they have arrived.
Those who work in IOCs see themselves as great achievers, not knowing that they are slaves.
I ask young people reading this, what are you doing with your life?
Are you happy with the way Nigeria is at the moment?
What are you doing to push for change?
I wish you a Thought Provoking month.
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