Archive for December, 2007
Experience - The Supreme Benefit of Volunteering To Take Care of the Centre
Sunday, December 30th, 2007
When I started practising, I had three very young children and we were desperately poor, crammed into a tiny battered old house, and struggling to buy nutritious food each week. My daughter had been diagnosed with anaemia as we couldn’t afford meat. I wasn’t able to go to activities, as my husband was a long distance truck driver and rarely home in time for me to make the meetings. Nevertheless he made sure he was back in time for the Discussion meeting once a month, and each year he would take one week of his holiday to care for the children while I went to Taplow for a week’s keibi.
The first time I did keibi various poisons came out of my life, I didn’t get on with anyone, fought with my room mate, and hated that they made me sit at the computer, which I hadn’t ever learnt to work and kept making mistakes. I would have done anything rather than sit at that damned computer, but they said I had to challenge that feeling of negativity. I said ‘No but I just hate computers’. When I got home I was called by an employment agency I had applied for work unsuccessfully with several months before. They said, ‘We have a part time job – Have you ever had any experience with computers?’ I worked part time whenever I wanted after that, and we have never been short of money since. Later on I became a teacher, and was always in charge of using computers in the curriculum in every school I taught in.
On a personal note it may seem strange, but I’d always felt bad that I didn’t have any relatives in Wales, the area of the UK my family are from. My grandmother had left Wales to work in England and her brothers hadn’t had any children, yet I still felt a connection with that area and with my ‘tribe’.
I found myself chanting for a Welsh cousin. I did keibi with a woman who looked just like my daughter (but older!), and I looked like her mother (but younger). We come from the same part of Wales and have the same surname, and we feel sure we must be related. Anyway, we call ourselves keibi cousins and I often visit her in Wales, and a couple of years ago we spent Christmas together.
I developed myself on keibi. There was never any toilet paper in the staff toilets, and I used to report it each time to the senior staff. They would say ‘Thank you’ and smile enigmatically, but never did anything about it. It used to drive me mad. One day, not on keibi but in Taplow for something else, a member was complaining in the Ikeda New Century Hall about the lack of toilet paper in the main guest toilets. I looked around for keibi but no-one was there, so I went to the cupboard and fetched the rolls for the toilet area, then I collected the rubbish and tidied it. I finally understood the enigmatic smiles. Who is responsible for the upkeep of the Centre, of Buddhism and of the World, and for looking after my fellow human beings? I am!! Since that time I’ve always taken action and done everything I can to help, wherever I find myself. If I or my other keibi friends are around the place, everything will run smoothly.
Two years ago I was responsible for training the team of Stewards who would look after an Earth Charter Exhibition we staged at a local College of Further Education. Our job was to always be there protecting the panels and caring for the visitors. My fellow-trainer said, ‘You can really tell who has done keibi and activities at the Centre!’ When we were on duty, everything was done properly and ran smoothly with no accidents and with a lovely atmosphere. For example, I decided to walk round to the far side of the panels, when suddenly a gust of wind blew the panel I was next to over. I was right there, easily reached out and caught it before it fell, and put it back in place. A woman in a wheelchair would have been hit by it if I hadn’t been there at the right moment.
Keibi teaches you that you can’t leave anything to chance in this world. We are the stewards of the Earth. Every day now is a keibi day for me. In the morning I chant for everything to go smoothly for everyone round me, for everyone to be safe and happy. This puts me in rhythm with the world around me. If I need to see someone, I look up and they’re walking in, or they call on the phone! All my family and people I know have good fortune in their lives. I know how to use the Strategy of the Lotus Sutra: if something goes wrong, I put more energy into Buddhist activities, visiting a member or telling someone about Buddhism, knowing that this is what will correct the underlying problem. I am never stuck, because I can always change my karma!
So if you want to change things in your life, volunteer for keibi at the your Buddhist Centre. It’s the shortest way to Buddhahood!
Jill Rees
992 words
First published in Africa Sun, Lagos
Tags: Art, Buddhism, Family, Friend, home, jill, jill, money, Publish, Rain, SGI, Sun, Truck, War, WorkRelated posts
Monks and Kings
Sunday, December 30th, 2007Synopsis
Combining history and modern life, this novel investigates the worlds of belief and knowledge, organised religion, friendship and love. Follow Dan’s adventures in the fantasy world of his mind, or is that the prophetic insight of his soul, and how he resolves his inner contradictions to find a network of friends, his true love, and to save a life. A story of courage and the battle with madness, how one individual can confront the evil of political society, and survive with his humanity intact. Dry, caustic, cynical, but ultimately optimistic, this book will make you laugh and ultimately restore your hope in the future.
Tags: Book, Evil, Fantasy, Friend, Friendship, jill, Network, Novel, Story, WorkRelated posts
Happy New Year
Sunday, December 30th, 2007New Year
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007Happy New year to everyone who reads this column. In the aftermath of the over-eating and over-drinking that characterises Christmas in the UK, this quiet time between Christmas Day and the New Year’s Eve revelling is a good time to nurse one’s hangover and reflect over our achievements and experiences of the Old Year, and make our determinations for the next twelve months.
So how did we do last year? Personally, 2007 was the year I discovered Africa. This time last year I hadn’t been to Africa nor particularly thought about what it is like. I had met Africans in Europe of course, and they impressed me as relaxed and friendly people. I had met Africans from wealthy families, who were well-educated, well-fed, and doing well in their chosen careers. And I had met students f rom Africa, mostly serious and studious young men intent on doing well. Like my friend Ade, they were often huge and muscley, obviously well-fed. So I never quite bought into the ‘Bob Geldof’ version of Africans, little swollen-bellied starving children, or farmers too ignorant to plant and tend their crops. Then in April I was invited to drive from France through Spain and Morocco, through Mauritania into Mali. As I arrived in Bamako I remembered the reaction of Mohammed Ali when he first visited Zaire for his ‘Rumble in the jungle’ in the early sixties.
Mohammed Ali expressed his surprise and his feelings of betrayal in having been led to think of African people, therefore his people, as being poor, unintelligent, uneducated and incompetent. While the Charities have to show poor people in war zones or famine zones to raise money, they are ‘raising awareness’ not of Africans, but of the results of war and corruption, which are the same whatever the continent. The shocking images of starving children with flies in their eyes is a gross misrepresentation of Africans. Mohammed Ali realised during his visit that a lot of the information he had taken as gospel, was racist in bias. This heightened awareness enabled him to refuse to fight in the Vietnam War, to be imprisoned and have his career ruined and his championship medal taken from him. He had no way of knowing at that time that he would one day make a comeback, regain his championship status back in Zaire in 1973, and be one of the three humanitarian leaders studied in schools worldwide, alongside his contemporary Martin Luther King and the Indian leader Gandhi.
An old, sick man, he later corrected journalists saying, ‘I’m not famous as a boxer, but as a Muslim.’ The vision and understanding of the world from the global perspective that his visit to Zaire and the Vietnam War gave him, enabled him to grow in spirit to become one of the world’s greatest heroes. A religious man, a pacifist, and a humanitarian, he makes a perfect hero for all peoples on the planet, admired and respected the world over ‘not for the colour of his skin, but for the content of his character’*. In 1999, Ali was crowned ‘Sportsman of the twentieth century’, an undisputed champion of life, as he had been of boxing.
It’s obvious in a way that all human beings are the same, and the differences between us are very minor. At the same time, human beings are primarily social, our survival depending on our living in groups, which means we tend to gang together. We tend to associate with those most like us, our families and school friends, people living the same kind of life. A recent study on social groupings in schools showed that bullying occurred when a member of a group started behaving differently to the group, doing something considered prohibited. However someone in a different group who did the prohibited behaviour was not bullied. This shows that the identification with one’s group and conformity within the group is of paramount importance. In the ‘wild’ as it were, being ostracised from one’s group would mean you die, as human beings can rarely survive alone ‘in the jungle’. Conforming with one’s group is a very strong calling. Emotionally, we like to feel we belong.
Yet even if you look at your nearest and dearest, at your friendship group or your work colleagues, a lot of the reason you are together is circumstance. Even colleagues you work with for years, go out together on Fridays and send the best Christmas wishes to, once you’ve changed jobs become strangers once more. On a personal level, you may have little in common. Real intimate and lasting friendships are built on having the same values, when you can trust a person’s reaction to events because they hold the same basic principles as yourself. Connections at this level override nationality, tribality, religiousness, language, appearance and all other superficial attributes. We may be closer to a person on the other side of the world than our next door neighbour. Globalisation means precisely this. Our social groups span continents.
Some things in Africa are easy to grasp. The idea that your identity is linked to a region or a tribe for example, which we also have quite strongly in the UK, especially between northerners and southerners, and don’t get them mixed up Nigerians or you’ll be in trouble! Other things are really baffling, like why an ordinary worker will wait to be told exactly what to do and not show initiative, or why the director of a company will sit in a waiting room for six hours to deliver his company’s brochure, or the way Nigerians will promise they will be able to do something or get something when there is no chance of it happening. It would be a mistake to try to interpret this in terms of one’s own culture, you’ve got to get right into the local way of thinking, and that is no easy task and no quick task.
Like Mohammed Ali, comparison with Africa has made me realise that the social conventions and separations in my own country are entirely arbitrary. Otherwise how could they be so different elsewhere? Learning about life in other countries is like having your skin stripped from you, leaving your true values and sense of right and wrong as the main part of your being. Seeing beyond the superficial is what gave Mohammed Ali the strength and moral courage to perceive the heart of the matter, and to stand up for what he believed in. This inspires me to try to be a better person this year, and to try to have the courage of my convictions. That’s why this year my New Year’s resolutions aren’t to lose weight or get up and hour earlier, though that would be nice! I want to try to be a better person, and perceive the hearts of other people beyond the superficial, to be more humanitarian in my outlook and in my behaviour, and to continue to make friends around the world.
1172 words
© Jill Rees
23 December 2007
Tags: Africa, Art, Article, Continent, Creative Writing, Europe, Famine, France, Friend, Friendship, Humanism, Humanist, jill, jill, Leader, money, Nigeria, Peace, pet, Spain, Survival, Travel, Tribal, War, WorkRelated posts
Update
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007Wondering about my friends in Abuja and what the weather is like, as they all told me it would be cold. As they were shivering when it was 25 degrees however I wonder what cold is for them.
I hear I have a little following who love my articles in the Leadership newspaper where I write a Sunday column. Most of the articles are on this site under ‘articles for Leadership’. I’m also still writing for UK publications on a variety of subjects.
Still plugging on with the Education Handbook. Basically it’s done except that I am unsure how to present it ie is it for a day course? A week? how much depth? What is aim etc? When I know the exact nature of a project or what to do with it, it can be easily adapted to a given thingy.
At the same time, I’m extending the idea into a book form, where it will be about systemic and humanitarian education and will be good for a teacher training or professional development course, also will enter the general affray about education today. I think it will be good. Not only that but I am the only person with this idea as an organised whole, because of my particular experiences which haven’t been restricted by being just in the classroom or just in the academic world, also being involved in Developing communities stuff, I’m able to put together the various ideas going around in a cohesive way, which should be useful and kind of healing. Our government and indeed worldwide education is surrounded by ideas of creative learning, multiple intelligences, sustainability, life-long learning and the ideas from the systemic theorists, but there is no development of what underlies all these ideas. That’s what I am doing, and making it a useable handbook for teachers, trainers, school leaders, government advisors and so on.
Meanwhile it looks as if I’ll be arranging my return later in the year to Abuja soon. At the moment I’m going off to Austria at the end of January with a teaching company. I’ve wanted to work for them since working with River in the summer. You go off and teach English in a team in an Austrian school. the week ends with a show the kids put on. It’s collaborative teaching and quite creative and I’m really looking forward to it.
My first assignment is for 7 weeks. You go to an airport and they give you a brown envelope with your tickets, resources and details of the week’s mission. At the end of the week they give you another envelope and you make your way to the next school. You can see it has enough of the James Bond element to satisfy my sense of adventure. And surely there’s not much I can get embroiled in in Austria - it’s in the EU! although my daughter has been mumbling about neo-Nazism, so you never know!
Christmas Eve, off to hospital to have two bottom wisdo teeth out. Won’t be able to eat over Christmas. Or drink. We adventurers have to get this sort of thing done when we can though.
Tags: adventures, Africa, Art, Article, Book, Classroom, Friend, jill, Leader, Leadership, News, Newspaper, Rain, Sea, Sun, War, Work, WritingRelated posts
Dr Lawson says…………….
Saturday, December 1st, 2007Dr Lawson studied in Liverpool for a PhD in tropical medicine thank god. It was in 1984 and he left just before the riots. I joked him that he’d set them off then left town quick, which he thought was funny. A Nigerian with a sense of humour, perhaps caught as an infectious Liverpudlian disease who knows? He told me last week that the people here are nice to you at first, trying to please you, then they stop doing what you tell them, so that you have to kind of oversee everyone under you, every day. This is true, I have to go tell the electrician to turn on the generator every morning, despite having told him to turn it on at 7.30 every day. This morning he couldn’t do it as he’d run out of diesel. I had told him to come get the spare the moment he had emptied the first jerrycan. Only three days ago!!!!!! I even had it translated into Yoruba for him in case the English was too complicated.
The workers at school .
He was delighted to hear about my operation when I had ulcerative colitis with the bowel removal, and was in awe of UK wonders, saying the thing about living where we do is that we can investigate, whereas in Nigeria they have to rely on the doctors. I told hm however that the tests they did failed to show up any illness and in the end it was Dr Goldie who just looked at me and said ‘I think I know what it is’. He was quite pleased with that. Anyway I had blood tests and those nurses at Eastover need to know that this Nigerian blood guy got blood out of me without any trouble and very gently leaving no bruises. I handed them a jar of my urine. I got the results on Friday but Dr Lawson had an enormously important national Methodist gathering all weekend so was somewhat distracted then. After a weekend of serious worry about the numbers, which I don’t understand, he said I’m still alive but with an infection somewhere (must be the teeth) and raised cholesterol. I’d taken a bet with Lakan the Taxi driver that he’d just tell me to go to the gym and I won, he did. So I’ll be at the Bodyline gym in town or else Lakan is going to take me to another one at the Bowling Alley complex near the National Stadium, which is just up the road from me. I’m on antibiotics too, like anyone who has money in Africa, it’s a sign of wealth - hey if you can afford it, why not take it? But hopefully my teeth will stop hurting.
Meanwhile Lakan is sweating with a headache and shoulder ache, Kunle was ill so he stood in for him to drive me, only now he’s ill too. He drove very carefully, especially as there’s been a storm, it rained hailstones and there were two beautiful rainbows forming one arc across the western sky. I gave him my last Anadin Extra so hope he’s better tomorrow, he’s a super guy. He’s taxi driving in the week and studying at the weekend to finish his degree as he was ill during his finals last time. His ister lives in Manchester and is very homesick, so if you’re reading this in Madland be nice to any young ladies you see who might be Nigerian as it might be Lakan’s sad sis needing some encouragement. She had to go over because of love, but is hoping to come back soon. They all come home!
I should talk about African Big Brother, the Show Which Never Ends. The horrible guy Richard seems to be winning and he’s been leading everyone on and finally bedded the Nigerian girl Tatiana last night. I can’t bear it!!! We had to watch them sleep. It’s like Andy Warhol 24/7. I avoided it for ages but finally my sheer hatred of this Richard guy drew me in and now I have to watch in the hope he’ll be evicted.
The best channel for news is…..Aljazeera, my god its good. You will see many famliar faces as the best BBC journalists work for them, in depth news and research and very balanced and international, you hear many viewpoints. Just one things…………..no sense of humour at all. When they report drizzle in south wales there’s none of Martin Gorgeous Lewis and his sighs of pity.
At work I have got over being soft and, following Stephanie’s guidance not to assume others know best because they are local, have taken a stand. I had to battle about everything but today - a sign, a parent came in with two little kids and was truly impressed by the preschool, jumping up and down at the tiny red triangles as they are learning about the number 3, ‘They know 3 mathematical principles in one activity!’ he cried as he jumped. ‘No,’ I said,’they don’t know it, but we’re developing their minds so that when they do grow old enough to learn it they will really understand it.’ Then I tried to find the teacher but the entire department had gone off to the market to look for toys, including one woman who shouldn’t have been there at all and had gone off to do her own private shopping. Then she lied about it so instead of a formal reprimand for walking out of school I’m probably going to have to sack her. The teaching staff aren’t very good and what was said at the start about the recruitment is probably true. In fact the huge mess I was left with becomes increasingly apparent every day. So I called Chianson the pastor back after his prayers last week which actually were really spot on and asked him to get marketing for us. How led astray I have been!
Let’s try to upload some photos…………
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