Jill Rees: Welcome Press

 

            While I was working as Head of Languages in a school in Somerset, in 2003, I started chanting for the happiness of every child in my class, then I added, ‘and in the school’. After a while I decided to include children at other schools in the town, then I included all the children in Somerset. Soon I started to chant about all the other children in the UK as well. As time progressed, I began to include children in Europe, then the world, and finally the parents too, and everyone in their communities. I was more or less chanting for the happiness of everyone in the world, which is the vow of the Buddha.

 

 

“At all times I think to myself:

How can I cause living beings

 to gain entry into the unsurpassed way

and quickly acquire the body of a Buddha?”

[Lotus Sutra ch 16)

 

This is what has happened as a result of that daimoku!

 

At this school I had the opportunity to start a Masters degree in Education, and I developed my dissertation from behaviour management ideas to systemic theory in education.

Systems theory is based on the idea that everything in the world is interconnected. It developed from bio-chemistry, and has been used in fields as diverse as cybertronics and psychological therapy. It is clearly very consistent with the Buddhist concept of dependent origination, that everything is interconnected. One analogy is the fisherman’s net: if you tweak one part of the net, the whole of the net will move.

Some people will recognise its use in Family Therapy, where instead of blaming the family member who appears to be having problems, the whole family is treated together, as it is believed that one family member’s actions is a response to the whole family situation. In terms of the classroom, or the school, or any organisation, if you change one part, everything will change. One thing you can always change is yourself, and as Buddhists we have a way to do that easily in chanting to the Gohonzon.

 

In UK schools, the problem is often poor or aggressive behaviour. Instead of seeing the child as the problem, the whole class, school or ultimately society is seen as part of the cause, and the child’s actions as a response to the environment around him or her.  In this way the child with problems is viewed with gratitude for bringing the negative situation within the system to our attention, so we can change it. The methodology is how to go about a process to be able to change the situation from the cause to the effect.  It is very dynamic and powerful, also very respectful to each individual, and it is based on soft power.

 

One day I phoned a friend I had met doing activities at the Buddhist Centre.   She introduced me to the work of Gregory Bateson, who had started the ideas behind systems theory.  This was it!  These were the thought processes I needed to develop a methodology for Education which would enable other teachers to teach in a Soka Education way, respecting the life of every individual.

The support from others in this field who I mysteriously bumped into from then on - Professors, a Soka school teacher in Japan, people involved in sustainable development projects around the world - are a result of the Buddhist principle as expressed in one of Nichiren’s letters:

 

 ‘When a caged bird sings, birds that are flying in the sky are thereby summoned and gather around,’ (MWND 872)

 

             I took part in an international internet forum called Soka Educators International Network, where I was able to share my research into systems education with others. From them I found out about a Soka Education programme in the poor areas of Brazil, called the Makiguchi Project, which encouraged children to pull themselves out of illiteracy, and also invited the parents to learn to read and write.

 

The children in my class meanwhile were doing very well, the medium ones getting what were previously top set results in tests and the lower ability kids, including three autistic children, developing good communication and interactive skills. The method for value creation in education using systems theory was having great results, and I shared it with my colleagues.

 One class told me, ‘You are the only teacher who respects us.’ This isn’t really true, as all the teachers were really good in this school, but it reflected the deep respect that was coming from my Buddhahood to them, which they were feeling, and the confidence that the systemic method was able to give them. This assured me I was doing the right thing, and that systemic education based on the fundamental principle in Buddhism of respect for every individual would be the way forward..

 

Because of a financial crisis, my school was becoming very nasty, with   people being bullied, contracts not being renewed, older teachers replaced by temporary newly qualified teachers and so on. The Headteacher was a fundamentalist Christian, and put members of his own Church into management positions in the school.  I decided I should leave this abusive environment, although not without having shakabuku’d the Head and his wife, using an article about an inspiring woman in the Art of Living magazine, and negotiating a profitable severance package which enabled me to travel to Africa.

 

            I did lots of Buddhist activities. I volunteered to help at the Centre, I supported local members, I helped organise courses, I held an awareness event in my town, I helped organise the Seeds of Change exhibition and I took two study courses in Buddhism. I introduced several people to the practise, who went on to do wonderful things and become happy,

Someone in the town I worked in started to practise really strongly. It turned out he lived in the house I used to park my car outside to chant at lunch time!  Soon, this town had a strong District, and I felt secure that children in the schools would have support now.

At home, my husband started to chant, and he has a really strong practise. This was something I had been chanting for fourteen years. He was promoted at work and his salary was increased to what mine had been, enabling us to carry on in the manner to which we had become accustomed.

 

Out of the blue, I was invited by the person who had originally introduced me to this practise, to drive a van in Africa. Eight of us drove the same number of vans down on a wonderful journey, through Spain, across the strait at Gibraltar, down the west coast of Morocco and across to Mali. Five of us were members of SGI, a sixth was a member of another Nichiren sect and one person started to practise along the way! We really rocked! The leader was African himself, and very knowledgeable and able to explain how people think there, so I could get a good understanding of African life and how African people tend to think.

Afterwards I was asked to lead a school in Nigeria, a British Curriculum School in the capital Abuja. By an amazing and mystic co-incidence, the founder of the Soka Educators International Forum had also just arrived in Abuja, as her husband, a diplomat, had been posted there. Together, we developed a Methodology for Sustainable Education which is based on Makiguchi’s Value Creating philosophy, or Soka Education.

Because I had just completed the second Study course in the UK, I was able to help introduce the SGI-UK study course to Nigeria, and they are now using it as their study in that country.  When I left three months later, SGI Nigeria was made independent. This means people can receive Gohonzon in Nigeria.

 

The one thing I have always been too scared to chant for is my personal dream to be a successful writer. Through a contact, I was asked to write a Sunday column for a newspaper in Abuja, which I write every week. In this column I am able to encourage people who are trying to create positive change in a difficult emerging nation, based on Buddhist ideas of humanitarianism and respect for everyone. Stuff goes on my website too, and I feel this is beginning to develop. Of course, I also write articles about Sustainable Education, which are read by some of the people who are involved throughout the world.  I helped start a project for sustainable development in northern Nigeria which enables poor families, especially girls, to attend school.  

 

              Since then I have been able to teach around Europe, in countries such as Austria, Bulgaria, Italy and Istanbul, for a company who send in a team of teachers to do one week of intensive English study in a school. The course is very creative, and we get to travel and visit celebrated European sights. I have been able to chant and support members around Europe.

As I watch my students enjoying their learning in Europe and Africa, I smile to remember how I had determined that every child in the world will have a joyful educational experience. I never imagined  that my ridiculously big determination would enable my own life to expand so much.  

 

1550 words

Jill Rees 2008

 

Tags: Article, behaviour in schools, jill, Makiguchi, Nigeria, northern nigeria, Soka education, sustainable development, Sustainable education

Related posts

• Straight as an arrow to my mission (0)
• Report from Abuja Nigeria (0)
• Nigerian MPs in Bust-up, pictures are the problem (0)
• Nigeria’s still here…..just! (1)
• New Year (0)

I know what it is like to weep bitter tears for my country. Throughout the 1980s my country was run by a rabid right wing solipsist who systematically destroyed every institution which had made ‘British Constitutional Socialism’ almost universally respected as an attempt to build Jerusalem in our green and pleasant land. Finally, when criticised, she snorted, ‘There’s no such thing as society.’ So it was that I read a reader’s letter with empathy, a PhD student at a prestigious university in Benue, telling me he wept for Nigeria.

British Democracy evolved over several centuries following the 16^th century Earls Rebellion for freedom of religion and the fair application of land inheritance. Although ‘gentlemen’ had a say in Parliament, democracy in the sense of the common people having a say was much fought for and much died for.

After the Plague in England, workers were very much in demand, and wages and conditions were excellent. Consequently, political change occurred mainly among the aristocrats and concerned higher constitutional matters. By the early 1880s, the population had grown and wages could be cut to starvation level because workers were obliged to take what they could get. If anyone objected, they would be fired and another hired in his stead. Agriculture and industry was just beginning to develop on a global scale and production had not yet reached levels of major exportation. It was illegal to join together to protest until 1824, when trade unions began to be formed legally.

In 1832, six men joined together in a ‘friendly society’ in Tolpuddle, south west England, to protest against the gradual lowering of wages. The powers that be objected, and they were arrested and exiled. These men became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and symbolise the rights of the working people to a decent living and a decent lifestyle.

During the next 50 years, conditions for ordinary people in Britain were dire. A novel, ‘The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’, was written about the conditions endured by poverty-struck working men who were unable to make enough money to support themselves and their wives. Throughout this long story, wives die in childbirth, men too sick to work are unable to visit a doctor, children die in hunger and of ordinary childhood diseases they could not afford to treat and cause by defiled living conditions.  The book was not permitted to be published until 1914, when many of the workers the author Robert Tressell wrote about were being slaughtered as ‘cannon fodder’ on the battlefields of Europe.

Throughout the novel Tressell’s hero Frank Owen asks the question, why do so many allow themselves to be so mistreated by the few? He urges working people to stop being ‘philanthropists’ to the rich, working themselves literally to death so that fat cats can make ever increasing profits, and supported by those who could afford the backing to be in potions of power. Until the poor become organised, he thinks, the rich will take what they want.

This is similar to Nigeria today in many ways. Wealth is the main source of power, and to be in government you need to be from a certain background. Meanwhile, low wages, poor housing, paltry health and nutritional resources and limited educational opportunities keep the poor in their place. The poor and powerless complain, they talk about the corruption in power, yet they remain in isolation, and do nothing. They weep.

There are too many young people in Africa. They don’t need to be persuaded by high wages, they don’t need to be educated, and they have no leverage to fight corruption in high places. If an individual complains out loud, they are sacked and replaced.  The state doesn’t need to keep all the babies born alive until they reach working age, more will come.

Never has anyone with power voluntarily yielded it. Nigerians can look at corruption and ask ‘Why, why?’ but the answer is simply ‘Because’. Why don’t the rich and powerful not share their wealth?  Because they don’t have to, nobody makes them.

When I went to Nigeria I too was concerned about all this corruption in high places.  I was soon shocked to understand that it went all the way to the bottom too: to the maid who steals from her Madam, to the security who keeps you waiting until you pay a bit extra, to the worker who won’t do anything extra unless you give him a ‘tip’. How can they complain about corruption, I would ask, and yet do the same?

‘To survive’ said my friend, obviously wondering how I got to be so stupid.

The oppression of the workers continued in the UK in between the wars. In the 1930s poverty was so bad that the famous ‘Jarrow Marchers’ walked from the north to London, picking up thousands of unemployed workers along the road.  The Labour government of the day, along with the Trade Union Movement, ignored the 12,000 workers who came on the Houses of Westminster.

Only after the Second World War, when the whole of Europe was in ruins, did some element of idealism as well as necessity see fit to build the decent society we find in Britain today. In 1945, a newly elected government began to invest in agriculture, in steel and coal industries, in Heath and education for all its citizens, and in child support for poorer families.

The lessons we have learned are these: those in power will not yield it without a fight; the working people have to unite and work together, not to let one individual get fired or bullied in the workplace;  poor and underprivileged people need to get organised; we must never give up however long it takes; dignity and unity are what matters.

The economic crisis is worrying many people worldwide, but for us who have nothing, the worry is much less. In fact, this may be a window of opportunity for us to change some conventional  economic structures. Today’s forward-thinkers are interested in sustainable development and co-operative working.  These obviously lend themselves to small independent projects.

Sustainability means we don’t have to produce an awful lot of stuff. Co-operatives mean we don’t have to have money, because several minor players combine what they have.  The trick is to contain them. In the USA, at the start of the great corn belts, famers worked in co-operatives to share expensive machinery, and this enabled them to harvest huge areas of land, and make profits which could then be put back into the farms, until they were able to become independent.

With sustainability however, there is no real need to ever become independent. In France and Spain, wine and other co-operatives have simply stayed together, enjoying the pool of labour and skills, and content with smaller profits. The increase in standard of living is slow, but this in itself enables the co-operatives to stay ‘beneath the radar’ as it were and out of the state’s eye, with its desire to control everything.

Modern co-operatives include coffee co-ops in South America, and the organic projects in Uganda. Fair Trade, a company which began as a farmer’s co-op to keep profits with the growers instead of the supermarket chains, has developed into an international phenomenon. Organisations and NGOs abound whose job is to help fledgling sustainability projects, like the Green Belt project of Uganda. But how close are Nigerians to being able to use these opportunities?

A commonly held view from the ‘Stupid White Man’ community (apologies to other stupid white men out there) is that Africans are incapable of strategic thinking and unable to plan ahead. This is patently not so: the Nigerian scams are often brilliantly planned and executed.   If, instead of spending their energy scheming plotting and cheating, young people decided to work together to improve their lot, what could not be achieved?

1,309 words

©Jill Rees

04 October 2008

Tags: co-operative movement, corruption, Leadership, Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, Nigeria, progress, trade unions

Related posts

• In School Today (0)
• Who is Jill Rees? (0)
• The Return of Martin Guerre (0)
• Straight as an arrow to my mission (0)
• Poor Africa (0)

It’s nice to get letters from readers of this column, even when the response is not as positive as it could be. Contrary to what a reader recently accused me of, I don’t say things just to ‘provoke a reaction’, as he felt obliged to write his thoughts to me about the intentions of Archbishop Peter Akinole’s attempts to split the African Church from the Rest of the World over the issue of homosexuality. I thought long and hard about whether I should write about a subject that still upsets many Nigerians. In the end I wrote about it because I thought it was right that Nigerians are aware of this big difference in attitude between Nigeria and the developed world.

In the liberal, secular nations, personal choice issues such as homosexuality and sex before marriage are almost universally accepted. Even if a lifestyle is not approved of by an individual, the right to live according to one’s own conscience is strongly upheld by all.  Nigerians have the right to know that that is how we think in the north.

For us it is part of the whole human rights thing and ‘rights of the individual’ thing. In the UK in particular, laws against discrimination are enforced fairly rigidly, and any kind of attack or slight against a gay person, a physically handicapped person or a person of a different race or religion will be taken seriously both by the police and by employers.  Even children can’t be bossed around by strangers. Sometimes this goes a bit far. The other day I was cycling down the canal path when a little boy accompanied by his mother, also on a bike, wobbled about unsure which side to go past me on. As I went by him i called out ‘It’s best if you pull onto the left hand side’. His mother yelled furiously after me,

‘You mind your own f*&^%$£ business you f*&^%$£ cow!’ which I thought was a bit over the top in the circumstances. It reminded me of teaching in English schools.

I found it quite sad last week when I came back to teach in school here to hear the children swearing at their teacher.

‘We don’t want to learn’ they say. Because their parents have bought them the latest blackberry phone, iPod and Wii computer games, they see no reason to work hard for themselves.

Democratically mature countries seem to have a disrespect for authority. Even more, a distrust of those in authority. When Priests have been led into the courts in droves for child abuse, our Prime Minister has lied in the House of Commons about Sadam’s weapons of mass destruction, and where the banks with our mortgages collapse, how are we to trust them? Gordon Brown at the moment can’t put a foot right. Whenever he speaks in his own defence, his audience just laugh mockingly. Nothing he says will sound credible, because we can’t tell lies from truth now.

So while I can understand the children for not trusting what their teachers say to them, I feel sorry for them. Human society progresses only by each generation being able to assimilate just that little bit more each time, and this is achieved by listening to those who have gone before. If children won’t listen to their teachers, they won’t be able to learn. Of course this is how the governments want it, only the most liberal of nations, maybe Sweden or somewhere, would want its young people to genuinely be able to work out what’s going on.

Nigerians I guess can see how, when something is handed to you on a plate, it can be taken for granted. The positive side to it is that when many children in the UK don’t take advantage of their opportunities, it is more worthwhile for Nigerians to persist in becoming qualified as much as they can, despite the hardships. If Nigerians can rid themselves of the reputation they have in England for dishonesty and scams, they will be recognised for the hard-working people the majority are, and will become a sought after workforce in an under populated Europe, for those Nigerians who want a spell abroad.

While every Nigerian is aware of the importance of education, as yet the government has not managed to ensure even Primary education for every child, and huge investment in public education is still needed. Even then, teachers will have to be better trained, and this is going take a generation at best. The same problem occurs in Nigeria as in the UK, if the government can’t be bothered to fund education properly, how can we trust them?

Nigerians have picked up on the idea that their politicians and business leaders may not be entirely honest in their dealings.  If you want to join with us in distrusting our leaders, why not take up the correlative? The good side of this mainly negative trend? The idea that everyone is equal and has the right to be themselves. We need  unity among ourselves to keep a beady eye on authorities, secular or otherwise to get through this.

864 words

30 September 2008

©Jill Rees

Tags: Article, corruption, government, Leadership, Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, Nigeria, political, priests, school, secular, trust

Related posts

• Tears for my country (0)
• Straight as an arrow to my mission (0)
• a reversal of fortune (2)
• Who is Jill Rees? (0)
• Update (0)

Recently I found myself embroiled in an argument with a businessman from Lagos about agriculture in Africa. Bizarrely, although the argument was very passionate, we both were arguing the same point of view, although not only did he know much more about it than me, he also had more ‘right’ to speak about it, as he is Nigerian, and himself personally involved. The argument was saying that Africa ought to be a major food producer in the world, and that many acres in Africa are just wasted when they could be made productive.

No way would I encourage any violent sabotage of oil pipes of course, although when polluters bribe the population with wealth and jobs, as they do in the UK, it is one thing; but when the jobs and wealth go to investors one can only term ‘imperialists’, while the crude oil leaks across the fields and streams of poor people’s countryside, disabling their ability to be self-sufficient, one can only feel sympathetic. But today we aren’t talking about the injustice surrounding Nigeria’s oil production for a change, we’re talking about land far from the Delta State.

‘Everywhere I go,’ said my friend, ‘I see fields that are lying fallow, nobody using them. All over Nigeria are these stretches of wilderness, waiting to feed us.’

One of the most surprising things about Africa when I first came was that Africans prefer to eat meat with every meal. In Europe, we like to have a bun or a small bowl of muesli for breakfast. When my host Yussouf saw this he was horrified, and, thinking he would be seen as a poor host (especially as his wife was largely invisible in the kitchen, but enough about his problems!), he rushed out to the market to get some meat for grill.  To this day, he fails to believe that we like vegetarian meals, and suspects that we are intimating that he is too poor to feed us properly. No, Africans like meat.

‘We can’t really get the food like in Africa,’ moped the waiter at the Africa Restaurant in Bristol, England, ‘Because we can’t get high enough quality meat here’. The quality of meat is much better in Africa, than our fatty gristly stuff.

We like all the other African stuff too, couscous, Atlantic fish, exotic fruit like Papaya and so on.  Though we clearly source it in Africa, the image of Africa that it is full of starving children and famine prevails. This is because northern white men are stupid.

‘Here is a papaya,’ I say patiently, ‘Where does it come from?’

‘Africa.’

‘Correct, so what do Africans eat?’

‘Rice from American aid packages.’

‘No, now I’m going to start again, let’s take it more slowly this time….’

During my childhood, another African state in chaos, Uganda, expelled its most successful citizens, the Sikhs of Indian origin, and we agreed to take them in the UK. Since then, Uganda has spent long decades in the doldrums and finally scratched its way back into relatively high functioning. It is now one of Africa’s agricultural miracles. With two seasons for growth, large rainfall and rich soils, millions of small farmers have worked hard to develop their production of cash crops.  Fish, rice, vanilla, sunflower seeds, roses and potatoes are all blooming.   Ugandan farm output has increased nearly 50 percent during the past decade. Having died off since the sixties, when Africa became isolationist after liberation of so many former colonies, exports are once again beginning to build.

West African countries, such as Liberia, have decided to limit exports because of increased costs to farmers, and this closing down of markets can only destabilise African trade. Having finally got an advantage, Africa needs to hold on to it. What could really help would be a strong African Union, a bit like the European Union. African countries doesn’t seem to keep in touch with each other as much as they should, if they want to ward off the twin evils of European monetary strength and American loathing of all that is not actually America.

As well as providing the cash incentives, as Uganda has done, for small local people to grow crops, the nations need to invest in distribution. This would have the dual benefit of dealing with rural poverty as well as increasing national exports.  Mali is an example of a country which is building roads, has an understanding of national infrastructure, and is concentrating on trucks and transport as much as production. President Toure denies his is a poor country - if it is well-run, and the people eat and are educated, a country is not poor, he claims. It is the producer of the world’s best cotton, for example. Mali and Niger have recently started a programme, helped out by the Islamic Development Bank, to build dams along the Niger to grow food in previously droughted and impoverished areas bordering on the Sahara desert.

This is when a government cares about its people, of course. Other countries not very far from here are more interested in using the Aid programmes to look after the people, such as they do, and pocketing any investment money whenever they can.

One thing you can trust African countries to do is to blow everything by the leaders’ love of gain and their self-interest. Africa, with its land, its rain, its sun, its oil, its seas, its population explosion, its fruit and vegetables, should always have been ‘paved with gold’ as Timbuktu once was. Ironically, the obstacle to exports at the moment is not the climate, nor is it Africa’s varied bugs, blown around unpredictably by the Saharan winds.  The problem is the increase in oil prices which farmers need for their farm vehicles and machinery. A simple way to maintain advances in agriculture would be for government to buffer the farmers from these price hikes, which Nigeria, as a major oil producer, should have no trouble in doing.

Of course we don’t really need government to be doing something positive. In Kibera, Uganda, former inmates of prisons who couldn’t get work started digging out old slum areas and turning it all into organic farmland. They enlisted the help of Green Dreams, a pioneer company who support organic farming. Casting aside the broken bottles, tin cans, abandoned tyres, animal bones and ‘flying toilets’ littering the grounds, the young men purified the soil of zinc by planting sunflowers, which absorb the poisonous metal. They quickly established a local customer base in the slums, and are now a teaching farm for other potential organic farmers. None of the lads intends returning to prison! For a family or group of families, a tiny plot of earth can be used to grow some favourite things, with just a little watering, getting the kids to learn about the beauty of growing things.

‘Who is going to change this thing?’ said the businessman. Who indeed?

1,160 words

©Jill Rees

23 September 2008

Tags: Africa, agriculture, AID, farmers, Kibera Uganda, Leadershiip, Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, Mali, Nigeria, President Toure

Related posts

• The Gentleman Farmer (0)
• ‘Scraped flat by rollers of wars, wars, wars’ * (0)
• Who is Jill Rees? (0)
• Welsh Nigerian (0)
• We’ve still got time. (0)

There is a joke about Africans: An American is driving his 4×4 in the desert when he realises he is lost. Suddenly he spies a Bedouin herding his camels and decides to ask for directions.

‘I’ll play a trick on him’, thinks the American. Pulling up beside the Bedouin, the American speaks slowly and uses his hands to illustrate: ‘I am come from the moon,’ he announces in a lordly manner, ’Show me the way to your nearest city.’ The Bedouin eyes him emotionlessly, and merely raises his arm to point. ‘How stupid these Africans are, thinks the American, ‘he didn’t even understand what I said.’ As he is about to pull away, the Bedouin reaches out his hand and shakes the American’s hand.

‘So you have come from the moon? says the Bedouin, ’I am honoured to meet you Mr Armstrong’.

Thus has the internet brought knowledge of, not only man walking on the moon, but, well, everything. Everyone on Earth can access worldwide events, via the internet. There are websites about every conceivable subject, chat sites and blogs from every faction, from Algerian independent groups to NASA. The internet is the Olympics of the modern era, the height of human achievement and the showcase of all human research and human thought. It has brought liberation and education in the most unlikely places. Governments are sensitive to networking sites such as Facebook, which organises rallies and petitions about contentious issues. Governments employ people to sift their way through these sites to monitor public opinion. In supposedly closed cultures, like Saudi Arabia, youths are accessing heavy metal on YouTube and forming their own rock bands. It is uncontrollable. ‘Heavy metal will free Islamic peoples’ says one of the young metal heads, rather obtusely. The internet is ensuring that everyone knows what is going on around the world.

Except in China, that is, to the annoyance of western journalists. China started its war on the internet a few years ago by banning the search engine Google, ensuring that its citizens were not corrupted by the wicked western democracies. Western journalists claim that in particular, the Chinese don’t want their people to see the human rights sites such as Amnesty International, which has details about political prisoners and Chinese work camps. Information such as the historical events at Tiananmen Square in 1989 is also still unknown to most people in China.

The image of excellent government is very important for Chinese society, and the government ensures that this impression is the one its people have, they find it reassuring. Not for the Chinese the tempestuous overturnings of democracies; it prefers to progress in a slow, calm and gradual way. The internet, it claims, incites populations, and as well as not always informing accurately, it causes social unrest.

‘It is better to see it once, than to hear it one million times.’ goes the Chinese saying. Precisely so, say the journalists who have arrived in Beijing to cover the Olympic Games. They want to see the images of Chinese life, good and bad, and also to send their own impressions and photographs back to their newspapers. It isn’t good enough to have to wait before news can be sent, people in Europe and America expect to be informed instantaneously.

What makes it all the more irritating to journalists is that all the negotiation has ended long ago to everyone’s apparent satisfaction. The Chinese Olympic committee had agreed to allow access to the important web sites, at least within the limited sphere of journalistic hotels and Olympic areas. In the Chinese tradition, however, to agree is merely to be polite; unlike in Europe, agreement isn’t necessarily binding. For the Chinese, it is good to show willing, even if you don’t take the actions. There is a suitable time for everything. Like the Ents in Lord of the Rings, it doesn’t pay to be hasty among the Chinese. But the journalists can’t wait: the Olympics is happening NOW! And time is money!

‘Why should journalists covering the Olympic Games want access to sites about Tibet?’ Chinese organisers are saying. ‘These sites are not related to the Olympic Games’. Information, to the developed world, is a right. We desire to know about things just for the sake of knowing. It isn’t necessary for information to have a focus; we just want to know things.

Take road signs. In the UK a sign might say ‘Road blocked due to necessary bridge repairs. We apologise for the inconvenience’. Contrast this with the type of message proffered in countries not all that far from here, and yes Turkey I mean you: ‘No entry road blocked.’ As a Westerner, and used to being fully informed even if it doesn’t concern me, this latter makes me want to drive up the road as far as I can go just to see what is going on. ‘Don’t you just want to know why?’ I ask people, but they just look at me as if I’m crazy. The powers that be have said it, so it is case closed.

The thing is, I don’t know if I need to know it until I actually know it. Knowledge is power, and if the people are informed they may indeed decide to change their government, to refuse to pay an unjust tax, to demonstrate against an unjust war, to challenge their leaders for explanations of policy. The fact that knowledge is power is one thing the Chinese government do not need reminding. But although the people may be more obnoxious, stroppy, demanding and time-consuming if they have access to information, one thing they are not, oh governors of the world’s newest superpower is this: they are not as likely to stage an outright coup d’etat if they are given more access to this power. Greater liberal democracy, we have seen time and again, means greater stability.

The founders of the Olympic Games were the founders simultaneously of democracy. In ancient Athens, peoples’ dreams became reality on the sports field and in the governing of ancient Greece. Unstable and oppressive societies are as unlikely to achieve excellence in the modern world as they were in the ancient world. We can only hope that the true Olympic spirit reveals itself to the Chinese leadership during these Games, and that the gateway to knowledge and freedom is opened as a result. That would be our Gold.

1069 words ©Jill Rees

05 August 2008

Tags: Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, Nigeria, Olympics

Related posts

• ‘Scraped flat by rollers of wars, wars, wars’ * (0)
• Who is Jill Rees? (0)
• Welsh Nigerian (0)
• We’ve still got time. (0)
• Unifying Factor (0)

‘Vampire states in Africa are sucking the life blood out of our nations’, Ghanan George Ayittey said  during his address to international academics and experts at the recent Technology, Education and Development  conference in Tanzania, ‘and that is why Africa’s begging bowl leaks.’

According to his thinking, it leaks from corruption, capital flight and over dependence on food imports. In the 1960s, Africa was self-sufficient in foods, fed itself and exported from its agriculture.

Africa today is made up of cheetahs, he went on, and hippos. The cheetahs are the go-getting young, that new generation who are angry about the state of Africa, and those who are trying to change. The hippos, well, just look at them! They blame colonialism for what has happened since the 1960s, when the facts suggest it is not colonialism but themselves who are responsible for the denigration of their respective countries.

‘The question Africans should ask themselves’, he continued, ‘is this: are you a cheetah or a hippo?’

Post colonial leaders have failed their people, he says, and he calls them ‘fou-fou heads’. I have no idea what a fou-fou head is, but I would not dream of calling a Nigerian one, much less a head of state.  Still, President Yar’Adua seems to think there are a lot of fou-fou heads around him who he is enjoying getting rid of. Perhaps he is in agreement with Mr Ayittey.

A British woman at the airport ahead of me was found to have $6,000 in cash on her.

‘My husband insists that I travel with an emergency fund,’ she explained. The two customs men looked at each other and smiled,

‘Is your husband Nigerian?’  At the airport, you are handed a notice saying ‘There is currently no restriction on taking money out of Nigeria’, as if almost encouraging this rupture of the nation’s wealth, which everyone knows stems from corrupt practises somewhere down the line, and maybe at every stage in the line.

Africa has two problems, rats and the governments. They are not governments, continues Ayittey, but ‘vampire states’, that suck the lifeblood out of their people.  Africa’s problem is its governments and its governments are its problem. People who think the problems stem from colonialism are wrong, for colonialism would be taking an entirely different tack.

A country that reminds me continually of Africa, despite its trying desperately to become European, is Turkey. Recently I was at a school prize giving. As soon as their own child received their certificate, the parents left. They didn’t even clap other children receiving certificates. In Europe and even more so America, we have a big thing about celebrating success, and it doesn’t really matter whose success it is. The success of all our children is what will make our country great to live in in the future. This selfish inward looking attitude seemed to sum up all that is blocking progress in Turkey.  Every citizen matters. Every citizen matters equally: this is the principal of democracy.

African countries have, since colonialisation ended, adopted a modern approach to their economies, and they have done this very quickly. The traditional ways of running market economies, and the largely informal ways of markets which are mainly local and very successful, especially in areas where the climate is unpredictable, have been downgraded and almost lost. In a sustainable economical project in Jos, one of the arms of the project is to encourage local people to find their old methods once more through narrative and exploring their traditional cultures while some people are still alive who remember them. This is enabling local people, especially women, who traditionally ran the markets, to realise ways to re-establish local economies, and work their way back out of the recent plague of localised poverty. Run mainly by local people, this project has not tried to impose any external solution on this community. This isn’t colonialism, but local inspirations for local solutions which are sustainable.

The masses of aid sent to Africa by well-meaning groups has been largely wasted. It is one thing where there is a disaster or a war, and where outside help is clearly needed, and in this kind of situation Nigeria has itself been very active in sending economic and army assistance; and quite another to use foreign aid to shore up corrupt economic governmental management. This is why Africa begging bowl leaks. Reliance on aid, which is largely accepted throughout modern Africa, is a form of colonialist attitude.

Well meaning projects in Nigeria such as the education reforms for every primary school age child to be in school, start off well and then realise aid can be obtained for these projects. Consequently government funding dries up, and the infrastructure never improves. All projects which improve life for people become temporary again.  The building up of Nigeria’s infrastructure needs to be certain, reliable, long-term, and locally managed.

Communities need to develop further in a sustainable way, based on traditional communities and including, though not exclusively, agriculture and traditional industries, locally produced exportable goods such as Shea butter products which are much sought after in Europe and the USA, and expanding areas such as eco-tourism. In some countries such as Malawi, this is starting and shows signs of being successful.

‘We can take Africa back,’ concludes Mr Ayittey, ‘one village at a time.’  The best thing is, every person who begins some kind of small project, making their own clothes in Gandhi style, or producing some simple marketable item which funds their daughter’s schooling, is creating the basis for the New Africa, the Africa that works, and is truly independent.  However minor one’s efforts may seem to be to begin with, each person can feel empowered and confident that they, not the seemingly powerful fat-cats, are the foundation stones of the new Nigeria.

982 words

©Jill Rees

25 August 2008

Tags: Africa, George Ayittey, Jos, Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, Nigeria

Related posts

• Unifying Factor (0)
• Unifying factor (0)
• Out of Africa (0)
• New Year (0)
• Democracy and corruption in Nigeria (0)

Every four and a half minutes someone in the world is scammed by a Nigerian!

Recently this was reported on the BBC, to the detriment perhaps of Nigerians everywhere. The Athenian George Nicolas is one victim of a scam, and now realises how foolish and naive he has been. ‘They seemed so intelligent,’ he said, ‘And so well educated.’ Perhaps this is the key to the success of the scams.

The popular image of Africans in Europe is far from an intelligent, literate, business-oriented internationalist. The European version is a poor, half-naked, ignorant and starving native with chattering teeth and speaking in clicks as he shakes his decorated spear. Europeans like to think they can help Africans by donating money and clothing for aid, or they think of the savage armies in Somalia and Zimbabwe.

The wily city-boys from Lagos are outside of their ideas, even when they are within their experience. However often Europeans meet large, muscley, handsome and charming gentlemen from Nigeria, men who have obviously never missed a healthy meal, they persist in this image of the starving African. This means that when they are approached by someone with an articulate request, they will tend not to be alerted, indeed not really to register that this is an African.

Of course our image of the nature of criminality plays its part. Despite the continuing fraudsters in a certain political party in the UK, who are usually Eton and Oxbridge educated, the public believes that criminals are lower-class dirty scum, drunken and homeless, wife-bashing no-goods who stupidly rob and murder. Of course this doesn’t make sense. The drunken man of fictional criminality is the man who has failed as a criminal. Clearly if they are successfully thieving, they are going to have plenty of money. It may be that a certain kind of pickpocket is indeed a poor kid, but if he is to succeed he’s got to wise up.

In the UK we have a fine tradition of the gentleman, and this is a concept without nationality. The Royal Family are friends with the King of Jordan, for example, and other ‘gentlemen’ from Arab nations in particular. Such is the romanticism of the Arab gentleman, taken perhaps from Lawrence of Arabia and fictions like Arabian Nights, that Princess Diana charmed rosy-cheeked English girls with her delightful romance with the dusky, wealthy and delightful Dodi Fayed.

Alongside our concept of the scruffy criminal and the wily Nigerian, stands the romantic vision of the dusky African lover. The Egyptian Omah Sharif has more or less made a career of his sexy and romantic Arab-ness, playing in Lawrence of Arabia and in the lead role in Dr Zhivago. We have our Eastern crumpet for the middle classes, the Indian Art Malik who, although persistently attempting to change his image by playing villains, is remembered and adored among English ladies of a certain age for his sexy portrayal of Hari Kumar in ‘The Jewel in the Crown’.

Although Omar Sharif converted to Islam, returned to Egypt and has gone completely Arab on us, we still adore him. He recently told George Bush that things would never work out in Iraq because ‘people of the East’ will never succumb to democracy, they just like to ‘go to the nearest Sheik’. ‘He didn’t believe me’ the disgruntled Sharif complained as Bush invaded Iraq anyway.

Sub-Saharan Africans are a bit shadier when it comes to desirability. On the one hand, they are known to have certain…….accruements which are greatly lauded by white women; on the other, they are thought to be somewhat fiery and volatile, and a little bit macho.

Some of this volatility was on display when a scam was traced to a Nigerian internet cafe owner in London, Ikon Bukeh, who replied to his accusers simply by shouting, ‘Get out of here!’ in the secure knowledge no doubt that it is very difficult to trace the scammers, but also completely oblivious to the effect he had on the image of Nigerians. A calm, polite and intelligent demeanour would have led to the TV and therefore the entire population of the UK to say, along with our victim George Nicolas, ‘Nigerians are so intelligent, and so well-educated,’ and by inference therefore cannot be criminals.

The good impression of Nigerian men will now have to wait for another opportunity to show the other side, the more positive side, to the national character that is true of the majority of Nigerians. Slowly, the drip-drip of fine upstanding gentlemen and ladies who don’t sell their own babies, as we observed previously with the case of the woman who tried to claim state benefit for a baby she had bought in Lagos, will get into the consciousness of British people and European people. This is necessary for the increased co-operation and interaction between Nigeria and the rest of the world which we all hope is to happen for Nigeria to become a major world player.

Of course, the ordinary upstanding citizen who minds their own business doesn’t tend to make headlines, and it can be frustrating to see poor examples impoverish the image of Nigerians, but in the case of image, the slow way is the best way. Whenever opportunity arises, the key is to make sure it is taken. China recently had an enormous amount of poor publicity to do with Tibet, much of which was unjustified. However, the moment their fantastic rescue services launched into action following the earthquake in Szechuan province, the image of China changed to a respect worthy modern state.

The longer Nigeria works as a democracy, and the more people notice excellence among Nigerians, the easier it will be for individual Nigerians to do business, and for public representatives to make inroads into projects for progress. The scams are probably the greatest enemy of Nigeria at the moment, in that they create such a poor image of the country.

 

994 words © Jill Rees 11 June 2008

Tags: Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, Nigeria, scams

Related posts

• May 5th What we see of Nigeria (0)
• ‘Scraped flat by rollers of wars, wars, wars’ * (0)
• Who is Jill Rees? (0)
• Welsh Nigerian (0)
• We’ve still got time. (0)

So here it is: Barack Obama, possibly the first black President in the US. ‘Generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment,’ he said in his victory speech following the Montana primary on Wednesday, ‘When the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.’

He may not be able to stop the ocean, but certainly Barack Obama has grown in stature since he came to the nation’s attention back in January, during the Iowa caucus.

When he announced he intended to run for the nomination of the Democratic Party in February 2007, people thought it was a good thing that a black man would be in the democratic picture at the start, but perhaps only Obama himself and his wife Michelle really imagined he would be here now, the nominee elect.

Not until January 3^rd, when he came in first in the Iowa caucus, traditionally the launch pad of the campaign for nomination, did the world suddenly sat up and took notice.

Perhaps the strangest thing about this historic Iowa event was that when questioned, the majority of the democrat electorate for the nominations in Iowa said that the most important thing for the candidate was that he or she would be likely to unify the Democratic Party. The astute observer would have noticed that what was being said about Obama was extraordinary.

His supporters include Senator John Kerry, himself once a candidate for President, Claire McKaskill, respected senator of Missouri, celebrities like Matt Damon, Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, George Clooney, who thinks ‘He is the best candidate I’ve ever seen, he is a leader.’ Senator Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy bring in the old legion of hope from that famous and adored first family, respected senator Bill Bradley brings up the rear of this impressive list.

Still it took Hillary Clinton some time to realise she had a genuine rival. Perhaps Hillary’s coming third to John Edwards in Iowa should have heralded a warning that there were weaknesses in her campaign even then, but we didn’t see them. Even those few short months ago, the idea that the United States of America would really nominate a black man for President seemed unimaginable.

The secret and the strength of Barack Obama is perhaps that he doesn’t act as if he is the underdog at all, but as if he is the natural heir to the Presidency. During his 11 subsequent wins, Obama looked increasingly statesmanlike. His inspirational speeches drew gasps of admiration from seasoned politicians and, more importantly touched the hearts of the public. Even when his preacher Jeremiah White made incendiary remarks in a sermon about the anger felt by black people against racist America, Obama responded by his ‘More Perfect Union’ speech of February 8^th. In it, he gained the respect of all Americans by facing up to the fact that much of America had yet to find genuine equality, yet this hope for unity, and this kind of change in people’s hearts, was what his campaign was and is all about.

Dissenters such as Donald Kittl of the University of Pennysylvania doubted whether ‘some white working class Pennysylvanians’ would resonate to it, but most onlookers felt he had tackled the race issue as well as its contingent religious issue ‘in a Presidential manner’ and ‘finally treated Americans like adults’. By not shying away from the complexity of feeling in the US about race, he had showed himself to be straightforward and trustworthy, the very qualities Americans are feeling bereft of from their incumbent, George Bush.

Yet it proved to be the case that the white working class tended to prefer Hillary Clinton, and she played on this. Some say she played also on their natural racism fears, and some of her comments have seemed incendiary. It seems unnecessary and irrelevant to say Barack Obama is ‘no Martin Luther King’, and to point out that he is only able to stand because of that great man. This is true, but it is not a negative point.

The fact that a black person born 4 years before the 1965 Voting Rights Act that gave all people in America the right to vote, irrespective of colour, could run for President, is a proof for Americans of that which they hold most dear: the image of their country as the iconic democracy.

Voting for a black man may turn out to make Americans feel more patriotic than ever, and this is the biggest threat to the Republicans. While Democratic women and working men in some states prefer Clinton, Obama has not shown himself to be unelectable among white workers. Indeed in Iowa itself Obama gained over 40% of the white vote, shattering his own ceiling in this and 11 other states. The previous black candidate for the nomination, the firebrand Jesse Jackson, never breached the statistics for the black populations. Obama is increasingly winning the white vote.

Stuart Argabright, a white New Yorker, says that ‘There are white people who will never vote for him, but race is not quite as large a factor as it has been in the past, even the recent past. Officials such as Colin Powell and even Condi Rice have softened stereotypes to some degree.’

Even in Texas, where he narrowly lost to Clinton, Obama won the majority of the super-delegates, chosen seniors from the Democrat Party’s political ranks. Super delegates like Senator Barbara Boxer and Karen Hale, women delegates, switched from Clinton to Obama during the capaign.

With the confidence of such senior and experienced fellows, Obama must have increasingly felt that he might indeed be able to appeal to all voters, irrespective of race. The Latino vote, hitherto pro-Clinton, seems to largely follow the pattern of the working class vote. In these populations, the issues are pure Democrat issues: health, peace in Iraq, taxes, the economy and education. On all these issues, Obama is in as good a position as Hillary Clinton. The Latino vote, as well as the white working class, will in all likelihood come over to support Obama as strongly as they have supported Hillary.

Fears about discrimination are even more pronounced when it comes to the women’s vote. Hillary has laughed and even wept her way into women’s hearts and into the dreams of middle-aged feminists, who feel a kind of tribal loyalty to their great hope. Although many men feel that she ‘reminds them of their first wife’, she reminds women of themselves.

Barack seems to have cold-shouldered the middle-aged woman, in a kind of replay of personal tragedies across the country. Yet once this slight has faded, depending largely on how Hillary Clinton plays her next move and how enthusiastically she backs Obama, the woman’s vote is not lost.

Barack Obama is a modern guy, and has a caring, slightly geeky charm that women like. He is good-looking, in a non-threatening, dreamy college-boy way, and seems to be on friendly terms with his wife. He comes across as gentle, although he is clearly powerfully focussed, and his travels into the sands of Hawaii and the jungles of Africa make him kind of glamorous. Women may be angry now, but in time that cheeky Barack smile will surely win them over.

In this time of despair and disappointment over the current regime, however, the strongest card Obama has to play is his inspiring rhetoric, drumming his message of hope for change into the minds of the brainy and the hearts of the emotive. On Tuesday, when he acknowledged his victory in front of a rapturous crowd in the Xcel Centre in Minneapolis-St Paul, he claimed the ground of hope for the future for Americans. He promised care for the sick, jobs for the jobless, action to counteract global warming, an end to the unpopular Iraq war and the chance to ‘restore our image as the last best hope on earth’. In speeches like this throughout the United States, Obama has lifted the spirits of those who are ready for the ‘change we can believe in’ that he promises.

If a black man can become President, maybe the hopes and dreams of all Americans can be fulfilled also. Barack Obama, by the content of his character, has brought the campaign for the nomination for Presidential candidate to a magnificent crescendo.

Yet even in his hour of glory, his campaign to combat Senator McCain, the nominee for the Republicans, began. This speech contained some fundamental key points to his promises as President. He will begin serious and ‘tough, direct diplomacy’ with Iran’s loose-cannon President Ahmadinejad, whose name Barack cleverly managed to struggle to pronounce, thus proving he is not a bona fide Muslim. He will settle things in Palestine, he will ensure Iraq does not drag on; he will improve the economy and take well-defined steps to finally lessen America’s impact on CO2 emissions. He has promised to free the US from dependence on ‘oil dictators’. He intends to depend less on foreign food producers.

All this may impact on LEDCs more than our initial enthusiasm implies. If hope is high in America for an Obama presidency, it is positively exploding in the rest of the world. Allies, willing and unwilling alike, have a common resentment of the way their hands have been forced internationally in the Bush years, and they have been made to look like fools, to risk foreign policy and diplomacy with nations they used to get on with, such as Saudi Arabia, and to pour money and human resources into unpopular military conflicts which, be they morally right or wrong, would not have been entered into without the Bush impulse.

Islamic nations are a little more realistic, yet although they are tentatively complaining about Obama already, it is probably more of a tactic to initiate the diplomatic negotiations he has promised to enter into with them, rather than a genuine disapproval.

C. Uday Bhaskar, a New Delhi-based analyst with the Institute for Defense Studies, believes that being a man of colour, Indians will be able to identify with him as the underdog. Having been responsible for four years of his education, Indonesia and the Asian countries feel he will be able to understand them.

Palestinians and others doubt nevertheless that he will undermine the strong pro-Israel lobbies in the US, and are cynical about real change, but among the poorer quarters in even these parts of the world, there is the feeling that Barack understands and wants to help them, not least because he began his public life helping out the poorest communities in Chicago.

Americans have the hope that he will engage Muslims in the world where George Bush antagonised them.

      ‘His experience with Muslims in his own life will be a source of better understanding.’ thinks Stuart Argabright , ‘although for some people , it is and will remain an issue. For some Muslims too it is an issue as one cannot simply ‘leave from being a Muslim, which is considered a disgrace, from what I understand !’

Perhaps among Muslims more than others, Obama’s flirting with Islam is a sign of his inconstancy. Sheng Dingli, director of the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University in China, said that Obama’s criticism of China, for example, will likely fade if he is elected president.

         ‘He will change, just like George Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. They were all harsh toward China during the campaign but softened after the election. Their job is to protect America’s interests, and they know trade with China benefits America.’

If Obama becomes President, and if he indeed manages to achieve some of what he promises, Nigeria will need to consider how to reposition itself in this new world, for new world it will be. It may be that, as so little of the revenue from oil actually manages to find itself in the national coffers, the reduction of ‘dependency on oil’ will not impact too severely on the country, but impact it must. Nigeria will need to concentrate on sources of energy other than carbon based, such as solar power.

It will need to think about exporting food to countries other than the US, including staples, which are globally in very short supply

     ‘Change,’ Obama said in his speech on Tuesday, ‘is building an economy which rewards not just wealth but the work and the workers who created it’.

Obama has no intention of becoming an international figure, but on concentrating on the economy at home. No doubt he will be diplomatic and more aware of the differences which can cause confusion, but make no mistake, he will not be a gift to the rest of the world.

Although we cannot help but be moved by his wonderful rhetoric, and by the hope that we will soon see the back of George Bush, it would be wise to watch events from this moment on with a degree of healthy scepticism.

 

Publ Leadership © Jill Rees 07 June 2008

Tags: Barack Obama, election, Leadership Abuja Nigeria articles 2008, Nigeria, nominee, President, US Elections, US nominations

Related posts

• Democracy and corruption in Nigeria (0)
• ‘Scraped flat by rollers of wars, wars, wars’ * (0)
• Worthy representatives? (0)
• Who is Jill Rees? (0)
• Welsh Nigerian (0)

Although largely dismissed in the UK, Descartes’ main arguments, the argument of duality, that the spiritual can affect the physical, is one of the mainstays of Western thought and is the skeleton of western science, considered to be the ultimate in logical and scientific thinking since Aristotle laid the ground rule that ‘A thing cannot be both A and not A. This is in contrast to eastern philosophy. In Chinese thinking, Daoism says that all things are one, and the eastern philosophy constantly seeks consensus. Life is the important thing, the totality of a man’s life and what he leaves behind him is his judge, community and harmony are the aim of society.

Contemporary thinkers tend to suggest that this western commitment to dualism is the cause of most of our evils and our problems. It leads us to use competition against the common good, to accept personal ambition above social needs, to destroy our environment and wider concerns for short term comforts and pleasures. Descartes believed, like the Bible, that animals were automata, subservient to whatever uses we wished to put them to, and that the human being was the primary and superior entity on this planet. Our carelessness about other creatures is now leading to mass extinctions caused by man’s usurping of the natural environment. Once the eco-cycle is destroyed, humankind may well follow the species we have chased into oblivion.

Nevertheless, determining to follow the dualistic way of thinking has enabled us to take ideas apart, into the thesis and hypothesis, in order to investigate them systematically. This has led to our being able to devise engineering and electronic materials and environments which enable us to cure disease, to travel by air, use the binary systems of computers, as well as submission of animals and the sublimating of our natural feelings and needs to growth and profit. We are increasingly able to understand scientifically this world we inhabit, and use our scientific knowledge to change our lives for the better in many cases. We have become like gods, with an understanding of good and evil, and able to perform miracles.

It has also led to racism, to nationalism, to shooting from the hip, imperialism and using each other to our own purpose, to materialism, to believing that everything will be alright if we confess on our death bed. We believe that God is ‘out there’ and will save us, no matter how we behave now. We hope for a heaven, as well as this earth, and that there will be somewhere for us to go once we have destroyed this planet. We think God will repair it again after we have broken it.

In the west everything is in tension and is adversarial. We lack the idea that life works as a harmony, with everything which exists serving a purpose in its own way. Today, a friend was explaining to me about the different tribes and peoples of Nigeria. He said some were known for their intellectual strength and for valuing education, another for their famous business acumen, and a third for their social outlook and caring attitudes. My reaction was how well these suit each other, they must make up the wonderful society that is Nigeria, but he went on to say how each thinks it is the best, and the most worthy to run the nation, and so are always in conflict, sometimes at war. In the UK too, we have always had the different peoples, the English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish, who were adversaries for so long. But it is peace and working in respect and in unity that makes us strong.

A saying from the East says:

"Cherry, plum, peach and damson blossoms all have their own qualities, and they manifest the three properties of life without changing their character." Each one of us contributes our own unique qualities through the role we play in society. The cherry flower is renowned for its beauty; many people enjoy seeing the cherry blossoms in the spring. The plum blooms in late winter,while other flowers usually bloom in the spring, and it, too, is known for its beauty. According to an old Chinese tradition, peaches are said to bring longevity and ward off evil. The damson flower’s appearance is different from the others, but it is associated with assiduousness and perseverance. Each of these flowers is unique, it is an example of how each human being is unique. In the same way, the differences between individuals and groups of people can be seen as complementary, rather than in conflict. By working and living together we can create a holistic and healthy society in which everyone can be happy.

The African philosopher