Sapphire - Push

The paperback is small and quick to read.  I picked it quite by chance from my book shelf as I looked for something easy to read.

 

It is a book that explores a difficult and harrowing subject - incest and abuse not just for Precious - but a number of other girls who have been abused by different people.  I was hard pressed to find something to laugh about as I turned the pages.

 

I remember telling my mother that one of the good things about life is to find a support group. There are support groups for everything (tall people, short people, black people, thin people, fat people, breast cancer survivors, spouses, battered women etc). The important thing is to get the support group that suits your needs best and run with it. If there isn't one, start one.  Precious says that when she heard the stories of her friends, she realised that her story was not the worst.  have never come across a support group for incest survivors.

 

At the start of the book is a quote from the Talmud "Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over and whispers, 'Grow, grow' "  My best character in this book is Blue Rain who teaches the young adult girls plagued by illiteracy due to various reasons - in this case incest and allied issues. I presuppose that she is the Angel as are most teachers who are so amazing. I have often wondered why teachers in the public system in my country are not given a good return for their labour. To teach and teach effectively one must have a calling. In my life, the people who made an impact in my life were the teachers who believed in me. I can remember my class teacher Mr Ok, Mrs Wa, Mr Mu and others who were ever so patient with me and made life at BGHS manageable.

 

The depiction of mothers in the book is rather surprising. Mothers who have failed in their duty towards their offspring. Due to my own understanding of what a mother is and what motherhood entails, I find it difficult to relate to the mothers in the book who in different ways  abused ( or aided and abetted the abuse of) their children.  

 

Stamina and determination are topical issues. They are those who fall by the way side by there are also those who push on no matter the hand that has been dealt with.  So when all is said and done, it is important to stand with our back against the wind and our head towards the sunrise in order to stand tall against all odds.  This is embedded in the title. When you are tired..when you cannot go on, their is only one option PUSH.

 

 

Steve Lopez:- The Soloist: A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, And The Redemptive Power of Music

I watched the movie and read the book on which the movie is based. This led me to googling Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers into the wee hours of the morning. In my search, I discovered Los Angeles - The city of angels and the Los Angeles Times. The movie, the book and the articles had such an impact on me that I spent the whole Sunday morning - instead of reflecting on my maker and His goodness - regurgitating to my sister all that I had learnt.

Where do I start?

Steve Lopez - I admired not just his writing but also his demeanour as he was interviewed.  I envied him for the fact that he had found purpose in life beyond simply being a columnist at the Los Angeles Times. Steve had the opportunity and tenacity to make a difference in the life of Nathaniel Ayers whom he bumped into, quite by chance. So many times I spend my working days doing many things and at the end of it all wonder whether all these things are simply "a chasing after the wind".  Steve's story - was for me - better than a sermon. I digress to wish that our journalists might make a difference through the articles they write.

Nathaniel Ayers - I was puzzled by the "demons" that led an otherwise promising child to the skid row.  Was it the pressure of being the only black student playing the cello?  Was it the pressure he felt in wanting or waiting to excel?  Had Nathaniel been my townsman, my people might be forgiven to believe that someone had definitely 'done him in by remote control'. There would have been a frenzy searching for the oldest person as the scapegoat for such a heinous deed.

Nathaniel was admitted to Julliard College , one of the most prestigious music schools in New York but he dropped out and became one of the close to 40,000 homeless people in Los Angeles. How does one explain such a thing in a rational manner except to believe that something paranormal must have occurred in his life?  The medics have found a name for this mental health condition and aptly named it Schizophrenia.

When I grew up we threw stones at 'Ali Kichwa' who walked by our house to the Municipal Graveyards.  As kids, we never paused to discuss his mental condition or whether it had a medical name.  We did not bother ourselves with why he was as he was, which home he came from or whether he had a mother who loved him.

As I read Steve Lopez’s columns, I remembered my classmate's sister who was diagnosed with Schizoprenia. G recounted how her perfectly normal sister heard voices that no one else heard.

The story got me to ponder about my best friend  of years gone by. Her two siblings - brilliant whilst they were in high school - went over the ledge and were in & out of Kenya's only psychiatric hospital.  Why would God visit such a burden on an otherwise lovely & promising family? A challenge that tested the very foundations that they believed in.

I thought about JK who for no properly explainable reason flipped and 'never returned from whence she went'.  N's sister who had to be confined - much to her chagrin - to prevent her from harming herself and others.

Into the wee hours of the morning, I thought of cousin S who decided - rather irrationally - that she preferred the freedom of the streets to the confining comfort of a home.

These are too many people for me to have known who have suffered similar unexplainable conditions without much support being available for them.

LAMP - The people who worked - some pro bono - at LAMP challenged me. I was moved by the expression that sometimes 'People need compassion and not a cure'. It is almost impossible to understand what it means to be sick unless we too have been sick. It is difficult to grieve for someone who has lost something unless we too have lost the same thing.  Even the Messiah had to take upon himself the nature of man so that he might be able to  better understand our challenges.

I retold, to my sister's listening ear, of my adventures   visiting the old people's home, a shelter by the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Africa in Thogoto each Sunday during my high school days.  Old folks who had been abandoned by their families & who received no visitors except for the Sunday visit by young lads and lasses in green skirts and grey trousers.  When they died - as old people often do - they were interred at the church graveyard without an obituary or a telegram to a loved one.  I often wondered how someone could not have a home, no matter how basic, and often pondered what 'ill wind' led to such a lonely existence without children, grandchildren, siblings & friends to fawn over in the dusk of their lives. I thought of my grandparents as I chatted with a lad from "Across" strolling back to school  for another week.

Los Angeles California - There was a comment that Los Angeles - the City of Angels - was the homeless capital of the world.  I need to further research this phenomena but must digress to recall my first visit to Washington  DC where I saw an old fellow push all his worldly belongings on a shopping cart. I could not imagine where he came from or where he was going to. Neither could I reconcile this to the America I knew & watched on the airwaves.  What had happened to him in this land of promises where all dreams came true?  Me - who was an African - was so afraid of the people who slept in the subway which I had to take from my hotel in downtown Washington DC to the malls!!! I had neither the heart nor the courage to take a photo in remembrance, the way foreigners to my country do when faced with scenes of starving children.

Now I understand that there might be a myriad of reasons why these people might be homeless. Whose homelessness might not be a rational lifestyle choice. This again reminded me of my sister's thesis on people with disabilities and what the GOK could do to make their burden lighter.

The Rest of Us - More often than not I am guilty of judging people and assuming they have made certain lifestyle choices which have led them into the abyss they find themselves in.  I blame these events on the sins of the father that will follow them upto the third generation, or join in the 'binding and losing' and casting out demons.  If all fails, I turn away - like the teachers of the law - and pretend that I never noticed.

But there were good moments too.  I discovered Neil Diamond and found that I loved his music. I also discovered that Mozart, Beethoven and Bach is actually music that I could listen to.  I have often wondered why people listened to this genre of music. Watching the movie and some of the orchestras transported me to places I had never experienced before.

Everyday I learn a new thing and find a new distraction. 

Michelle Moran - The Second Empress

This book is set between 1809 and 1815 or thereabouts. It chronicles the story of the Bonapartes. It is an interesting and easy read which transported me back to my history lessons. Although, the author indicates that she has 'altered some of the history' in trying to spin the tale, she has nonetheless tried to keep as close as possible to the facts as they happened.

 

The book reminds me - not sure if I came to the same conclusion in my history class - of the fickleness of the masses. They see-sawed between the Bourbons, the Bonapartes, the Bourbons, the Bornapartes...It must have been a very confusing period for the french citoyens or perhaps they did not really have much choice in their destiny. Like many people now...they were just like pawns on a chess board...watching the political class making decisions that would ultimately affect their lives - for better or for worse.

 

One must admire Napoleon...Love him or hate him, he was and is an enigma. He rose from nothing, led a coup d'etat, charmed the French, brought his enemies to the brink, fell and rose again.  Even whilst in Elba in exile, he was down but not out.  No wonder Shaka said that one must never leave an enemy standing - even on an Island!! What is amazing is that Napoleon was not even French...being as he was from Corsica hence Italian. His story reminds me that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Surprisingly, Napoleon craved the very trappings of nobility that he fought against including divorcing his commoner wife - The Pope be damned - to marry the unwilling Maria-Lucia (great niece of Marie-Antoinette with 800 years of Hapsburg blood in her veins) so that his children could be of noble blood.  What better pedigree would one desire? He desired that which he did not otherwise have.   One can only wonder at the madness that drove him to invade Russia which eventually brought his downfall. This reminds me of a question in the film Serafina. What brought Napoleon down? Was it the Russian winter or was it the people who burned their homes to ensure that the French soldiers did not get any respite from the harsh elements of russian winter.  Historians say that the French had won the war until the Russian governor ordered the muscovites to burn their homes rather than capitulate.  Napoleon's downfall was precipitated by the French masses and their nobles who now wanted their dead back - they wanted their dead husbands and sons back alive. Even Napoleon could not achieve that feat. Luckily for him he received extreme unction upon death, received a state funeral and has a place in French history. If only we, africans, could revere our leaders - despite their faults and teach our children to remember them as heroes and not villains - only then would we, as a people, have achieved  nirvana.

 

The supporting character I admired most - though in the shadow - was Madame Mere - Napoleon's mother (Letizia Ramolino) who believed in her son despite everything. Reminds me of the verse that I paraphrase to mean that a mother does not often forget her child.  A mother stands by her children, protects them and believes in them, despite everything. This is the Joy of Motherhood.

 

The character I hated most is Prince Metternich, the diplomat who supposedly brokered the marriage between Maria Lucia and Napoleon. He was the Austrian Ambassador to the French court. The world is full of the duplicity of such people who cannot always be trusted.

 

The book is written mostly through the eyes of Maria-Lucia...The Second Empress...So one cannot but love her, feel for her and be happy for her.

Not much is said in the book about Josephine...The First Empress and Napoleon's talisman except that his luck began to dip when he divorced her. Interestingly, he still communed with her, kept her children and her name was the only one he uttered in death.

 

The book tempts me to brush my memory about Saint-Domingue a.k.a Haiti and the Egyptian ptolemies that so mersmerised Pauline Bonaparte. Pauline Bonaparte herself epitomised the foibles of the French court - the less said about her character, the better! Except that she was faithful to the end.