i be naija

So, bornAfrican.com has finally gotten off the ground!

bornAfrican (http://www.bornafrican.com) is an online community for Africans, and is billed “the convergence of Africana.”

I encourage you to join and be a part of the bornAfrican community… share your African (and human) experience, converse with old friends and meet new ones … rant, rave, pontificate … take advantage of current and coming offerings … spread the word by telling your friends about bornAfrican … help to make small (or earth-shattering, if you like) improvements to bornAfrican, over time…

So, I will now blog at http://www.bornafrican.com/blog/author/coyibo/. (Or, just visit bornafrican.com, and click on the Blogs navigation tab).

Catch you on the rebound—at bornAfrican.

C. E. Oyibo, Over and Out.
bornAfrican.com

On my taxicab ride from O’Hare today, the driver no sooner asked for my destination and bawled fluent Yoruba over his cell phone than inserted a Fela CD into the vehicle’s CD player.

While I have heard Fela’s indictment of Obasanjo, Nigeria’s two-time president, for killing (or at least having to do with the killing of) his mother during Obasanjo’s first presidency in the 70s, I (and I suspect many Nigerians in their characteristic complacency) have not really, and I mean truly, fully absorbed the import of Fela’s charge.

Perhaps I was roused by Fela’s lamentations of the murder of his mother by the fact that I only just finished reading Wole Soyinka’s childhood autobiography, Ake—in which he recounts Mrs. Kuti’s valiant headship of a women’s liberation movement in colonial (i.e., pre-independence) Western Nigeria, that rendered the Alake, the King of Egbaland, the white District Officer, and the at once feared and revered Ogboni, all summarily impotent.

Did Obasanjo kill this woman of whom Soyinka wrote? The one that dared lambaste (to my utter joy) the insolent white colonial D. O. with the riposte,

You may have been born, but you were not bred. Would you talk to your mother like that?

The one that inspired the march on, and siege of, the Aafin, the palace of the Alake? Did dark-hearted, cowards of men, on orders of President Obasanjo and his vice Yar’Adua, really throw Fela’s mother off a balcony onto her death?

Countries and cities vie to host global events like the Olympics, the World Cup, the Miss World pageant, etc., in hopes that the literal convergence of the world onto that geographic space will translate into some real contribution to the local economy, etc., etc.

It leaves one really, truly aghast then, when the argument purportedly advanced by “the spokesman for the Nigeria[n] Olympic Committee (NOC)” to support his country’s bid for hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2014 is the need to:

… celebrate the centenary of the unification of its northern and southern protectorate[s].

This refers, but of course, to the British “amalgamation” of northern and southern Nigeria in 1914. BUT… What exactly are we celebrating? The invasion, violation, and exploitation of the peoples inhabiting the Nigerian space circa 1914? Or the arbitrary drawing and re-drawing of geo-political maps and interventions into those peoples’ collective fortunes?

What an absolute goon.

According to BBC News, Nigerian Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential contender, Umaru Yar’Adua (pictured) was flown to Germany last week after he collapsed at a campaign rally.

In other words, the man collapsed out of I’ll bet, no more than mere exhaustion, and had to be rushed—not down the street, or to the next town, or to a neighbouring country—but half way across the world, to an entirely different continent, to be attended to. What does this say about the state of Medicine (amongst a host of other things) in Nigeria? Or, does this reflect the Nigerian perception of local products and services relative to foreign ones? Perhaps it’s a combination of both and many other factors?

How much of an indictment is this of the Nigerian leadership?

We’ve all received that e-mail, right? The one that urges us to “forward this to 20 people” in return for anything from “a laptop from Dell” to “a miracle in 7 days” to an outright “surprise right after you click ‘Send’”. Who hasn’t seen the one that says Bill Gates will send you a check for $1 for every single person you forward the message to?

I just received one such e-mail today, and couldn’t help but shake my head at the gullibility and outright folly of the universe. The e-mail appeared to have traversed a good portion of the Internet, for it appeared to have been forwarded many a time. Scrolling through the multitude of e-mail headers (To, From, CC, etc.), revealing the e-mail’s traversal path, to the bottom of the message, brought me upon:

Hi everyone,

The Ericsson Company is distributing free computer Lap-tops in an attempt to match Nokia that has already done so.  Ericsson hopes to increase its popularity this way. For this reason, they are giving away the new WAP laptops. All you need to do to qualify is to send this mail to 8 people you know. Within 2 weeks, you will receive EricssonT18. But if you can send it to 20 people or more, you will receive Ericsson  R320.

Make sure to send a copy to : anna.swelung@ericsson.com

The scheme here should be fairly obvious: you send this to 8 people, cc’ing Ms. “Anna Swelung” at “Ericsson.com”. Depending on how gullible your 8 friends are (let’s say that an arbitrary 50% of them are in fact gullible and forward the message to 8 of their own friends), Ms. Swelung now has your e-mail address, plus the 8 e-mail addresses you forwarded to her (via cc), plus the 8 e-mail addresses that 4 of your recipients sent to her… (and this doesn’t even count the e-mail addresses of the folks upstream to you; i.e., the folks that sent you the message in the first place).

Now, let’s say you and your friends are really, really gullible, and decide to up the ante by forwarding the e-mail to not 8, but 20 of your buddies… Think about how quickly (read: exponential growth) Ms. Swelung’s e-mail box will fill-up with the e-mail addresses of folks thirsty for a free laptop computer… Ah, thousands, if not millions of e-mail addresses, harvested, and ready to be spammed with Viagra, Cialis, and HornyAsianVixens.com come-ons.

Out of curiously, I copied ericsson.com from the contact’s e-mail address, and pasted it into my browser’s address window (which resolved it to www.ericsson.com). The site I came to appeared to have no more than a slightly subliminal connection to the telephone company at www.sonyericsson.com.

A couple thoughts:

1. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
2. By extention, if it doesn’t make sense, it probably, well, doesn’t. (A company gives away its high-cost/high-margin product, on a large (Internet-wide) scale—to “increase its popularity” and match its competition? How sustainable is that?!)
3. And, finally, there is no such thing as a free lunch; in fact, there is no such thing as ‘Free’. Everything has a price.

I really do hope that those little programs that scour the Internet in search of e-mail addresses, ALL grab Anna Swelung’s e-mail address from this page, and that they all collectively spam her to no end. That would give her a taste of her own medicine.

Postscript:

The clincher: neither Ericsson T18 nor Ericsson  R320 (pictured) are laptop computers; both are cellular phones.

And, both are discontinued models.

On Creationism

I believe there is a Creator. Or, to put it more accurately, I’d like to believe there is a Creator.

But believing is not the same thing as knowing—at least, not in the epistemological sense. My ‘belief’ is different from what I consider ‘knowledge,’ in that it is based on an imperative not too dissimilar from ‘faith,’ rather than empirical evidence, discernible by the senses or through deduction.

I believe there is a Creator; I just do not know that there is one.

Why I do believe that there is a Creator?

It appears highly unlikely to me that the universe, in all its complexity, began spontaneously and without cause, out of nothing. The sheer diversity and organization of things would appear to require the concerted action of a creator. In order words, I believe it is more likely than not that a universe as complex ours resulted from some sort of higher intelligence.

Also—and I am convinced many people share this sentiment—my belief in a Creator is driven by a desire, nay need, for there to be something bigger than me… for there to be something that transcends my mortality. Believing in a Creator satisfies that need.

 (True, true, these two ‘arguments’ do not offer deductively valid support for the belief in a Creator, either. Nonetheless, I think that the first one at least, is strong enough to support that belief.)

Why I do not know there is a Creator?

I cannot claim to know that a Creator exists because I have not seen any empirical, fool-proof evidence for His (or Her) existence.

What is your own belief based on?

Do you KNOW that a Creator exists? What is this ‘knowledge’ based on? If you have a deductively valid (i.e. 100% fool-proof) argument for the existence of a Creator, do post a comment. Note though that anecdotal “evidence” do not count.

Finally, without convincing empirical evidence, I categorically refuse to believe in:

voodoo · juju · jazz · deities · shamans · shamanism · astral travel · ouija boards · reincarnation · sublimation · demons · demonism · demonic possession · Satan · Satanism · conspiracy theories · spiritualism · charms · talismans · cults · occultism · fraternities · confraternities · angels · archangels · demonic suppression · feng shui · organized religion · psychics · magicians · magic · witches · wizards · witchcraft · wizardry · curses · spells · incantations · heaven · hell · purgatory · the sixth sense · extra sensory perception · past lives · aliens · unidentified flying objects · etc.

Read the Poem, Abiku, by Charles O.

Background

To the uninitiated, Abiku can be a rather daunting piece. This is so because an understanding of the meaning and implications of the Abiku concept is necessary for a proper understanding of the poem.

If the belief in the supernatural is all-pervasive in traditional African culture, then the belief in the inimical and diabolic variant is even more insidiously ingrained in that tradition. Abiku (figuratively “born to die”) in Yoruba lore refers to one such malevolent spirit who appropriates and insinuates a woman’s womb to be born and re-born, for the singular purpose of unleashing recurring tumult on such a woman. The woman, then, conceives, carries the pregnancy to term, delivers, only for the child, Abiku, to die within the first few years of its birth.

In some cases though, the spirit-baby pities her mother and decides to stay permanently.

The poem Abiku explores the travails of a woman who has birthed several Abiku. Each conception brought her an unnerving admixture of “elation and despair”. Indeed, she inhabited, perpetually, the twilight between exaltation and grief: in one year she would conceive, in another, deliver, and in a few more yet, mourn the death of the child. The poem captures a moment when our protagonist, pregnant again, sits on her windowsill and gazes at the night sky. Crying silently, she prays the gods to have mercy on her, and have Abiku stay this time. As though in assurance of a new resolution, the child stirs within.

Imagery & Symbolism

“Death” and “rebirth,” “emergence” and “spiral … into abyssal depths,” “elation” and “despair,” “arrivals” and “departures,” are imageries at odds with each other. We sense antagonistic forces—life and death, emergence and downward spiral, et cetera—engaged in tense battles, as though for their very own continuity.

The “accentuation” of the protagonist’s belly by the night’s full moon provides another striking imagery. For one, both are round; for another, both are, literally, full. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, just as the full moon heralds the dawning of a new day, the woman’s full belly portends the impending arrival of a new being.

Message

Undoubtedly, there are as many interpretations of a poem as there are readers of it. One of the messages I take away from the poem though is that, just as the protagonist, who had suffered repeatedly at Abiku’s hands, clung obstinately to the hopes of having a child that would survive past infancy, we all must remain steadfast to our higher aspirations in spite of (or, even, because of) the odds. We must, indeed, never resign ourselves to the accident of chance, or worse, fate.

Even in the face of forces seemingly outside of her control, our protagonist expressed hope for an eventual breakthrough (“maybe she’ll stay”) this time.

*

Rewritten from the original piece of May 9, 2002.

Here’s Sony’s billboard ad (in the Netherlands, at least) for its Playstation® Portable, depicting a Caucasian woman gripping the jaw of a woman of African descent, in an undeniably rude and condescending manner.

According to Business 2.0 (Vol.8, No. 1; Jan./Feb. ‘07, p. 105), Sony initially defended the ad, saying it was meant to “highlight the whiteness of the new model,” though they later apologized (and, I hope, pulled the ad).

Let’s not waste our time analyzing the blatant racist undertone of the ad, but suffice it to say that I hereby resolve not to purchase a Sony product, until, and unless, I am convinced of a reversal of this unfortunate, unfortunate corporate mindset.  I really do not see myself buying a Sony product—PlayStation, Walkman, TV, DVD player, camera, headphones, computer, et cetera—anytime soon…

*

(Incidentally, I have a similar standing resolution for Tommy Hilfiger, who might have hinted that his designer jeans were never intended to be worn by black folks.)

I post this (inexhaustive) list of general investing perspectives to (1) document them for my future reference, and (2) in hopes that others might find them to be useful.

• Opt for fee-based financial professionals over commission-based ones. Since their remuneration is not tied to the sale of any particular product, they will be more likely to give you unbiased advice;
• Opt for unmanaged, or index, funds (like Vanguard 500) over actively-managed ones, or better yet, for total stock market index funds (like the Wilshire 5000). Over the long-run, index funds outperform even the best managed funds;
• Opt for funds with expense ratios less than 1%. You do not want to eat away at your returns by doling out exorbitant fees.
• Opt for no-load funds. Two words: NO LOADS.
• Take advantage of dollar cost averaging (DCA). (1) It is less painful to put away (relatively) small amounts on a regular basis, and (2) you are able to ‘buy into the market’ when the prices are low, thus spreading (or “averaging”) the cost to you;
• Consider exchange traded funds (like iShares 500), for their liquidity and lower expense.

Finally, here’s a summary of Suze Orman’s financial to-do recommendations (from her The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke):

1. Invest in your employer’s 401(k) program, up to the maximum match;
2. Pay down credit card balances; ask c/c company for interest rate reductions; transfer balances if necessary;
3. Save for a home downpayment using a money market deposit account (MMDA) or money market mutual fund (MMMF);
4. Open a savings account to build an 8-month emergency fund;
5. Fund a Roth IRA to the annual maximum;
6. Go back and fund your 401(k) to the maximum.

 Please feel free to share your own investing perspectives by posting a comment.

I share the sentiments of MyMoneyBlog’s author, about criteria for chosing an investment brokerage… The brokerage should exhibit all of the following characteristics:

1. carry index mutual funds,
2. have a large selection of no-transaction fee, no-load mutual funds,
3. have low expense ratios,
4. have minimal fees — and definitely no “hidden, tricky” ones, and
5. have a Web site with a good (useful, usable, and user-friendly) interface.

Some Suggestions:

Discount Brokerages

• Muriel Siebert, (800) 872-0444
• Scottrade, (800) 619-7283
• Fidelity Brokerage, (800) 343-3548

No-Load Mutual Fund Companies

• Vanguard, (800) 662-7447
• T. Rowe Price, (800) 225-5132

Share your perspectives and/or experience on this subject by posting a commment.