Discussion

Thank you Teju for this piece. As a Medical Social Worker in a teaching hospital, it is frustrating to try and explain to Doctors, Nurses etc the social issues that accompany any condition. Social issues -that are beyond fiances- which can deter the access to and course of treatment. Social issues which at times we are too embarrassed about to put into words

This woman is a great writer. One more book of hers like NW and she should have given the Nobel Prize of Literature.

Thank you for your humbly beautiful account. The compassion captured in your writing and demonstrated in your actions is inspiring.

What I love about this beautiful moving piece
is how the open mind heals; the husband taking a risk; the doctor trying something new.
As someone who suffered a long time because of prejudice in this area, it is very heartening to see it being broken down and people being healed, even where it's not 'supposed' to exist.
I was told recently that it is the next generation who will benefit most.
What I found in this description of Nigerian village work and witness by the new generation was humbling and awe-inspiring - life, colour, positivity, make-do, work-around, pragmatism, dedication, and a healthy anger at those who would hold people back. Thank you.

Poesía.

Poesía
inquieta,
caliente
mañana que
viene en
silencio como
un ave cansado
en el llanto
del sol....

Francesco Sinibaldi

Having adopted a Chinese extended family through marriage, I have constantly struggled with their blunt and relentless denigration of their offspring. This wonderfully crafted piece has provided clarity and calmed my anxiety through this explanation. "..[they are ].. people who above all [have] held steadfast against the irresponsible fanning of their children's self-regard."

An epiphany. Thanks.

My two cents:

Ethiopian people deserve more than what Meles has 'done for them'. The idea that we couldn't have done better than him (anyone would have done better than The Dergue) is preposterous.

Anyone (however great his economic policies) who's been in power for over twenty years is a tyrant.

Meles Apologist / Stockholm syndrome.

What a superb article. It enters into the vastness of space and the space age in such an intimate way that I finally feel I understand something of this great adventure.

I envy your experience at Bush House. As a youngster, I mimicked newsreaders on the World Service to improve my English, eventually becoming an announcer on the English radio service of Radio Television Hong Kong. My dream to work for the BBC never materialised, although I did visit Bush House for an interview to join the Chinese service. I left broadcasting for another career long before the decommissioning of Bush House, so chances of ever working of the BBC were non-existent anyway. Even then, the demise of Bush House as the iconic home of the World Service put the proverbial nail into the coffin in which my dream is buried.

Dans la lumière...

Un chant
très léger et
la douce harmonie
d'une tendre
lumière, un
souffle de
poésie et encore
l'émotion qui
rappelle la
jeunesse......

Francesco Sinibaldi

This is quite an elegant narrative of a personal medical problem. It reminds one of Professor Eldred Durosimi Jones's piece of his failing sight in West Africa magazine close to thirty years ago. For all those details of frustrating visits from Doctor to Doctor and the keen observation of the surrounding-one reference to feeling shameful about the inability to read a menu, not so much about the poor sight, but about what a group of young white people would think of this black person's level of literacy-this is a cause for pause.

"There are galaxies upon galaxies stretching out to infinity in the big world beyond us"

I think that there is a finite number of galaxies & that the universe, being curved as it is, cannot be infinite.

Gentle tradition...

Gentle and
sweet sensibility,
I call your
attraction to give
an appearance
to that delicate
sound...

Francesco Sinibaldi

This wonderful essay made me crave a chili dog with mustard and onions from Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington, D.C., and at 10 in the morning, no less.

"I now know that the practice of internal emigration when there is clearly no need to emigrate further is simply called being a writer."

Thank you for this sentence, and for the rest of them here. A piece of writing, too, can be a magic place.

This is the best quote i've heard in my whole week: "Although a lot of us are aware that these attitudes and actions happen perhaps I think we choose not to look", there's so much truth in these words it made me reflect about the society of today and my personal way of contributing to it.

‘We don’t make the decisions do we, we just do what they say.’

What strikes me in this art is the contrast between a choice to be well-groomed and yet no apparent volition to assert an exclusive, uncommon reportage.

When I read this I think of Olympic boxing -how conflicted I am about it. The last barrier for women in sport, and we have won gold - a great achievement. I cheer that! A sport that reaches and includes so many disaffected young men and 'makes something' of them. And is it really different from martial arts in skill?

Yet I might cheer the result but can't watch it - can't stand to see people fight each other. Is it violence reduced to pleasurable safety, the skilled channeling of aggression, or does it legitimise it? Become part of the desensitising process talked of here? I mean we used to like dog and bear fights....even if for us now its not bare knuckle.... I am unsure. But think the images here are powerful; and beautiful also in their way - especially the top one.

@V.V. Ganeshananthan I wonder what that word is in Tamil because I think that is what I feel about my place of ancestral origin.

And it is really the people and not the place like Kennedy puts it.

How terrible that Cole thinks home can be a place where you go to die.

Home is that place that wraps her arms around you, makes your heart let out a sigh and feel a million times lighter.

I can't think of another athlete who seemed so happy just to be there, he looked so relaxed before the race. I think with Mo, it would have been equally brilliant to have seen him win the 10,000m in Somali or GB colours. Either way, a wonderful moment.

When you think about the dreadful state of athletes, courts, conduct, sponsorship, etc. that cripples the aspirations of these athletes, you start asking yourself what comes first, nationality or sport. Of course sport is gendered and political in ever sense. I personally disagree with Farah's choice of flags (none for the sake of sports), but he surely has his reasons. On the other hand, let us not forget that these Olympics brought participation from women from every delegate. Also, the Lybian delegate carried its post-Gaddafi flag for the first time in an event of such scale. Last but but not least, and in line with froufoxy (see above), it seems that the colonial machine is still very much alive and the ease at which immigrant sportsmen get their share of the "white dream" compared to thousands of rejects is one solid proof. Athletes brought from the far away lands quench the thirst of those longing for a long gone "greatness" that bases itself on hypocrisy and double standards.

Un silencio rosado.

La rareza de
los sueños
aparece constante
cuando el
primier sonido
viene silente
regalando una
hoja.....

Francesco Sinibaldi

Sometimes, in a fit of anachronism, I think the colonialists main objective was to procure high performing athletes.

these poems are very impressive, quite well-written, and worth rereading . . . I can't afford to buy the book, but I will look for more of her verses online—

Very vivid and moving. I'm sorry - my comments yesterday were predicated on the understanding that the interview was done in 2003, which seemed to be the date given. I believed the interview had been re-issued to mark several years since this journalist died. I didn't realise it was so recent, thus so raw.

I was using current events to comment on changes in attitudes in what I thought were several years. If I accidentally sounded insensitive to recent loss, I apologise.