I had the privilege of working with what might be the last batch of foreign Christian missionaries in east Nigeria. Very brave and courageous missionaries scouring the regions of Benue, Taraba and Donga rivers for people. Scattered among the mountains and the valleys from Mayo-Belwa through Jadda, Zing, Gembu (Mambila), down to Karim-Lamido, are many peoples, possible citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. Those Irish fishers of men knew this very well.
There are tribes of Bachama, Fula, Vere, Koma, Jen-jon, Lau, Mumuye, Jukun ( comprising at least 5 lingo-tribal groups), Mambila, Kutep, Chamba, Tiv and many others. Although the people live in the wild in this expanse, they are a lot less wild than their environment. Facts are they have been discovered earlier, and they know of modernity more than the urbanized cameramen from the city know of them. These peoples are generally hospitable. Aggressively savage only when provoked.
Recencently, I was straining to figure out which Jibu were discovered as reported in some newsbooks. I found out: they are the same old ones, a subgroup of Jukunawa.
Some Facts
*In some remote villages, it was usually very difficult to communicate definitely with the people for there was no common language. But in other villages, folks speak Hausa just as city people do.
*There is a tourist site in Gumti.
*Some of the rivers in these areas are still bridged with old-fashion bridges. The types built of steel frames, wooden boards, and baked mud, by past colonial administrations.
*Their local hunting and farming instruments are not entirely backward. They have guns and they use fertilizer. They also practice a sort of crop rotation.
In 1996 or 1997, one group of these peoples greeted a visiting military governor with the chorus: "Taki! Taki!!" (Fertilizer! We want fertilizer!). That was because the one ordered for them that year by a reverend missionary stationed at Wukari was not delivered. The extremely corrupt importation system in Nigeria embezzled it.
*City folks might not be less superstitious than them. Some of them, people from cities, do go in search of uncorrupted mediums among the villagers.
*Although, unconventionally dressed and housed, they are yet unafflicted by many of the social plagues devastating their city counterparts. While there are thieves, they usually scuttle away at the appraoch of the householder, unlike in the city where skilled barbarians kill off whole families to get the money they want. Polygamy is common but rape and incest are virtually unknown. Homosexuality (homosexualism) is unknown. Adultery is rare, unlike in the cities where adultery is commoner than marriage.
True, the people are poor; some of them, especially of the older generation, are completely lacking in knowledge and application of modern things. But poverty is ubiquitous both in the cities and in the villages in this zone. While the poor in the city may be well clothed but hungry and homeless, the villager often only lacks adequate clothing, sanitation and efficient means of telecommunication.
The biggest poverty, poverty in ethos, is with government.When leaders are consistently dishonest, it's extremely risky to base any plan on what they say. Governmental agencies seem more interested in keeping these folks in the backyard than in bringing some modern amenites to them.
*When the Koma people were highlighted in the 1980's, Nigerian government functionaries quickly drafted and awarded contracts for the provision of electricity, tap water, roads, schools, hospitals, et cetera...The funds were provided. Today, more than 25 years after, virtually none of these basic things has been provided. The only things that reached the people were clothes, provided by the lawyer-military administrator of Gongola state then, Mr. Yohann Madaki. He personally superintended the distribution of these things. He had observed those who entertained him when he visited them. They danced clothe-less.
An old teacher, discussing with me about kabiloli achikin kauyuka (tribes in the pristine villages), once queried: "Who're primitive:the unschooled people or the government officials who make it their fundamental duty to embezzle resources?"
Just as sighting the smaller version of humanbeings found in some remote parts of Cameroun and other central African countries is no longer new discoveries, so is sighting the Jibu and their neighbours (at festival) in the mountainous expanses of Gashaka, Gumti, Serti...in east Naija-Area no longer new discoveries.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Genesis Of The Naughty Korea
The story of the division of Korea into the North and the South is an example of how predaciously dishonest the leaders of world powers have always been. By History (the scant facts available of the period between 3000BC an now), nearly every "drastic" venture of liberation has been a gateway into greater bondage; bondage to a person, a tiny group of persons or some popular stupidities. There were only a few exceptions.
Outside their home territory, the leadership of the USA have been especially hypocritical to the American ideals of human freedom.These ideals are excellent. And they are enhanced above their counterparts by being encoded in the most flexible, catholic, language of our time. As sure as concrete facts are stronger than fantasies, the present military hyper-power of the world is, and has been, unfaithful to her professed and constitutionalized tenet: that all human souls are equal in personhood and (excepting unpunished criminals) have inalienable rights to freedom and happiness, sovereignly worthy of respect.
To me, some of the greatest heroes and guardians of human liberty were the judges who recognised and affirmed, in that circumstance, the legitimateness of Mr. Martin King's cause against the brand of injustice (American apartheid).
The people of the Korean peninsula, like many other peaceable peoples, have suffered greatly at the hands of their aggressive neighbours. Chief among the aggressors is Japan. Japan molested and oppressed Korea for many years. Then, in 1910, Japan's imperial armies achieved a definite annexation of Korea. They immediately began a massive settlement programme by which Japanese families were put on the peninsula. They had envisaged an eternal lordship of Hapon over Korea.
The Koreans resisted. The resistance struggle was still on when the European second World War broke out. Alignment and assignment of forces (armies) changed
Japan fought on the side of Germany and Italy. When Mr. Hitler finally over-reached himself, the victors, leaders of the Allied Nations, went to Yalta to divide their spoils. They went with political geographers and experts in cartography. Yalta was a town in Crimea, presently in Ukraine.
Korea was given to Stalin and Roosevelt. Churchil had other plans.
USSR was to enter from the north; USA, from the south. The demarcation line was latitude 38 degrees. That was how Korea got partitioned in February 1945.
Following this, a Socialist government arose in the North, headed by an officer in the Armée Rouge (Red Army), the armed forces that had fought against Japanese occupation earlier. His name was Kim Il Sung (Kim Sung-Il). He and his comrades had opposed the partitioning but could not have their way.
A capitalist government arose in the South, headed by a man, Syngman Rhee.
At the time, the two Koreas were quite un-unifiable in any foreseeable future.The relationship between them was war-like. Yet the leaders of the Allied Nations declared that a unified, independent and democratic Korean government was soon going to be established.
It was only a matter of a short time before a ful-scale war broke out between the North and the South, in June 1950. In approximately two weeks, North Korean forces over-ran the South and put the entire peninsula under their control.
Quickly, the armies of the USA, in the cloak of United Nations, “intervened”. They went to fight for their puppet, the South Korean government.
A very, very bitter war ensued.
Three years, and more than 300,000 military personnel, were wasted. Very many lay people, probably numbering in millions, were also unaccountably dissipated. Then the USA accepted and signed an armistice in 1953.
Since then, from Kim Sung-Il to Kim Jong-Il, North Korea, like Cuba, had been on vigil.
Dealers with monsters often develop(ed) monster-like characteristics.
USA is an imperialist lion, roaring and seeking for someone(s) to devour.
Betrayed and over-alerted by the South's apparent friendship with a clear plunderer of Korea, the North roars back in defiance, seldom in cooperation, whenever USA roars.
By certain reckoning, the present hysteria and rattle-tattle over North Korea is not quite about "unconventional weapons" or democracy. It is about China; China and other increasing military and economic powers in the region. Washington detests any threat, even democratic and peaceful one, to the present unicentred, global, hegemony in which she is the centre and the arrowhead. Pyongyang is a strategic weight, if added to Japan et al on the side of the United States of America.
Outside their home territory, the leadership of the USA have been especially hypocritical to the American ideals of human freedom.These ideals are excellent. And they are enhanced above their counterparts by being encoded in the most flexible, catholic, language of our time. As sure as concrete facts are stronger than fantasies, the present military hyper-power of the world is, and has been, unfaithful to her professed and constitutionalized tenet: that all human souls are equal in personhood and (excepting unpunished criminals) have inalienable rights to freedom and happiness, sovereignly worthy of respect.
To me, some of the greatest heroes and guardians of human liberty were the judges who recognised and affirmed, in that circumstance, the legitimateness of Mr. Martin King's cause against the brand of injustice (American apartheid).
The people of the Korean peninsula, like many other peaceable peoples, have suffered greatly at the hands of their aggressive neighbours. Chief among the aggressors is Japan. Japan molested and oppressed Korea for many years. Then, in 1910, Japan's imperial armies achieved a definite annexation of Korea. They immediately began a massive settlement programme by which Japanese families were put on the peninsula. They had envisaged an eternal lordship of Hapon over Korea.
The Koreans resisted. The resistance struggle was still on when the European second World War broke out. Alignment and assignment of forces (armies) changed
Japan fought on the side of Germany and Italy. When Mr. Hitler finally over-reached himself, the victors, leaders of the Allied Nations, went to Yalta to divide their spoils. They went with political geographers and experts in cartography. Yalta was a town in Crimea, presently in Ukraine.
Korea was given to Stalin and Roosevelt. Churchil had other plans.
USSR was to enter from the north; USA, from the south. The demarcation line was latitude 38 degrees. That was how Korea got partitioned in February 1945.
Following this, a Socialist government arose in the North, headed by an officer in the Armée Rouge (Red Army), the armed forces that had fought against Japanese occupation earlier. His name was Kim Il Sung (Kim Sung-Il). He and his comrades had opposed the partitioning but could not have their way.
A capitalist government arose in the South, headed by a man, Syngman Rhee.
At the time, the two Koreas were quite un-unifiable in any foreseeable future.The relationship between them was war-like. Yet the leaders of the Allied Nations declared that a unified, independent and democratic Korean government was soon going to be established.
It was only a matter of a short time before a ful-scale war broke out between the North and the South, in June 1950. In approximately two weeks, North Korean forces over-ran the South and put the entire peninsula under their control.
Quickly, the armies of the USA, in the cloak of United Nations, “intervened”. They went to fight for their puppet, the South Korean government.
A very, very bitter war ensued.
Three years, and more than 300,000 military personnel, were wasted. Very many lay people, probably numbering in millions, were also unaccountably dissipated. Then the USA accepted and signed an armistice in 1953.
Since then, from Kim Sung-Il to Kim Jong-Il, North Korea, like Cuba, had been on vigil.
Dealers with monsters often develop(ed) monster-like characteristics.
USA is an imperialist lion, roaring and seeking for someone(s) to devour.
Betrayed and over-alerted by the South's apparent friendship with a clear plunderer of Korea, the North roars back in defiance, seldom in cooperation, whenever USA roars.
By certain reckoning, the present hysteria and rattle-tattle over North Korea is not quite about "unconventional weapons" or democracy. It is about China; China and other increasing military and economic powers in the region. Washington detests any threat, even democratic and peaceful one, to the present unicentred, global, hegemony in which she is the centre and the arrowhead. Pyongyang is a strategic weight, if added to Japan et al on the side of the United States of America.
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