The following Editorials were culled from the author’s Yahoo 360 account and are part of an ongoing effort to change specifications of CIP presentations.  Articles found on the CIP web page are copyright intended for the research development interests of CIP readers, affiliates and patrons.   All articles, except for the Charles Nicols letter, were written by Gbujama J. M.

 

 A Research Development Product CIP, Copyright © 2009

DISTINGUISHING BOARDERS

January 7, 2009:

 

Much has been pondered on what is a boarding facility or if any such place exists in housing discourse. It is an intrigue fostered by the very principles of government so argued by the need to organize the state of nature in its earliest stages into some form of social contract as Lock refers to, in a struggle towards uniformity, insignia fraternity, and intellectual development.

Yet, often referred to as a boarding home, the term itself is somewhat a misnomer – properly termed as a boarding school in many regards. In a cultural sense, the applications of such domiciles have varied from orphanages to the most elite heritage traditions and have shared a definitive need with the more widely defined domiciles, such as a boarding house; a place where one receives food and lodging for payment, a hotel; which is a superior inn, or hostel (motel); a stopping place for travelers. There is also much need in sorting out differences in disciplinary concerns from military, internment and incarceration facilities. It is arguable, that one cannot possibly analyze the boarding school, specifically in Africa, without taking into some account the issue of punishment and means of correction. Certain boarder facilities are almost legendary in their disciplinary constraints to the point of appearing to be military training grounds, yet ironically with corporal distinctions, since there are many forms of punishments like caning or kneeling down, which do not stand out as military practice. This strictness may be due to the younger age group of boarders and the idea of a replacement of parental authority and structural functionality used in group control. Though most boarding facility populations are not often large in number, the total inclusion of school learning and boarding domesticity may be the demand for such order, since such systems often pride themselves with behavior control achievements particularly in regards to public settings. However, unlike military training, boarder training is behavior specific and does not necessarily involve any stratified goal of greater organizational regimentation. There is no set commanding post-graduate skeleton.

Even so, the outgrowth of many institutions are frequently need based and have proven to be less or more than their intended purpose. For instance many boarding facilities in Africa are of a practical concern, providing residence for students from various groups and locations more so than the European aura of exclusivity or historical church and civil aura of social responsibility as in France. As religious sources remark in principle, The death of one or both parents makes the child a very poor ward of the community.” Therefore, “of the seventy-seven charities for children, mostly orphanages, established in America before the middle of the nineteenth century as listed by Folks, twenty-one were Catholic and all of these were orphanages.” Nonetheless, within cultures, academic interests have often overshadowed provisional arguments with that of a more immaculate and moral Puritanism geared towards education. In that regard, socially, boarding facilities have leaned more towards an analogy closer to the ant farm, rather than that of the more unitary Spiders web. Though of a survivalist nature, and encouraging the individual to care for the self, boarding facilities have for the most part retained a plural relevance over individual significance.

The most poignant example of this is Sierra Leone’s, The Bo School. Though designed, to foster an environment where pupils will be motivated, healthy, peace-loving, well-mannered, and academically successful, the school is also well known for its use of student numbers which promote a history of registration and regimentation - even though it is not in any manner an institution of incarceration. There are also other institutions in which the school itself in creation gained its purpose through boarder schooling and later opened its doors to wider off campus participation and thus emphasizing the role of the boarding school, as a place of terminal – not necessarily home residence. Regardless of the semantics, there are clearly distinctions in unified academic purpose, as opposed to parental unification, or that of a gang, united by a deviant purpose.

Politically, boarding facilities are also quite different than other lodging authorities in that they are seen as an early rallying point of political activity since much of its body is eventually incorporated into greater civic matters. It is also considered that as a value of systemic impression, boarding facilities have a tremendous influence on impressionable youth, since it is a point where many mores are traded, debated and reassessed between movement from the facilities and family homes. However, for the most part, parental approval to attend facilities is the most distinctive difference from other molds of boarding, thus retaining the relevance of home rights. Nonetheless, this does not address recent studies dealing with the extreme loss of progenitor rights and stability within homes that boarder their children to schools, with some studies comparing it to a domestic brain drain within families. This perspective perhaps is derived from, as Locke states in his “Clean Slate” analysis of the mind, the struggle to control mental faculties.

Lastly is the idea of a boarding home for the aged, which has in elderly separation become a tradition. The old folk’s home as colloquially termed retains its distinction outside of the obvious reason of age, in the relaxed and reposed function served. Such facilities due to health concerns have shared imagery more with medical centers or resorts than ever being closely associated with the traditional boarding school. The term convalescent home is quite apt in expectation, and often such facilities retain permanence as a place of residence.

It is interesting to note that further insights into the clarification of the definition of homelessness, provides a corrupt cynicism by itself in relation to boarding, its definition and purpose since on the one hand, while the term homelessness implies an impermanence in bordering, there is however not much consolation given to the gradual connotative erosion such phraseology lends to the idea of the home.

 

A SHOW OF PURPOSE

September 13, 2008:

 

B.F. Skinner once reasoned, If it is possible to ask whether a machine can show purpose, the question implies significantly, that if it can, it will resemble a man. Yet this is to suppose that man in any respect has purpose to his life, that there is a continuance of his being, despite Fukuyama 's assertion of a historical end. In some polities for instance, a lack of employment and substantiation of mental ineptitude, are enough to warrant a charge of vagrancy! Thus the question has always implied, are the educated with purpose? If so what is that purpose?

There is today much investment, perhaps rightfully so, in technical equipment more so than the philosophical sciences, giving reason then to the argument of science and technology as being an extension of that purpose no matter how far reaching. The triumph of these purposes being; that intellectuals in the technical sciences such as Bill Gates, transcended the usual social constraints in which the conceiver of an idea, almost never owned or controlled its growth as a business, or if he did, would no sooner have to sell it. It would be just as meaningless to suggest that from time in memorial a Darwin or his descendant has sat at the head of the Ministry of Social Welfare in the United Kingdom . In most cases the studious inventor was never in the lead of matters pertaining to the expansion and incorporation of the business, therefore the Bill Gates victory, not only changed the image of business, allowing for "soft" financiers, but removed the wandering intellectual from the courtyards of the academy and into the business world, as exemplified by the new generational adaptations of the Geek Squad, a far reaching cry from the executive towering image of IBM. In fact it was this executive image that was responsible for the corporal psychology of the Bill Gates success (even if not in deed) beyond that of the bubbly, sub-aquatic image of the MAC world. That is, the user-friendly argument.

However, this does not imply that the presence of such machines reflects a softer purpose, as much as it does the changing attitudes towards the intellect itself. For instance, it is questionable whether the invention and use of the pen in schools or monasteries changed in any manner the relationship between the academic world and that of business, or their purpose. It is doubtful whether the issue was ever an official matter of calligraphy over the depth of exploratory study or that of profit - perhaps in China . Yet often it appears that educated people are for the most part included, higher up in the statistical grid of unemployment. In fact those few who have gone through into the production industry serve as a policing agent against apprehensions towards intellectualism, abandoning their previous role of assistance. This is not to advocate such an image, only to point out that the idea of a puritan or Christian character, has not always been at the root of a 20th century education. Much of the difficulties, despite the expansion of technology are still communicative. In the past a British citizen having graduated with a bachelor’s degree could find security in local civil service employment or that of colonial, thus giving reason for the influx from outposts in the other direction by persons seeking highly institutionalized education. This was perhaps true of the missionary purpose as well, governmentally passed onto a new generation in the 1950'-70's in the form of university graduate conscripts for Peace Corps training, all directed towards a similar utilization of education.

However, despite the technological expansions there has been an administrative if not a cultural halting of higher academic purpose in the form of perpetual testing, as if the educated are a product themselves, never quite ready to enter the workplace. While a complex wall of guarantee often appears to benefit the preparation of a standardized approach to office developments - it would be too simplistic on the other hand, to ask an educated man if he knows how to use a pen - Ceteris Paribus; with every intent and purpose included.

 

POISE

Posted June 8, 2008

 

Do not consider an impropriator as necessarily desolate, why? They have been made content. The complacency of modern society is that we do not have to believe - in almost absolutely anything. The old cultivate cynicism and infect the unobserving youth where prosperity in its most basic state ironically reminds of the unfeigned simplicities of life. As said in Krio; you are satisfied - you belful. A majority of antediluvian systems on the other hand, are literally built on nothing else, save but issues of belief, and in that; there are no short cuts to the truth, and for this, the paradox of language; can one know the truth and fail to speak it?

Noise has never been an advisable disposition, no more than silence connected the being to anything else but nature. By noise I do not mean sound, no more than to hear would mean to listen. I am speaking then, of temperament, condition, circumstance, or specification, something that ties us with the idea of sanity. It is not that accusations of insanity cannot be made, or the argument for sanity, but that there is a compromise of the whole process itself which is intolerable; that there is a reflex of the mob that echoes a sentiment of ridicule towards its own existence. Tell true, if you do not believe in the product, then who will? As phrased in the philosophy, Cognito Ergo Sum; I think therefore I am, thus the impetus for the African saying; the one who creates the spirit is responsible for the fear.

It is the reason for poise.

Perhaps in time letters should be written to democratic political campaigns un-advisably conformist, that criticize fathers in remarks recently published, though one must think of these issues as they weigh, think of the politician and his hook, with float, worm, and all. Still, the comments were so usual and conventional; the idea that there are no fathers in the homes as well as the issue of abandonment, that it made wonder if the future cultural heritage to be initiated, is that of a liberal diatribe. Perhaps it was spoken of reawakening the issue, alerting that such things still do matter as worthy cause - and this I will accept. Yet, I will not accept the overlook of the 2500 mean in diapers changed by fathers per child, the meals cooked, books read and most of all - the rebellion, that great fight against the spirits of this world, in opposition to the possession of the mind by a world that suffers in a most hypnotic, sleepy and hollow state. I will not accept a government in the bushes either, the people wild on the streets, neither savages in office. Really, if you would have us believe that homosexuals and lesbians believe in themselves, then how thus will there be any more? It is merely a refuse of reason, a corruption that argues that we are not doing the right thing because of such and such. Today white flight flees from white, not black and black believes that it is in the same strain as yesterday. Misplaced and splattered blood everywhere indicates to even the fool - that there is a problem. Not a word more about certain things is necessary.

 

ON ECONOMIC IN-EXACTITUDES

    March 10, 2008

 

In response to the stimulus of aroma, there are those analyses, which come with sharp thorns.  There is inn for some grumbling therefore, beyond specific concerns of labor, product and produce with a reminder of similar analysis from impassive sources that argue, that economic crisis is the very factor that causes “devaluation and war”.  Now those same disciplinary oracles contend that “devaluation and war” limits economic growth.

Surely, such may be argue a modern appraisal; quite in sequence with planning, which experts consider of a legitimate economy and are wary of instantaneous success that tunnels its way through the underground.  So very much inferred in the analogy of the solar powered butter truck economy, in which sunlight is required to deliver the butter to its destination.  Except for, that would be unlikely if any such sunlight is available.  Thus the butter is often delivered by other means, in some cases an Omolankae wagon, which by OPEC fuel dependency standards would be measured inexcusably crude.

Often precision science tends to appear more arrogant than art, because of its up close and personal relationship with the notion of fact.  This causes even within philosophy, the epistemologist, to raise his nose in total abhorrence to opinions outside of institutional fundamentalism.  One would think that the sophistication of business, manufacturing, politics and agency would have given way to a unified European currency, for example.  Then again, such a project is still primitive in historical terms.  Consequently, even though the Italian Lira is relatively bulky in ratio to the dollar, its poor measurement is less an indication of civilization doom.

Reconfiguring nations must focus on basic notions of self-sufficiency more so than to leap into the import success camouflage of high-end technological devices.  And the failure to do so is much an investment short sightedness of the lender as much as it is, of the borrower.  These non-basic approaches are only good so much as to help supplement objectives of leadership, education, clarity, artistic and scientific practicality, political transitional legitimacy and diplomatic representation.  Whether a rural African Farmer needs a cell phone to tell his buyers that his market is ready; is yet another question.  In some cases, that cell phone would most likely make him a chief and increase responsibilities beyond subsistence, thus bringing glory further than the realities of productivity.

For every query, about an edifice salute in Africa to Roman Catholicism, there is Ghana’s unsuccessful cocoa fiasco, which at least left Akosombo dam.  For every academically inclined Nkrumah there is an experimental Kaunda.  Again, for every undemocratic Doe, there is a Kabbah or Mbeki, and for every revolutionary challenger like Sankoh, there is a Rawlings, who was able to implement his revolution to fit economic trade terms.  It is not all about failure as much as it is about imperfection.  Surely, it should not be accepted practice to dump, so to speak; the academic, scientific, and productive excesses of frontline economies on other systems, then cast a blame of obese complacency on those systems - especially in failing to deal with the chain reactionary mercantile aggression that follows.

ABOUT THOSE ACCENTS

July 12, 2007

 

Our American Cousin once said to me in Africa long time ago, when asked how he enjoyed the nightclubs, there were sounds banging left and right.  And because at that time he spoke no other language but English, his response though powerful and metaphorically African, was very peculiar - given his completely American accent.

Therefore, a quick note on language that is reminiscent of record.  For many years there was some ambiguity as regards American authorship, which did not become as clear and pronounced, until the success of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and The Prince and The Pauper (A very Dickens like tale), catapulting the American writer into the same status as that of the French and the British.  This, in speech as in writing, held against a premise; an American accent can rarely attain leadership in the African understanding as a local voice, unlike a British or French accent.

Even the Black American voice in writing and speech (African-American - commonly assumed as black accent) , claimed an affluence with Europe as many authors had an outright affinity with playwright acting stage culture, swayed by the roots of the Christian church (Baldwin, Wright, Angelou, Robeson).  Granted, this may be due to the late involvement of America in African matters in the national acquisitions sense, and as well, in the reality that ethnological lines often lead outside of America.  These same claims as often made about the Sierra Leone Krio is flawed, since what a real Krio is in the Sierra Leone domestic sense, is not defined as one who claims ties with the West (that would be too vast and simplistic), but rather an amalgamated Western Area localization, that is historic to Sierra Leone.

This argument of speech is best seen in the person of Nigeria's Ojukwu (born in Niger State, Ojukwu attended local schools like Kings College and later Oxford in England).  Ojukwu's British English accent rivaled that of Prince Charles with a linguistic following of an elderly African English teacher and clearly accepted as a local African voice, despite Ojukwu's British accent; or the existence of other Africans with what is clearly a refined local African accent when speaking English.  Mobutu as well in his early years retained an Afro-centric cultural appeal despite his Franco-phone fluency.  The issue complicates itself along African tribal lines, giving reason for the argument of academic standardization; a process often over-taken by daily speech in a struggle to communicate - books have no accent.

Nevertheless, the African with an American accent is still a pariah, despite explanations of facilities and missionaries long since left Africa, of studio influences, or of years spent in a muzzled American tour overseas.  It has come to be associated in varying terms, from a diplomatic academic marble-mouthed politeness, to what Lemuel Johnson termed as, the highs and lows of street insight and big book talk."  Perhaps these are the reasons for the fierce ethnological movement here within America, particularly in states like California with a considerable number of foreign born assemblymen - immigrants in a struggle not to be submerged in the fluency of their own speech patterns.

Scholars have given answer to this definitive problem in the coining of the term American-African to meet with the definitions of a British-African accent, French-African, or regional East-African (eg.Tanzanian-African, Ethiopian-African), or West African (Nigerian-African, Ghanaian-African, Sierra Leonean-African) etc. - Or the very successful, South African-African accent in use of the English language.  Furthermore, this matter of the English accent cannot be hidden completely in the issue of local tongues, since many states still communicate in the mass sense using English (1963 May, OAU Charter was written in English).  However, the manner in which those distinctions are perceived in Africa is another thing by itself, since it would be like comparing Ojukwu's Biafra speech in English, which received popular support within his polity, to a Kenyan leader with an Obama accent, running for the Kenyan presidency or leading his people in the Mau-Mau movement - not in address of the American concern.  Perhaps this is a more controversial analogy. The current vice-president of Iraq clearly has an American-Arab accent like the many Saudi Arabians who attended schools in the United States - but not an Arab-American accent like actor Tony Shalhoub. Somehow it appears that Americanism is often designated as a youthful experience, one that can only improve, as some critic’s remark, by the thwarting of what is an infantile progression, better guided by the more international Voice of America.

Yet, it is unlikely that Americans are the authority on playfulness.

Perhaps, the exit is in evangelism as being the best ground for such acculturation, since churches have a local remain and mission, often ground in emotional sermons that have a sensory appeal.  Given local attitudes one must admit it is unlikely that Ojukwu's style of politician will spread across Africa, or that American speech will ever be seen as a local domestic component in populist African politics, like a British accent within its past colonial context, Senegal or Congolese within French.

One must admit in guilt, Indeed that would be rather, peculiar

 

WHO GIVES

 June 21, 2007:

 

To be without food is perhaps best defended by the imagery of Sudanic and Semitic arguments of religious self sacrifice in puritan agreement that, man cannot live by bread alone, and as well by a moral opposition to obesity and gluttony, each having its own place in the waste of human form. This latter opinion is of course, typical of biblical contradictions that go against the grain of the miracle with loaves.  Yet, despite the Malthusian statistics proving otherwise, that the world still cannot feed itself, there has been a general admission to the idea of food as being essential, as reasoned by the World Food Conference of 1974, and even by my own birth-date, October 16th, co-incidentally declared World Food Day by the United Nations.

Efforts have been made. Nonetheless, Richard Wrights coining of the term "American Hunger" and his prowess with the subject matter is so ravenous that he describes it as being, "a black rat gnawing in the stomach" (Lawd Today).  And this may be true. This starvation imprint was clearly left on Africa on the other hand, by the 1984 “We are the world” drive and its persistent image remains. The subject matter is so intense, that it queries the mythology of abundance juxtaposed with cause movements against refugee-ism, homelessness, and the artificial starvation called famine. The question of whether of not there is a mutuality between such factors and if so then how can such a thing still be engineered?  What's more as a weapon of dispute, negotiation and social control?

Yet further examination reminds of the conflict between traditional systems and modern systems, the distinction being not an absence of modernism in tradition or vice versa, but an agreement to the idea of tradition being the highest authority. In recent informal debate regarding what FAO's Diouf terms as Food Security (predicting that by 2010 about 730 million people will be chronically undernourished), it was differed by other experts that even though subsistence and profit systems co-exist side by side, there is often a daily regimen provided for most West African citizens from the stand point of traditionalism.  Indeed, no polity anywhere can afford to be insecure about food - or the bewildered farmer will not be able to keep his farm.

Despite the traditional duty, no matter the victory in providing food, the modern perception of storage always wins the interpretation, even though it seldom fulfills any case for a traditional obligation. And despite Wrights argument of a special hunger, even betraying Africans, having lived in the US for years perpetuate the idea of a prevailing African hunger, which I believe is often misconstrued from the addiction to European tastes.  Perhaps, the unification of these differences can be found in the fact of the bequeathing of Liberia which territorially was a provisioning, yet history is often oblivious of such ethnological Mande contributions, technically debunking the need for Wrights case of an American Hunger. The critique of African traditional efforts even credits Arabs, Europeans, NGO's, churches, and all manner of expatriates for the reason Africa does not starve to death.  As stands, a current argument is being made in relation to abundance and mass production. There is unfortunately now, a developing grey area between alleged donor-ship and local provisioning - the trouble of addressing the starving damned and who gives.

 

 

CULTURAL BUFFOONERY

February 01, 2007:

 

A writer once suggested buffoonery as being an indication of cultural shortcomings, and in that, regard he may have been right about what is usually taken for granted.  That is perhaps the first rule of culture, that it is internal and usually to the child, appears to be indestructible and impervious against any influence.  In fact, that in many ways is a means of defense.

Nevertheless, what is it?  - If not simply the food we eat, the attitudes we hold, the clothes we wear, places we live and spiritual beliefs we practice.  Food may be less global, depending on the recipe used and a dependence on familiar foodstuffs like flour and rice; the latter in the past giving so-called third world countries their commonality or staple (some what like the notion that wheat binds Gothic bible belt Americans).  No doubt, a restaurant culture liberalizes cultural tastes, creating a crucible of acceptance.  It comes as a peculiar memory to recall the apprehensions held against Judeo-Christian values of the Passover, with a determination never to live on roots and shrubs save by cassava.  In a less than defensive manner, cultural aspects like food and clothes are an indication of lifestyles and cultural aspirations within that particular group.  It was a very powerful scene to see officer’s show-off their cultural ties in the form of kilts and bagpipes in capital display, since it was with regret that I was without my African gown on that occasion.

Clothes seem to destroy silly notions, the idea that is, that New York City is not hotter than any city in Africa, in July for instance, or that Eskimos would be foolish enough to brave cold weather simply because they have been exposed to it so long.  On the contrary, a Roman, Greek, or raffia skirt has its place in the history of machismo, much like trousers have their place in de-militarized professions.  However, in this regard certain foodstuffs bring their own uniqueness as used and grown in other cultures.  It would be no surprise to deem the acceptance of cassava (Yuka) for instance, in American culture to be termed as white earth apples.  Certainly, it is outside the boundaries of ignorance to claim that a life without palm oil is not West African – health issues notwithstanding.  Yet in this regard, organized corporate life though beneficial is often a cultures worst enemy.  Case in point is a local retailer grumbling in political spirit of the peoples concern that we have seen no such international efforts to provide food to the people as claimed.  Still, growing corporate structures in provision of such changes somehow even by retail local demands convert themselves into a profit module, whereby bringing to cultural question again, “where is all the food?”

Therefore, attitudes are difficult to earth, without running into some aromatic universality.  Yet, the most popular distinction is often that of a more superficial nature.  Charles Darwin remarks about snout discrimination:   

 I heard that I had run a very narrow risk of being rejected, on account of the shape of my nose!  That he could judge a man’s character by the outline of his features; and he doubted whether anyone with my nose could possess sufficient energy and determination for the voyage.  But I think he was afterwards well satisfied that my nose had spoken falsely. 

So too is the case for the places we live of a more urban and rural concern, with technology now having breached those distinctions - the village laptop so to speak versus the patio hammock renewed into modern furniture design.  It is with nomadic concern that these issues of domicile dictate our very understanding of place and origin in culture, the village accusing the town a product of its creation and vice versa.  This overall superficial approach begs reason, and therefore is often in some cultures of the strictest concern. 

Nevertheless, there are those certain things – if attitudes are not changed about, certain things; it is agreed there is much reason for shame.