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Duganafi Gaenana Falaeh God help us!
Sunday, 18 July 2010 23:23
In this edition of Duganafi Gaenana Falaeh, Mr. Peters expresses shock at the death sentence handed to Lang Tombong and co, looks back
on the World Cup, blames Paul, highlights some PC cases in Germany and the UK, why he is looking forward to 22nd July, being superstitious, decries a lenient jailing, suggests what should have been done to find out an athlete’s gender, lauds Africa and…Maradona’s height or, rather, lack of it.God help us!
I’m naïve, I admit it. I didn’t know we have capital punishment enshrined somewhere in our laws until I shockingly read that Gen. Lang Tombong Tamba and seven others were given the death penalty by Judge Emmanuel Amadi on Thursday. This was on the basis of treason, conspiracy to murder and participating in an act to overthrow the democratically elected government of the day. Our judicial system helmed by these mercenary Nigerian judges has ceased to amaze me. If they could jail my dad for a year for something as flimsy as propelling a rally, you would be a dolt to put it past them to take seven lives and hide behind the constitution, when the evidence brought forth by the state were all over the place. Still, this latest offering of a judicial gaffe got me stunned. Can Judge Amadi be able to live with himself if these men were to be killed? Can he look himself in the mirror and be comfortable with the face that stares back at him? Can he be able to sleep at night with the coffins of seven men resting on his conscience?
When my dad was jailed, I had a rush of blood. I can’t remember last I felt that boxed in. With the Tamba case, I just felt sad. Sad that the institution that should take human lives in high regard; i.e, the judiciary, has taken a sharp departure from that.
God help us all at the courts.
You can’t have it all…It is human instinct to be greedy, to want more, sometimes even when we don’t want it at all.
During the football season, all I wanted was the title and nothing else. I couldn’t tell you what group Holland were in if you had put up mortgage money. Bizarrely, I can tell you the results of all Holland’s seven games they played in two World Cups ago as that was the year I went Dutch.
It came to past Chelsea won the double and all I wanted was the Community Shield in August and fill in the biggest sporting tournament going on at the base of the motherland with a John Grisham novel and then some.
I should have done that. I should have treated the back pages of newspapers like I do when Chelsea loses: ignore them.
I should have gone to that Kenny Rogers concert; I should have ordered more novels on Amazon.com, I should have refused to get caught up in the madness. Alas, I didn’t and the result? Football heartbreak I’m still nursing.
I’m big enough to admit Spain were worthy winners and my guys came to kick anything moving in Spanish colours. We should have been two players down by half time if the referee was worth the whistle he shrills. This brand of football (let’s call it thuggery) was the first time the Dutch had exhibited it and it shocked us all as them orange lot are one of the finest footballing sides in the world. When Holland meet Brazil, it is Arsenal versus, er, Arsenal. Football played like a nude Beyonce: irrestibly sexy. If you look at it in perspective, the only way to play Arsenal is the Bolton approach: rough them up, kick a few shins, slide in with pernicious tackles and have them shook. Go in the break goalless, score one after, keep up the in-your-face-approach and the points are yours. Good in any league ground in the UK but bad on the biggest stage of all, a World Cup final. Even Dutch legend Johan Cruyff denounced the football his countrymen played.
I doubt whether Holland will ever have a star on their jersey. Three times in thirty six years, we’ve come up short. Cruyff and Rep couldn’t, nor could Gullit and Rijkaard, nor could Kluivert and Bergkamp and nor could Robben and Sneijder. The English say Brian Clough is the England manager who never managed England. Holland, I think, has become the Word Cup wining team that has never won the World Cup.
I hope I’m wrong like Paul the octopus is right.
Somebody batter Paul!
Now I know how German and Argentinean fans felt about Paul the psychic octopus. I have never loathed a sea creature like I did Paul, whose only crime was predicting a Spanish win. You could tell I live in England as I’ve taken the blame game to another level. But someone has to be stationed to take the blame for the Dutch not winning football’s biggest accolade and one shouldn’t look past the eight legged creature. Paul has been a revelation for the World Cup and punters wish they had taken him seriously when he predicted a Serbia win over Germany. Someone wrote in the papers that Paul should be put in charge of the British economy. Now, while I think that move would prove that Paul the octopus is merely an octopus, I would want him to broaden his scope on Premier League and Champions League games. Not only would I take him serious, but I will grow to love him.
A success for Africa
Now that the World Cup has wrapped up, we can tap ourselves on the back after successfully staging it. The opening and closing ceremonies were breath taking, the stadiums were top notch, FIFA made money (which I had initially doubted) and the vuvuzela blasted its way into the dictionary.
The sight of a beaming Nelson Mandela in a buggy cart at the final was heart warming and it couldn’t have been more befitting had he been made to present the trophy to Iker Casillas.
South Africa has blazed the trial and I reckon it won’t be long before we welcome the world to another party.
Let’s take it west this time…Jollof!
A blatant miscarriage of justice
Don’t you sometimes feel judges sometimes don’t know the severity of those docked before them and pass out sentences, willy nilly, that don’t fit the crimes committed? Case in point, my dad’s ‘crime’ wasn’t worth the sentence he received, a guy who snatched a $4.99 beef burger from someone in the park and got jailed eighteen months for it in the US is judicial lunacy which ever end you pitching for. Guess how much time a couple got, wait for it, administering methadone, a heroin substitute drug to their fourteen month old ill baby who died hours later? Child killers Bonny Richards and John Davies got fifteen and eight months respectively. And this was after they admitted child cruelty! If you are not spitting feathers at the tissue-soft time these despicable, apologies-for-beings got, you urgently need a check up from the neck up. Any right thinking judge would easily have issued life or serve a maximum of forty years before parole is considered.
Unfortunately, they were sentenced by a judge with a basket of sandwiches short of a damn picnic.
Only in Germany…
A police officer made legal history when he won a battle to get compensated for, you couldn’t make it up, getting dressed for work. No, you don’t need glasses. You read it right.
According to Officer Martin Schauder, it takes him fifteen minutes to get dressed and another fifteen to undress. Effectively, he was working 50 hours a year for free. The 44 year had argued the case for months with his bosses in Munster, north-west Germany but they didn’t budge so he took it to court and won an extra seven days annual leave.
It has left the legal profession wondering whether his victory will open the floodgates for a whole raft of similar cases.
It has left me furiously thinking of coming up with a writ for Transport For London for…not making sure my favourite seat is empty when I get on the bus. I could argue I get hot tempered, dizzy and difficulty breathing if I get anywhere else other than my favourite seat.
I fancy my chances like an alcoholic fancies a pint.
Only in Britain…
A transsexual paedophile found guilty of downloading child porn was spared jail after being told she would not be safe in jail. Again, nothing wrong with your vision. You read right.
Laura Voyce, who is legally a woman but biologically still a man, was told jail would have been an ‘appalling experience’ and was instead given community service.
‘I do not see how you could be kept safe in a prison environment with the best will of those who run such establishments,’ the judge was reported to have said.
That would have been one despicable being off the streets if the judge had taken Voyce as a man and jail him for a good stretch. Instead, a despicable being is among us, breathing the same air we breathe, because a judge chose to get all technical. Stupidly.
A much quicker wayNineteen year old South African athlete Caster Semenya won the 800m this week at the Lappeenranta Games in Finland after being given the all clear by the IAAF. She hadn’t competed for eleven months following an investigation into her gender which followed her gold winning run in Berlin last year.
Eleven months to determine whether Semenya was a he or she? Incredible! Okay, the South African looks more on the male side with the face and body to boot but wouldn’t it have been quicker if she was made to go starkers before a panel of female reps from the IAAF, who, ahem, would closely observe her and have it over with? There is no other quicker way.
Superstitious or stupid-stitious?
I read that sportsmen are notoriously superstitious and with good reason as it improves performance. John Terry only pees in one urinal and would wait till it is vacant even if others are free, Paul Ince, during his playing days, wears his top in the tunnel, Kolo Touray makes sure he is the last to leave the dressing room and ex-French keeper Bernard Lama wears the socks of the opposition team underneath his own for good luck.
‘It may have been the combination of existing talent, hard training and good luck underwear that made Michael Jordan perform as well as he did,’ says Prof. Lysann Damisch of the University of Cologne.
I do have my own superstitious beliefs too, however barmy they may come across. I cross myself when I leave home and when I come home, I use one bus stop for work and anything else and another for church only, I sit in the same seat on the second bus of my journey which is easy as I get it at the first stop. If someone sits on it, I sit next to them when there are scores of empty seats around and, in all cases, they get up, slightly irritated I presume, and I shift over and continue my reading. I use the same side gate to get to church and, if coming from another direction, would pass two open gates before the side gate. I cross myself on entering the side gate, on entering the church and do the same when I leave. I sit in the same pew and in the same spot for six years in church. So far, no one has beaten me to it. I read the papers backwards. I wear my Chelsea bracelet on my right wrist before I wear my Chelsea watch on the left. All the novels I owed have O.I.R Peters personalised on the three sides. I have to read something when I’m eating, I always start this column on a Friday even if I started getting ideas on a Monday and I always visit the loo whenever I wake up and, in few cases, when I got noting to er, drop.
These are some of my head-scratching superstitious stuff. If you are doggedly doing something and don’t want to change your ways, you are being superstitious.
Jeffrey Deaver is here!
What do President Jammeh and I have in common? We are both looking forward to 22nd July. For different reasons, I hastily add before you lot think I condone military intervention in politics.
Whilst Jammeh will talk a lot and say very little on Thursday as he celebrates sixteen years since he occupied State House and got minted up beyond his wildest dreams, not to mention the many titles and AIDS cure he brags of, I will be at Water Stones in Piccadilly for a book signing by international best seller Jeffrey Deaver on his latest offering, The Burning Wire to be followed by a talk and a Q and A. I’m so excited and it’s not like I wasn’t there last year when I gave him seventeen of his books to autograph for me and took photos with him. His sense of humour is almost like that of an Englishman and he doesn’t laugh at his own jokes which got me thinking, if the plots run out, he couldn’t do badly in stand up.
If you are into fiction reading and haven’t read anything by Deaver, it is a bit like coming to England and not sample fish and chips. Or visit Banjul and not get ‘welcomed’ by a mosquito.
Last year, I pulled off the perfect fib at work to see him. This year, I’m a year older and wiser so I will tell the truth and nothing but the truth. See, I’m showing growth.
Maradona is so down to earth…I meant the above literally. I know Maradona would struggle to get the adult magazines at the top shelf of my local off licence but I didn’t know he would struggle to get the groceries at my local Tesco too.
The football legend, I hilariously learn, stood at a, er, towering 5 foot 4 and the half inches. You know you are short when you jostle for half an inch to further prop you up. This photo does justice to his height. Gosh, even Claude Makelele is taller at 5 foot 6. I know I will never be the ‘Maradona’ of whatever I chose to be in life as I don’t think He upstairs instilled that impeccable a talent in me like that last I checked. Thus, it feels right, somewhat, that I, a mere mortal, should poke fun at a legend with more talent in his left foot than I have in my whole frame.
Hahatai
Last season, I was conversing with an 11 year old wanna be footballer as we watched final scores on BBC1. Final scores, for those not in the UK, is a round up of all the weekend’s league games in all the divisions live on the box.
On this particular day, as usual, final scores were wrapped up by that distinctive voice who announces all the football results. Years ago, it was James Alexander Gordon and the guy was so neutral and sounds the same every weekend that I reckon he will be announcing his own obituary and not change his tone.
For some reason, the 11 year old I was with asked whether the man who reads the scores is doing a job? Of course, I replied to his utter dismay. People work very hard, all he does is read, he protested.
So, how do you expect him to pay his bills, I asked him?
The kid shrugged, morphed his face into that look that all the kids in this country seem to wear when they telling you something you should have figured out. Let him get a real job, he said.
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Comments
Their have been so many pleas from Gambian friends for me to return to Gambia...these past few days.So many have lost their jobs and need help.
Mile 2 would be a great danger for me.
Sad ??
Bajaw.
Now why didn't I think of that?
Would like to own another....may call it
Mile 2....what do ya think ?"
Comment
How about call it Sankulay kunda-bridge-devil? This name can resist all forces to banish even against devine-mystified presidents with godly powers; will win you all races & won't break even a hair! You'll get billions without selling cocaine!!!
Didn't bet on The Open...No one grabbed my eye. Much prefer roulette or the horses. My plan is to go by the name or the number.. not the price or the form.
Been remarkably lucky doing this since I was 6 years old.Betting owes me nothing.
Once owned a race horse...called
"Arn't We Lucky"
Recall he cost me nothing..as he earned his keep being placed on every occaision.
Unfortunately broke a leg at Uttoxeter. 3 fences from home when leading.
Not so lucky uh ?
Would like to own another....may call it
Mile 2....what do ya think ?
Good birthday present as South African..Louis Ousthoiusen.{Cant spell that} takes the 150th British Open at St Andrews.
The Guy didn't have a nerve in his body...The rest were no where...
Bad day for American golf...he he he?
Roll on the Ryder Cup.
Well done Africa.
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