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No, I’m not homophobic...
Saturday, 29 May 2010 14:41
In this edition of Duganafi Gaenana Falaeh, Mr Peters apologises, touches on childhood pinnacles, the Kanilai
Festival, glaringly irresponsible parenting, the ever-escalating knife crime claiming teenage lives in London and solutions to curb it, The Special One and…an admiration for a certain Chelsea fan.Please read on…
No, I’m not homophobic
In the last issue of this column, a couple of readers were of the opinion that I sounded a tad homophobic in my write up. I had pointed out, case studying Gambian society, on why same sex couples won’t fly back home. In all honesty, hand on heart, I didn’t detect any homophobic tinge in my article after I read and re-read it. My editor must have felt the same as he didn’t delete that segment but published it without a footnote that would have read, ‘the views expressed by the columnist are not necessarily those of Jollofnews.com.’
The last thing the administrators of this media outlet need is to be tagged homophobic. Like sexual assaults, readers, that’s a charge that sticks forever.
Ask Buju Banton
Maybe had I added George Michael is one musician I would pay to watch (actually, I watched him for free when I worked in his last ever UK concert at Earls Court four years ago. Take it from me, he can rip a set.), it would have erased any homophobic overtone hidden, unknowing to me, in the article. Or how ‘Father Figure’ and ‘Careless Whisper’ are two favourite songs of mine. Or how Elton John’s ‘Daniel’ or Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’ are songs I love to listen to on YouTube when I can.
My bad, the Yanks would say.
Like I said in the thread, I apologise if I come across as anti-gay. Like almost all Gambians, I was raised right and, yes, I did pick up, on my own, some bad habits my dad never taught me. Like loathing with an unbridled passion a certain football club clad in red up north. That’s not a bad habit, anyway. It is called perpetually hating the progressive enemy. None of the others, I can tell you, are homed in on same sex couples.
Once again, should it be viewed different (which turned out to be the case), I apologise.
Life’s grand as a child!
I was waiting for my bus reading a novel, happened to look up as I turned a page and saw this toddler, roughly about two or so, pushing a toy baby buggy, her face etched in the most beautiful beam I had ever seen. It was an effort what she was doing as her hands were high up her head as she grasped the buggy handles and propelled it forward, her mum pushing her own buggy.
But she was truly having a ball and the best thing she could ever do in life, at that moment, was move that buggy.
It was such a beautiful sight and I couldn’t help but chuckle and reminisced our own feats as kids.
I was too young to remember what I top off on by the age of two but, between five and eight, it was to whistle. Yes, whistle. It took great skill at that age to be able to do that. Those who did were seen as geniuses. For my baby brother, it was to rinse his mouth. You know, ‘kuchu-kuchu’ after brushing your teeth. That was his pinnacle and he made sure he reminded me he could do it every morning when I bathed him as a four to five year old.
At that age, with no bills, mortgage and what have you to pay; life is a bed of roses.
Pity the hands of time can’t be turned back…
Dancing dunce
Read this week of our president prancing about in the Kanilai Festival. Nothing wrong in upholding one’s roots but there is a lot wrong with pumping millions into a festival which won’t better the life of the average Gambian in any way.
A president busting a move and a populace governed in utter lunacy? The words Nero and Rome sprout to mind.
Lock them up and melt the key!I was numb with fury when I read in Wednesday’s issue of The Sun of a chain smoking Indonesian toddler. The story stated that two year old Ardi Rizal was first given a stick at 18 months by his dad Muhamed.
They say anybody can be a dad but it takes one to be a parent. This, in this case, was a cliché coined for the flea-brained cretin.
Rizal’s mum, Diana, went on to state her son is totally a nicotine addict and throws a tantrum when he doesn’t have his usual 40 cigarettes a day.
If we had all the stuff as kids that we threw a tantrum for, I don’t think we would all be here today.
Rizal’s parents have chronicled everything that is wrong with bad parenting. How on earth could they succumb to their child’s cravings when it would only hasten his departure from this earth is beyond any sane thinking individual.
At an age when kids try out their feet, Rizal weighs 4 stone and is too unfit to run around. With the puffing rate the poor boy is going, he probably won’t be around long.
Cold but true.
Rizal’s ‘parents’ should be thrown in a cell crawling with all kinds of creepy crawlies, keyed and forgotten forever.
Knife mania
I may not have the name of the average Gambian but I had the average Gambian’s childhood: running out, playing hide and seek, grazed knees and popped toe nails from football, levitating felines with our feet, hurling stones at dogs and, oh yeah, think nothing of beating up a girl who so much as rolls her eyes at you.
That was the childhood I had.
As a teenager, it was all about dressing amicably and trying to catch the eye of the ‘chepehs.’
Come to the UK and I witness a whole different ball game.
These kids over here are tooled up with ‘shanks’ (London slang for knives) and have no second thoughts in pushing it in you.
Everyday, you read in the papers of some kid stabbed to death over the weekend. For crying out loud, one poor kid was chased all over the place in Victoria Station before being fatally knifed.
What is the world coming to?
What really hurts is the missing ones at family dinner tables, families torn apart forever, lives changed forever, for the worst, another young body interred, hearts forever grieving are of ethnic minorities.
I was interviewed on the subject by a college student doing a presentation on it and I stated that if the authorities don’t swiftly tackle knife crime and give it the priority it deserves, we would be cascading down the path of which there would be no young black kid under 21 years.
Last year, 25 young Londoners were stabbed to death. This year is only five months old but 11 young lives have been lost to the madness.
It is a very soul destroying situation and one that should be addressed right away to save the young black lives left.
Here’s my 2 pence on it.
First off, anyone carrying a knife gets ten years straight and life for a murder. Currently, it is five years if caught with a knife but should it be upped to ten, (and ten meaning ten not five) I think it will remedy the gloomy situation.
If you know you stand to waste ten years of your life being caged or you only leaving HMP in a box, one would give it a good go-over before pocketing a kitchen knife and looking to use it on some poor soul.
Sadly, as it stands, the issue is being treated with kid gloves and more and more young black kids are failing to finish their teens. More mothers’ hearts are wrenched.
Blues brother
I read the interview of Cherno Baba Jallow, the GPU-USA PRO, online, and it was a delight to learn that he supports Chelsea. Yes, he did pointed out a lot in his interview, what he thought of the online Gambian sites, news content, etc, but the Chelsea bit snared me.
As a youngster, I had religiously read his column in the pages of the Weekend Observer (Was it Perspective?) and marvelled at the way he puts himself across. A writer my dad once described as ‘sending you to the dictionary all the time,’ Cherno was a delight to read and it is with sadness to say I never got to meet him in person.
So, Cherno, if you reading this and you happen to drop by in the Smoke, swing a long time fan an email. A full tour of the world’s greatest club is on me.
Can he deliver?
What do Jose Mourinho and Muhamad Ali have in common? They both mouth off a lot but can back it up. One is considered the greatest boxer that ever breathed and one is rapidly making waves to being the footballing manager to it. It didn’t hurt that both are easy on the eye.
I stand to be corrected, Jose (who anointed himself The Special One in his first press conference as Chelsea boss in 2004) is the only manager to win back to back titles in Portugal, England and Italy.
Last weekend, he became the third manager to win the Champions League with a 2-0 drubbing of Bayern Munich.
It is an open secret he will be Bernabau boss come next season and this is where I reckon The Special One will turn out to be not so special after all.
Yes, he will lead them to silverware galore but minus the flowing football so synonymous with Real de Madrid outfits. At Chelsea, we have been tagged ‘boring, boring Chelsea’ under the Special One but the trophy cabinet was far from being a cob webbed one. Still, with a team costing over $200m to assemble, it would be interesting to see the likes of Ronaldo, Kaka and co turf it out the Chelsea-and-Inter-Milan-under-Mourinho way: notch a goal and shut up shop.
Before the Mourinho fans descend on me, I hasten to add, I, like all Chelsea fans, love The Special One to bits; even when he knocked us out of the Champions League. I had the privilege of talking to him (even if it was just ‘thanks for the title,’ ‘yeah, thanks.’) and got his autograph at a Bryan Adams concert in 2005.
Again, Mourinho is like Ali in another unique way: even those who don’t like him like him and those who like him love him.
For criticisms or suggestions, please email me at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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