AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

As I am writting this article it is a very cold night in the GTA.Thoughts and prayers goes to men and women on the streets because they don’t or can’t afford a place to call their homes.We call them homelessness yet do very little about them.Most of them can not even afford a meal,cold or warm one.Their survival totally depends on miracles.Humanity means nothing to them,does it? Should it?The picture on the right is of a man whose human right of housing is denied.I took this picture at the verandars of Toronto City Hall one week ago.

One night of humanity is the best way I can relate to many announcements and alerts I hear all over radios and television that if you see anyone hanging in the streets with clues of being homeless or with nowhere to go please call the following numbers…….What a shame,what a sin!Does someone enjoy to see these men and women in the streets? Why then wait for cold weather to hit then pretend to be human? Where are we everyday and night when countless people are suffering from poverty yet we hardly admit and even want to openly talk about it?

Stephen Lewis calls the issues of HIV/AIDS in Africa as failure of humanity.I believe he will also agree with me that our pretence of being humans in just those cold days and nights like today is a humanity failure that no one will be able to draw a defence if asked.Canada is one of the G8 countries,most industrialized nations on earth,powerful nations in the world.Doesn’t this click some exagerrated usual western world theories?

Canada could have and must have solutions for homelessness.Permanent and continous humanity can be achieved in this country.Its a shame that there are so many people in the streets.Can any of our politicians try to spend just one night on the street,even in summer day?Its time someone get senses of what it means or should mean to be called G8 country.What it should mean to be developed country.I think Canada and other western countries should stop thinking of poverty as a foreign problem.Poverty lives and grows in Canada.You don’t need to travel miles away to see how poverty lives and grows.Just look at the mirror.

In life there must be things that you agree with and disagree with. Its also essential to have ideologies that you believe in and others that you do not believe in.Its purity of life and one among few areas that offers totally independence and freedom of opinions.Whether the same qualifies into “freedom of speech” myths and truths,it is a matter of choices like that of promised paradise and hell!

I do not believe in counselling! Does this sentence shock you?I am sorry if it does because I wish it does not.One of many north american cultural values that I don’t believe in is the entire issue of believing that counselling works and helps individuals to change and become better person(s). Thinking of it as a cultural practise makes it easier for me to accept it simply because I respect each and every culture on earth.Respect does not equal agree or believe in. Is there best counsellor on earth than yourself? Does the story telling sessions full of self opinion and un-unique circumstances change the way you look at issues and all areas that have been subjected to counselling? I am hoping to find some answers in this journey of learning the complexity of people’s mind.

See,the world has mostly two choices. The good and the bad.Sometimes the bad becomes the good and the good turns to be the bad! Its what we call LIFE and sometimes do not even bother to question it into its own justice.How many people have been helped by counsellors? By “helped” I mean change their pattern of lifestyles to better just because of countless sessions they had with the men and women who believes to be angel like citizens? The bad being the good and the good being the bad concludes that its only a person himself/herself who has to come to some sort of conclusion that hey I need to change,I need a new chapter of my life.Its only you who can save yourself,because as far as I know you have your own soul and your own life to gamble with.Counsellors talks,they intimidate,they scare people,they offer limited or unlimited support(depends on situation) support,they air their own opinions,that is what they are trained to do.At the end of the day,you have to form your own opinion and your own counsel.

Societies needs supporters and people who will seriously warn about possible consequences.Let people remain their own counsellors! Let us have story tellers who puts on the table different cases and how they were solved or remained cold cases.Believing that somehow,some people could get into other people’s mindsets brings joke in life.Its my opinion.Peace.

It certainly feel like a dream, a dream that your only house is burning and your both hands a tied up.You can do less than watch,weep and let it go. Its the simple laws of life that you have to live with.
I am not sure where was I composing these dreams from.May be they were wishes and not hopes.I am told black people wishes but not hope. For some reasons I was not excited that Steven Harper was being sworn in and yet write a new sentence in the history of Canada.But my dissapointment which is basically self-inflicted one came after green lights when the new cabinet was announced.In the whole list no black person.I say my dissapointment was self inflicted because I am not even sure how many Conservative MPs are black,if there are any blacks. I had gathered “some” hopes due to speculations that had spread in the media channels that the sense of equal and balanced representation was going to be de facto.I had hoped,for the first time there will be a black minister.I was wrong,there was none.

Does it send some waves to you? Probably not,why?Long walk to freedom was not just a mere biography by Nelson Mandela but almost a reality.Either black people are left far behind in the political arenas or the aspiration of the game are left at the doorsteps.Being part of the history of this country means equal participation and fair play.Somebody gotta wake up and run for the seat and let the rest decide.Somebody has to set an example,like Lincoln Alexander.We may complain and complain,but without actions,we are hitting around the bush.Message for my brothers and sisters.

However,what if some foul are involved?Did you try?Do you have evidence?Did you remember to take pictures? You have to learn how to play by the heart,just like how piano is played.