Busayo Akanro – Light does not shine in light

If your eye is single, your whole body would be full of light.

I once heard about the story of a young man who had just one arm - the right one. The guy very much wanted to learn judo (a form of martial arts). His desire to become a world class judoka made him seek out a world class judo coach. He told the coach of his desire to learn judo and contrary to his expectation of discouragement or rejection due his handicap, the coach agreed to train him.

From the first time the training started, the coach began to teach him a particular “throw” technique aside from the basics of judo. Everyday and every training opportunity, he taught him to learn only that same technique until he perfected it. After a while, the young man began started wondering when he’d be taught another technique. All his other colleagues at the judo school were taught several other techniques but he wasn’t allowed to learn any other. He soon began to feel left out and complained to his coach about the issue. “If you want to learn to be a great judoka, just listen to my instructions and obey them.” said the coach in response to his questions.

A little while later, the young judoka started to compete in in-house matches and he started to win engaging the only throw technique he had learnt. One after the other, he won all his matches and entered into the local area competition. He won this event and qualified for the regional, state and national competitions respectively still using and honing the single throw skill he had been taught.
At the nationals, he had it a lot tougher going against experienced judokas armed with only one skill. He fought gallantly though unimpressed with himself and his coach that he could only engage one option of challenge while his opponents displayed several techniques. He literally fought for his life to counter all the techniques thrown at him. Then came the finals. (more…)

“See, I have made you a god unto Pharaoh”

I have always been amazed at these two words-Blindness and Deafness. They generally represent a handicap or a deprivation for most people as blindness is many times related to darkness and we all know darkness is the “absence of light”. In essence, if you are blind, you have no form and you are void because that was the state of the world before God said “Let there be light”. If you need to know what state you are in, please buy the tape. Hey! but wait! see what wikipedia defines blindness as – Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.

The interesting part of this definition for me is the visual perception. In fact, if I would redefine blindness, I’d say it’s the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological, neurological, environmental and spiritual factors. Albeit I have found out that a handicap in one of our five senses usually results in a compensation for that loss by an upgrading of some of the other good and available ones to complement the deficient one.

Helleen Keller was quoted as saying “what is worse than blindness is having eyes and not being able to see”. She was blind at 16 months; she authored several award winning books; she could speak 3 different foreign languages and she was also deaf. Stevie Wonder has been able to write, sing and produce many award-winning songs. Ray Charles held the world spell bound in his time. Someone said “your most important eyes are not on your head but on your mind.” Why isn’t this strange? (more…)

As I sit in my room musing over what to write, a funny story I heard in my secondary school comes to mind. It’s titled Boldness (courage). I hope I don’t bore you with its length. 3 naval divisions each from 3 different countries assembled together on a warship somewhere on the high seas. The countries represented were USA, Japan and Nigeria. The different commanders of these divisions soon got embroiled in an argument of who had the boldest soldiers in his division. After much deliberation, they decided to enter into a boldness contest.

The Japanese commander was the first one to give an order. “Jackie Chan!” he shouted, “Swim round this ship 5 times”. A fit young japanese sailor retorted “Aye, aye sir!”, jumped into the ocean and swam round the ship 5 times. The japanese commander looked at his colleagues and asked “Did you see what that man did? now that’s boldness”. The american commander proceeded to give his own order “Chuck Norris!” he yelled, “tie your hands behind your back and swin round this ship 3 times”. “Aye , aye sir” responded a lithe young soldier before plunging into the sea and swimming “no hands” around the ship 3 times”. His commander, the american, with a wolfish grin on his face turned to his colleagues and said “See what my man just did? men that’s boldness.Then came the turn of the nigerian commander. He looked around the ship and bellowed “Pasuma Wonder!” “Aye, aye sir!” answers Pasuma as a huge black man steps out of the ranks. “Swim round this ship once! Anyhow!”, commanded his boss. The nigerian soldier looks in bewilderment from the sea to his boss and back again. His visage quickly changes from shock to wrath as he runs at his boss and begins to pummel him with blows shouting things like “O fe pa mi ni? Mi o ni baba! Mi o o n’iya! O fe pa mi sinu omi abi!” Apologies to non-yoruba reading viewers. It simply translates as “Do you want to kill me? I am an orphan! You want me to die in this water? Anyway, after venting his wrath on his commander while the whole camp watched in amazement, he stepped back a few paces. The nigerian commander picked himself off the ground, dusted his uniform and signals to his colleagues to come closer. “Did you see what that man just did?” he asked them, “Now, that’s boldness. I’m sure none of your men can try that.” (more…)

I sit here in my new boss’ office trying to write this post as well as watch Nigeria’s first African nation’s cup match against Cote d’ivoire. The scores are still 0-0 and it’s getting really frustrating with Nigeria throwing away a lot of very good goal chances. So I’m thinking, “how can i douse this tension” and Oh!!! No!!! My boss steps into his office and Salmon Kalou takes a shot at point blank range and scores a goal for Cote d’ivoire. OH!! NO!! I really don’t know why my boss stepped in. It was apparent that when he opened the door to his office, he mistakenly opened the door to the nigerian net and caused us to concede a goal. He must have thought he was opening the door to the Ivorian net. I just pity my colleagues who couldn’t stay collected at the closing meeting we had at the office because they wanted to go home and watch Nigeria soar to victory(lol). I’m sure they’ll be kicking themselves right now. I just hope they don’t kick me tomorrow when they read this post.

I really can’t believe I’m so calm watching Nigeria almost lose their first match of the tourney. Maybe it’s because I no that they’d equalise; maybe it’s because I know that even if we lose this match, we’ll win others in the group, maybe it’s because I’ve made a decision not to break my neck worrying about problems I can’t do anything about (for crying out loud, I’m in Lagos, Nigeria and the tourney is going on in Ghana), but reserve my energy and brain power for problems I can connect with. Don’t get me wrong I am an adept lover of football. More so, I love my country and can’t stand us losing especially when we should have won, but I have noticed that a display of disgust and negative emotions in the scenario I’m witnessing right now in the office has never changed the match results and what runs through my mind is something someone said “Doing the same thing the way you’ve always done it before and expecting a different result is the definition of madness”. -Sorry to cut you guys reading but Nigeria just lost the match 0-1 to Cote d’ivoire. (more…)

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