OJ says our father lives somewhere between the self-satisfaction that his success has made us soft and disgust that we are unacquainted with the brutal intensity of a world that he has effectively tamed for us.
The days since then have been a timeless fuzz. I feel time pass but nothing actually seems to happen.
You cannot unsee what has been seen once the veil is lifted, Reverend Olumide says in church. We cannot return to the garden of Eden. When I meet with him he says I need to confront my fears, that the devil torments us with that which scares us most. So, I cross the line between the blue hallways tiles and the white locker-room floor and navigate my way to locker number thirty-two.
You cannot unsee what has been seen once the veil is lifted, Reverend Olumide says in church. We cannot return to the garden of Eden. When I meet with him he says I need to confront my fears, that the devil torments us with that which scares us most. So, I cross the line between the blue hallways tiles and the white locker-room floor and navigate my way to locker umber thirty-two.
There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority.
'Talking Peace' is one of the few books from childhood that I still keep prominently displayed on my bookshelf.
Around the world, our cities are not the idealised open, accessible, and cosmopolitan spaces of our dreams. More often than not, they are sectioned and controlled purviews of the radically wealthy, surrounded by clusters of have-nots.
Like all things, cities must change - even a city as enamoured of the past and memory as D.C.
Everybody has an equal right to be on this earth and to be happy on this earth and to achieve on this earth. That's kind of the way that I would like to try and go about living.
People just think Africa is this one thing. So if you're from Nigeria, then you're the same as somebody from Kenya; not realizing that within Nigeria, right, we have 250 different ethnic groups, right? Two hundred and fifty different languages.
There are multiple levels of 'we' and multiple groups that can constitute this idea of who we are. We need to be aware of who we are including and excluding.
People don't talk about the amount of destruction in terms of human lives that happen, whether it's through slavery, or through, for example, what Belgium was doing in the Congo - the fragmentation of society that happened after that destruction of human life.
Kidnapping causes a long-term rupture in the psyche of those kidnapped and of those who wait for their return. It doesn't end.
The kidnapped person is so tantalizingly close, kept alive by a devastating hope. Kidnapping or hostage-taking is perhaps the most disturbing form of terror because it turns this hope into a liability that can paralyze.
Right after undergrad, I started doing low-level work on health issues in sub-Saharan Africa, and what struck me was the disconnect between how people in New York would speak about some of the issues people were facing. At the time, 2006-ish, there were a number of big media campaigns to raise awareness about HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.
Our racial past and future is something that we Americans must address.
The first time I ever cast a vote in my 1992 Blessed Sacrament School poll, I voted for Ross Perot because - Ross Perot.
In my senior year of high school, I read an article in 'Newsweek' about child soldiers in Sierra Leone. I felt a sense of shock - this was happening in the region where I'm from, and people don't know about it. I wanted to understand.
'Beasts of No Nation' began when I read an article about child soldiers in Sierra Leone during my final year of high school.
In terms of medicine, I've generally been pretty interested in public health issues as they relate to sub-Saharan Africa on a broad scale - HIV/AIDS, malaria etc.
