Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Some people may be surprised at what they will no doubt term my outburst against sparklers, “bangers” and fireworks in my most recent “Echos of the Past” piece in the Cavan Echo. As I said these are dangerous; what’s more they cause a lot of distress to animals. There is one group of animals upon whom humans really depend: guide-dogs for the blind. They are highly trained to be able to navigate their handlers, and to add a pair of eyes which the blind person does not possess, but yet they become distressed and disoriented when confronted with the detonation of one of these bangers. This then affects the blind person, who may often find themselves completely lost.

This anti-social aspect of Halloween was recently exprressed on RTE radio by guide-dog user Bethann Collins. She asked why were such items allowed to proliferate, especially when they are technically illegal in the Irish Republic. I feel I can answer her – it is because of the ambivalence of the authorities who never act unless they are forced to by events. If, and I hope it never happens) somebody is fatally injured, then there will be an outcry and the police will put out their collective eggbags to clamp down on the sale and posseession of fireworks, but they’ll get tired of it and the whole thing will peter out into the sands of habitual laziness.

Niger is one of the world’s poorest countries. Its people inhabit a vast swathe of territory in Africa, much of it desert or under risk of desertification. Those crops which grow are subject to devastation by locusts.

I’ve never been there and I doubt I’ll get there now, but I have heard their national radio station La Voix du Sahel  broadcasting from the capital Niamey. Each night it ends its programmes with its jaunty national anthem performed by a group of school-children, most of whom are out of tune. I believe the recording was made at the time Niger gained its independence from France in 1960. I wonder how many of the school-children are still alive or even in Niger? Many, probably the lucky ones, migrated to France where they eventually settled. no doubt having to suffer discrimination and hostility at first. Others may have died of hunger in one of the incidents of mass malnutrtition which have visited Niger. A small handful may have joined the small elite of senior army officers, bureaucrats and politicians who never have to worry about hunger, who live in comfortable villas with all the latest mod-cons and who send their off-springs to be educated in either the best French lycees or exclusive American B-schools.

The Nigerien government seems to be very sesnsitive about figures. Not surprising, I suppose, given that fhese figures usually place Niger on the bottom rung in the world and that they usually hint that life has disimproved dramatically since independence. These figures are embarrassing, but the government”s response is embarrassing at another level.

The succesful case brought by Hadijatou Mani has highlighted the persistence of slavery in Niger. Human rights organisations like Anti-Slavery International claim there are as many as 40,000 slaves still in Niger; the Nigerien government dismisses the claims as grossly exaggerated. The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has worked for many years in Niger, says there are tens of thousands of malnourished children in Niger. The government doesn’t agree and in July it suspended MSF’s activities in the country. Since then the charity has asked to be allowed to resume work but has received no response from the authorities. This has prompted the charity to pull out of the country altogether.

Have some of these bureaucrats trained in Ireland?

Slavery is as old as human history, and if like so many blinkered historians we consider human history as only being as old as written records, well then it’s much older. It stems from a really nasty need to own and possess another human being, to control not only their waking moments but when they are asleep too.

Many people’s visions of slavery centre around stereotypes of the Deep South of the USA, maybe coloured by Gone With the Wind or Roots. It is far too easy to see slavery in simple racial terms: the abduction of black children to work for white people. But this is simplistic: slavery has existed within Africa for centuries, maybe millennia. What’s more the Roots stereotype whereby the young Kunta Kinteh was kidnapped by greedy white monsters and torn from his black brothers to enter a world of degradation and exploitation was not that common. It was far more common for the young black boys (and girls) to be captured in internecine conflicts and then sold to white slavers by local African rulers in return for money, weapons or often mere trinkets.

Most people assume that slavery was ended in the US by the Civil War. They also know that it was replaced by a culture of repression and discrimination of black people every bit as horrible as slavery. Some people will also have heard of Hull’s most famous son, William Wilberforce who persuaded the English government to turn its back on slavery in the early nineteenth century. Few people will be aware that slavery still exists; one of the regions where it seems endemic is in a belt of territory in Africa embracing the nations of Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

These countries have outlawed slavery. Mauritania did so in the late ’70s, yet it is estimated that up to 18 per cent of its’ population live as slaves. Recently, a former slave has won compensation from her country’s government for its failure to resccue her from enslavement despite claimng to have outlawed the practice in its territory.

Hadijatou Mani was born in the impoverished nation of Niger twenty-four years’ ago. When she was twelve her family was compelled to sell her to a farmer for the equivalent of $500. She was raped and forced to bear her owner’s children. She was also beaten incessantly. All the while she had to work as an unpaid domestic and farm-worker performing tasks including carrying water and looking after animals. On numerous occasions she attempted to escape and flee back to her family, and each time they, no doubt reluctantly, brought her back to her “owner”. Two years’ ago he granted her a “certificate of liberation”, yet he insisted on viewing her as one of his wives and when she married another man she was charged with bigamy and jailed.

In 2003 the government of Niger formally outlawed slavery in its territory, though most observers (both inside and outisde the country) viewed this as mere window-dressing.  Hadijatou learned of the decree and also learned, even more importantly, that the status of being a slave she had been compelled to accept was unnatural and illegal. This year she brought a case against her government for failing to protect her from being treated as a slave and its failure to enforce its own ban on the practice, and this week a regional court found in her favour, granting her compensation. Significantly the government of Niger has accepted the judgement and has promised not to appeal it. Hadijatou has vowed to spend the money on building a house, buying land and sending her children to school  sp that they can gain the education she was denied during her youth.

The judgement was handed down by the court of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). When this was set up there were many who felt it was no more than a joke, yet it has shown that it has the capacity to make real-life decisions that impact positively on the livest of the many million of mainly poor people who inhabit the ECOWAS territory.

Hadijatou Mani is a very brave young woman, yet there are many more young girls like her who are still in slavery. Some don’t even realise they are slaves and that their conditions are wrong. Hopefully Hadijatou’s victory will help them too.

In last week’s Cavan Echo I wrote about the origins of the curious name Swanlinbar. I think that the original name of the villag, which then grew into a village, may have been Swandlinbar or Swaundlinbar. Remember that one of the founders who wanted to be commemorated in the name was one Sanders or Saunders. Part of the first syllable of his name {-an}  was included, but it is far more likely that he sought to be remembered through the syllable (-and or -aund). Such a name could easily be rendered as “Swadlinbar”, the version used by many if not most people today.

SAMHAIN
 
Samhain was the beginning of the Celtic year. It was when the year turned and so was propitious for divining the future. Long after Christianity had apparently triumphed this aspect was retained in popular memory when cooks placed talismans in food whose discovery might reveal what lay ahead for those discovering them.

In prehistoric Cavan Samhain was a time of terror, when the prescribed sacrifices of the first-born were made to the idol of Crom cruach in west Cavan. At a season when the skies were visibly darkening the land around Darragh Fort near Ballymagovern often ran red with blood.

 Samhain marked another turning-point; from those seasons when man mastered nature through husbandry of the soil and care of plants towards the dead season of winter. With the lengthening of night Man became an important slave of nature and its forces, which were mysterious and frightening.

The enveloping darkness was luridly illuminated by people’s imagination. The boundaries between the living and the dead became blurred: the dead shook off their shrouds and emerged from their tombs to pay often unwanted visits to their friends and relations who had been able to cheat the grim reaper. The connection with the dead was so strong that the early Church, which had struggled for so long against this pagan survival was forced to embrace Samhain, transforming it into the Feast of All Saints or All Hallows.

Former taoiseach Barrow-Boy Bertie was rushed to the Mater Private Hospital today with a fractured leg. The injury happened when Mr Ahern fell while descending a flight of stairs. Gardai are refusing to comment on rumours that the accident happened when a crazed male with a pendulous lower lip and gaping expression rushed at Mr Ahern from behind exclaiming in a Midlands accident: “”Ya knew this was comin’ ya bastard” before attempting to push the former taoiseach down the stairs.

Pootr Brian oge. He was born with a silver toe up his arse and went through his existence always looking on the bright side of life. He never had to worry about being taught in a huge class full of little horrors fighting with each other or otherwise vying for the teacher;s attention. It was all going so well for him, and then he was given a speech to read, which he did, but never bothered to look at what he was saying. He was a bit like a fellow who makes the transition from the potty to the grown-ups’ toilet and can’t understand why nobody wants to know about his great success. He had obviously started to believe the crap about his great intellectual abilities, and never realised how he was being led by the nose into a quagmire. On the sidelines cheering him on were those in his party who feel he has risen too far too soon. But those two PD councillors in Galway really took the biscuit, resigning over medical cards, when it was their over-fed leader who egged on Brian in the first place.

Is there anyway back for Brian oge now? He’s eaten humble pie but it’s obvious he prefers filet mignon with a nice Medoc. He will forever be known as the guy who tried to nick the medical cards from the oul’ fuckers, many of whom had voted for his party just to get the cards in the first place.

My advice to him would be to consider an image make-over. That crue-cut, sharp, yuppie image is about two decades out of date. He should instead consider growing his hair long – real long, sitting back and taking a spliff, he could think of singing “Every Sperm is sacred” at a Spuc conference,  and next time he’s given something to read out in public he should politely refuse. This way he might just avoid getting crucified.

Last week Brian oge Lenihan and the organ-grinder’s monkey issued a call to patriotism to defend their cowardly and idiotic budget. I feel no loyalty to thei country they seek allegiance to. This is a country of the haves; I don’t mean simply those who have economic wealth for which they may have worked. The haves are those who have power and influence. These people may not have worked all that hard to be where they are today; in fact it may just have been a case of being born in the right family. Once that happens you don’t really have to work that hard at all. It’s taken for granted that you will do well at school and go on to University. It’s also taken for granted that you’ll pass your exams. It would be a very stupid university teacher who would fail the son or daughter of an “influential” person. And then if they choose to pursue a career in one of the professions, such as Law, they won’t have to worry about seeking pupillages or internships in law companies which will be competing for the kudos of employing them. Briefs will fall from heaven, and if they choose to transfer to the political world the media will laud their immense intelligence not to mention their selflessness and public spiritedness in turning their backs on unimaginable wealth in favour of the paltry and miserable pay of a parliamentarian or government minister.

What is true of the world of politics can be seen no less in other spheres. It’s not a question of what you know or even who you know, it’s a question of who your daddy and mammy are.

No thank you Brian, I am a citizen of the world, not of your benighted, hypocritical little banana smoothie republic.

The reaction to the changes in the medical card entitlements for over 70s have perhaps taken attention away from the idiotic cuts introduced in primary education last week, which will see teacher – pupil ratios skyrocket. The importance of lowering this ratio was recognised over thirty years’ ago by the then (Fianna Fail) minister John P. Wilson, but it seems that we are now rowing back in the gains of the past.

Any government that messes with primary education is deserving of a very large dunce’s cap, and they should be put out of the class altogether to stand in the hallway. The fact that we have in Ireland a well-educated population is the single most important factor of our prosperity in recent years – tax rates and “positive business climate” have very little to do with it, and if that goes we’ll just be another also-ran trying to attract inward investment. Primary education is the most important part of the educational system - screw it up and it’s very hard to make it right later on.

Brian Cowen has tried to make a big fellow of himself by announcing amendments to the cowardly changes introduced to the medical card scheme in last week’s budget. The changes are being amended, not scrapped, and the over 70s will still have to undergo the indignity and stress of a mean’s test. What’s more this mean’s testing will cost money, so how much money is going to be saved? Nice one Brian(s)