Gerry Loughran
27 June 2009
Nairobi — If you are one of those people who think that newspapers only print bad news, read about these two little girls who point-blank refused to die.
Grace Vincent was just six weeks old when she got a rare form of meningitis and doctors on Tyneside in the north of England concluded that she had less than a one per cent chance of survival.
She was placed on a life support system but, after four days, the baby's parents, Emily and Pete, reluctantly agreed her case was hopeless.
What happens in these situations is that the baby is placed in the mother's arms, the support leads are disconnected and the parents hold the child until death intervenes. Grace was having none of this.
After the tubes were removed, she started breathing on her own and when the nurse returned to the private room half an hour later, she was stunned to see the baby making food signals. She was given a bottle and, five weeks later, the child they now call Amazing Grace was taken home.
Next up, the Caldwell family. Donna and Neil Caldwell spent thousands of pounds on IVF treatment over five years and eventually Donna was found to be pregnant. But doctors who checked her at six weeks declared they could find no heartbeat and concluded that the pregnancy had failed.
Procedures were undertaken to clear the womb so that Donna could resume IVF treatment. But when she returned to begin the process a month later, she was tested and found actually to be pregnant. Still pregnant, that is, for a baby had been there all along.
Gestation followed a normal course and Alexandria Lydia May appeared in good time, a healthy eight pounds (3.64 kilos), and clearly a born survivor.
Although much of the critical detail was blacked out, enough remained to show how MPs squeezed every penny they could out of the system. Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt claimed one penny for a 12-second mobile phone call he made, the amount being written alongside a £10,020.34 (Sh1.2 million) claim for office repairs and a landline.
Bob Blizzard claimed for a 39p (Sh50) paper clip, Bed Bradshaw claimed for a postage stamp and Gerald Kaufman put in for a 53p (Sh68) bottle of bleach and a 71p (Sh91) bottle of washing up liquid.
Serious charges have involved cases of MPs employing family members, buying luxury items (such as a £1,645 - Sh211,600 - floating duck house, a claim that was rejected) and "flipping homes," a tactic by which MPs can secure allowances for two properties, instead of just one "second home".
The scandal brought Prime Minister Gordon Brown close to destruction and resulted in the forced resignation of the Speaker, Michael Martin. New Telegraph stories last week brought up allegations against two MPs seeking to succeed the Speaker.
The paper said Margaret Beckett claimed for £11,000 (Sh1.4 million) for gardening expenses over seven years, including £1,380 (Sh177,500) for plants, and said another contender, John Bercow, repaid £6,500 (Sh828,000) after failing to pay capital gains tax when he sold two properties in 2003 and had to repay £6,500 (Sh828,000). Bercow was elected Speaker.
Africa-watchers will be quick to see the ironies in this whole situation, as Trevor Walshaw of Melthem, Yorkshire, made clear in this letter to The Guardian newspaper:
"I lived for some years in Kenya under President Moi. There were often reports in the Daily Nation and the East African Standard to the effect that the British High Commissioner to Kenya had made yet another speech proclaiming that the way to "good governance" was through "openness and accountability".
Would it be possible to drag those gentlemen out of retirement to advise the current British Government?"
A new fish and chips shop boasting 37 items on its menu has opened in the village where I grew up. Back then, there was no need for a menu since the only three things for sale were cod, haddock and chips.
We used to have three shops, one of them run by "Chin" Fullerton, so called because of the prodigious size of his jaw.
Poor old Chin was subjected to mild but regular persecution by the neighbourhood children. One trick was to appear in the shop doorway late at night and ask, "any chips left?" "Aye, plenty chips," Chin would reply, prompting the inevitable chorus, "Then you shouldn't have made so many!"
Quite what the health and safety people would have made of food retailing practices in those days is hard to say. The oil tanks in which the fish and chips were fried were heated by a coal fire and dusty heaps of the fuel were piled next to the ovens or brought in from the yard in buckets.
Styrofoam boxes and trays were unheard of and the wrappings for your purchases - at least the outside coverings - were always yesterday's newspapers.
On the counter were large metal salt cellars and bottles of brown vinegar to sprinkle on your chips - though you never took too much of the latter, conscious of grandma's warning that vinegar dried your blood!
The new shop, Bisla Fish and Chips, still offers cod, haddock and chips, the basic takeaway being fish and chips for £4.40 (Sh565). But there is now a whole range of other delicacies to choose from, including mince pie, steak pie, fish cake, cheese patty, haggis, scampi, veggie burger, black pudding. And inevitably, mushy peas.
I hate to mention it, but you can also get a chip butty (sandwich) with gravy or curry sauce for £1.80 (Sh230). Exactly how the sandwich and the gravy are combined, I hesitate to ask. But the last I heard, the new shop was doing good business.
Some contributors to R.C. Bowen's Kenya Talk blog are mad at me for picking up a piece the other week about Kenyan attitudes to funerals and for failing to make a precise attribution. I always thought the idea of websites was to circulate your views widely, just as bloggers recycle, criticise and comment on newspaper stories. But hey, for those who were offended, apologies.
Among the downsides of the ageing process are the aches and pains. Afflicted by a stiff shoulder and no longer content to grin and bear it, or even worse, offer it up, I called a physiotherapist and made an appointment for a massage.
It never happened. A few hours beforehand, the clinic called and said the physio had to cancel. Why? She had put out her back.
A report from China says death row prisoners will be executed by lethal injection rather than by firing squad. The director of the Supreme People's Court, Hu Yungteng, said injections are "cleaner, safer and more convenient". Safer?
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
