My 10-year-old daughter read me the riot act!
Aug 30, 2006
EARLY in July I was in Banjul, the capital of the country that dubs itself 'the smiling coast of Africa', for the AU Summit. <br>Many of my friends in the AU bureaucracy whom I had branded ‘bureaucrats of our were lying in wait to confirm a recent change in job that happened to me (or a soften
DR. TAJUDEEN - A PAN-AFRICANIST VIEW
EARLY in July I was in Banjul, the capital of the country that dubs itself 'the smiling coast of Africa', for the AU Summit. Many of my friends in the AU bureaucracy whom I had branded ‘bureaucrats of our were lying in wait to confirm a recent change in job that happened to me (or a softening of ‘Mr Africa’ as many see it) and also get their own back.
I had recently joined the UN Millennium campaign as Deputy Director for Africa. Why the UN of all possible employers! So many people wanted my ‘new business card’ not because they needed to communicate with me or did not know how if they wished to but just to keep a souvenir of ‘Taju joining the system’ or ‘Tajudeen selling out’.
The ‘AUcrats’ had a field day taunting and teasing me as a ‘UNOcrat’. All attempts to convince them that I am still within the CSO community as the campaign is meant to empower citizens of the world to make their political leaders accountable for MDGs were met with knowing certainty of career bureaucrats saying “we
shall seeâ€.
It was barely two months then since I joined the campaign but somehow people were looking for evidence that I had mellowed or had been bought over. Those who have not been receiving my weekly column now believe that it must be because the UN has stopped them. Many now look for ‘evidence’ in every article I write for my ‘political shifts’.
Meanwhile I had arrived in Banjul with an even bigger change in my personal and public persona which most of the friends doubling up as foes in Banjul did not immediately notice. I had given up smoking for more than a year. That is after more than 15 years of serious piping. I did not have the obligatory pipe dangling from my mouth. It was at the end of the second day that one of the sisters challenged me that ‘something has changed about you’. Everybody chorused: “He has joined the UN.†but she said that was not it. They said I had lost wait but she still said no.
Everybody now wondered what other bomb shell she had in her armoury to demolish ‘Mr Big mouth’. She cherished her triumphalism by giving people clueless clues asking them to ‘see what has changed’ or ‘what is missing’ in me. I was not wearing a three-piece suit in tropical conditions.
So what were they supposed to be looking for? I was in my Acting Big Man full Nigerian National Dress.
Finally with the smugness of the only one who knew and the sense of discovery comparable to Newton discovering the Laws of Gravity she shouted: “Look at him. the pipe is missing.†Then everybody realised that that piece of wood perpetually dangling from my mouth for about two decades was not there indeed.
Instead of them congratulating me, everyone wanted to know where the pipe was and why I was not smoking. But I had stopped smoking more than a year before! It was not a sudden realisation on my part that smoking is dangerous. Every smoker knows that just like any alcohol consumer is aware that excessive alcohol is bad for them.
In the case of tobacco, every quantity of it is dangerous. The message should not be smoke less but do not smoke at all. Even now that I have stopped it does not mean that the impact of my previous smoking will not be with me to my grave. But more than the impact on me personally there is the impact on anybody, friends, family, complete strangers and the rest of humanity, alive and yet unborn, in whose face I have smoked. This is where and why smoking ceases to be a matter of personal choice.
If I had serially tried to poison my family or circle of friends or whole community I would safely be behind bars, if not executed and gathering manure in some grave. Yet smokers are doing this every time they smoke, directly or indirectly.
I am no latter day convert to ‘NO Smoking’ evangelism. I do not preach or lecture people. I confess that I still miss the buzz, satisfaction, elation, bounding with complete strangers, cancer friendships, emotional release, pressure antidote and all the feelings that go with smoking but I have given it up and hope that the puff you are now having is your last too. It is not the medical arguments and scary tales of lung and other kinds of cancer and health risks that made me give up.
My spur for changing a lifelong habit was a plea from my older daughter, Aida, 10, this month. On a wintry morning, last year, I was tasking her and her younger sister, Ayesha, 6, to their school in North London. I rolled down my window and settled for my first puff of the day (which any smoker cherishes, the house is a no- smoking, no-drinking rigorously enforced Sharia Zone!) but Aida said: “Baba do you know that you will not see me graduate.â€
I asked her why and she said: “Because you are smoking.†I was happy and saddened at the same time. I was happy that my 10-year-old daughter aimed to be a graduate but sad that my lifestyle was already making her feel that her father may not be there 11 or 12 years down the line when she proudly takes that degree. What kind of father am I that traumatise a young girl from that age for the rest of her life?
The buzz, the urge and everything that goes with that puff drained out of me that morning and I have not filled up the pipe again. It has been so much part of me that not many people have noticed that I have moved on.
By this article I am making a public break with the tolerated poison industry that tobacco industry represents. I am no longer active in the fraternity. I can no longer aid and abet its destruction of lives and communities and our shared environment. I may not be able to stop BAT and other tobacco companies but at least I can demand that The
New Vision no longer uses a picture of me with a pipe.
I hope my good friends Owori Charles , Kevin and Sue O’ Connor in the Tobacco or Health and their colleagues in the Better Health Lobby and others who have written to me on this particular public association with the ‘Cancer Stick’ take this as a public atonement and a determination on my part to be of service that affirms life instead of being accessory to my own death and that of others. There is and should be nothing glamourous about smoking!
EARLY in July I was in Banjul, the capital of the country that dubs itself 'the smiling coast of Africa', for the AU Summit. Many of my friends in the AU bureaucracy whom I had branded ‘bureaucrats of our were lying in wait to confirm a recent change in job that happened to me (or a softening of ‘Mr Africa’ as many see it) and also get their own back.
I had recently joined the UN Millennium campaign as Deputy Director for Africa. Why the UN of all possible employers! So many people wanted my ‘new business card’ not because they needed to communicate with me or did not know how if they wished to but just to keep a souvenir of ‘Taju joining the system’ or ‘Tajudeen selling out’.
The ‘AUcrats’ had a field day taunting and teasing me as a ‘UNOcrat’. All attempts to convince them that I am still within the CSO community as the campaign is meant to empower citizens of the world to make their political leaders accountable for MDGs were met with knowing certainty of career bureaucrats saying “we
shall seeâ€.
It was barely two months then since I joined the campaign but somehow people were looking for evidence that I had mellowed or had been bought over. Those who have not been receiving my weekly column now believe that it must be because the UN has stopped them. Many now look for ‘evidence’ in every article I write for my ‘political shifts’.
Meanwhile I had arrived in Banjul with an even bigger change in my personal and public persona which most of the friends doubling up as foes in Banjul did not immediately notice. I had given up smoking for more than a year. That is after more than 15 years of serious piping. I did not have the obligatory pipe dangling from my mouth. It was at the end of the second day that one of the sisters challenged me that ‘something has changed about you’. Everybody chorused: “He has joined the UN.†but she said that was not it. They said I had lost wait but she still said no.
Everybody now wondered what other bomb shell she had in her armoury to demolish ‘Mr Big mouth’. She cherished her triumphalism by giving people clueless clues asking them to ‘see what has changed’ or ‘what is missing’ in me. I was not wearing a three-piece suit in tropical conditions.
So what were they supposed to be looking for? I was in my Acting Big Man full Nigerian National Dress.
Finally with the smugness of the only one who knew and the sense of discovery comparable to Newton discovering the Laws of Gravity she shouted: “Look at him. the pipe is missing.†Then everybody realised that that piece of wood perpetually dangling from my mouth for about two decades was not there indeed.
Instead of them congratulating me, everyone wanted to know where the pipe was and why I was not smoking. But I had stopped smoking more than a year before! It was not a sudden realisation on my part that smoking is dangerous. Every smoker knows that just like any alcohol consumer is aware that excessive alcohol is bad for them.
In the case of tobacco, every quantity of it is dangerous. The message should not be smoke less but do not smoke at all. Even now that I have stopped it does not mean that the impact of my previous smoking will not be with me to my grave. But more than the impact on me personally there is the impact on anybody, friends, family, complete strangers and the rest of humanity, alive and yet unborn, in whose face I have smoked. This is where and why smoking ceases to be a matter of personal choice.
If I had serially tried to poison my family or circle of friends or whole community I would safely be behind bars, if not executed and gathering manure in some grave. Yet smokers are doing this every time they smoke, directly or indirectly.
I am no latter day convert to ‘NO Smoking’ evangelism. I do not preach or lecture people. I confess that I still miss the buzz, satisfaction, elation, bounding with complete strangers, cancer friendships, emotional release, pressure antidote and all the feelings that go with smoking but I have given it up and hope that the puff you are now having is your last too. It is not the medical arguments and scary tales of lung and other kinds of cancer and health risks that made me give up.
My spur for changing a lifelong habit was a plea from my older daughter, Aida, 10, this month. On a wintry morning, last year, I was tasking her and her younger sister, Ayesha, 6, to their school in North London. I rolled down my window and settled for my first puff of the day (which any smoker cherishes, the house is a no- smoking, no-drinking rigorously enforced Sharia Zone!) but Aida said: “Baba do you know that you will not see me graduate.â€
I asked her why and she said: “Because you are smoking.†I was happy and saddened at the same time. I was happy that my 10-year-old daughter aimed to be a graduate but sad that my lifestyle was already making her feel that her father may not be there 11 or 12 years down the line when she proudly takes that degree. What kind of father am I that traumatise a young girl from that age for the rest of her life?
The buzz, the urge and everything that goes with that puff drained out of me that morning and I have not filled up the pipe again. It has been so much part of me that not many people have noticed that I have moved on.
By this article I am making a public break with the tolerated poison industry that tobacco industry represents. I am no longer active in the fraternity. I can no longer aid and abet its destruction of lives and communities and our shared environment. I may not be able to stop BAT and other tobacco companies but at least I can demand that The
New Vision no longer uses a picture of me with a pipe.
I hope my good friends Owori Charles , Kevin and Sue O’ Connor in the Tobacco or Health and their colleagues in the Better Health Lobby and others who have written to me on this particular public association with the ‘Cancer Stick’ take this as a public atonement and a determination on my part to be of service that affirms life instead of being accessory to my own death and that of others. There is and should be nothing glamourous about smoking!