Post by Onyango Oloo on Jan 9, 2018 16:52:12 GMT 3
Onyango Oloo Wishes a Special Event to a Unique Young Man!
On Wednesday, January 9, 1991 a handsome young born was born at the Scarborough Centenary Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Needless to say, his mother was there, giving birth to him.
What is less obvious was that his father, a Kenyan landed immigrant to that cold North American country was also present just outside the delivery room.
His mother a twenty-something budding feminist and environmentalist had made Canada her home in the early 1980s. His father had just hit his thirties.
Both parents were unanimous about one name for the child even before he was conceived.
Boy or girl the name Sankara was agreed upon-father and mother being passionate admirers of the
slain charismatic musician, paratrooper, Marxist and leader of the tiny West African nation who carried out a revolutionary coup in conjunction with three of his youthful military colleagues-including his best friend,
Blaise Compaore who was to later organize Captain Thomas Isidore Sankara’s assassination on October 15, 1987.
Sankara took over
a poor Third World backwater
that had been bedeviled by at least six military coups, decades of neo-colonial oppression, exploitation and extreme poverty.
In his rise to power Sankara renamed the country from its old French colonial name-Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, meaning Land of Upright People. He gave the country
a new national anthem and proceeded to lead national mobilization efforts against river blindness, marginalization of the peasants and workers and foregrounding women. He made a mark in Africa and around the world when he boldly castigated the onerous foreign debt; visited Cuba and was embraced by
Fidel Castro and went to the United States where he publicly addressed African-Americans in the
historic Black neighbourhood of Harlem. Of course this was a direct threat to Western imperialists, particularly the former colonial power and its African stooges like Ivory Coast which at the time under the grip of the
late octogenarian,Félix Houphouët-Boigny.
Especially after his electric performance at the
OAU conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, monopoly capital decided that Captain Thomas Sankara, just like
Maurice Bishop in the tiny Caribbean island nation of Grenada, was too dangerous an example to the Cold War myth that the people of Africa and the Caribbean were hostile to socialism.
So plans got underway to get rid of Sankara. A direct CIA, Mossad, French intelligence or otherwise capitalist assassination at a public meeting was too risky. So the French colluded with their neo-colonial surrogate Cote D’Ivoire to plan the elimination of Thomas Sankara. Being a neighbouring country Ivory Coast to give it its English name had close ethnic, cultural, economic and political ties with Burkina Faso. So the leadership of Cote D’Ivoire infiltrated the revolutionary core of Sankara’s military circle. They managed to get through to Blaise Compaore a childhood friend who had actually helped to free Sankara when a previous military regime had incarcerated.
Captain Sankara trusted his close comrade and confidant Compaore so much that he is reported to have quipped, “If you hear Compaore is planning something against me, it will be too late because there is nothing you can do.” Compaore took advantage of Sankara’s weaknesses (see this scholarly article:http://www.academia.edu/29206753/Third_Wordism_Sankara_and_the_burkinab%C3%A9_revolution_-_Fighting_oppression_with_tied_hands) in dealing with civil servants, teachers and a plethora of Leftist parties to further isolate the leader of the Burkina Be Revolution. In mid October 1987 he struck, ordering the arrest of his erstwhile best friend. Fearing the cataclysmic consequences of a blatant killing of the massively popular Captain Sankara, Compaore ordered for the leader of the revolution to be hastily buried in an unmarked grave.
Blaise Compaore immediately assumed power and continued to accumulate wealth as he misgoverned Burkina Faso for the next 27 years until a
popular uprising led to Compaore’s ousting a couple of years ago.
That is how our son acquired his first name. His mother, a lapsed Catholic and his father, a Marxist-Leninist atheist, had no time for Christian-usually Jewish, English, German or European-appellations. Instead because our son was of Luo and Meru heritage, he has three other names from his father’s and mother’s side. Just African names.
Sankara grew up to be an intelligent, sensitive, poetic, athletic child who did well in Tae Kwendo. From the time he was this high he became a veteran of street demonstrations against police brutality, marches against apartheid, meetings on El Salvador, Northern Ireland, East Timor, planning against the Moi-KANU dictatorship, protests against environmental degradation, solidarity with North American Native communities and celebrations of LGBTI issues. He literally had no chance to be involved in reactionary and backward ideas. On his own, he developed a talent for poetry and spoken word and is today respected among his peers for his creative output.
But he has grown up to be a very private young man who often shuns Facebook and other social media platforms. So out of sheer respect his father will say nothing more about Sankara. Unlike his son, Onyango Oloo lives on Facebook, has thousands of Twitter followers and manages at least eight blogs including the well known Jukwaa discussion group and the Kenya Democracy website.
Once when he was about six years old, I asked Sankara what he considered himself to be in terms of nationality. He promptly responded: “Dad, you and Mom are KENYANS. I am African-Canadian”. So there you have it.
Sankara has been to Kenya when I brought him, his mother and step-brother to attend the 2007 edition World Social Forum held in Kasarani and for someone who had grown up a long time believing he was an only child, he was amazed to discover the dozens of cousins, aunties, uncles and grandmothers he had among his Luo and Meru relatives. He was particularly impressed when I took him all the way to Yiro,South Ugenya to meet my auntie, my father’s oldest sibling who died recently at almost a hundred years old. Sankara was amazed that this old woman a retired employee address him in the Queen’s English.
If I have one enduring regret, it is the decision I made at the end of 2005 to come back to Nairobi to head as the National Coordinator of the Kenya Social Forum headlining the Eastern African Committee to plan for the 2007 WSF event. Because my trip was rather rushed, I did not have time to explain to my son my abrupt departure from Canada where I had been very close to Sankara despite breaking up with Kathure Kebaara, his mother a few years ago. For the record, both parents remain close comrades who were once members of the North American chapter of a certain Kenyan clandestine movement.
But my coming to Africa was seen by my son as an “abandonment” by his father and this led to some friction between father and son which I am trying to correct even today.
I think I have said what I wanted to say and since my son is an avid reader, I am sending him an email of this message so I will wrap up by saying:
Happy Birthday Sankara!
On Wednesday, January 9, 1991 a handsome young born was born at the Scarborough Centenary Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Needless to say, his mother was there, giving birth to him.
What is less obvious was that his father, a Kenyan landed immigrant to that cold North American country was also present just outside the delivery room.
His mother a twenty-something budding feminist and environmentalist had made Canada her home in the early 1980s. His father had just hit his thirties.
Both parents were unanimous about one name for the child even before he was conceived.
Boy or girl the name Sankara was agreed upon-father and mother being passionate admirers of the
slain charismatic musician, paratrooper, Marxist and leader of the tiny West African nation who carried out a revolutionary coup in conjunction with three of his youthful military colleagues-including his best friend,
Blaise Compaore who was to later organize Captain Thomas Isidore Sankara’s assassination on October 15, 1987.
Sankara took over
a poor Third World backwater
that had been bedeviled by at least six military coups, decades of neo-colonial oppression, exploitation and extreme poverty.
In his rise to power Sankara renamed the country from its old French colonial name-Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, meaning Land of Upright People. He gave the country
a new national anthem and proceeded to lead national mobilization efforts against river blindness, marginalization of the peasants and workers and foregrounding women. He made a mark in Africa and around the world when he boldly castigated the onerous foreign debt; visited Cuba and was embraced by
Fidel Castro and went to the United States where he publicly addressed African-Americans in the
historic Black neighbourhood of Harlem. Of course this was a direct threat to Western imperialists, particularly the former colonial power and its African stooges like Ivory Coast which at the time under the grip of the
late octogenarian,Félix Houphouët-Boigny.
Especially after his electric performance at the
OAU conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, monopoly capital decided that Captain Thomas Sankara, just like
Maurice Bishop in the tiny Caribbean island nation of Grenada, was too dangerous an example to the Cold War myth that the people of Africa and the Caribbean were hostile to socialism.
So plans got underway to get rid of Sankara. A direct CIA, Mossad, French intelligence or otherwise capitalist assassination at a public meeting was too risky. So the French colluded with their neo-colonial surrogate Cote D’Ivoire to plan the elimination of Thomas Sankara. Being a neighbouring country Ivory Coast to give it its English name had close ethnic, cultural, economic and political ties with Burkina Faso. So the leadership of Cote D’Ivoire infiltrated the revolutionary core of Sankara’s military circle. They managed to get through to Blaise Compaore a childhood friend who had actually helped to free Sankara when a previous military regime had incarcerated.
Captain Sankara trusted his close comrade and confidant Compaore so much that he is reported to have quipped, “If you hear Compaore is planning something against me, it will be too late because there is nothing you can do.” Compaore took advantage of Sankara’s weaknesses (see this scholarly article:http://www.academia.edu/29206753/Third_Wordism_Sankara_and_the_burkinab%C3%A9_revolution_-_Fighting_oppression_with_tied_hands) in dealing with civil servants, teachers and a plethora of Leftist parties to further isolate the leader of the Burkina Be Revolution. In mid October 1987 he struck, ordering the arrest of his erstwhile best friend. Fearing the cataclysmic consequences of a blatant killing of the massively popular Captain Sankara, Compaore ordered for the leader of the revolution to be hastily buried in an unmarked grave.
Blaise Compaore immediately assumed power and continued to accumulate wealth as he misgoverned Burkina Faso for the next 27 years until a
popular uprising led to Compaore’s ousting a couple of years ago.
That is how our son acquired his first name. His mother, a lapsed Catholic and his father, a Marxist-Leninist atheist, had no time for Christian-usually Jewish, English, German or European-appellations. Instead because our son was of Luo and Meru heritage, he has three other names from his father’s and mother’s side. Just African names.
Sankara grew up to be an intelligent, sensitive, poetic, athletic child who did well in Tae Kwendo. From the time he was this high he became a veteran of street demonstrations against police brutality, marches against apartheid, meetings on El Salvador, Northern Ireland, East Timor, planning against the Moi-KANU dictatorship, protests against environmental degradation, solidarity with North American Native communities and celebrations of LGBTI issues. He literally had no chance to be involved in reactionary and backward ideas. On his own, he developed a talent for poetry and spoken word and is today respected among his peers for his creative output.
But he has grown up to be a very private young man who often shuns Facebook and other social media platforms. So out of sheer respect his father will say nothing more about Sankara. Unlike his son, Onyango Oloo lives on Facebook, has thousands of Twitter followers and manages at least eight blogs including the well known Jukwaa discussion group and the Kenya Democracy website.
Once when he was about six years old, I asked Sankara what he considered himself to be in terms of nationality. He promptly responded: “Dad, you and Mom are KENYANS. I am African-Canadian”. So there you have it.
Sankara has been to Kenya when I brought him, his mother and step-brother to attend the 2007 edition World Social Forum held in Kasarani and for someone who had grown up a long time believing he was an only child, he was amazed to discover the dozens of cousins, aunties, uncles and grandmothers he had among his Luo and Meru relatives. He was particularly impressed when I took him all the way to Yiro,South Ugenya to meet my auntie, my father’s oldest sibling who died recently at almost a hundred years old. Sankara was amazed that this old woman a retired employee address him in the Queen’s English.
If I have one enduring regret, it is the decision I made at the end of 2005 to come back to Nairobi to head as the National Coordinator of the Kenya Social Forum headlining the Eastern African Committee to plan for the 2007 WSF event. Because my trip was rather rushed, I did not have time to explain to my son my abrupt departure from Canada where I had been very close to Sankara despite breaking up with Kathure Kebaara, his mother a few years ago. For the record, both parents remain close comrades who were once members of the North American chapter of a certain Kenyan clandestine movement.
But my coming to Africa was seen by my son as an “abandonment” by his father and this led to some friction between father and son which I am trying to correct even today.
I think I have said what I wanted to say and since my son is an avid reader, I am sending him an email of this message so I will wrap up by saying:
Happy Birthday Sankara!