The Farmer In Me

Footprints of Change

I see footprints of change

I hear drums of victory; I sense freedom
The captives of hope are being freed
The beauty of life like a flower is again reappearing

Despair is giving way; barreness is ending

Gain is coming for every pain; glory for every story
Water is coming upon every dry land
I see footprints of change

Although Slow, be Thankful

My occasional Monday morning two-hour drive to work turned out almost five hours on November 17th. Why? It was the first day of the 2014 winter downpour in Southwestern Ontario. I left home quite early enough to get to work about an hour before time but the bitterly cold winter condition accompanied with the briskly blowing wind, reminiscent of the Chinook condition prevalent in Southern Alberta, sent a 'driver beware' message to everyone plying the highways and the byways on that day; You drove with caution to arrive safely at your destination.

For most parts of the journey, I drove between 40 and 90km below the posted speed limit and at some points, I came to a complete halt behind other vehicles piled up on HWY 401 heading to the GTA.

It was a slow drive especially considering the numbers of things I planned on doing at work early that morning. About an hour to my final destination, astonishingly, while we were slowly trailing each other on my lane, the other lane was not moving at all. An accident had occurred in which a large truck was seen lying ninety degrees in the direction of oncoming vehicles. The paramedics were moving around to manage the casualties while the police were working on diverting traffic to a bypass. For several kilometers or miles if you like, all types and shapes of vehicles were bumper to bumper with each other – none of them was making any progress.

Reflecting on this event as we continued the stop-move, stop-move rhythm on my lane, I got one of the most profound illuminations anyone could receive starting a new day and a new week.

‘’No matter how slow things might appear today, be thankful that you are still making progress. If you look closely around you, some people are completely grounded and their position is not changing’’

I was humbled by this illumination and I believe it was the Holy Spirit that sent it my way as a way of giving me a good start for the week.

One of the greatest tragedies in life is to be overly ambitious and eccentrically driven by results to the point where one becomes self-consumed and loses every sense of gratitude for slow and steady 'progresses' made in the journey of life.

Success is sweet; getting results is refreshing; being grateful however, for the little steps and occasional stopovers experienced along the way, is more rewarding.

Ingratitude infantilizes our sense of accomplishment and places us in oddity with reality. About seven billion people occupy this geographical enclave called earth; Life is not about us alone. There are others around us who are doing more but unfortunately are denied the opportunities and possibilities we have been endowed with.

Being thankful helps us to jettison every invitation to be proud and self-centered. It infuses us with the right perspective and energy to do more and be more for ourselves and our world.

My four hours fifteen minutes journey to work reminded me that I am able to do what I do because of the enablement of GOD; I should therefore be thankful for every situation I encounter on my road to fulfilling my assignment.

Engineer Mary

Live in your space

I took this video two years ago at the annual Canada's Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock, Ontario. As a trained animal scientist and a lover of livestock, I couldn't take my eyes off these well-fed, good-to-behold cattle. They represented the beauty of God's creation and the adroitness of man in the science of breeding and genetics.

Looking at the video again, a few thoughts came to my mind on how life is lived in regimented spaces. 

These herd of cattle were placed within a stall to feed, grow and take all the full advantages of being reared under an intensive system. The quality of feed and water is good, temperature is well regulated, disease is monitored and overall management practice is best-in-class.

Extrapolating these thoughts into the human space, I say while we are higher and more intelligent beings, we do not live our lives differently.

The beautiful, the strong, the wise and the powerful: we all live within boundaries. We are all confined to specific territories not necessarily in terms of limitation but rather by virtue of operation. We can neither be everywhere nor can we be everything. 

My message - find your space and operate within it. Maximize the opportunities within your space and be the best you can be in your space.

Live in your space.

Sorry, It's now e-payment.

Aliyu, a middle-age man with separatist beliefs showed up on a hot sunny afternoon at a local grocery store, after years of ostracizing himself from everything called modern, with a large dark-colored pouch about the size of a soccer ball.

Some years back, the store was only a small area with a few shelves of food items on display but now to Aliyu's surprise, it's about fifteen times his farm and now filled with eye-catching items of all sorts, that even the most local person cannot resist. 

Several years back, Aliyu woke up from a deep sleep and felt everything around him was changing too quickly from what they used to be. He felt modernity was causing so much insanity and he would rather remain sane. He therefore made a personal decision to stop interacting with everyone and everything that showed any semblance of this change he resented. He became self-indulgent and adjusted a lot about his life to suit his new-found belief. He stopped interacting with neighbors, stopped going to the market, stopped spending his money, and started planting all he ate at his backyard farm until the yields became disappointing and insufficient to meet his growing demand for food.

In his fully-fledged haughty and unapologetically superior demeanor, Aliyu threw the dark pouch on the wicket where one of the sales representatives was and said 'open it, count it and let me know how much i have in there; afterwards divide the amount into four, use one part to get as much yam as it can buy, one part for everything vegetables, one part for condiments and palm oil and of course the last part for garri - the last food handed down by our ancestors when they were leaving for heaven.'

Trained to be respectful and handlers of all unpleasant situations, the sales representative, Ruto, pulled the raffia rope off the pouch carefully and peeped slowly into the content of the bag. Much to her surprise and with a mixture of amazement and disappointment, Ruto muted 'sir, what are these whitish shell-like piece of art that you have in this bag? It appears to me that you may have come to the wrong store. We are not an artifact collection store or an antique preservation outlet, we sell groceries here'.

Aliyu laughed sheepishly and shouted with a look wrapped with anger 'where is Busari, the owner of this store', rats like you go into hiding when my cat gallantly walk around. Get me Busari now', he shouted further with a higher-pitched voice. A few shoppers glanced at his direction when he raised his voice the second time at Ruto.

Ruto, unsure of what was going on and still trying to recover her breath from the verbal tornado erupted on her, zigzagged towards the manager's office and said 'Oga, there is a situation at my wicket, a certain man is acting funny and he mentioned your name during our conversation'.

Busari - the manager, coming from his office to fully understand what could be the issue, spotted Aliyu from a distance. It's being a while I saw him last and he really looked more and more unkempt, the manager thought in his mind as he approached the wicket where Aliyu stood.

'Busari, you mean you have taken this modernity stupidity to a higher stage. You have gone to the level of adding insult to injury by importing ignorant little rats into this community who cannot even identify the means of business transaction that our forefathers bequeathed unto us - I mean the cowries. So, this is the best you can bring out of your years of living in the big city and constantly claiming times are changing and we should change with time'.

Busari, trying to ensure the conversation does not create a scene in the store, moved closer to the loose pouch on the wicket and shoveling through the whitish objects with his hands exclaimed 'Baba Aliyu, you can't be serious, cowries as a means of business transaction in this age and time. Where have you been? Everything in this store is now paid for by electronic means - I mean e-payment'.

Aliyu could not believe his ear. His mind immediately flashed back to the fifty other pouches of cowries, twice the size of what he brought to the store, that he kept secretly in his roof. His eyes gazed swiftly at the calendar on the wall close to this wicket where he stood. It's August 1, 2014. Could Busari be saying that cowries are no longer accepted as at this date? Something in his mind suggested to him that he might have been living behind the times.

There is nothing like being cut off from reality, whether it is as a result of arrogance or ignorance or due to the impact of e-revolution that societies across the world are going through. 

Indeed, it leaves much to be desired when one tries to acquire today's needs with yesterday's means - showing up in the Metro, Lidl or Walmart of our time with a pouch of cowries as a means of exchange.

The pace at which technological changes are impacting our lives now is unprecedented and phenomenal to say the least. From religion to business to relationship to parenting, there is practically no aspect of our lives that is left untouched by this wind of innovation and newness blowing across the world. For examples online market places are increasingly wiping out traditional face-to-face market locations and e-books are obsoleting hard cover books. In an aspect of my professional space, the long-hour, arduous task of manually milking cows is now handled by robots - yes robots, and with the revolution we are seeing in recent years in robotic science and engineering, some of today's high-paying jobs will be next in line for robots to take over.

Globally, we are in the middle of change and we cannot ignore it. We are at a time when we either innovate or relocate at personal, organizational or societal levels. We are in the middle of history and we can either add to it or rewrite it, we cannot remove from it or destroy it. 

As a student of strategic management, I learnt about destructive innovation and how big corporations and organizations are redefining tomorrow's products through today's processes and are establishing themselves in their blue ocean spaces, which guarantee sustained profitability.

One thing is clear in this wave of advancement and never-before experienced scientific and technological evolution, we cannot show up in today's store with yesterday's means of exchange. 

We can save ourselves the pain and shame of being told 'sorry it's now e-payment' by responding to the wind of change blowing around us. The world is not waiting for us to be ready, it's rotating anyways.

Be there for someone

Picture from www.youbeauty.com

Life happens as they say. 

The bravest and the most determined sometimes find themselves shut away from opportunities to prove their worth and leave their footprints on the sands of time. The diligent and highly resourceful sometimes run on deficit and wrestle with the pain of not having enough for themselves howbeit share with those around them.

The righteous and morally upright sometimes are shoved behind the bars of life and their voices may never mix with those walking the streets of our cities and towns anymore; they may not have an opportunity for vindication or extrication.

Life happens and sometimes people find themselves in inexplicable situations that they never envisaged or planned for. 

All around the world today, there are millions who are on a road they never expected to be. To them, life is both an enigma and a paradox. They wake up everyday hanging on to hope and believing the dawn of another day will wipe away the sorrow of their yesterday. 

These are men and women who need someone so desperately to share a sincere smile, a generous hug, a heartfelt encouragement and a love-filled prayer with them. They need someone to come to their level and help chase their devil away. 

Jesus was destined to carry the Cross and bear the agony of misrepresentation. He was meant to be in His dark moment and for God to stay mute all through His wrongful vilification. He was to complete His assignment by wearing the cloak of death so that all who believes in Him can forever be adorned with the raiment of salvation and reunification with God. He was to be lonely.

But alas, someone was there for Him; a thief at the point of breathing his last, affirmed Jesus' innocence. Oh, a dying man spoke the truth about another dying man - the truth that those the manger-born Savior helped all His life, could not tell.

Heaven remembers those who plead the case of the helpless and history is mindful of individuals who are there for persons who could not be there for themselves.

Chose to help someone today, chose to be there for someone today. It's a noble cause, it's a cause that changes the course of history. It's a cause that keeps our world going.

Stop! You need help.

Every road has travelers who have passed through it before; every mountain has climbers who have reached its peak; every sea has swimmers who have dived to its depth. 

Life has sojourners who have passed through the same path you are passing through today. Men and women whose experiences and stories, including their victories and tragedies, have transformed their mind and outlook to life. They are embodiment of wisdom, patience and results. 

Seek out these men and women as you surely need help to deal with that situation you are in. They know what you are struggling with and they can support you as you navigate your way away from that highway of confusion you find yourself.

These men and women may not look like you, speak like you, live where you live or have as much as you have, but they may be your bridge to your land of solution and progress.

When you access them, be humble enough because pride closes the door to instruction and haughtiness destroys the gate to wisdom. 

Are you thinking of where these men and women are or how to access them? Hey! they are right around the corner where you are. Your father, mother, wife, husband, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, boss, neighbor etc. These are the men and women I am talking about. They are not strangers to you. You know them, perhaps you are just 'too familiar' with them to think they can help you.

They are wise, you just don't think they are. Talk to them, this time, with humility.

If you think these men and women are not the ones you were thinking about, then pick up your bible and you will be opened to a world of another sets of men and women who have answers to your questions. From Adam, to Sarah to Mary to Paul, to Jesus Christ, you can't miss wisdom if you seek it from the life of these people.

One thing is sure, you can't go ahead making mistakes or wallowing in your self-inflicted problems. You need help. Stop and get some help.