Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Macabre March... Abysmal April... Melancholy May = Jolly June? Not Likely...
When three months in a row have proven to be sorrowful in a variety of ways, one can logically not be looking forward to the next one... for, who knows what it could bring out next.
The link today is about a family of color that is, unbelievably enough (to me), living through even more dire times than I presently am.
The Etibako family has lost, overnight and around Mother's Day to boot, not only their mother but several other family members in a very suspicious home fire...
"Stephan Etibako, eight years of age, his two sisters and his mother, along with a fifth person, were killed in a deadly blaze at the Etibako townhouse just before 4 a.m. Monday."
The mother, Adela Etibako, had arrived in Vancouver from the Congo in 1998.
She was an examplary citizen, helping the Congolese community which is a tightly-knit community that truly holds together. "On Mother's Day, hours before she would die, Etibako cooked a feast for people at her church" - that alone says it all about the woman Adela.
A friend of the family stated on CTV Newsworld that he had not known such sorrow since 1990 - the year that his father died.
I see all manners of synchronicity here, again, as I just lost my own father - whose health problems truly began in 1990. And one of my own mother's names is very similar to "Adela" too; Adelina. All of this pain and sorrow brings me into a sense of kinship with men and women of colour - and my father's country, Portugal, is no stranger to Africa. In fact, Portugal is now always helping its former colonies there (Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde) - the same colonies that "won" their independence in violent insurrection and bloodshed... only to turn now to the former colonizer in order to avoid devastation at the hands of two of the four horsemen; famine and death.
The most spectacular bit of synchronicity is that, in the Etibako tragedy, "police suspect an arsonist may have been responsible, setting their home ablaze with gasoline. Two weeks earlier, someone threw a Molotov cocktail about two blocks away."
They appear to have enemies - again, the hateful face of bigotry, rearing its ugly head into the picture. In my family's case, I know for a FACT that some hateful old coots, older than my father, are not-so secretly elated and overjoyed to hear of his passing... They always hated my family's name, the men of the family first and foremost, and wished my elders ill all throughout what is now a grudge several decades old... They won't throw Molotov cocktails or get into arson only because they are neither so obvious nor young enough for these activities - that is it. Otherwise...
Link
The link today is about a family of color that is, unbelievably enough (to me), living through even more dire times than I presently am.
The Etibako family has lost, overnight and around Mother's Day to boot, not only their mother but several other family members in a very suspicious home fire...
"Stephan Etibako, eight years of age, his two sisters and his mother, along with a fifth person, were killed in a deadly blaze at the Etibako townhouse just before 4 a.m. Monday."
The mother, Adela Etibako, had arrived in Vancouver from the Congo in 1998.
She was an examplary citizen, helping the Congolese community which is a tightly-knit community that truly holds together. "On Mother's Day, hours before she would die, Etibako cooked a feast for people at her church" - that alone says it all about the woman Adela.
A friend of the family stated on CTV Newsworld that he had not known such sorrow since 1990 - the year that his father died.
I see all manners of synchronicity here, again, as I just lost my own father - whose health problems truly began in 1990. And one of my own mother's names is very similar to "Adela" too; Adelina. All of this pain and sorrow brings me into a sense of kinship with men and women of colour - and my father's country, Portugal, is no stranger to Africa. In fact, Portugal is now always helping its former colonies there (Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde) - the same colonies that "won" their independence in violent insurrection and bloodshed... only to turn now to the former colonizer in order to avoid devastation at the hands of two of the four horsemen; famine and death.
The most spectacular bit of synchronicity is that, in the Etibako tragedy, "police suspect an arsonist may have been responsible, setting their home ablaze with gasoline. Two weeks earlier, someone threw a Molotov cocktail about two blocks away."
They appear to have enemies - again, the hateful face of bigotry, rearing its ugly head into the picture. In my family's case, I know for a FACT that some hateful old coots, older than my father, are not-so secretly elated and overjoyed to hear of his passing... They always hated my family's name, the men of the family first and foremost, and wished my elders ill all throughout what is now a grudge several decades old... They won't throw Molotov cocktails or get into arson only because they are neither so obvious nor young enough for these activities - that is it. Otherwise...
Link
