There is this funny old quote about Europeans and heaven.

Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and it is all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where the cooks are British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, the police German and it is all organized by the Italians

I decided to try and fit this to the Nigerian tribes

Heaven is where the police are Hausa, the cooks are Ijaw, the mechanics are from Igbo, the lovers are from Calabar, and it is all organized by the Yorubas

Hell is where the cooks are Hausa, the mechanics are Calabar, the police are Ijaw, the lovers are Yoruba and it is all organized by the Igbos

So what do you think? Is it accurate? Can you do better?

For the record I should state that I like District 9. So feel free to dismiss my opinions as biased :D

The portrayal of Nigerians in this movie has gotten a lot of negative ink in the blogville. See here, here and here. The three commenters write compelling pieces on why District 9 is the worst piece of racist trash since Birth of a Nation.

Now it is entirely possible that they are right, but it is a tenable position only if you ignore the rest of the portrayals in the movie. Every portrayal is an over the top stereotype. From the evil evil white guys, to the helpful black South Africans, to the random ignorant people on the street. If you recognize those portrayals as caricatures why can't the Nigerian one be.

Now it is entirely possible that the caricature can be so over the top that it drops into racism despite the fact it is meant to highlight racism. I don't think this is a tenable argument, but that may just be me. Think of it this way, it is like arguing that Bruno is homophobic.

My issue with the racist argument is that the movie doesn't back it up. The only thing Nigerian about the Nigerians is the name. They speak English with South African accents, they look South African, and they speak gibberish as their language. It is clearly taken for granted that everybody in the movie thinks it normal that all Nigerians are criminal, even the bleeding heart liberal characters. Now you could argue that this is ridiculous laziness on the part of the writers, but is this really a tenable argument when all the other satire in the movie is very heavy handed?

All this reminds me of one of those things that they used to say about Hollywood in the 90s; that the only people one can portray as villains are the White men who have to be Western European or American; that way nobody will complain that they are being unfairly represented.

There should be much rejoicing in the land. Globacom's fibre optic submarine cable Glo-1 has landed in Nigeria. The cable has a capacity of 640Gbps. To put this in perspective Nigeria's current demand is 4Gbps. The market for data in Nigeria is poised to explode, the days of $100 a month for 512kps are over... or are they?

Most of the internet traffic in Nigeria involves Nigerians connecting to the rest of the world. There are two ways the connections are made. Undersea cables or V-SAT connections. V-SAT connections are more expensive in general and tend to be used as back-ups, well some people use V-SAT as primary links but that is another story. Undersea cables, normally the cheap option, are also very expensive in Nigeria; between 20 - 40 times the price in most markets.

The new undersea cables being laid were expected to significantly reduce the price. Main One a Glo-1 competitor was rumored to have reduced bandwidth prices 90%. So it is clear, if the rumors are close to being true, that Glo-1 can significantly reduce data prices in Nigeria. However in typical fashion, Globacom has given no indication of what it plans to do with its cable.

Globacom could keep the cable for itself, and use its significant cost advantage to attempt to run its competitors in data out of business. The other alternative is for capacity on Glo-1 to be offered to the other data providers in the market. The first alternative may be better for Globacom in the short term, but as new cables are expected to land in the next two years it is unlikely to work as a long term strategy. I don't see the likes of MTN or Etisalat disappearing from the data space because of this. They might shelve their data offerings in the interim, but a brief window is the best that Globacom could hope for. The smaller players in the data space may be wiped out, but even that is too early to tell. The other cable suppliers may drop their prices significantly enough that most small players may survive.

I suppose it goes without saying that if we had a competition body that cared about such things, Globacom would not be allowed to use Glo-1 to create a monopoly, even for a minute. Still that is a larger Nigeria issue, which isn't the point of this post. So we watch and wait and continue to dream of real broadband.

On the face of it, it would seem that Christianity has very simple rules on sex; Don't do it until you are married. However after an in depth conversation I had with some married Christian friends, my belief that anything that is that simple usually isn't has been reinforced.

The discussion was similar to any that would be found on the pages of cosmo, except for the standard constraint of a Christian marriage. That is you have one partner; if anything is wrong you try to fix it or you deal. It was interesting to see people deal with sex issues with that frame of mind.

One of the areas where this was particularly interesting was related to the issue of sexual liberation in marriage. Is there any such thing as "too much liberation"? Does there come a point when consensual sex with your spouse can be considered a sin?

As you would expect people drew the line where they were comfortable. This means that oral sex is fine because you do it, but S&M is beyond the pale and thus sinful. This is generally the way non-religious people talk about sex; that it is preference determined. The only difference is that there is no sin component.

Thinking about it logically, there are two positions one can take.

First; Consensual sex in the context of marriage is no sin. After all if both parties are comforable with whatever is happening, it is for the betterment of their relationship and therefore cannot be a sin.

Second; Religion to a large part relies on denying fleshly gratification. So therefore giving into all sexual desires can be seen as gratifying the flesh. Fleshly gratification is sin; which means that some sexual desires could be sinful even in marriage.

While it may not seem it on the surface, the second argument is actually more nuanced than the first. The first is an absolute statement and the second is a more nuanced statement. While I am o so fond of grey, the socially liberal me tilts in the direction of the first argument. Even though the second argument, with its focus on intent is probably the more reasonable.

Clearly I have succeeded in tying myself in knots. So my dear readers what do you think? Which argument do you find more plausible?