Posts tonen met het label BBC. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label BBC. Alle posts tonen
zondag 21 september 2025
vrijdag 1 september 2023
SHARTIE AART DEKKER N.A.V. GROENE COLUMN EN SINEAD O´CONNOR / ZINGEN: ´Het is een breed gedragen misverstand dat je moet kunnen zingen om te mogen zingen´- Rebekka de Wit
Dichters & Denkers
De weg terug naar het struikgewas
Rebekka de Wit beeld Femke van Heerikhuizen
– verschenen in nr. 31
‘Tell me, how many times in your life did you try to stop singing?’
Vraag aan Sinéad O’Connor, BBC Radio, 2010
Ooit speelde ik een struik in een grote musical. Groot, zeg ik, dat weet ik eigenlijk niet. Negen was ik, dus de meeste dingen waren op dat moment nog groot, ook de struiken. Ik was overigens niet een integrale struik, maar vormde samen met vijf anderen het struikgewas.
Eén regieaanwijzing had het struikgewas gekregen en dat was ‘niet te jolig doen’. Ik wist niet wat dat was en probeerde dat te verbloemen, wat me goed af ging omdat ik een vreselijk zwaar pak van ontplofte groene tule droeg, waaraan paarse ballen bungelden die bosbessen moesten voorstellen.
Er waren wel grotere rollen, die van de muizen bijvoorbeeld, maar dat was ik niet geworden, tot mijn grote opluchting, want dan had ik een solo moeten zingen en er was me al lang duidelijk dat ik alleen in mijn borststem een beetje dragelijk klonk. Niemand had dat zo tegen me gezegd, maar het was me op verschillende manieren duidelijk gemaakt. Het struikgewas was de buffer waardoor ik uit volle borst kon zingen en zo was ik onderdeel van een symfonie, wat me later zelden nog is overkomen.
Het is een even verdrietig als breed gedragen misverstand dat je moet kunnen zingen om te mogen zingen. Een misverstand bovendien dat zich vrij vroeg in het leven lijkt te nestelen in ons binnenste. Mijn dochter bijvoorbeeld, drie – nog niet echt besef van gisteren en morgen, aangezien ze vaak zegt: ‘Ik weet het nog niet meer’ – wilde laatst niet met me zingen ‘omdat Vela had gezegd dat ze lelijk klonk’. Ik zei tegen haar dat ze een voorbeeld moest nemen aan de haan, die zich daar niks van aantrekt, en daardoor – niet alleen wat dat betreft – een enorm inspirerend schepsel is, maar ze dacht dat ik bedoelde dat ze als een haan klonk en daardoor wilde ze al helemaal niet meer zingen.
Ik zing alleen uit volle borst als ik alleen in de auto ben. Niet per se omdat ik daar alleen ben, alhoewel dat er waarschijnlijk alles mee te maken heeft, maar tijdens het rijden durf ik nooit aan de radio te prutsen, dus om de stilte te verdrijven ga ik zingen. Ik zing, met andere woorden, omdat er anders geen muziek is. Die is er doorgaans wel, aangezien de meeste mensen een premium abonnement hebben op oneindige hoeveelheid muziek en draadloze boxen.
Nadat ik een paar liedjes heb gezongen is het net alsof ik in de zee ben geweest, maar goed, waarom zou je gaan zwemmen als Spotify dat ook voor je kan doen. Wel zo makkelijk, hoef ik de wereld niet lastig te vallen met mijn eigen volle borst. Dat scheelt enorm. Hoef ik mijn eigen borst niet meer in trilling te brengen en in die trilling onderdeel te worden van een symfonie.
Stil is het op mijn werkkamer. Iemand stuurt me een bericht. Dat hij met zijn schoonbroer een heel lang gesprek had over Artificiële Intelligentie. De schoonbroer denkt dat dit de wereld gaat worden van onze kinderen en om zijn angst te bezweren gebruikt hij het voortdurend. Ik reageer niet, zet muziek op en er overvalt mij een soort chagrijn. Ik ga op bed liggen en zing niet. Vraag me af waar je nog bang voor moet zijn, qua computers en hun oneindig lange armen, als we toch al gestopt zijn met zingen.
Het was niet eens een moment, we hebben er niet eens echt afscheid van genomen en het lijkt erop dat we niet echt meer terug kunnen. Dat wil zeggen, als ik nu met een groep mensen een verjaardagsliedje zing (pak ’m beet, twee violen en een trommel en een fluit), voelt de weg terug naar het struikgewas nogal lang.
Ooit was ik bij een concert van Laura Mvula in Brooklyn. Het publiek kon zo goed zingen dat het het bisnummer tweestemmig meezong. Ik geloof niet dat ik, terwijl ik daar stond in het publiek, aan het struikgewas heb gedacht. Maar ik weet dat ik heel even mijn adem inhield en schrikkerig dacht aan de onmogelijkheid om dit op te slaan.
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SHARTIE AART DEKKER N.A.V. GROENE COLUMN EN SINEAD O´CONNOR
ZINGEN
Drie aanleidingen voor deze korte ontboezeming...
De eerste is het overlijden van Sinéad O'Connor: het is opmerkelijk hoe sterk dit trieste overlijden van een lang niet bij iedereen populaire en allang niet meer heel actuele zangeres resoneerde in de media. Blijkbaar maakte de emotie die altijd aanwezig was als je haar zag, en al helemaal hoorde, zingen veel los bij ontzettend veel mensen...dus ook weer in de Column in de Groene Amsterdammer van Rebekka de Wit die ook getriggerd werd door de dood van Sinéad ...
Als tweede: ´Ik zing alleen uit volle borst als ik alleen in de auto ben. Niet per se omdat ik daar alleen ben, alhoewel dat er waarschijnlijk alles mee te maken heeft, maar...´ schrijft de columniste, iets waar veel mensen - ik in ieder geval sterk - zichzelf in zullen herkennen...
Ten derde de absurde vraag bovenaan dit stukje die dus blijkbaar ooit op de BBC aan Sinéad O'Connor werd gesteld en de stelling ´Het is een even verdrietig als breed gedragen misverstand dat je moet kunnen zingen om te mogen zingen.´ van Rebekka de Wit. Die stelling is natuurlijk een waarheid als een koe, maar de beleving is voor introverte mensen zoals ik en zelfs al voor de kleine kinderen waar de column over gaat een hele andere.
En dat is dus in ieder geval iets waar Sinéad O'Connor in haar leven weinig last van had...gelukkig maar...
(AD)
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Meer Columns van Rebekka de Wit op Groene.nl --- Hier ---
woensdag 31 augustus 2022
CARTOON / EN DE LEADER IN DE 'LEIDERSCHAP'-VERKIEZINGEN TORIES UK IS..: Liz 'Tok, tok, tooook - Cut Taxes' Trooookuss'... / WIE WORDT DE VOLGENDE JOKER/CLOWN? / Peter Brookes on #LizTruss #BBC - political cartoon gallery in London /
Peter Brookes on #LizTruss #BBC - political cartoon gallery in London https://t.co/dePcTdnXF6 pic.twitter.com/RBgDU9tGKL
— Political Cartoon (@Cartoon4sale) August 30, 2022
dinsdag 12 maart 2019
COLUMN AART DEKKER / NRC CARTOON UIT MIJN LEVEN GEGREPEN / SLAAPPROBLEMEN: 'Renske Stript Slaaptekort' - Slaapteveel is trouwens Ook Niet Alles....Iedere
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| Klikken op de Strip voor het maximale formaat - Iedere Zaterdag 'Stript Renske' -de Greef- op de Achterpagina van het Eerste/Weekend Katern van NRC -naast Youp- op bovenstaande wijze over iets dat haar bezig houdt, meer 'Renske Stript --- Hier --- |
COLUMN AART DEKKER:
'Slaap-problemen en ander ongemak'
Zo af en toe -in sommige periodes wat meer dan andere- ligt ik wel eens een tipje van de sluier die over mijn persoonlijke bestaan ligt op. Dat doe ik omdat het -om mijn doen en laten een beetje te begrijpen- wel belangrijk is om te weten wat er nog meer speelt in mijn leven dan alleen het volgen van die Grote Oranje Bal, politiek, en andere zaken die de moeite waard zijn.Politiek zie ik overigens als een noodzakelijk kwaad; er is de laatste decennia nogal eens door een kust en keur aan mensen tegen mij gezegd "Jij moet de politiek in gaan", of "Waarom ga je niet in het NBB Bestuur zitten?" Goede vraag trouwens die laatste...
Die stelling ervoor -dat in mij een potentiële politicus huist- slaat de plank trouwens goed mis; door mijn karakter, maar zeker zoveel door mijn persoonlijke omstandigheden -en dan met name mijn gezondheidsproblemen gedurende meer dan de helft van mijn leven, wellicht zelfs bijna heel mijn leven- ben ik er enerzijds wel van doordrongen geraakt hoezeer 'Politiek en politiek' -zowel met de hoofdletter als de kleine letter dus- ertoe doet; voor iedereen, maar zeker voor mensen voor wie het leven wat lastiger is dan voor 'de gewone, gezonde, hardwerkende Nederlander met een baan, een huis, en huisje-boompje-beestje'...en dus ook voor mij persoonlijk. Zo heb ik 14 jaar lang moeten vechten, wachten, bloed-zweet-en-tranen moeten plengen voordat mijn bestaanszekerheid enigszins zekergesteld was door middel van een WAO-uitkering, nadat ik vijf jaar al behoorlijk beperkt keihard doorgewerkt had terwijl mijn gezondheid het al gigantisch af liet weten. Dus: de politiek is in principe van wezenlijk belang voor iedereen, ook voor de mensen die nu nog denken dat 'ze het allemaal zelf wel kunnen' en die wellicht denken dat de politiek alleen maar (te-)veel belasting vraagt van diezelfde hardwerkende Nederlander, en dat degenen die een beroep doen op de collectieve middelen -door bijvoorbeeld veel ziektekosten, een uitkering, of een of andere subsidie of toeslag- eigenlijk uitvreters en/of parasieten zijn. Ik heb aan den lijve ondervonden dat het van de ene op de andere dag allemaal anders kan zijn..!
Dus ik ben door het bovenstaande wel politiek bewust en tot op zekere hoogte betrokken, en vind om die reden ook dat ik dan politiek mijn steentje bij moet dragen -en dat probeer ik dus op diverse manieren ook te doen-, maar tegelijk en dus anderzijds ben ik totaal GEEN politicus, en denk ik dat ik er ook nooit een zal worden; ik ben niet geschikt voor dat vak...
Goed, en nu langzaam aan naar 'de Strip' van Renske hierboven.
Ik vond -en vind nog steeds, al is het na mijn recente scheiding allemaal stukken minder geworden- dat ik altijd gezegend ben geweest met veel goede vrienden en trouwens ook mensen in het gebied tussen 'Echte Vrienden' en 'Erg Goede Kennissen'. Maar ondanks dat, werd ik me er tijdens vooral de periode waarin ik een 'Chronisch zeer Vermoeide Voorzitter/Coach/Initiator/Organisator/etc, etc.' was (zo tussen 1991 en 2001 in Den Haag), en een Halfblinde Scout, Basketball-adviseur en Stukjesschrijver (van 2001 tot de dood van Vriend en compaan Rob Meurs in 2010), en de periode erna wel achtergekomen, dat het voor zo ongeveer iedereen -ook mijn Beste Vrienden en zelfs deels mijn ex-partner- onmogelijk was om totaal te doorgronden hoe het is (was) om Chronisch Vermoeid (CVS/ME) te zijn, flinke oogproblemen te hebben, en naast nog e.e.a. aan andere gezondheidsproblemen, ook nog eens in toenemende mate geplaagd te worden door Slaapproblemen.
In eerste instantie ging het daarbij om problemen bij het in- en door-slapen; ik werd jarenlang eigenlijk nooit uitgerust wakker, deels doordat ik door spier- en gewrichtspijnen eigenlijk nooit lekker lag. De laatste jaren is dit probleem door allerlei ontwikkelingen -te ingewikkeld om hier even in een column te verwoorden- opgeschoven naar of (veel) teveel, of juist heel veel te weinig slapen per etmaal -en dat dan in een bizarre grafiek, die op zich wel weer een grote mate van regelmaat vertoont- daarnaast is ook nog eens mijn dag-/nacht-ritme steeds verder verschoven; ik slaap dus te vaak op 'maatschappelijk gezien lastige tijden'; meer overdag dan 's nachts bijvoorbeeld.
Dat, en dan daarnaast toch graag bezig zijn met zinnige dingen -en liefst een steentje bijdragen aan de samenleving (en iets terug doen voor die uitkering die ik geniet)- bleek zo rond 10 tot 5 jaar geleden bijna onmogelijk lastig te worden. Ik werkte aan een concept voor een heel nieuw soort Basketball-vereniging -de Buurt Basketbal Club(BBC), in eigen Accommodaties- en dat project was natuurlijk veel te groot voor een individu, bovendien had ik van mijn tijd als trekker van BV Team Ten Dreamers The Hague(TTD) wel geleerd dat ik niet nogmaals in een groot avontuur moest stappen zonder voldoende garanties op financiële middelen en -vooral!- voldoende betrouwbare mensen om me heen die de kar mede konden en wilden trekken gedurende langere tijd.
Toen ik aan dat BBC-concept begon te werken, had ik voor de conceptuele fase een aantal mensen om me heen waar ik wel dat vertrouwen in had -Rayon West Voorzitter Ruud Sparrenboom was daarvan misschien wel de belangrijkste persoon- maar toen ik een stapje verder wilde gaan, en een grotere groep aan het verzamelen was, was ik die groep op een gegeven moment zomaar ineens kwijt, door allerlei persoonlijke en economische (de Crisis) omstandigheden van die mensen, waarvan de ziekte van Ruud, en zijn veel te vroege overlijden een jaar later de meest definitieve en hardste klap was.
Dat zette mij te denken; 'Hoe verzeker ik mezelf van voldoende steun van goede en betrouwbare mensen voor die volgende stap? En hoe maak ik iedereen duidelijk waar mijn eigen grenzen en dus ook behoeften aan steun liggen, en waarom is dat eens te meer belangrijk voor iemand in mijn positie en omstandigheden?'
Want dat de norm in Nederland is: 'Hardwerken en voluit meedoen aan de Rat-race, want anders tel je niet volwaardig mee'...die harde waarheid was inmiddels wel tot mij doorgedrongen. In Den Haag was ik zo succesvol in wat ik daar had gedaan, dat er nominaties voor diverse Prijzen volgden -en dat was denk ik ook terecht- maar ik was en bleef 'maar een vrijwilliger' en dan kan je van het ene op het andere moment door een Corrupte Wethouder en zijn ambtelijke vazallen aan de kant worden geschoven, en als je dat niet zomaar accepteert...dan kiest men de middelen Chantage, Laster en Smaad om je uit de weg te vegen... Dus was het ook weer een les dat afhankelijk zijn van overheden -en ja dus: de politiek (met een kleine 'p' dus)- je positie (en daarmee die van je projecten) erg kwetsbaar maakt. Dus werd TTD medio 2001 een slapende vereniging, en is inmiddels het op TTD-roots ontsproten St4R ook alweer ter ziele...
Maar met zinvolle dingen en met Goede Mensen bezig zijn was voor mij van existentieel belang. Dus dacht ik 'ik doe een proef; ik ga op mijn verjaardag -dus aan mijn Beste Vrienden en Familie- eens proberen duidelijk te maken hoe mijn leven er ECHT uitziet, wat ik graag zou doen om het de moeite waard te maken elke dag weer mijn bed uit te komen, en proberen ze duidelijk te maken dat mij dat zonder een beetje hulp -en met een beetje bedoelde ik dus echt een beetje; een halve dag, hooguit een dag tijdsbesteding- van die geliefde mensen misschien wel niet zou lukken om een beetje zinvol bezig te blijven op het gebied dat ik daarvoor had uitgekozen; door middel van Basketball Maatschappelijk Relevante Dingen te doen voor de Samenleving, in de Buurt, voor de Jongste Jeugd en andere groepen die in 'normale Basketball-verenigingen' onvoldoende aan bod komen, en zelfs voor mensen uit de Buurt die zelf misschien helemaal nooit een balletje zullen gaan gooien. Met als uiteindelijke doel: het concept BBC, zeg maar een soort Basketball Buurthuizen, liefst 24/7, en in heel veel verschillende vormen met een hoge maatschappelijke relevantie.
Ik wil niet zeggen dat het mijn meest geslaagde Speech was, over het Hoe&Waarom daarvan zal ik hier en nu niet uitweiden. Maar al kort daarna moest ik de conclusie trekken dat het gewoon niet gelukt was om aan het selecte gezelschap van Vrienden en Familie duidelijk te maken hoe mijn leven eruit zag, wat daarvan de implicaties waren, tegen welke barrières ik aangelopen was -'Corruptie? Dat zal je wel overdrijven...toch?" Nee; daar was geen letter aan overdreven: het ging om politieke en ambtelijke Corruptie, Chantage, Smaad en Laster!"- en dat ik het dus met een minimaal beetje hulp uit de kring die het dichtst om mij heen zat, waarschijnlijk niet zou redden om met mijn concept -dat mij nota-bene was aangedragen door iemand uit die kring zelf!- voor mezelf zinvolle invulling van mijn beschikbare energie en tijd te creëren...en dat was een hele harde gewaarwording/reality check...
En dat begon er dus al mee dat het niet goed lukte om aan die groep mensen die mij zeer lief was/is, uit te leggen wat het met je doet als je zes weken lang 14-18 uur per etmaal slaapt, of tenminste in bed door moet brengen. Slaapproblemen dus -het schijnt een volkskwaal te zijn in Nederland en de hele Westerse Wereld, en ik wist dat diverse mensen in het gezelschap zelf ervaring hadden met ernstige slaapproblematiek- toch lukte het me niet om de boodschap goed over tafel te krijgen...
Vandaar de Strip van Renske de Greef hierboven, met de kanttekening dat ook teveel slapen 'een Hel' kan zijn...
Wordt vervolgd!
En als iemand over het bovenstaande eens verder zou willen praten, 'Be My Guest', dus zoals eigenlijk altijd: 'Reageren? Graag!' maar beperk je dan a.u.b. niet tot alleen losse flodders op Facebook, en zoek echt contact met me... Overigens geldt hetzelfde voor het verder toelichten van het BBC-concept.
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| Afb. 'gepikt' van --- Hier --- al ben ik bepaald geen luiaard, Luiaart voel ik me soms helaas wel... |
AART DEKKER
woensdag 22 maart 2017
BIJZONDER MENS NIEUWS / VIA DE TELEGRAAF: 'Stephen Hawking gaat....de ruimte in...'
| Wat raden wij verder aan? |
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| Stephen Hawking |
| Foto: AP |
Stephen Hawking plans space travel on Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic
Een langer artikel van de Telegraaf hierover: --- Hier ---
zondag 6 november 2016
NATUUR / TRAILER / BBC / AANRADER: Planet Earth-II; nu bij de BBC, binnenkort bij de NPO?
Planet Earth II: Official Extended Trailer - BBC Earth
donderdag 12 november 2015
SYRIE / JOURNALISTIEK MIJN HELDEN / VLUCHTELINGEN / OORLOG / NIEUWSUUR / CNN / EVEN NADENKEN: BBC-Journaliste Ging Terug naar de Hel van Aleppo
Afgelopen avond zag ik een item op Nieuwsuur dat erg veel indruk maakte; het ging over een Syrische Journaliste die al jaren voor de BBC werkte - buiten haar vaderland Syrië. Ze ging terug naar haar land, naar haar stad Aleppo - een van de meest kapot gebombardeerde en stuk-geschoten plaatsen in het door alle oorlog verwoeste land.
Ze vertelt waarom ze terugging - om door amateurjournalisten op te leiden en te begeleiden ervoor te zorgen dat de oorlog daar, hier in beeld blijft -, maar geeft ook een onweerlegbare analyse van het hoe en waarom van de 'vluchtelingen-crisis' van Europa. Wij in 'crisis'? Kom op zeg! Mensen zoals Zaina Erhaim zijn pas echte Helden.
Ze won dan ook al terecht een prestigieuze Journalistieke Prijs...
11 November 2015, NIEUWSUUR, BUITENLAND
Wie gaat er vrijwillig terug naar Aleppo? Twee derde van de twee miljoen inwoners van de Syrische stad zijn gevlucht voor het aanhoudende oorlogsgeweld. Meer dan drie jaar beschiet en bombardeert het regeringsleger van president Assad de stad die in handen is van rebellen.
De Syrische journaliste Zaina Erhaim ging terug om verslag te doen. Nieuwsuur spreekt haar over haar ervaringen in het door oorlog verscheurde Syrië.
Bebloed en verbrand
Ze weet het nog goed. Op een ochtend werd Zaina Erhaim gewekt door het fluitende geluid van een raket. De raket, vol met explosieven en stalen scherven, kwam vlak bij haar appartement neer. Het hele gebouw schudde. Zaina hoorde gegil en geschreeuw.
Ze haastte zich naar buiten. De bom bleek een heel gebouw plat te hebben gelegd. De locatie van een geïmproviseerde basisschool. "Mannen trokken overal kinderen vandaan, bebloed en verbrand. Sommige kinderen hadden hun pen nog in hun hand."
Lees het hele artikel van Nieuwsuur en Bekijk de uitzending --- Hier ---
Daar zijn ook drie eerdere reportages uit de kapotgeschoten en -gebombardeerde stad Aleppo te zien.
BEKIJK OOK, Interview bij CNN:
Syrian journalist on why she
Ze vertelt waarom ze terugging - om door amateurjournalisten op te leiden en te begeleiden ervoor te zorgen dat de oorlog daar, hier in beeld blijft -, maar geeft ook een onweerlegbare analyse van het hoe en waarom van de 'vluchtelingen-crisis' van Europa. Wij in 'crisis'? Kom op zeg! Mensen zoals Zaina Erhaim zijn pas echte Helden.
Ze won dan ook al terecht een prestigieuze Journalistieke Prijs...
11 November 2015, NIEUWSUUR, BUITENLAND
Wie gaat er vrijwillig terug naar Aleppo? Twee derde van de twee miljoen inwoners van de Syrische stad zijn gevlucht voor het aanhoudende oorlogsgeweld. Meer dan drie jaar beschiet en bombardeert het regeringsleger van president Assad de stad die in handen is van rebellen.
Bebloed en verbrand
Ze weet het nog goed. Op een ochtend werd Zaina Erhaim gewekt door het fluitende geluid van een raket. De raket, vol met explosieven en stalen scherven, kwam vlak bij haar appartement neer. Het hele gebouw schudde. Zaina hoorde gegil en geschreeuw.
Ze haastte zich naar buiten. De bom bleek een heel gebouw plat te hebben gelegd. De locatie van een geïmproviseerde basisschool. "Mannen trokken overal kinderen vandaan, bebloed en verbrand. Sommige kinderen hadden hun pen nog in hun hand."
Lees het hele artikel van Nieuwsuur en Bekijk de uitzending --- Hier ---
Daar zijn ook drie eerdere reportages uit de kapotgeschoten en -gebombardeerde stad Aleppo te zien.
BEKIJK OOK, Interview bij CNN:
Syrian journalist on why she
moved back to aleppo
dinsdag 10 november 2015
RUSLAND / POETIN / SPORT / DOPING / RIO 2016: Die zag ik dus niet in deze vorm aankomen...
Cartoon: De Tekentafel
Die zag ik dus niet in deze vorm aankomen; het Grote Nieuws van Maandag 9 November 2015 - het WADA dat voorstelt om de Russische Altletiekfederatie te schorsen en dus uit te sluiten van deelname aan de Olympische Spelen van Rio 2016.
NRC bracht het nieuws zo: --- Hier ---
Poetin komt zo - voornamelijk door eigen keuzes - nog meer in een soort '7-Plagen-scenario' terecht. Want - stel de IAAF volgt de aanbeveling op, welke sport is dan de volgende die dit soort maatregelen neemt? Afgelopen zomer was het al even raak bij het Basketball; Fiba schorste de Russische Bond en een Mannen-Jeugdteam werd er het slachtoffer van. De maatregel werd teruggedraaid (of opgeschort) zodat de Mannen mee konden doen aan EuroBasket 2015, maar daar kon Rusland - al dan niet door alle tumult - weinig potten breken...
Een Rusland van Poetin zonder Sport - dat is geen Rusland van Poetin meer... Geen deelname in Rio, geen WK Voetbal organiseren meer...Wow!
Een puntje van commentaar van mijn kant op 'de Aanbevelingen van WADA': als een en ander inderdaad 'staatsgeorganiseerd en wijdverbreid is in de Russische Atletiek' dan vind ik dat je geen atleten levenslang kan schorsen, zeker niet als het de eerste keer is dat ze gepakt worden. Dan worden die atleten twee keer gepakt, terwijl de verantwoordelijkheid eigenlijk bij hogerhand ligt. Dan moet je dus hogerhand aanpakken..!
Toen ik met die gedachte in mijn hoofd ging googelen vond ik het volgende - al een jaar oude artikel op Sport&Strategie.nl:
Is de Russische dopinggebruiker dader of slachtoffer?
Update 10 nov. 18:38: Ik zie nu dat een atlete de kans heeft gehad mee te werken aan het onderzoek - en weigerde - dat geeft weer een beetje ander licht op het bovenstaande...nog eens over nadenken...
Update 10 nov. 20:47: NRC.nl 'Rusland schorsen? Hell of a job."
Meer:
Het WADA-Rapport: --- Hier ---
Persconferentie WADA
Transcript van de onthullende Documentaire van ARD --- Hier ---
Natuurlijk is er inmiddels een oneindig aantal items over dit onderwerp te vinden op het Net; ik gebruikte Google en kreeg deze lijst --- Hier ---
In iedergeval lijkt 'het Rusland van Poetin' aardig in verwarring als je de volgende drie berichten achter elkaar zet:
nu.nl/sport-overig/4159210/russische-bond-schorst-vijf-atleten-dopinggebruik
nujij.nl/algemeen/poetin-vindt-dopingbeschuldigingen-in-wada ongefundeerd...
nu.nl/sport-overig/4161922/rusland-erkent-problemen-met-doping-en-geeft-wada-volledige-medewerking
woensdag 8 oktober 2014
donderdag 13 maart 2014
Het ongelofelijke Verhaal van Alex Owumi, Basketballer in Bengazi voor het team van Gaddafi
Professionele basketballers zijn nogal eens nomaden, eenmaal weg van huis volgt de ene onverwachte tussenstop de andere op. Zo herinner ik dat een van mijn teamgenoten uit de jeugd van Frisol/R Dordrecht, Raymond Bottse, ooit ergens in Syrië terecht kwam als coach - nu ondenkbaar - , en daarvoor had hij er ook al een flinke reis opzitten... Ach, iedere basketballer kent zo vele voorbeelden. Maar het onderstaande verhaal gaat stukken verder dan dat!
Alex Owumi: I played basketball for Gaddafi
BBC Magazine, 6 February 2014
Alex Owumi in Worcester January 2014
When US basketball player Alex Owumi signed a contract to play for a team in Benghazi, Libya, he had no idea that his employer was the the most feared man in the country. Nor did he guess the country was about to descend into war. Here he tells his story, parts of which some readers may find distressing.
It was a beautiful flat. Everything was state of the art and it was spacious, too. It had two big living rooms, three big bedrooms, flat screens everywhere. The couches had gold trim and were so big and heavy they were impossible to move. The door to the apartment was reinforced steel, like on a bank vault.
It was 27 December 2010 and I had just arrived in Benghazi, Libya's second biggest city, to play basketball for a team called Al-Nasr Benghazi. I had stayed in some nice places playing for teams in Europe, but this seventh-floor apartment in the middle of town was something else. It was like the Taj Mahal.
I didn't immediately notice the photographs dotted around the place - of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi and his grandchildren.
When I did, I phoned the team president - we called him Mr Ahmed - and he told me how it was. "The apartment belongs to Mutassim Gaddafi, the Colonel's son," he said. "Al-Nasr is the Gaddafi club. You are playing for the Gaddafi family."
Gaddafi! When I was a young kid growing up in Africa - I was born in Nigeria - Gaddafi was someone we all looked up to. He was always on the news and in the paper, helping out countries like Niger and Nigeria. I thought of him as one of the faces of Africa - him and Nelson Mandela. As a kid I wasn't really aware of any of the bad things he was doing. Maybe I was too busy playing sports.
Gaddafi and al-Nassr team Libyan leader Gaddafi watched Alex (right, centre) and his Al-Nasr team
In my first practice with my new team-mates there was a weird atmosphere. I asked the other international player on the team, Moustapha Niang from Senegal, "Why does everybody look so depressed?" And he explained it to me. "We've been losing," he said. "They haven't been getting paid, some of them are getting physically abused. If we don't win our next game, some of these kids are going to get beat."
A lot of the players had scratches and banged-up bruises on their arms. One had a black eye he was trying to conceal. Gaddafi's security goons would push them up against lockers, things like that - and some of these guys were not big athletes like me and Moustapha. During practice you could see some of them were just scared to make mistakes. But in any sport you're going to make mistakes, you're going to make bad plays. I can't go into a game and trust people who are scared.
The next day, we travelled to a game in Tripoli on a private jet like we were a team playing in the NBA [the National Basketball Association in the US]. That's how it was with Al-Nasr and the Gaddafi family - they got extra funding, extra millions of dollars. But the deal was we were supposed to win - and when we lost, it was a problem.
Col Gaddafi was at that game. Before the start I saw him sitting with his military personnel up in the stands in a white dress uniform. Walking on the court was his son, Saadi Gaddafi, the man in charge of sport in Libya. We spoke and honestly, he seemed like a nice man who just loved sport.
As we were talking, I looked into the stands at his father and we locked eyes. It lasted just a moment, but my team-mates saw it and my fans saw it. We won that game by 10 points and afterwards, in the locker room, Mr Ahmed handed out envelopes, each containing about $1,000 (£600) in dinars. "From our leader," he said.
Alex Owumi in Worcester January 2014
After that game I started to get a lot of special treatment around the country because I had been personally acknowledged by the Gaddafi family. I never had to pay for food at the markets or in restaurants again. Everything from socks to a new TV and laptop - I got it all free or on a sort of open-ended loan. I never had to pay anything, not a dime. And after that game, we just kept winning and winning. I was the point guard - the captain, the conductor of the orchestra. We just kept winning and my team-mates weren't scared any more.
But we noticed that our team coach, Coach Sharif, was often sad during practice. He was Egyptian and was worried about the situation back home - by this time, the revolution there was in full swing. There were rumours that there would be an uprising in Libya, but I never really took them seriously. We're talking about a country where the leader had been in power for 42 years. Who in their right mind would cross that kind of leadership, that kind of army?
Find out more
Alex Owumi spoke to the BBC World Service programme Outlook
Outlook airs Mon-Thurs
Tells personal stories from around the world
Listen to Alex Owumi interview
Subscribe to Outlook podcast
From the roof of my apartment in Benghazi I could see the whole of the city. I liked going up to the roof, especially when I was homesick and missed my family. I could really clear my mind up there.
But on 17 February 2011, at about 09:15 in the morning, I go on to the rooftop and see 200, maybe 300 protesters outside a police station across the street. A military convoy is coming closer and closer. Then, without warning, shots. People running, people falling. Dead bodies all over the ground. I'm praying, praying that this is a dream, that I will wake up sometime soon.
With these bullets flying everywhere, I'm hugging the floor of the rooftop. I am so frightened. So many things are running through my head and I just can't think straight. After 10 minutes or so, the shooting stops and there is only wailing and screaming.
I go back to my apartment and close the door. I call Coach Sharif. It takes a long time before my call is connected, but eventually he picks up. He tells me that he's on his way out of the country, back to Egypt, but that I should stay in my apartment and that somebody will come for me.
I try calling Moustapha but there is no connection. Over and over I punch the numbers on my phone, but the networks are down. The internet is down. I sit huddled against a big metal bookcase, praying.
Every now and then I peek out the window. The crowds of men have dispersed. Instead, I see kids, kids I played soccer with on the street. They have turned into rebels now, with their own shotguns and machetes. Regular life is over - it's every man for himself.
The view from Alex Owumi's apartment in Benghazi The view from Alex Owumi's apartment in Benghazi
I watch as a little girl tries to drag her father back to their house. He's so heavy her mother has to come and help her. I can see the blood leaking from his head. His eyes are just gone, popped out of his head. And they can't move his body. They just sit by the road, wailing.
There is a bang on my door. I open it and two soldiers ask me, "American or Libyan?" I show them my American passport and they let me go back in. I shut the door. About 15 minutes later I hear a commotion in the hallway - yelling and scuffling. When it dies down a little, I open my door to see what's going on and I see a man, my neighbour, lying in the doorway to his apartment. He's covered with blood and isn't moving. For a moment I think he's dead.
The city that loathed Gaddafi
Protestor in Benghazi with Gadaffi cartoon
-Benghazi is Libya's second city, with around 670,000 residents
-King Idris, ousted by Col Gaddafi in 1969, kept his court in Benghazi
-Many Libyan Islamist rebels were drawn from Benghazi and the surrounding area, and most of the 1,270 men killed by security forces at Abu Salim prison in 1996 came from east Libya
-The city felt itself to be economically neglected - in the 1990s, 413 children at a Benghazi hospital were infected by HIV because of appalling sanitary conditions
-The ground of the football team Al-Ahly Benghazi was bulldozed in 2000 following demonstrations against Gaddafi's son Saadi, who ran the Football Federation
I know this man and I like him. He has a daughter, about 16 years of age, and sometimes after practice I sit with her in the hallway and help her practise English.
I hear these noises coming from around the corner of the hallway. Strange noises - crying and heavy breathing. I creep slowly around the corner and see an AK-47 on the ground. I creep further round the corner and see one of the soldiers on the stairwell with his pants down raping that little girl.
There's so much anger in me. I reach for the gun, but then the other soldier steps out of the shadows, and pokes me with his own AK-47. I think he might just pull the trigger and blow me away.
But he doesn't. He just shoos me back to my apartment, jabbing at me with his gun. I'm yelling at him in English, calling him every name under the sun, but I don't have it in me to take him on. There's nothing I can do. He closes the steel door on me and I sink to the ground, weeping, banging my head against the door. I can still hear that poor girl on the stairwell. I can't do anything to help her.
As a Christian, it's hard for me to say this, but there were many times I questioned my faith in God. That first day I just sat on the ground, crying and praying, trying my phone again and again.
There was a group of women next door who had a baby who was crying with hunger. Libyans don't tend to keep much food in the house - they buy fresh groceries every day. So I gave them most of what I had - just a couple of slices of bread and some cheese - thinking that in two or three days this would be over.
But it carried on - the screams, the sirens, the gunshots. Non-stop, 24 hours a day. My apartment was in a war zone. It was all around me, I was just a dot in the middle of the circle of the bull's-eye. I told myself that I would be rescued, that at any moment Navy Seals would come crashing through my steel door. I kept myself ready to go at a moment's notice. I didn't go to bed, but just took short naps throughout the day and night.
Alex Owumi holds a basketball
The police station on the other side of the road was set on fire. The policemen climbed on to the roof, which was the same height as my apartment building. I stared at them across the street and they stared back at me.
I had no power and no water. The food I had left over was gone in a day or two. I rationed the little water I had for four or five days, then it was gone. So I started drinking out of the toilet, using teabags to try to make it more palatable. When I needed to go to the toilet, which wasn't much, I would urinate in the bathtub and defecate into plastic bags, which I tied up and left by the door.
I realised that if I didn't do these things I wouldn't survive. Three or four days after the massacre I had seen from the roof, a building across the street collapsed. The next day, the Libyan Air Force started dropping bombs all over Benghazi as they tried to retake the city.
I thought - I have those couches with gold trim but I can't eat this gold. These flat screens are not going to feed me. Everything in this apartment is worthless. The things that we take for granted as human beings - water, a bit of cheese, a slice of bread - suddenly these things felt like luxuries, luxuries I didn't have. I was getting weaker every day, slowly starving.
When the hunger pains got really bad, I started eating cockroaches and worms that I picked out of the flowerpots on my windowsill. I'd seen Bear Grylls survival shows on TV and seemed to recall that it was better to eat them alive, that they kept their nutrients that way. They were wriggly and salty, but I was so hungry it was like eating a steak.
I started seeing myself, versions of myself at different ages. Three-year-old Alex, eight-year-old Alex, at 12 years, 15 years, 20 years and the current, 26-year-old version. The younger ones were on one side, and the older versions on the other. I was able to touch them and I talked to them every day.
And I noticed that the younger Alexes were different, happier somehow, than the older versions, who seemed to have lost their direction. I asked the younger Alexes: "What happened? How can I get back to that happiness? How can I get my life back on track?" I asked them, "What made me make bad decisions?"
Twelve days after I shut myself away in my apartment, my mobile phone rang. It was Moustapha. "My brother, how you doin'?" he said. I told him I wasn't doing too well. He was stuck in his apartment on the other side of the city, too. And he told me that my girlfriend, Alexis, had called him from the US, frantic with worry about me.
When we spoke again the next day Moustapha told me that our team president, Mr Ahmed, had promised to get us out of the country. We had to make our way to his office - it was only two blocks from my apartment, but I wasn't sure how I would get there. "I will see you or I won't," I told Moustapha. "I will make it or I won't."
I was so weak that it took me about 15 minutes to climb down the seven flights of stairs in my apartment building. Out on the street I saw the empty shell cases that had been fired at the crowd two weeks earlier. I picked one up and thought, "Did this go through a human being?" They weren't like handgun bullets - they were the sort of thing that could take a limb off.
Alex Owumi
Then I saw those same kids I had watched from my window, the ones I had played football with - one had an AK-47 that was almost bigger than him. They recognised me and called out: "Okocha!" They called me that because they thought I looked like Jay-Jay Okocha, the Nigerian footballer. These kids saw my legs start to buckle and they raced to grab my arms. Two of them took my arms and I made them understand where I needed to get to.
They basically had to carry me for about a mile. We went the long way, down backstreets and alleyways. Sometimes they would break into a run, and sometimes one of the kids would shout and we all stopped dead and looked around.
A year of change
17 December 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, sets himself on fire in protest at the police, sparking protests
14 January 2011 Tunisian president Ben Ali steps down
11 February 2011 Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak steps down
17 February 2011 A 'day of rage' across Libya
15 March 2011 The first protests against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria
15 July 2011 The National Transitional Council recognised as the government of Libya
20 October 2011 Col Gaddafi and his son Mutassim are killed
Arab uprisings: 10 key moments
Libya: The fall of Gaddafi
At my team president's office, Moustapha and I hugged, and Mr Ahmed told the two of us, "I could get you out of here, but it's going to be very dangerous." He said it would mean a six-hour drive on a long desert road to the Egyptian border. Just a few days earlier, he had hired a car to take a Cameroonian footballer to the border. But this footballer had panicked at a rebel checkpoint and made a run for it across the desert. He had been gunned down.
Moustapha didn't want to do it but I managed to convince him. And all the time we were talking it over, I was stuffing my face with cakes and drinking bottles of water. It gave me enough energy to get back to my apartment on my own two feet, accompanied by my band of miniature warriors.
I packed a small suitcase and at about 02:00 a car horn beeped outside. It was our car to Egypt - a tiny vehicle with Moustapha - all 6'10" (2.08m) of him - already jammed into the front seat.
Fifteen minutes outside Benghazi we got to our first checkpoint - rebels searching through our stuff, throwing our clothes on the floor, looking for our passports. As black men, we were suspected of being Gaddafi mercenaries trying to escape the country.
At one point the rebels, guns in hand, kicked the legs from under Moustapha. I thought he was going to be gunned right down in front of me. The driver kept telling them, "They're just basketball players, they're just basketball players." But there was so much turmoil, so much death around the city, that people didn't believe anything.
By the grace of God they finally let us go. But there were another seven of those checkpoints, and instead of it being a six or seven-hour journey, it was 12 hours because we had to stop so often. We were searched and kicked to our knees so many times, thrown in the dirt. It was rough - and if I ever see that driver again I will give him all the money in my pocket.
We crossed the Egyptian border and after three days in a refugee camp, I could have begun the journey home to the US. But while I was waiting at the border for the Cairo bus to leave, I got a call from Coach Sharif. He told me: "I want you to come to Alexandria, stay with me and my wife, and get yourself back together, talk to us."
I thought about it and realised that I needed some time - I didn't want my family to see me the way I was. So I said goodbye to Moustapha and took the bus to Alexandria.
When Coach Sharif saw me, he shook his head, saying: "This is not the guy I've come to know. This is not him." I looked different - the pigment on my face was discoloured, I had hair all over my face. My teeth were rotten brown, my eyes were bloodshot red. But it wasn't just that. He basically saw that my soul was gone. And he said, the times I saw you happy were when you played basketball.
So while he and his wife took care of me, he got me involved with an Alexandrian team called El Olympi, coached by one of his former players. And it wasn't about the money any more, I didn't care about that. The big thing was being normal again.
I had a check-up before I started playing and I found that that fortnight without food had killed my body. Being a professional athlete, my body was used to a high-calorie diet. My liver was messed up, my lungs were bad, my blood was not right.
But I played anyway. El Olympi wanted me to help them make the playoffs, but we ended up winning 13 games in a row and taking the championship. It was amazing.
That decision to play the rest of the season in Egypt was a lot for my mum and my girlfriend to take, though.
When I went home and saw my father again I shed tears. He was in a diabetic coma. Had he gone into this coma because I didn't want to come home, his youngest son? I felt very, very guilty.
Continue reading the main story
I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I would shut myself at home for 15 hours with the blinds closed. I didn't shower. My girlfriend, Alexis, would come home and find me like that and it took a toll on our relationship. I got a lot of treatment, a lot of therapy. But I was raised in the Catholic church, and I found going back to church was a way back to my regular self.
As for my old team-mates in Benghazi, there was nowhere for them to go, no way for them to escape. A lot of them had to fight in the war. I am still in touch with one of them and with Moustapha, who I speak to about once a fortnight. I saw him last summer and gave him the biggest hug in the world. We're partners for life.
I have tried very hard to get in touch with that girl who lived across the hallway from me in Benghazi. I've found nothing, just nothing.
I was trying to forget about everything that had happened to me. But my family convinced me that I needed to get my story out there, so I wrote a memoir, Qaddafi's Point Guard. Doing that was hard - there were a lot of tears.
I don't regret going to Libya. In life, just like in basketball, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to make bad plays. But God has a plan for everybody - you could go left, you could go right, you're going to end up on his path at the end of the day.
My girlfriend and I are still together, and after a break from the game, I am playing again, this time in England, for the Worcester Wolves. My team-mates don't really know how to deal with me. I still get depressed just like that. In a minute, I go from happy to sad. I am liable to snap at people. They just leave me alone and I'm grateful for their understanding.
When I close my eyes I relive moments from 2011. I see faces, I see spirits. So staying awake is my best bet. I only sleep for four hours and by 08:00 I'm excited to go to practice. Basketball is an escape for me. The only time I get to be calm is in those 40 minutes of a game.
I do get really bad anxiety attacks before games, though. My hands get sweaty and start to shake. I can't breathe, I can't function. Sometimes I can't leave the locker room. People look at me and say, "Woah, this dude is so crazy." But that's normal for me now. That's normal life.
Alex Owumi in Worcester January 2014
Matthew Bigwood photographed Alex Owumi in Worcester, January 2014.
Website production by William Kremer and Catherine Wynne
Alex Owumi schreef zijn verhaal ook op in het boek: 'Gaddafi's Point Guard'
Met dank aan www.NRC.nl/longreads
Alex Owumi: I played basketball for Gaddafi
BBC Magazine, 6 February 2014
When US basketball player Alex Owumi signed a contract to play for a team in Benghazi, Libya, he had no idea that his employer was the the most feared man in the country. Nor did he guess the country was about to descend into war. Here he tells his story, parts of which some readers may find distressing.
It was a beautiful flat. Everything was state of the art and it was spacious, too. It had two big living rooms, three big bedrooms, flat screens everywhere. The couches had gold trim and were so big and heavy they were impossible to move. The door to the apartment was reinforced steel, like on a bank vault.
It was 27 December 2010 and I had just arrived in Benghazi, Libya's second biggest city, to play basketball for a team called Al-Nasr Benghazi. I had stayed in some nice places playing for teams in Europe, but this seventh-floor apartment in the middle of town was something else. It was like the Taj Mahal.
I didn't immediately notice the photographs dotted around the place - of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi and his grandchildren.
When I did, I phoned the team president - we called him Mr Ahmed - and he told me how it was. "The apartment belongs to Mutassim Gaddafi, the Colonel's son," he said. "Al-Nasr is the Gaddafi club. You are playing for the Gaddafi family."
Gaddafi! When I was a young kid growing up in Africa - I was born in Nigeria - Gaddafi was someone we all looked up to. He was always on the news and in the paper, helping out countries like Niger and Nigeria. I thought of him as one of the faces of Africa - him and Nelson Mandela. As a kid I wasn't really aware of any of the bad things he was doing. Maybe I was too busy playing sports.
In my first practice with my new team-mates there was a weird atmosphere. I asked the other international player on the team, Moustapha Niang from Senegal, "Why does everybody look so depressed?" And he explained it to me. "We've been losing," he said. "They haven't been getting paid, some of them are getting physically abused. If we don't win our next game, some of these kids are going to get beat."
A lot of the players had scratches and banged-up bruises on their arms. One had a black eye he was trying to conceal. Gaddafi's security goons would push them up against lockers, things like that - and some of these guys were not big athletes like me and Moustapha. During practice you could see some of them were just scared to make mistakes. But in any sport you're going to make mistakes, you're going to make bad plays. I can't go into a game and trust people who are scared.
The next day, we travelled to a game in Tripoli on a private jet like we were a team playing in the NBA [the National Basketball Association in the US]. That's how it was with Al-Nasr and the Gaddafi family - they got extra funding, extra millions of dollars. But the deal was we were supposed to win - and when we lost, it was a problem.
Col Gaddafi was at that game. Before the start I saw him sitting with his military personnel up in the stands in a white dress uniform. Walking on the court was his son, Saadi Gaddafi, the man in charge of sport in Libya. We spoke and honestly, he seemed like a nice man who just loved sport.
As we were talking, I looked into the stands at his father and we locked eyes. It lasted just a moment, but my team-mates saw it and my fans saw it. We won that game by 10 points and afterwards, in the locker room, Mr Ahmed handed out envelopes, each containing about $1,000 (£600) in dinars. "From our leader," he said.
After that game I started to get a lot of special treatment around the country because I had been personally acknowledged by the Gaddafi family. I never had to pay for food at the markets or in restaurants again. Everything from socks to a new TV and laptop - I got it all free or on a sort of open-ended loan. I never had to pay anything, not a dime. And after that game, we just kept winning and winning. I was the point guard - the captain, the conductor of the orchestra. We just kept winning and my team-mates weren't scared any more.
But we noticed that our team coach, Coach Sharif, was often sad during practice. He was Egyptian and was worried about the situation back home - by this time, the revolution there was in full swing. There were rumours that there would be an uprising in Libya, but I never really took them seriously. We're talking about a country where the leader had been in power for 42 years. Who in their right mind would cross that kind of leadership, that kind of army?
Find out more
Alex Owumi spoke to the BBC World Service programme Outlook
Outlook airs Mon-Thurs
Tells personal stories from around the world
Listen to Alex Owumi interview
Subscribe to Outlook podcast
From the roof of my apartment in Benghazi I could see the whole of the city. I liked going up to the roof, especially when I was homesick and missed my family. I could really clear my mind up there.
But on 17 February 2011, at about 09:15 in the morning, I go on to the rooftop and see 200, maybe 300 protesters outside a police station across the street. A military convoy is coming closer and closer. Then, without warning, shots. People running, people falling. Dead bodies all over the ground. I'm praying, praying that this is a dream, that I will wake up sometime soon.
With these bullets flying everywhere, I'm hugging the floor of the rooftop. I am so frightened. So many things are running through my head and I just can't think straight. After 10 minutes or so, the shooting stops and there is only wailing and screaming.
I go back to my apartment and close the door. I call Coach Sharif. It takes a long time before my call is connected, but eventually he picks up. He tells me that he's on his way out of the country, back to Egypt, but that I should stay in my apartment and that somebody will come for me.
I try calling Moustapha but there is no connection. Over and over I punch the numbers on my phone, but the networks are down. The internet is down. I sit huddled against a big metal bookcase, praying.
Every now and then I peek out the window. The crowds of men have dispersed. Instead, I see kids, kids I played soccer with on the street. They have turned into rebels now, with their own shotguns and machetes. Regular life is over - it's every man for himself.
I watch as a little girl tries to drag her father back to their house. He's so heavy her mother has to come and help her. I can see the blood leaking from his head. His eyes are just gone, popped out of his head. And they can't move his body. They just sit by the road, wailing.
There is a bang on my door. I open it and two soldiers ask me, "American or Libyan?" I show them my American passport and they let me go back in. I shut the door. About 15 minutes later I hear a commotion in the hallway - yelling and scuffling. When it dies down a little, I open my door to see what's going on and I see a man, my neighbour, lying in the doorway to his apartment. He's covered with blood and isn't moving. For a moment I think he's dead.
The city that loathed Gaddafi
-Benghazi is Libya's second city, with around 670,000 residents
-King Idris, ousted by Col Gaddafi in 1969, kept his court in Benghazi
-Many Libyan Islamist rebels were drawn from Benghazi and the surrounding area, and most of the 1,270 men killed by security forces at Abu Salim prison in 1996 came from east Libya
-The city felt itself to be economically neglected - in the 1990s, 413 children at a Benghazi hospital were infected by HIV because of appalling sanitary conditions
-The ground of the football team Al-Ahly Benghazi was bulldozed in 2000 following demonstrations against Gaddafi's son Saadi, who ran the Football Federation
I know this man and I like him. He has a daughter, about 16 years of age, and sometimes after practice I sit with her in the hallway and help her practise English.
I hear these noises coming from around the corner of the hallway. Strange noises - crying and heavy breathing. I creep slowly around the corner and see an AK-47 on the ground. I creep further round the corner and see one of the soldiers on the stairwell with his pants down raping that little girl.
There's so much anger in me. I reach for the gun, but then the other soldier steps out of the shadows, and pokes me with his own AK-47. I think he might just pull the trigger and blow me away.
But he doesn't. He just shoos me back to my apartment, jabbing at me with his gun. I'm yelling at him in English, calling him every name under the sun, but I don't have it in me to take him on. There's nothing I can do. He closes the steel door on me and I sink to the ground, weeping, banging my head against the door. I can still hear that poor girl on the stairwell. I can't do anything to help her.
As a Christian, it's hard for me to say this, but there were many times I questioned my faith in God. That first day I just sat on the ground, crying and praying, trying my phone again and again.
There was a group of women next door who had a baby who was crying with hunger. Libyans don't tend to keep much food in the house - they buy fresh groceries every day. So I gave them most of what I had - just a couple of slices of bread and some cheese - thinking that in two or three days this would be over.
But it carried on - the screams, the sirens, the gunshots. Non-stop, 24 hours a day. My apartment was in a war zone. It was all around me, I was just a dot in the middle of the circle of the bull's-eye. I told myself that I would be rescued, that at any moment Navy Seals would come crashing through my steel door. I kept myself ready to go at a moment's notice. I didn't go to bed, but just took short naps throughout the day and night.
The police station on the other side of the road was set on fire. The policemen climbed on to the roof, which was the same height as my apartment building. I stared at them across the street and they stared back at me.
I had no power and no water. The food I had left over was gone in a day or two. I rationed the little water I had for four or five days, then it was gone. So I started drinking out of the toilet, using teabags to try to make it more palatable. When I needed to go to the toilet, which wasn't much, I would urinate in the bathtub and defecate into plastic bags, which I tied up and left by the door.
I realised that if I didn't do these things I wouldn't survive. Three or four days after the massacre I had seen from the roof, a building across the street collapsed. The next day, the Libyan Air Force started dropping bombs all over Benghazi as they tried to retake the city.
I thought - I have those couches with gold trim but I can't eat this gold. These flat screens are not going to feed me. Everything in this apartment is worthless. The things that we take for granted as human beings - water, a bit of cheese, a slice of bread - suddenly these things felt like luxuries, luxuries I didn't have. I was getting weaker every day, slowly starving.
When the hunger pains got really bad, I started eating cockroaches and worms that I picked out of the flowerpots on my windowsill. I'd seen Bear Grylls survival shows on TV and seemed to recall that it was better to eat them alive, that they kept their nutrients that way. They were wriggly and salty, but I was so hungry it was like eating a steak.
I started seeing myself, versions of myself at different ages. Three-year-old Alex, eight-year-old Alex, at 12 years, 15 years, 20 years and the current, 26-year-old version. The younger ones were on one side, and the older versions on the other. I was able to touch them and I talked to them every day.
And I noticed that the younger Alexes were different, happier somehow, than the older versions, who seemed to have lost their direction. I asked the younger Alexes: "What happened? How can I get back to that happiness? How can I get my life back on track?" I asked them, "What made me make bad decisions?"
Twelve days after I shut myself away in my apartment, my mobile phone rang. It was Moustapha. "My brother, how you doin'?" he said. I told him I wasn't doing too well. He was stuck in his apartment on the other side of the city, too. And he told me that my girlfriend, Alexis, had called him from the US, frantic with worry about me.
When we spoke again the next day Moustapha told me that our team president, Mr Ahmed, had promised to get us out of the country. We had to make our way to his office - it was only two blocks from my apartment, but I wasn't sure how I would get there. "I will see you or I won't," I told Moustapha. "I will make it or I won't."
I was so weak that it took me about 15 minutes to climb down the seven flights of stairs in my apartment building. Out on the street I saw the empty shell cases that had been fired at the crowd two weeks earlier. I picked one up and thought, "Did this go through a human being?" They weren't like handgun bullets - they were the sort of thing that could take a limb off.
Then I saw those same kids I had watched from my window, the ones I had played football with - one had an AK-47 that was almost bigger than him. They recognised me and called out: "Okocha!" They called me that because they thought I looked like Jay-Jay Okocha, the Nigerian footballer. These kids saw my legs start to buckle and they raced to grab my arms. Two of them took my arms and I made them understand where I needed to get to.
They basically had to carry me for about a mile. We went the long way, down backstreets and alleyways. Sometimes they would break into a run, and sometimes one of the kids would shout and we all stopped dead and looked around.
A year of change
17 December 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, sets himself on fire in protest at the police, sparking protests
14 January 2011 Tunisian president Ben Ali steps down
11 February 2011 Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak steps down
17 February 2011 A 'day of rage' across Libya
15 March 2011 The first protests against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria
15 July 2011 The National Transitional Council recognised as the government of Libya
20 October 2011 Col Gaddafi and his son Mutassim are killed
Arab uprisings: 10 key moments
Libya: The fall of Gaddafi
At my team president's office, Moustapha and I hugged, and Mr Ahmed told the two of us, "I could get you out of here, but it's going to be very dangerous." He said it would mean a six-hour drive on a long desert road to the Egyptian border. Just a few days earlier, he had hired a car to take a Cameroonian footballer to the border. But this footballer had panicked at a rebel checkpoint and made a run for it across the desert. He had been gunned down.
Moustapha didn't want to do it but I managed to convince him. And all the time we were talking it over, I was stuffing my face with cakes and drinking bottles of water. It gave me enough energy to get back to my apartment on my own two feet, accompanied by my band of miniature warriors.
I packed a small suitcase and at about 02:00 a car horn beeped outside. It was our car to Egypt - a tiny vehicle with Moustapha - all 6'10" (2.08m) of him - already jammed into the front seat.
Fifteen minutes outside Benghazi we got to our first checkpoint - rebels searching through our stuff, throwing our clothes on the floor, looking for our passports. As black men, we were suspected of being Gaddafi mercenaries trying to escape the country.
At one point the rebels, guns in hand, kicked the legs from under Moustapha. I thought he was going to be gunned right down in front of me. The driver kept telling them, "They're just basketball players, they're just basketball players." But there was so much turmoil, so much death around the city, that people didn't believe anything.
By the grace of God they finally let us go. But there were another seven of those checkpoints, and instead of it being a six or seven-hour journey, it was 12 hours because we had to stop so often. We were searched and kicked to our knees so many times, thrown in the dirt. It was rough - and if I ever see that driver again I will give him all the money in my pocket.
We crossed the Egyptian border and after three days in a refugee camp, I could have begun the journey home to the US. But while I was waiting at the border for the Cairo bus to leave, I got a call from Coach Sharif. He told me: "I want you to come to Alexandria, stay with me and my wife, and get yourself back together, talk to us."
I thought about it and realised that I needed some time - I didn't want my family to see me the way I was. So I said goodbye to Moustapha and took the bus to Alexandria.
When Coach Sharif saw me, he shook his head, saying: "This is not the guy I've come to know. This is not him." I looked different - the pigment on my face was discoloured, I had hair all over my face. My teeth were rotten brown, my eyes were bloodshot red. But it wasn't just that. He basically saw that my soul was gone. And he said, the times I saw you happy were when you played basketball.
So while he and his wife took care of me, he got me involved with an Alexandrian team called El Olympi, coached by one of his former players. And it wasn't about the money any more, I didn't care about that. The big thing was being normal again.
I had a check-up before I started playing and I found that that fortnight without food had killed my body. Being a professional athlete, my body was used to a high-calorie diet. My liver was messed up, my lungs were bad, my blood was not right.
But I played anyway. El Olympi wanted me to help them make the playoffs, but we ended up winning 13 games in a row and taking the championship. It was amazing.
That decision to play the rest of the season in Egypt was a lot for my mum and my girlfriend to take, though.
When I went home and saw my father again I shed tears. He was in a diabetic coma. Had he gone into this coma because I didn't want to come home, his youngest son? I felt very, very guilty.
Continue reading the main story
I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I would shut myself at home for 15 hours with the blinds closed. I didn't shower. My girlfriend, Alexis, would come home and find me like that and it took a toll on our relationship. I got a lot of treatment, a lot of therapy. But I was raised in the Catholic church, and I found going back to church was a way back to my regular self.
As for my old team-mates in Benghazi, there was nowhere for them to go, no way for them to escape. A lot of them had to fight in the war. I am still in touch with one of them and with Moustapha, who I speak to about once a fortnight. I saw him last summer and gave him the biggest hug in the world. We're partners for life.
I have tried very hard to get in touch with that girl who lived across the hallway from me in Benghazi. I've found nothing, just nothing.
I was trying to forget about everything that had happened to me. But my family convinced me that I needed to get my story out there, so I wrote a memoir, Qaddafi's Point Guard. Doing that was hard - there were a lot of tears.
I don't regret going to Libya. In life, just like in basketball, you're going to make mistakes, you're going to make bad plays. But God has a plan for everybody - you could go left, you could go right, you're going to end up on his path at the end of the day.
My girlfriend and I are still together, and after a break from the game, I am playing again, this time in England, for the Worcester Wolves. My team-mates don't really know how to deal with me. I still get depressed just like that. In a minute, I go from happy to sad. I am liable to snap at people. They just leave me alone and I'm grateful for their understanding.
When I close my eyes I relive moments from 2011. I see faces, I see spirits. So staying awake is my best bet. I only sleep for four hours and by 08:00 I'm excited to go to practice. Basketball is an escape for me. The only time I get to be calm is in those 40 minutes of a game.
I do get really bad anxiety attacks before games, though. My hands get sweaty and start to shake. I can't breathe, I can't function. Sometimes I can't leave the locker room. People look at me and say, "Woah, this dude is so crazy." But that's normal for me now. That's normal life.
Matthew Bigwood photographed Alex Owumi in Worcester, January 2014.
Website production by William Kremer and Catherine Wynne
Alex Owumi schreef zijn verhaal ook op in het boek: 'Gaddafi's Point Guard'
Met dank aan www.NRC.nl/longreads
woensdag 12 februari 2014
Wellicht de slimste kraai ter wereld
door Lex Boon (NRC.nl, 9 februari 2014, 14:20)
Kraaien zijn over het algemeen intelligente vogels, daar zijn wetenschappers het al langer over eens. Met een experiment in het programma Inside the animal mind werd het onlangs opnieuw bewezen: kraaien zijn inderdaad uitstekende probleemoplossers.
Een kraai met de naam ’007′ gaat de uitdaging aan: een puzzel met acht verschillende stappen. Zelf wetenschapper Alex Taylor, expert op dit gebied, staat versteld van het resultaat:
“That was remarkable. I’ve never ever seen anything like it. All of the bird behavior that I’ve seen, nothing matches that. I can hardly believe it …. the immediate question is: How on Earth did that crow do that?”
Kraaien zijn over het algemeen intelligente vogels, daar zijn wetenschappers het al langer over eens. Met een experiment in het programma Inside the animal mind werd het onlangs opnieuw bewezen: kraaien zijn inderdaad uitstekende probleemoplossers.
Een kraai met de naam ’007′ gaat de uitdaging aan: een puzzel met acht verschillende stappen. Zelf wetenschapper Alex Taylor, expert op dit gebied, staat versteld van het resultaat:
“That was remarkable. I’ve never ever seen anything like it. All of the bird behavior that I’ve seen, nothing matches that. I can hardly believe it …. the immediate question is: How on Earth did that crow do that?”
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