The Week And A Bit That Was...

Strange happenings this past week or so, I've been pondering much and blogging very little. A few things have sort of stood out, my mum coming out of hospital, my brother's leukaemia returning and Tony Blair's statement regarding the slave trade.

My mum came out of hospital having been there since Easter this year. She didn't come out because she was ready to come home, but because the hospital is closing down and patients need to be removed. I'm not quite sure what to feel really. I honestly didn't think she would leave the hospital alive and have, to a certain extent, been emotionally detaching myself in preparation for the inevitable. What I wasn't prepared for this week was a phone call from my brother to say that his leukaemia had returned, that he'd already had to have a blood transfusion and that he had been advised by the hospital to check with his siblings for compatability. That can mean one of two things:- compatability for blood cells or bone marrow. As Richard's only healthy sibling (our sis has MS), and as your mind does at times like this, considering the worst case scenario, the thoughts of donating bone marrow are quite frightening as it is an extremely painful operation. I often wonder how come there is so much illness in my family and you can be tempted to, as the Pharisees of scripture did, ask 'who sinned, this man or his parents?' Are we/I meant to be learning something from this or is this all simply the result of living in a creation that is slighty askew?

Regarding Tony Blair, the cynic in me says that he has made this recent statement regarding his sorrow over the slave trade, as an attempt to rehabilitate his political reputaion in the light of the tradegy that is Iraq and Afghanistan. Being the great great great grandaughter of a slave woman born on Tobago after her mother was transported from the Ashanti tribe in Ghana, and having read Tony Blair's entire statement, I have to admit it left me a bit cold. I was more affected by the actions of a man called Andrew Hawkins (a descendant of John Hawkins, the first Briton to trade slaves) who visited the Gambia to apologise in person for his family's part in the slave trade. Are these apologies necessary in our society? Are words enough? Should more be done in terms of reparation? Or do we Caribbeans & African just need to get over it and move on?