The New Arsenal...In Their Eyes

On a night when the moon nears the full lighting up the African savannah

Arsenal   Starting  11? 

Away from the flashing lights of the city, appreciate you get to,  the intimacy of nature that rural Africa offers. Not that our cities are the concrete jungles that the planners of 'first world' cities are ever so desperately trying to inject some serenity with multi-money green space projects, but more because one gets to appreciate change like the never before. Stealthy change like such events as the unfolding of the moon through the different lunar phases, a transformation that would otherwise have been lost to the nuances of life in any 21st  century city.

In a way, such changes of subtle nature-like the waxing and waning of the moon and its said effects on sea tides that bring about the unexpected rain -gives one a sense of the sneaky nature of progress.

Taking a walk home, having swallowed a few for the road at the solar lit  watering hole that happens to be  part of the two rows of permanent structures that constitute urban life in this part of the world- somewhere along the Equator,  in the shadows cast by the moon as its light falls on the Acacia trees, the black,white and gray of life are ever so distinct.
My insight has nothing to do with the sorghum variant of  -OH groups flowing in my blood, but by the take of the proudly Arsenal Damu (Swahili:blood) farmers,middlemen and farm hands whose thoughts on the game .

To a Jamaa (Swahili: Bloke) like me, used to hobnobbing with city types whose take on most matters life is somewhat skewed (just like the way the illuminating moonlight is lost under the glare of city lights) by vain urbane preoccupations ( best exemplified by the proverbial competition between the Jones-es) quite a breath of life the football talk down at Generations pub, as rain drops on the sun bathed earth of the savannah.

Life. That is, philosophically speaking, new life in the way that dead matter manure nee plants.

On the La Cesc Fabregas Soap Opera

"The loyalty of dog lies not its wag of the tail, but where it feeds"

A bloke called Tadayo tells me of his beloved dog that at every meet up, wags its tail at him. He doesn't make much of the wag as he is aware of the mongrel's nocturnal behavior. Tusker the dog, patrols his neighbors property keeping watch as any dutiful dog ought to.

Thing is Tadayo's neighbor is in the habit of throwing out the remains of his kingly dinner into his compost pit ostensibly to rot them into manure. Tusker just happens to make most use of them, not because he is not well fed at home, but because kingly they are and so happen to be the inclination of  the Guinness coat mongrel's  taste buds.

Never mind that Tadayo took in Tusker as a malnourished abandoned pup and nursed it into health. Considering the desolateness then, only a champion could have come up the way Tusker did.

As he offers, he doesn't mind the wag of the tail, neither does he hold any reservations. In fact he's grateful of his neighbor's chipping in at enabling Tusker realize the potential that he saw:a champion dog. All that is left, he reckons, is for the pups that Tusker helped bring up to show the champion that Tusker rubbed on them. The clincher is unlike Tusker, having not known any other home, Tadayo is not worried about the safety of his home as by extension in them he now has four Tuskers in the making.


On Ox, Ryo, Jenks, Campbell and Arsene Wenger's Sustainability Youth Project

"The value of a brood is not in the number of eggs it lays but in the number of chicks that it coos into adulthood"

Edu the chicken farmer offered: granted even the very best hens lose a few chicks (Nasri, Helb Flamini, etc) to the African eagle as a meal, but the key to successful free-range chicken farming is in finding the hen among your bunch that can surrogate mother all the chicks into chickens. Edu reveals the secrect behind this ages old traditional chicken farming method that gives rise to tastier chicken (thanks to a more diverse natural menu)  that fetch premium prices in the market.

For every round of newly hatched chicks, from different hens, Edu picks one amongst them that from history is a better 'mother' to raise that particular generation. The benefits are twofold. First,a constant supply of quality chicken is ensured, while the other mother hens are free to lay the eggs of future success as they are sold off when its just right having done their bit in contributing towards a superior gene pool.

On the 8-2 Old Trafford debacle

"A tea bush is at its highest value when it has just been pruned"

Herman, a holder of a parcel with a few tea bushes recalls his dismay when his father bestowed to him the 300 or so tea bushes as seed capital 'to build his house' upon. Unemployed and with his young wife to be heavy with their first child, he was at loss what good a bunch of  leaf threadbare, recently pruned tea bushes would do his situation.

Now with his son a couple of months away from graduating from medical school, he only has himself to laugh at the folly of his youth. It is in the pruning that new tea shoot and buds arise. The more wanton  the act, the better the results. Ask Herman, and he tells you that some matters are only of historical conjuncture, at best reference points that serve as beacons to mark the boundaries of the harvest years.

Arsenal Damu.....They call themselves.

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