That afternoon he cleaned and prepared the rabbits the girl had killed for curing. Three does and one buck, the biggest of the does Cass, had been pregnant. After skinning and gutting the animals he treated each with salt and left them to hang in the smoke house. Upon exiting the smokehouse door he saw something move underneath one of the hutches. It was the other rabbit. The one the girl had been strangling when he had shot her. "Hello." He said to the rabbit. Martin got down on both knees and reached for the animal. The rabbit hissed and scratched Martin like a cat. "Son of bitch!" Martin yelled pulling his hand back. The rabbit darted past him to hide in some other corner of the garden. Martin inspected his hand. Three deep gashes were welling up with blood. "What did you do that for?" he yelled to the long gone rabbit. Removing his shirt he wrapped his hand to stop the blood flow. The wound need stitching. Martin went downstairs to gather supplies for the unavoidable. He prepared the supplies he would need for the surgery on the desk next to his bed. Surgical thread, peroxide, bactine, scissors, and a sharp curved needle that Martin had once hoped he would never have to use. He removed his belt, with his good hand, doubled it, and placed it his mouth biting down hard. Unwrapping the hand was painful. They blood had already started to coagulate and was sticking to the shirt. "Fuck!" Martin yelled through the belt clenched teeth. He doused the wound first with peroxide then with the bactine. While letting the cut dry he threaded the needle and then held it over the flame of the candle for a moment. "And now the hard part." he said through belt clenched teeth before making the first stitching. He saw red as the needle punched through his calloused skin but the second stitch wasn't nearly as bad. As he was finishing the first scratch he noticed a boy was standing in the doorway to his bedroom. He wasn't much older than the girl and he was gripping a pistol in his right hand. "Hi." said Martin.
"Hello." said the boy back and then after a pause asked, "Did you kill my sister?"
"Yes. I believe so." said Martin.
"Why?" Asked the boy.
"She was killing my rabbits..." Martin tried to explain. "I think she thought that I stole her cow but I just found it." The words didn't even make sense to him so he just said "I'm sorry."
The boy looked at Martin. His eyes were so sad. "Does that really matter?" He asked."No, I suppose it doesn't." Replied Martin.
The boy fired the gun once hitting Martin in the stomach. Martin looked at the blood welling from his body in disbelief. "You killed me."
"Yes." Said the boy. He was now crying. "I'm sorry."
Martin pressed his hand against the wound but the blood would not stop. The boy was watching him, still crying. "Do you think I'll be the last person?", asked the boy.
"I don't know." Said Martin. He was beginning to get sleepy and the pain was becoming a dull throb. It wouldn't be long now. "What happened to the rest of family? You're sister...when it happened she mentioned a they."
"My sister wasn't right sir. Our family died when we were younger. It was just me and Nalla." The Boy had stopped crying now and was now looking at ground with a blank expression.
"Nalla... What's your name?" Martin asked the boy.
"Jacob." Said the boy still looking at the ground.
"Jacob, my name is Martin and I will be dead very soon. I have a hutch of rabbits on the roof. Will you let them out before you leave this place?" Martin coughed twice projecting a fine pink mist in the candles light.
"Yes." Said Jacob.
"Thank you. Now will you end this? It will take hours otherwise." Martin laid back in the bed slowly and closed his eyes.
Jacob nodded and approached the bed hesitantly. He raised the gun to Martin's head and closed his eyes.
Later on the roof Jacob set the rabbits free. He was surprised to see one was already loose. His sister Nalla's calf was tied to one corner of the rabbits hutch. Jacob looked into the animal's eyes. "You are the only thing my sister ever loved." He left the calf on Martin's roof and set off back into the city alone.
On Tuesday January 11th around 5pm, I was arrested along with my driver and a photographer in front of a bank in Uyo Akwa State in Southern Nigeria . I arrived in Akwa Ibom on Sunday, January 9 to rescue two alleged witch children abused and abandoned by their families. One of the kids, 8 year old Esther Obot Moses, was living with a mad man who raped her several times. On that ‘fateful’ Tuesday, around 5.40 am, I stormed a dilapidated building in Nsit Ubium where the lunatic lived with two police officers and successfully rescued the poor girl. We went to the police station, made an entry and got a police extract.
Esther started vomiting on our way back. I took her to a children’s hospital in Uyo where she was treated for malaria. I later handed the children over to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and Social Welfare. I ran short of money in the course of doing this and rushed to a nearby bank to collect some cash. On leaving the bank, I couldn’t find my driver and the photographer who were waiting for me outside. I was accosted by a police officer who led me to where they were being held and questioned. I identified them as those who accompanied me to the bank, and the police forced me to sit on the ground. The police officers were asking us questions indiscriminately in their effort to implicate us or to confess to crimes we never committed.
They accused us of planning to kidnap someone. All my explanations as to our mission at the bank fell on deaf ears. Later a bus with some gun-throttling and fierce-looking police officers arrived. They removed our shirts and used them to tie our hands at the back. They pushed and kicked us into the bus and took us to the Anti-Kidnapping Unit at the state police command in Uyo.
Meanwhile we were in pain due to the way our hands were tied. On getting to the police station we urged the officers to untie our hands. But they refused. After a while one of the officers came and untied the hands of my photographer and replaced it with chains. I asked him to replace my own too. And he retorted “Don’t you know they are for sale?” Of course I didnt know and didn’t bother to ask him how much the handcuffs were sold for.
Another police officer said my hands were not properly tied,so he brought another shirt and tied my hands the second time. The pains increased. I literally lost all the sensations in my hands down to my fingers. I felt as if I had no hands or fingers at all. My hands were just dangling at my back as if they were lifeless.
At this point the Officer in Charge (O/C) of the anti-kidnapping unit, a middle-aged man who is fair in complexion, came in and started interrogating me. “Who are you? And where do you work?” he asked.
I told him that I worked with the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), an that I was in Uyo for an ongoing campaign against witchcraft accusations and to rescue victims.
“Where is your organization based?” he inquired. I said, London . As soon as I mentioned “London” he hit me several times with a baton on my head and my legs. He said I was among those who used fake NGOs to make money in the name of campaigning against witchcraft accusations in the state. He asked other officers to move me to another room for further interrogation. On getting to the other room, the officer started beating and kicking me. The O/C later arrived and asked him to stop. He ordered them to untie my hands.
I made a statement narrating how we were arrested. The O/C ordered us to be detained.
The next morning the O/C invited me to make another statement on IHEU. He asked me to state where it was based, whether it had an office in Nigeria, how it raised its funds etc., which I did. They kept us in a squalid building where we were held incommunicado – without food, water or access to our telephones. But we managed to smuggle out the telephone numbers of our family members and friends through some visitors who helped us contact them.
We were detained along with 50 other persons suspected of kidnapping in a room with one door and four windows all on one side.
The apartment had no fan or electricity. It used to be hot in the night so most inmates slept naked, packed like sardines. Most of them slept on the floor, a few slept on plastic bags. I couldn’t sleep and spent the night massaging my swollen head by pressing it against the floor.
All the detainees urinated, defecated, bathed and ate in the same room. Most of them had rashes, wounds and sores all over their bodies. They had no access to any medical care, and the police did not allow their families to bring them drugs.
The police did not care a hoot about the welfare of the detainees. They only opened the gate by 6 am and closed it by 6 pm, and of course extorted money from visitors who came to see their loved ones. Even animals are treated than the way detainees at the anti-kidnapping unit of the Uyo Police Command are treated. The police only arrest suspects and throw them into detention to languish and die slowly. Most of the detainees have been there for months awaiting trial. I had no doubt that some of the detainees were innocent citizens like us who were going about their business but were arrested and framed as kidnappers.
In the morning of Thursday, January 13, news reached us that the O/C had agreed to release only my driver and the photographer. I was a bit relieved.
Shortly after the news came, a humanist friend, Barrister James Ibor, arrived and we were all released without charge, after a short meeting with the assistant commissioner of police. It appeared that there had been some pressure on the police authorities to release us. I still experience pains on my head, hands and legs. My left hand is still not functioning properly.
But I am undeterred by the arrest, torture and detention – whether it was politically motivated or not. I will continue to work and campaign against witchcraft accusations and related abuses in Akwa Ibom state and beyond.
What could possibly make this day enjoyable (aside from that chickenshit sun showing itself)? I can't go back to bed because I have to go to work. I can't get drunk because I have to go to work. I can't even go look for a suitable bridge to go jump off because I have to go to work. Oh and to top things off I have to go to goddamn work.
And then I have a revelation.
I enlist my friend Gattis for the trip, both being a big fan of Thai Star and in town for the weekend. This a first time for both of us at the new local (when we roomed together we both frequented the E. Thompson store). We arrived at restaurant at 3:30. Typically this is a very slow time for any restaurant and I am surprised to still see plenty of people in the dining room. I Take this as a good sign. Our server seated us promptly and as a bonus was pretty funny. After taking our drinks she asked us if we were ready to order.
"Beef Pho please!" I say maybe a little too quickly.
Gattis orders the yum neu (a very very spicy beef salad) and a small bowl a of tom yum (a seafood stock soup with lemon grass.) While we wait for our food I check out the new digs. The dinning room is much larger than the previous building's. The decor is tasteful if a little sparse with a nice hand made bamboo entrance at the main door. A small shrine to Buddha sits in the corner and at the register a TV plays Thai music videos with English subtitles. The only thing I miss from the old place is a calender with Thai pin up girls.
Our food arrives and I quickly get to work making the Pho my own. Adding a generous amount of Siracha, a spoon full of sugar, some lovely but smelly fish sauce, and of course the chili paste, herbs, and lime but leaving out ice berg lettuce and hoisin sauce. The first bite is both heaven and hell.
I say to John, "May have been a little too heavy handed with the chili."
Even the steam from this stuff is unstopping my once impenetrable nasal passage. Hints of anise and coriander make it past the lava like heat and the freshness of the basil and cilantro. The beef is tender and not overcooked. The noodles soak up the broth and round out everything nicely.
The pleasure centers in my brain seem to be running on over time. Endorphins are starting to kick in from the heat and I have to stop myself from picking up the bowl and drinking the broth like cereal milk. This shit is that good.
I suddenly realize why I go to work. Like a junkie it's cop. Shoot. Cop.
Go to work to make money for pho.
Eat Pho.
Start all over again.
LONDON (AP) — The first study to link a childhood vaccine to autism was based on doctored information about the children involved, according to a new report on the widely discredited research.
The conclusions of the 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues was renounced by 10 of its 13 authors and later retracted by the medical journal Lancet, where it was published. Still, the suggestion the MMR shot was connected to autism spooked parents worldwide and immunization rates for measles, mumps and rubella have never fully recovered.
A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper to hospital records, that Wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their study.
The analysis, by British journalist Brian Deer, found that despite the claim in Wakefield's paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, five had previously documented developmental problems. Deer also found that all the cases were somehow misrepresented when he compared data from medical records and the children's parents.
Wakefield could not be reached for comment despite repeated calls and requests to the publisher of his recent book, which claims there is a connection between vaccines and autism that has been ignored by the medical establishment. Wakefield now lives in the U.S. where he enjoys a vocal following including celebrity supporters like Jenny McCarthy.
Deer's article was paid for by the Sunday Times of London and Britain's Channel 4 television network. It was published online Thursday in the medical journal, BMJ.
In an accompanying editorial, BMJ editor Fiona Godlee and colleagues called Wakefield's study "an elaborate fraud." They said Wakefield's work in other journals should be examined to see if it should be retracted.
Last May, Wakefield was stripped of his right to practice medicine in Britain. Many other published studies have shown no connection between the MMR vaccination and autism.
But measles has surged since Wakefield's paper was published and there are sporadic outbreaks in Europe and the U.S. In 2008, measles was deemed endemic in England and Wales.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
