Do you know your Genotype?

If you don’t, please go and do a test. And get to know the genotype of your spouse and family members. It’s really important. Below is a true story of a man (AS) who married a woman (AS) (didn’t know their genotypes before getting married) and had five children, all (SS). Sadly, they lost two of them….



Mr and Mrs Adewale and their three surviving children



A family’s struggle with Sickle Cell

The loss of a child is a traumatic experience most parents wouldn't wish for. It is usually prayed against, hoped against, with parents going to great extents to prevent a child's demise. But the loss of two children is as heartbreaking as it can be for a family.

Abel Adewale and his wife, Beatrice, have lost two out of five children to complications arising from sickle cell anaemia. As sad as their deaths were, what was even more depressing for the parents were the circumstances in which they died, circumstances they wished they were previously educated about and could have prevented.

Mr and Mrs Adewale got married in 1990, at a registry in Ilorin, Kwara State. At the time they got married, Mr Adewale was a primary school teacher at Ilorin, Kwara State; while his wife was a midwife at the Christ Apostolic Church Hospital, also in Ilorin. While Mr Adewale received his training at Teachers Training College, Osun State, Mrs Adewale only had her formal education up to secondary school and trained as a midwife in the church. At that time, neither of them had heard about sickle cell anaemia. They said they were oblivious of their genotypes and started having children soon after their marriage.

"I had never done a genotype test before marriage; we didn't do any medical test. We got married in a court in Ilorin," said Mr Adewale. The couple had their first child in July 1991, and four followed thereafter. However, as wonderful as the growth of their family was, their joy was marred by the sickly state of all five children.

"It was always sickness, sickness, complaining of sickness. Sometimes, all of them will be sick at the same time. Sometimes, it will be two or three of them," said Mrs Adewale.

Making a living from trash

A recent visit to the Olusosun Land Fill site where waste from thousands of homes and offices in Lagos is emptied gave me a sick feeling that hasn’t left me for several days. The sight of hundreds of people, wading deep into people’s trash, in search of items that could earn them an income is not what I expected to see.

The state of deprivation and unemployment in the economy can be brought alive in fewer pictures than that of people rummaging through waste at such sites daily. Was such a sad sight, seeing hundreds of people thronging a dump site for their daily bread….

Below is the article I wrote.

After hours of searching, dusting, bagging, and more searching, Moses Daramola was done for the day. He stretched his stiff back, made his way out of the dump, retrieved a sachet of water from his bag and washed his face. Then he settled down at a corner to go through his findings; a broken car radio, a pressing iron with a missing plug, a portable DVD player with a missing screen, several plugs, sockets, electrical parts and wires all at various levels of degradation. Satisfied with his findings, he stuffed them back into his backpack which had more than a few holes and stitches.

“Today is good.” Mr Daramola smiled to himself.

“Don’t look at these wires and sockets anyhow,” he told this reporter. “By the time I take it to all those people that sell electrical parts, I will be able to make some money.”

Mr Daramola is just one of the hundreds of people who, on a daily basis, throng the Olusosun dumpsite, the second largest landfill site in the state, for their source of livelihood. Among the tonnes of waste that is brought in by the Lagos State Waste Management Agency (LAWMA) trucks and other private waste managers, these people find items that could earn them an income.

The man who built a car

When Sunday Okpere was seven, he made toy cars using empty milk cans, short ropes and small twigs, which he happily dragged around the streets in his hometown in Edo State; while at the same time nursing the dream of building a real car.

Today, Mr Okpere drives a red and black car, which he named ‘Rock Auto,' around the streets of Lagos; a car which he designed and coupled from start to finish with locally-sourced materials.

Despite the death of his father and the attendant financial and emotional setback to the family, Mr Okpere said "making a car" was something he knew he wanted to do at a young age when he discovered his creative spirit.

"When I was a young boy, I used to make car with cans," said Mr Okpere, 35, who relocated with his family from Lagos to Edo State in the late 70's. "All my friends in my neighbourhood will gather around me and say I should make for them. From cars, I started making guns.Anything I was interested in, I tried to make on my own."

"In secondary school, my teacher in school asked me what I wanted to be in future and I said I want to be an engineer," he said.

A New Beginning

First of all, I’d like to say a very big thank you to everyone who has dropped by this blog or dropped a comment. Your kindness, support and appreciation means a lot to me. I love you all.

In order to improve the content and quality of this blog and eventually, for my personal and career development, I would be focusing more on what I love to do best – writing and journalism.

Contents of this blog would largely be based on fiction stories, reports, inspiring stories and events, writing events and competitions. And of course, since it is my blog, opinion pieces would also be a part of it :D

I hope you enjoy the new http://www.deolascope.blogspot.com/. Do keep dropping by again and again.

God bless you all!