Adult dating agency.

The couple took their vows on Friday at the Attorney-General’s chambers in Nairobi, with hundreds of curious people turning up to witness the unusual ceremony.

Mr Mbugua’s mother, 53-year-old Florence Nyambura, is so angry that she has refused to recognise Wambui as her daughter-in-law.

She is furious that her son decided to marry without seeking her blessing, saying that Mr Mbugua already had a fiancee and planned to marry her next month.

‘Love is blind’

Wambui’s children also boycotted the ceremony, saying that their mother would live to regret the day she married a “boy” who is 42 years her junior.

They have described the marriage as a disgrace to the family.

But for 67-year-old widow and prominent politician Wambui Otieno, “love is what matters, love is blind.”

Marriage is an expression of love and if the couple cannot bear children, they can adopt them Reverend Timothy Njoya Presbyterian Church of East Africa

The marriage has not just split the families of the newly-weds: Kenya’s churches are also divided on the correct biblical of the marriage.

A senior Catholic priest, Father Emanuel Ngugi termed the marriage as “uncouth”, saying that Wambui should have consulted her Gikuyu community before marrying a man who is her grandchild’s age.

He also suggested that the community might treat Mr Mbugua as an outcast.

But a Presbyterian Church of East Africa clergyman, Reverend Timothy Njoya, said the marriage is biblically right.

“Marriage is an expression of love and if the couple cannot bear children, they can adopt them,” he says.

Kenyan feminists have also joined the fray, saying that love does not recognise age barriers.

“Marrying a woman much older than you is no big deal. It has been happening, is happening and will continue to happen,” says prominent anti-rape activist, Fatma Anyanzwa.

life

Wambui Otieno, sister to Kenya’s former foreign Minister, Dr Munyua Waiyaki, is no stranger to controversy.

In her autobiography Mau Mau Daughter: A Life History, she says she had three children while a Mau Mau freedom fighter.

She was detained by the British colonial administration in 1961 for being a member of the Mau Mau movement fighting to free Kenya from colonial rule.

A few years after her release she married a lawyer, Silvanus Otieno, after initial objections from her parents.

In 1987, Wambui and her children were involved in a long-drawn legal tussle with members of her late husband’s clan over his burial place.

When the High Court ruled that the body of Mr Otieno should be buried in his ancestral western Kenya home, Wambui and her children boycotted the burial ceremony.

Children disinherited

This latest controversy regarding her marriage to 25-year-old Peter Mbugua is bound to raise questions over the late Otieno’s estate.

She says that she is including her young husband in her will after disinheriting her children, whom she accuses of neglecting her.

And this is probably why some people are accusing Mr Mbugua of dishonesty, claiming that his decision may have been “economically motivated”.

Mr Mbugua denies these claims, saying that he sincerely loves the woman who is 42 years his senior and 14 years older than his mother.

But as the debate over the marriage rumbles on, Kenyans will continue to forget one crucial question: would a marriage between an 67-year-old man and a 25-year-old-girl have caused such a furore?

Below is a selection of the comments received on the subject.

I think some applaud Wambui from a distance but wish and pray that they will never live to see a day when their mothers break the news to them that they are marrying the 25-year-old milk man. To use the very lexicon of the Wambui Otieno court debacle, the whole thing is repugnant!

Francis N,
USA

I reckon that everybody has the right to choose. However this issue reveals deep seated problems whereby women of age are unlikely to meet their male peers since these males have anyway gone ahead and married very young girls. Even where young couples marry there is always a motivation of sorts…be it financial or otherwise. As long as it is a WIN WIN situation what the heck is it to anybody else. Alot of old flabby white women in Mombasa ‘marry’ very young boys and the money they send their parents is received with blessings. Now that it is a black woman that is a problem. As for the men, stories abound.
Awinja Wameyo, Tunisia

I support the union of the two. It is absurd to see even families not respecting a decision of two adults. Wambui is one woman who is a realist of life. This is just a new trend and people will get over it.


Githii wa Mwathi,
Kenyan in the USA

Who said we live in a perfect world? Human beings are never satisfied and however much one tries to please people or a society they will always find something to criticise. There are as many older women engaged in sexual relationships with younger men as there are younger men engaged in the same practice with older women but all is done discreetly for fear of condemnation and heckling from the public, a price Wamboi and Mbugua are dearly paying. They made a choice and we should let them take charge of it. After all, everybody should be polishing their own relationships before polishing others.
K. Anuri, MD, USA

After initially dropping our dentures in hypocritical outrage, we will eventually accept that this runaway love train passed us zamani jamani (a long time ago), while we were busy playing peace keeping. Bravo Wambui Otieno………….a true lioness.
Margaret S. Maringa, US

Since marriage is about no one but the 2 people involved, I don’t see what business this is of anyone else. The brides children are obviously grown-up, so they have no business interfering. Surely this is more about people not understanding how a young man could possibly find an older woman physically attractive? As has been said by others, if an older man can marry a younger woman, why not the other way around? Marriage is about more than just physical attraction.
Stephanie Taylor, UK

The age gap is too wide and I do not understand why some people think its okay for the young Mbugua, who happens to be 42 years Wambui’s junior, to ‘marry’ her. This is madness! That close relatives on both sides, including Wambui’s own children, are so vehemntly opposed to the ‘marriage’ tells it all and I hope Mbugua opens his eyes wide enough and be a bit realistic. Whatever so much distorted his perception of life requires prayers and fasting!


Odhiambo George,
Kenyan in South Africa

I don not see any problem getting married to an elderly woman because in Africa, and in Cameroon my country in particular, men in their 80’s marry younger girls aged 8 or under. So let Mr MAN go ahead with his GRAND WIFE, or let us say, GRAND MOTHER
Funsah James, Yaounde /Cameroon

Being originally from Zimbabwe I dated a lady who was 11 years older than me. My friends, co-workers and everyone who had no business comments kept asking why I was dating an “off layer” (nicknamed after old hens that can’t lay eggs anymore). Needless to say because of my tender age of 23 at the time and despite the love I had for her, I broke it off. Now I live in the USA, I’m 28 and up until last year I was dating a woman who is currently 46. No one cared, commented or discouraged us as long as we were happy. I think firstly as Africans and as a people we need to breakout of our prisons of and move on with the times. Secondly the word privacy doesn’t exist to us at all. Why are we so concerned with why and what someone is doing - if he is marrying for love, lust, money or a mere fantasy - THATS HIS BUSINESS.
Baba veBoyz, USA

salute the woman. She has shown her love and the man is mature enough and loves her! Can you compare this with men sleeping with six months old babies? Come on people!

CONGRATULATIONS NEW COUPLE!


Anne Mwansa,
Zambia

Even though love is blind, let us also not forget about our African culture. Its not common in Africa for a young boy to get married to an older woman. Like somebody has already said, the boy is really a “gold digger”.

Khataza Nhlane ,
Malawi

Wambui is just confirming her controversial way of doing things. She is already saying that she will disinherit her children for neglecting her and include his young husband Mbugua in her will to inherit his property. Wambui is able to play with fire and come out without burns! That is her! She has already said her love is blind, who are you to say otherwise!
Harrahs Malinda, German

I think there is nothing wrong with the marrage. I am saying this because I am 27 years old and I would not mind marrying a 67- year- old guy if I fell in love with him. If I dont mind a s a woman, I don not see why a man 27 years old would not fall in love with me 40 years later. I believe, Only my skin will get older but my real will become smarter and smarter as I grow older. I want every one to know that I am saying this as an EQUAL to men.
Bethelihem Hagos, Ethiopia

The man is a “gold digger”. His decision is economically motivated, no more no less.


Abiodun G.,
Germany

No one will question the marriage of a 67-year-old man to a 25-year-old woman
Keta, Sao Tome

It is said that love is blind. In this case it is blind to age and any other prejudices such as other people’s negative opinion of it.
I wish Mr and Mrs Mbugua the best in their new life.

Kuria Githiora,
Kenyan in USA

I fail to understand why people are making noise. What Wambui has done is commendable. I have seen that happening else where. It now sounds odd for some, especially women. But why haven’t the same people come out to oppose old the men marrying off young girls. One should visit some of our leading tourist hot spots in the Kenyan coastal region and see what the hell is going on. It is no open secret that young Kenyans of either sex are marrying white old tourists all in the name of getting riches and yet no person has come out to condemn this practice. Many parents are known to bless such arranged marriages. For Wambui coming out and making it official, it should now go down to all Kenyans that everything is possible and acceptable as long as it does not infringe on other people’s rights. Pili pili usiyoila yakuwashia nini. (Why poke your nose into matters that do not concern you?)


Isaboke Omurwa,
Germany

In Swahili we have a saying that goes: Mkuki kwa nguruwe kwa binadamu uchungu (A spear is for a pig but for a human being it is painful). So, what’s the big deal? Why it is that people say nothing when a 75-year-old man marries a 19-year-old school girl?

Jidura Jr,
Tanzania

This occurrence can only be perceived as total outrage!! The marriage is obviously not love-based and can just be part of a complex plot, knowing the woman’s past character!!
Francis Oloo, Kenya

No one cries foul when old men marry far much younger girls. One’s own home is determined by those who live in it. Now I think this newly married couple should be left to live. It is upon them to prove us wrong or right. If death does them part, then they will have won. I think an objective judgement should come in years to come, after stealing a vista of what they will have gone through.

Weru Macharia,
Kenya/France

There is nothing wrong with this marriage. Why do men of 70s marry primary school kids of 15 and cause no furore?
Chatari Victor, Kenya

I don’t see the problem. Africa is full of old men who marry girls who are their great-grand children’s’ age group. So why the double standards? Let the woman be. Marriage is already tough enough these days without public trials and jury! Let’s not forget, both husband and wife are consenting adults.


Farida Mohammed,
Tanzania

Myroslav Kuvaldin is a very popular television presenter and musician in Kiev, Ukraine.

As one of the few black Ukrainians, he has had difficulty blending into the country of his birth.

He has recently been to Nigeria for the first time, trying to find his father, a man he hasn’t seen since he was four years old.

His mother and grandmother have given him some accounts of his father but details remain sketchy.

Before making the trip, he sent an open letter to a Nigerian newspaper, asking for information on his father.

Dear Dad, if you read this letter, and if you would be willing to meet me, please, reply to my e-mail address. Myroslav Kuvaldin Listen to Myroslav’s story in Everywhere a Stranger

He managed to speak to him on the phone and arrange a meeting.

Like Myroslav, many African children have grown up without their fathers.

In parts of southern Africa for instance, many households are run by women because men have gone away to work in towns or countries across the border or have died from Aids-related diseases. Elsewhere people have lost their fathers through war or divorce.

And of course there are many men who choose not to be part of the family.

BBC Africa Live would like to know your opinion on absent fathers. Is a family incomplete if the father is not there? How is life different if there is no father at home?

This debate has now closed. Here’s a selection of your comments.

In Liberia we can’t call a group of people a family if they don’t have a father.
Paul J. Somah, Liberia

The physical or emotional absence of a father is a major cause of a broken society. Removing or neutralising the role of fathers is a major strategy to destabilise society.
Noe Maill, Okrah, USA

It takes two to make babies. Doesn’t nature itself teach us that it will take two to raise them? The fact is, real men stand by their partners at all times
Jude Ogwu, Nigerian in Canada

Society tends to isolate the role of men as just being the providers and disciplinarians. Khatundi Nabwala Wakhungu, USA

African societies are patriarchal and consequently have suffered greatly due to absent fathers. I think many men have not faced up to their responsibilities and this has had a profound effect on their children. My mother raised me and did an exceptional job, however, I still needed my father to play an active role in my upbringing. Society tends to isolate the role of men as just being the providers and disciplinarians. Besides anger, showing any other emotion is impossible.
Khatundi Nabwala Wakhungu, USA

It is a very good thing for the parents to be together and take responsibility for their children. I was lucky that my father and mother were together for over 28 years before my daddy answered the call of the Almighty. Today, my siblings and I have every reason to thank God and my parents for their roles in our lives. Parents should pray for you together, discipline you together and love you together. I love my parents
Kunle Adeogun, Nigeria

I work as an adults literacy educator in a men’s prison. Most prisoners grew up in homes with no father present.
Richard Hicks, Amarillo Texas USA

I live away from my family in South Africa. We live apart, not by choice but because of politics. I love my wife and children and want them to be with me, but at the moment it is just not viable for me to live in South Africa and support them at the same time. It’s a sacrifice I have to make until such time I can be with them again.
Ryan, UK, formerly South Africa

Ideally, a family should have both parents to ensure a wholesome experience for the kids. It’s important for parents to realise the enormous part they play in parenting. I was extremely fortunate in having grown up with both parents and I feel sorry for many people who were denied that experience. Nevertheless, I appreciate the fact that certain circumstances make it impossible for fathers to be around.
Uche Okagbue, USA

In Europe it is easy to divorce and the children normally go to the mother. In most cases the mother paints a bad image of the father, hence the men keep their distance. In Africa, women who are working would not tolerate an unemployed husband sitting at home. Generally it is felt that the man should fend for the family and work. In short, lets not point fingers at men and look at every situation individually.
Brian Mphande, Finland

I grew up as an orphan, but luckily there was an SOS Children’s village in Ethiopia with a replacement mother whom I still have a very strong bond with. The lack of a male figure, however, has definitely not been a positive influence in my life. I personally believe that my has a lot to do with not having a male figure head to be there and give me the confidence to stand on my own.
Eze, USA

It takes the whole village to a raise a child and this includes the father. Joint parental responsibility is a key factor in culturing children. Most men are bread winners and women stay at home to bring up the kids. This has been the tradition in most African countries. In the west, men who don’t want to raise kids are running away from their responsibilities. It will take a lot to overturn this attitude.
Reinford Mwangonde, St.Louis, USA

I grew up without my father - he was arrested due to political instability. I don’t miss my father because I had a father figure who replaced my biological father. That person was my grandfather.
Jared A, USA

As a child of a fatherless home, I know all too well how devastating the effect can be. In order for a child to grow into an emoitionally and psychologically stable person, that child needs daily access to both male and female role models who take up both authoritarian and nurturing roles. No person is better equipped to do that than their parents, whether by biology or adoption. I don’t find it surprising that as the number of fatherless families increase, so does the number of ill-prepared people trying to maintain healthy .
John, USA

Too much credit is being given to fathers. My dad died when I was six leaving a widow and six children. My mother has seen all six of us receive university degrees. Life is very possible, even without fathers.
James Kanyotu, Kenya

Growing up without a father is hell on earth Paul Kudinha, Zimbabwe

Growing up without a father is hell on earth. I grew up without one. The number one question that will never leave you is ‘where is my father?’ Relatives and friends will mock you and say that illegitimate children are a problem. This results is an emotionally unstable, irresponsible child who is likely to repeat his father’s mistakes. A father in the home is like what water is to thirst.
Paul Kudinha, Zimbabwe

I’m an Indian expatriate and I’ve been in Kigali since March 2000. My wife and 2 year old son are in India. Although I’m away from them, I always try to make them feel that they are not very far away. I visit them two or three times a year and spend considerable time with them. We exchange e mails daily and phone each other weekly. Children are a source of joy for parents and I miss my son very much. I’ve realised that it is very important for me to be with my son and help him to grow. It is going to have a negative impact on him if I’m going to be away from him for a long time. So, I’ve decided to leave Rwanda for good and in December I’ll be with my family.
Albert P’Rayan, Indian expat in Kigali, Rwanda

As a women raising her children alone, I want to say that although they have become wonderful caring people, a father figure was sorely missed by them. Their father was an alcoholic and wife beater, but their ties to him will always be strong. It is sad that many men are not able to take on the responsibility of teaching and being a role model, however, it is better not to have a father in the home than to have one who is abusive and non -caring. Love is the key to all things.
Gabrielle Perry, Germany

My mother is great but my late father was irresponsible. I am grown up now and wish that he could have been there more for my siblings and myself. The irony of ironies is that, I am now taking care of two children who’ve been abandoned by their mothers! I would never have expected mothers to be this way, but there it is!
Robert Alu, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.

As a child who grew up without a father, the impact was small because I never knew him (you do not necessarily know what you are missing). I think it is far harder on children who knew their father for a while before the father became absent. I do not know what I have missed, but 35 years later, I am curious to know who he is, but the search for him has proved fruitless.
Brian, USA

Parenting is a vital stage in the development of one’s life. Dads revive the home, give strength, warmth and respect to their family. A Dad is always needed and is greatly missed when he is absent. I just love my Dad. Dads are phenomenal.
Stehphen T Marvie, Liberia

Of course absent dads hurt the family! Many kids end up doing drugs and crime because of the lack of a male figure. I think kids tend to behave well and do well in school if they have a loving father in their life.
Haji, USA

Most Africans are deprived of their obligations to take care of their kids due to inhuman laws in foreign countries. Most Africans become fathers while studying abroad. Inhumane laws do not allow these fathers to stay with their new born and deliver their fatherly obligations. Instead, they are forced out of these countries when their visas expire. Kids are therefore forced to be brought up without a father.
Ombala Yu Shimba, USA

I have a longing to know about my Nigerian heritage. My father came to the US from Nigeria and has been there ever since. When I was 5 my parents fell out and my father fled. There was no trace of his culture left and I didn’t see him again until I was at university. Although I am no longer angry, I may never understand how anyone could abandon a child, particularly a father from a culture that values children so much.
Diepiriye S. Kuku-Siemons, New Delhi, India

I truly believe whole-heartedly that having a father in the home makes a huge difference, especially if he knows what his role is in the family. I thank God every day for blessing me with my father who has been in my life from the day I was born. I have friends that grew up without their fathers and our thought processes, conversation and actions are completely different.
Martha, Zambia

I grew up with the love of both parents and life was good. Both parents are needed for the social and economic equilibrium of the child. If a father cannot provide a wholesome environment where a child feels safe, loved and hopeful, what role does he then model to the child? Although some successful adults have been raised by single mothers, there is always a part of them that wants to know where they come from.

Fathers, face up to your responsibilities and keep in touch with your children! Juliana, Nigerian in USA

Can you imagine what would happen if these fathers have other children elsewhere and none of them knew one another? There could be inter family dating and marriages! Incest would be no fault of these children. Fathers, face up to your responsibilities and keep in touch with your children!
Juliana, Nigerian in USA

Surely, an emotionally absent dad has a worse effect on a child than a physically absent one. Many Nigerian dads judge their children by the quality of their grades when they’re little and by their earning potential when they’re older. Basically, a Nigerian dad is only interested in his child if they become a successful doctor, lawyer or accountant. Hopefully the western concept of a dad being there for a child emotionally, will eventually take root in Nigeria.
Anne Evans, England

Absent dads need to be punished by God, especially those who intentionally forsake their families. Why would you have kids and just them? If you don’t want to have a family, then forget about having sex. Women should not be used as sex objects. They are humans and need to be cared for. This is one of the worst crimes a man can commit against his family.
Thomas Fahn, Liberian in USA

It depends on when the dad left. If the child was born without a dad being around and the mum has settled for a single life, then the child will be ok. It is the part time dads that are ruining families. If you want to be a dad, plan on being there when your child is growing up, otherwise get lost and never come back.
Stephen Gitau, Kenyan in USA

A family should include both parents. Many men are only capable of siring children but not being a parent. This is selfish, especially for children left to suffer a harsh life, poor livelihoods and lack of education. I grew up without a father (due to death) and I find it very difficult to relate to male relatives.
Kay Em, Sierra Leone

I don’t agree with the person who says that ‘Often children that appear to be abandoned by their fathers are actually victims of their mother’s bitterness.’ I say this because in an African setting, men do walk away and abandon children and wives or girlfriends. I had a baby when I was sixteen, the father disappeared when he heard I was pregnant. Now ten years later he wants to walk back in. Would you trust such a man? Would you let him walk into your daughter’s life, not knowing how soon it will be ‘incovenient’ again and he will walk out again? Would you call me bitter?
Charity, Malawi

Sympathy for either the children or the mother is not enough reason to stay with the mother - just to avoid making your children fatherless. I just can’t stand women who try to take advantage of men through children. We will always be on the run!!!
Linje, Australia

Fathers may matter but when they are not there and the woman really knows that she is solely responsible for the bringing up the children, she can do so excellently. The six of us were entirely brought up by our illiterate mother. We are all responsible now and have tertiary education though our mother was very poor.
Kingsley, USA

I don’t see any thing wrong with fathers who move somewhere to work so that their kids can have quality education, food and healthcare rather than live at the mercy of our corrupt, money greedy politicians.
Monyoro Alex, Sudanese in Australia

When I hugged my wife, my son pushed me away from his mother Modisane, South Africa

I’m presently serving a tour of duty under the UN. Per chance I went home for a funeral and to see my son not recognising me immedialtely, killed me. When I hugged my wife, my son pushed me away from his mother . It took a lot of effort for us to rekindle our relationship and since I was there for only a few days, can you imagine what its going to be like when I get back? Fortunately my wife tells me that my son tells every one tha”papa Modisane, is coming back from Burundi tomorrow” which means he has not forgotten me just my appearence is the one he does not constantely see. For that I’m grateful.
Modisane from South Africa presently in Burundi

Single parenting will always hurt the family, especially one that arises from a divorce or separation. Currently, I am single parenting and I know what it takes. Children who have lived with both parents before, know the anguish of settling down with one.
Kelly Chubili, zambia

In South Africa there are a lot of foreign men who lie to women who give in to their lies and get pregnant after which the man runs away, to continue with their promiscous behaviour somewhere else.
Nagire, Pretoria, South Africa

Mothering comes naturally to mothers, becoming a father is a decision to want that tie.
Dieter Samsel, France

I have the feeling that any parent, whether mother or father that knowingly or unknowingly fails to perform their duty as a parent, will surely live to reap the fruit sown; here or thereafter.
Christian Merenini, Nigeria

Not really. “Hurt” only comes when there is no love, unfaithfulness, distrust, dishonesty, no respect etc. What matters is the relationship, and the love that exist amonsgt the family, not really the presence of a dad. For there are families with dads that have always let the kids regret having being born of that father.I have a nephew who lost his dad when he was still a kid, but has never really been hurt because of the love the mother and us the family showed to him.
Bezeng Joey Esoh, Cameroonian studying in South Africa

As the saying goes,” Elephants are never tired of carrying their tusks”,This is a responsibility that men have willingly agreed to pursue. Sometimes children are used as scapegoats to advance personal demands, which will in the long run act to the detriment of the children’s future.
Tom Alfred, Australia

If yours is as absent as mine was, you become disillusioned when you finally learn about his real nature Weru Macharia, Kenyan in France

I first met my father when I was almost nine. I never lived with him just visited. If I was asked 15 years ago if not having a father around affected me I would say no, but now I am older - 33 - I know I definately missed out. I didnt know what I was missing until I met the father of a friend, he calls all his children’s friends his own. Some of his own children didn’t appreaciate what they had!
T.O, UK

If your father is permanently absent, save for a few spells when he shows up, you only tend to see one side of him. And if yours is as absent as mine was, you become disillusioned when you finally learn about his real nature.It is as if you built an image of your dad which is not his. When I realised the real nature of my own dad, I just thanked God my mum was around.
Weru Macharia, Kenyan in France

I think the bottomline is: what does a father’s presence in the home mean, emotionally and materially? What should it mean? While a father’s crucial role is to compliment the nuturing care of a mother and support children materially and emotionally, in some cases families might be better off without one especially if he is abusive, uncaring and does not take seriously his responsibilities.
Esther, Kenya

My ex husband left us, me and our daughter when she was just 5 weeks old. I am an African woman from Congo, he is British. The toughest thing I have ever done, is to raise our daughter by myself. She is only 4 and still asks for him. She feels incomplete, especially when she looks at other children. Last night she asked me “why he doesn’t love her mum”. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell her that he loves her. Everyone needs a father whether that father deserve the role or not, because it is for the benefit of the child.
Ange Parker, Ireland

Please do not be so quick to judge absent fathers, some are denied the right to actively participate and contribute to their child’s development by the mother, out of spite and bitterness stemming from a relationship breakdown. This occurs a lot in Europe where the law favours the mother more than the father of the child.
Fathers Right, UK

I am lucky to have had a loving and doting father and mother under a polygamous setting. That notwithstanding, my father was interested in educating us, no between girls and boys, and by 9pm, his gates would be locked against the wolves. I was also lucky in that he escorted me to the altar to marry a nice and wonderful guy who was never an absent husband or absent father to his children. Unfortunately my husband died last year without my daughters getting the privelege of their dad holding their hand at their wedding. But I’m grateful that he was around to see the last become a graduate before he decided to die, or better still, before the good Lord took him away from us.
Oyebola Adetula, Addis Ababa ( A Nigerian), Ethiopia

Most fathers in Africa take their ‘head of the family’ role to great extremes, such that they are not approachable Natasha, Malawi

Most fathers are figureheads. They work long hours and when they come home, they just criticise and criticise. Mothers are the ones that nurture and shape the child, listen and really talk to them. Most fathers in Africa take their ‘head of the family’ role to great extremes, such that they are not approachable. I guess they learn this from their fathers. So, while many who do not have a father miss the ‘father figure’ in their lives, many who have are really not gaining much from having fathers.
Natasha, Malawi

I was raised without a father. My mother broke her back to study and work to support us at the same time. She done an exemplary job of which I am extremely proud. Building genuine self esteem under such conditions, and relating to others while harbouring such a fundamental difference in the basis of your very identity, is very trying indeed. Isolation never done any child any favours. Unstable children are more likely to become unstable adults. You don’t believe me? Go to any rundown neigbourhood in any large settled location anywhere in the world and check out the fallout.
Kay Millan, London, UK

As a single parent I believe my child is better off without the father who never would not have given her the love she deserves. My child is now nine years and the father has made it clear to his relatives that he will never want anything to do with his illegitimate daughter. Although it pains me, I have vowed to myself that she should never know her father because I definitely know that he will not accept her as his own. I have even gone to the extend of informing both him and his relatives that child is not his child.
Anonymous

Literally speaking, the role of a father in the African context is considered to be that of the leader of the family. Thus his absence does reflect a serious default in the family well-being. Even where the father’s contribution to the family welfare may be lacking, the African culture has taught us to respect his symbolic role as the main source of blessings for both the mother and the children. But in real terms, it’s widely believed that mothers are more difficult to replace than fathers. The late Prince Nico Mbarga supported this argument in his musical hit “Sweet Mother”. My late father hardly spend time at home. Off duty, he spends a greater part of his leiure time playing checkers with his friends under the big mango tree. But his presence in the neighbourhood used to be enough to force us into revising our lessons every evening.
Unisa Kanu, Saudi Arabia

I am a 26 year old woman in living in New York. I have grown up without my father and my mother for that matter. While I had a loving grandmother to take care of me it will never fill the void of not having a father figure in my life. The one who created me. I think it is more needed for boys to have a good father figure in they’re lives. I think growing up without a father does mold who you become as an adult. But then again, everything you do, see, hear etc has a role to play in who you are when your an adult. Life experience.
Jaime, U.S

Some children even know their father’s mistresses. Yet they turn out okay. So what is the big hulabaloo about? Sandra, USA

It is western influence that is convincing children they need their fathers. In Nigeria most children do not see or speak to their fathers until they get into university. Yet they are mentally and emotionlly stable even more than children from double parent homes. Most children even beg to go away to boarding school. Parents including fathers do not even attend PTA meetings yet these children turn out okay. Some children even know their father’s mistresses. Yet they turn out okay. So what is the big hulabaloo about?
Sandra, USA

I wonder why people hide behind such issues for their failings. In Myroslav’s case, he had no father for all the years he was growing up yet managed to be a successful black person in a land dominated by white people. Such cases echoes through out the world. There are millions of “fatherless” people in the world but that should not be a hindrance to self development. I never had any dad because he walked out on us when we were little but we managed to pick ourselves up and now, non is the prouder than the strong African mother we have. Get moving ‘fatherless’ friend!!
Quami Yeboah, England

If a father abandons his family it is definately clear he is a terrible dad. I think it is better the children grow up alone with their mother than grow up seeing a terrible dad! This may be difficult for mothers but it is a better option.
Nandawula Juliet, Uganda

I am one of a single mother after our father was murdered during Amin’s regim in Uganda. Living without a father can lead to a great disaster for the child if they fall into the hands of a weak woman. A child takes her/his basic learning and guide from the mother, but further guide would be expected first from the father, then if not that is when the growth of a child would end up in all sorts of mess.
David Kitara, Norway

Often children that appear to be abandoned by their fathers are actually victims of their mother’s bitterness Sean, Belgium

I see a close male friend of mine routinely denied access to his children that he loves so dearly. He lives in misery. The majority of court decisions regarding child custody favour the woman, and that custody stick is wielded with relish. Often children that appear to be abandoned by their fathers are actually victims of their mother’s bitterness.
Sean, Brussels, Belgium

Of course, fathers play a critical role. Fathers provide examples to their daughters of what a future husbands should be like. They provide the second - male perspective to understsanding problems within male/female relationships. They also teach different things to boys - future men and fathers. From the African point of view, it takes more than 2 people to raise children. It actually takes a “village” to raise one child.
Cheryl Sanchez, London

If you were a muslim, then you would know about child custody according to Islamic Shariah Law which dictates that after the age of seven, custody should have been transferred to your father by your mother.
Patel, England

While the mother’s love to her child is never questionable in a polygamous society, one will always doubt the love a child gets from the father. The father’s presence in a child’s life is important but it is worse if the mother is absent.
Hajir, Sweden

This is not a black and white issue like we may like to believe. There are gray areas we must also consider. Indeed a child’s developement requires the present of both parents. But when a parent, in this case the father, is an abusive one, it’s not worth it, having him live with his child.
Allieu Kamara, USA

My friend is looking forward to the day he can journey to Scotland to see his dad - all depends on whether he can ever raise the return fare! Robert Alu, Tanzania

At 29 Miroslav finally has gotten to have a conversation with his father. I have followed Miroslav’s story and am glad that, all in all, for him things have turned up quite well. It can be really traumatic for people who grow up in the knowledge that either of their parents is somewhere out of sight, but probably alive. I recently met a man in Dar es Salaam who does not know his father, the man left for his native Scotland when my friend was 2 or 3 years old, back in 1958! My friend is looking forward to the day he can journey to Scotland to see his dad - all depends on whether he can ever raise the return fare!
Robert Alu, Tanzania.

My dad left my mom when she was pregnant. I first met him when I was 13years old and the second time as an adult working for a bank in Sierra Leone. That’s our relationship. My life was the best it can be because of a wonderful mother, who struggled to send me to school from selling oysters and anything she could sell. Strong legislations need to be passed in african parliaments to stop these men from bringing children to this world if they don’t want them. To all African men please be there for your children even you don’t love or want to be with their moms.
Alimamy Kheiyo - Sesay, USA/Sierra Leone

Raising a child as a single parent is more than a challenging task. Parents, our children need role models. Each one parent has unique attributes that kids look up to and learn from. Anytime that tiny piece or input goes missing, obviously the output process is altered either permanently or temporarily. They say, it takes a whole village to raise a child -My perception: the village has to start from your very household.
Jean, Vietnam

Almost every man can be a father but very few men are parents. for it takes a man of responsibilty and with responsibilty to be a parent.
David Banda, Zambia

As long as the man is not abusive or alcoholic, being a father to his kids is crucial. Human’s need their fathers’ affection just as much as they need a mothers’. Plus, the custody laws aren’t fair for anyone, men are cut off from their kids and women bear the sole burden of raising the next generation! They literally sacrifice their adult life for their kids. It shouldn’t be that way.
Khalil, Canada

Poverty and social decay caused by misrule and corruption assisted by western businesses, has had a devastating effect on family life in the developing countries. However many children in Europe are also growing up without fathers. The unbridled scramble for unlimited wealth by a few at the expense of the many is a symptom of the general social malaise of our times. Just how much money does one person need?
Rev. D. Agama, UK

Yes, it takes two to make one. An absent father can hurt the family if he is a good dad.
Ruth, Spain

A father is more than a member of the family who feeds you or asks you about your exams. Rubaiya Alam, Bangladesh

I am a 14 years old girl who loves her dad more than anything else in her life. I have got a friend whose father is currently residing in Italy with her step-mother and receives his daughter with negligence. It is very pathetic to see that my friend, who is a girl of my age, does not have father to look up to. A father is more than a member of the family who feeds you or asks you about your exams. He is a part of yourself. To me the wole world revolves around him.
Rubaiya Alam, Bangladesh

As the child of an abusive father and stepfather, I can only say that no father at all is preferable to a brutal one. People rarely know when they’re better off.
David Brown, United States

I was born and raised in Sierra Leone until I came to the U.S. in 2000 when I was only 16. I used to think that my dad did not like me. Most of the time, if I forget to do my home work, he would punish me. I never wanted him around. My mom on the other hand never cared much about my schooling. All she cared about was me being happy and always having a big happy smile. In hindsight it’s made me realise why the absence of a father figure at home leads to trouble and suffering. Most of our fathers, want the best for us as kids. Any home where there is no father figure will always be incomplete.
Augustine Sesay, U.S/ Sierra Leone

Children that grow up without their father whether the man is dead or alive, should know that the greatest father they can ever get is the almighty God who will love you forever.
Ogbokor Elliot Elohor, Nigeria

No human with feelings will go through their whole life not wanting to know who part of their blood is, be it the father who is not around or the mother. It’s a pity that divorce laws mostly favor women over men when it comes to custody of the kids.
Yves, The Netherlands

When a man says yes to fathering a child, it should mean much more to him than just sending a couple of dollars home every month Cheryl, Canada

When a man says yes to fathering a child, it should mean much more to him than just sending a couple of dollars home every month. He also needs to take emotional responsibility in the up - bringing of his child as a good father. Don’t just say that poverty forced you to leave - you should have thought of that before you fathered a child.
Cheryl, Canada

I think Myroslav Kuvaldin case is one of too many cases of fatherless kids around the world. It’s most pathetic to see our fellow men neglecting their primary role in parenthood to their female folk out of one reason or the other. It’s the duty of the man to take charge of the up bringing of the child most especially the male child. The authority of the father in the house always makes the difference.
Desmond Abiodun Oji, Lagos, Nigeria

It rather unfortunate that to see the devasting effect of single parenthood on homes, especially the children and single mothers due to economic pressure or negligence. We can see its adverse effect on the moral conduct of children. For example teenage prostitution, youth crimes drug use etc. A true home calls for the adequate presence of both mother and father. We need our fathers!
Ayodele Olanipekun, Nigeria

We shouldn’t forget that not everyone is capable of being a father. Some men are capable of just reproducing babies Niyi, USA

In some certain situations, the absence of the father could be because of the economical status of the country. Take for example, a man who is not able to provide for his family, because he can’t find a job at home. He decides to go away to so he can provide for his family. On one hand, this man’s actions come out of the deep love he has for his family but at the expense of his children who need a male role model around. I believe the bottom line is that such children would turn out okay if they have a strong mother and responsible relatives. We shouldn’t forget that not everyone is capable of being a father. Some men are capable of just reproducing babies, but a father always stands up to take care of his responsibilties.
Niyi, USA

It is like a body without a head. Just imagine how it will look like - incomplete.
Alexander Oragui, Nigeria

We need to realize the following; Children always need an example to look up to and mothers tend to spoil children without a father. Also a father leaving might cause a child to be distrustful of everyone, even close relatives and friends.
Jouke Voolstra, The Netherlands

I know many people who moan about their parents. They don’t realise how lucky they are to have one at all. Anonymous, New York

I’m a 22 year old Nigerian and lost both my parents when I was 9. I grew up with relatives and it hasn’t been a bed of roses. When they do you wrong, you can’t really complain because its like they are doing you a favour by taking you into their home - but they might as well have let you walk the streets. More often than not you are reminded of that fact directly or indirectly. I know many people who moan about their parents. They don’t realise how lucky they are to have one at all. Nonetheless, I don’t think having one or both parents really makes any real difference to what you are destined to become in the future.
Anonymous, New York, USA

No, all my dad did was beat me, drink and smoke.
Frank Reynolds, Spain, USA

When my first child was born it took me 10 months to see him. Again, I was away from him and his younger brother for a year and a half, when they were 4 and 2, respectively. Though my sweet wife did a wonderful job of taking excellent care of them in my absence, the difference showed any time I came back to Canada for holidays. My absence reflected in their mood and in the academic performance of my older child. His teachers have commented on his superior performance since my permanent return to Canada. This is not to be interpreted as a sign of male superiority but the need for a gender balance in the raising up of children, the emotional well-being and stability of the family.
Kwadwo Appiagyei - Atua, Canada

Falling in love with someone you meet online while annihilating them with a lightning gun seems much more fun.

And it is happening regularly, as more women gamers set up their own clans and become serious gamers.

Amber - or Athena Twin PMS - is the 28-year-old founding member and leader of PMS - the Psychotic Men Slayerz.

They are “sugar and spice with guns” and are the largest competitive, multiplatform (Xbox Live and PS2 Online), all-female clan.

“Romance happens all the time - running the largest female clan in the world I see it all day,” the Texan blonde told the BBC News website.

“I don’t even think people realise it happens as much - I get personal confessions and people are always coming for advice.”

Some, not all, of the s become “intimate” online when players leave the gaming environment and go into other areas such as chatrooms. But many simply become deep friendships which may or may not grow into something.

These relationships can form much faster online because has no physical cue to latch onto.

One PMS clan members played with, fell in love with, moved in with, and is now engaged to a gamer she met online.

Another was “lost” after her offline fianc found out about her online gaming “affair”.

All for one

But do not be fooled - the prospect of romance is certainly not why women play games or join clans.

A clan is a group of players who regularly play together in multiplayer online games as a team. Playing via Xbox Live means they can speak to each other too.

They are often “buddies”, on or offline, and can act as a support network, just like non-gaming mates.

It is at LAN (Local Area Network) parties where gamers meet face to face with PC and game in tow and at major pro-gaming tournaments.

Started when Xbox Live came online in 2002, the PMS clan now has about 150 members globally.

I don’t care if they have online boyfriends - I have no problem with that. If they have multiple boyfriends, then that is a problem Athena Twin, PMS

It is about to start a UK arm supported by games/fashion firm, Joystick Junkies, and will be doing the pro-gamer tournament circuit this year.

PMS is not just about getting more women into online gaming but it is about creating a safe gaming environment - while “kicking boy booty”.

In the UK, women make up just over a quarter of the total number of gamers, compared with 39% in the US and 69% in South Korea, according to a recent report.

The most common complaint they have when they first enter a Xbox Live or PlayStation Online environment is about the constant harassment, sexual stereotyping and abusive behaviour of male players.

PMS and other groups - like the Frag Dolls who were set up and sponsored by games company Ubisoft - see their role as proving a haven for female gamers who want to break down misconceptions about female gamers.

But with more women in the game, that inevitably leads to more relationships.

Rules of engagement

As with any kind of “clan”, there are rules and guidelines which guide any possible romances that might spring up.

“We monitor it - we macro manage it - we will not allow any inappropriate behaviour,” said Athena Twin.

More women gamers opens up the of romance

“I don’t care if they have online boyfriends - I have no problem with that. If they have multiple boyfriends, then that is a problem.”

The clan had to kick out one of their members four months after they started because of her cybersexual antics.

“This girl was a ‘PMS whore’. In all honesty women can do what they want with their bodies - but when you are on a PMS tag it is like being at work,” explained Athena Twin.

The male players she had been having cybersex with had no idea they were being virtually two-timed and when they found out, they reported her.

“She was having online sex with anyone and everyone. I don’t know if she met any of them face-to-face,” said Athena Twin.

“She divided an entire clan. It ruined their friendships.”

Relationships between clan members can also get in the way of what the clan is about - commitment to game and clan.

Often when two players hook up, they will disappear for long periods of time to play offline with each other.

“They need to monitor the time invested in a relationship. When it takes away from what we need, then I have trouble with that,” said Athena Twin.

Very happily married Athena Twin is also very savvy about managing online platonic relationships that form deep ties.

“You can put boundaries on real world, but not on online. It sneaks up on you.

The Frag Dolls were recruited by Ubisoft

“But PMS keeps girls playing with girls and then the problems don’t happen.”

Many of the relationships have sprung up between PMS women and their brother clan - H2O.

The “waterboys” were set up for male players who wanted to join PMS. Their role is to be as supportive as they can to the PMS gamers.

“My H2O Nefarious Souls is my best friend but I have never met him. He knows more about my family and friends than anyone.

“Would my husband have a problem with that? Probably, but I would never do anything on an intimate level.

“I would not trade my husband in for a tonne of gold.”

Within the gaming world there is some cynicism over whether certain female gaming groups - like the Frag Dolls - are there as “man magnets” to get more men buying games.

The attractive Frag Dolls admit they are a group of girl gamers brought together by Ubisoft as an “all-star” team to play and promote games.

But that seems disingenuous to females who are passionate about gaming, and who just might discover the love of their life is in fact an alien with a gun.

An online social network is sweeping the most famous universities. Is the Facebook website going to create the digital equivalent of the old school tie?

What are the three most important things in the life of students in the United States? Beer, iPods and Facebook.

That’s the finding of a lifestyle-tracking survey in US colleges this month. But what’s that third one again?

Facebook is an online social network which has swept the university population in the United States and is making a foothold in this country. It’s already a verb: “to facebook” someone. And if a couple are really publicly together they’ll be described as “facebook official”.

But what is this thing that US students say is now more important than sex and texting?

Founded by a Harvard student a couple of years ago, Facebook allows people to list their personal details online and communicate with other people through the website. It’s an online Who’s Who. It’s how you advertise your parties and politics.

Digital ivy league

So what? You might think this is just another campus fad, or a pale imitation of Myspace, the social networking site that’s one of the top five websites in the world. But what’s different about Facebook is that it’s not just an easy way to keep in touch, it’s also a way of keeping it exclusive.

Facebook has made its biggest impact at Oxford and Cambridge

The website works around individual institutions. So if you don’t have an e-mail account from the University of Oxford, you don’t get into the Facebook for students at Oxford.

And in the UK, the Facebook wave has made its biggest impact at the upmarket universities - in places such as Oxford, Cambridge, University College London, the London School of Economics.

“It’s pretty much universal at Oxford, everyone is on it,” says Richard Hardiman, deputy editor of the Oxford Student newspaper.

Students put on their pictures, describe their likes and dislikes and romantic status - and use the website to swap messages. You list your friends, you can check out your friends’ friends, or find people who have matching interests.

People use their real names and pictures - and the fact that these are identifiably fellow students makes it seem safer, says Richard Hardiman.

There’s also a dating aspect of the website - as account holders can identify their current relationship status as anything from single to “it’s complicated”.

Blind dates

“A tremor can go through a social group when they hear someone has updated their relationship profile,” says Hardiman.

FACEBOOK Founded as an online social directory by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 7.5m people registered Seventh most popular website in US “Facebooking”: checking someone’s Facebook profile before meeting them “Facebook official”: really going out together

So widespread is the use of “facebooking” of potential partners - checking out how they look and what they like - that Cambridge students have warned about the death of the blind date.

This hasn’t met with universal approval. Sam Steddy, a languages student at University College London, says that the obsession with using Facebook is disrupting non-online relationships.

“People will organise parties and I’ll say ‘I didn’t know you were having one’. And they’ll say: ‘I put it on Facebook’. They forget that there’s a real world out there.”

Among the students supporting lecturers during the recent strike was UCL’s Kat Lay - and she said distributing information through Facebook was the most effective campaign tool.

“Leaflets would get thrown in the bin. But everyone is so obsessed with Facebook that they use it every day - people would be more likely to see something there,” she says.

‘Wheat from the chavs’

But what are the implications of all this? In the United States, Facebook has drawn the enthusiastic attention of politicians and businesses, eager to influence the hatching ground of the bright, young middle classes.

For politicians, it’s a form of digital hustings, giving them a chance to set up stall in the place where young people are meeting. And for brand promoters, it’s an instant insight into what young people like and dislike.

Facebook lets you browse lists of friends of friends

Employers have also been using the website as a way of checking out job applicants - creating a rash of stories about sober-looking job applicants being caught out by their own frolicking Facebook listings.

But in the UK, the question raised by Facebook is whether it’s going to be socially exclusive. As an Oxford paper asks, is it about sorting the “wheat from the chavs”?

This extends beyond university, because Facebook also provides an ongoing private connection for students after they’ve graduated and when they’re in the jobs market.

Will people be using these networks to tap each other up for jobs? How would you know if people were recruiting from lists of Oxbridge friends of friends?

Social commentator and university professor, Frank Furedi, says that the “sub-cultures gathering around these networks will become very powerful”.

Not least because these huge exchanges of information and ideas are all taking place below the radar - out of sight of the traditional media. But Professor Furedi says that overall these networks will help people to sustain relationships, rather than create division.

“On balance, these networks will be positive, people will be able to intensify their social engagement with each other.”

More to the point, these online networks have already entered the language. What’s the ultimate sign that someone is really committed to you?

“Can I say you’re my girlfriend on Facebook?”

A friend of mine was interviewing an Oxford undergraduate and offered them the job. Before she’d heard back that the interviewee was planning to accept the position, she’d already found this information out from the person’s Facebook profile!
Kasimir, Oxford

I’m disgusted with the youth of today. Whatever happened to the two most important things in my time at university, viz sex and drugs? Bah, humbug.
Simon Langley, Ilkley

Facebook has become a phenomenon at Nottingham University, so much so that I’ve decided to do my geography dissertation on it. Am in the process of just starting, and was worried that Facebook would just be a fad and my dissertation would be left high and dry, but it looks set to stay. Let’s just hope I get to talk to the right people concerning it.
Sally, Nottingham

Facebook is huge at Cambridge. Almost everyone is involved and I’ve yet to meet anyone who hasn’t heard of it. Yes, it is quite a strange feeling when you meet someone in the flesh having met them on FB. Or, when out in town recognising someone and realising that you’ve seen them once on FB through a friend’s profile. But it’s such a simple tool. Great to keep in contact with people. Great to meet people. And a great tool!
Andy, Rushden

Facebook has become as important a tool as Google or BBC Sport (two other favourites with students). When it first came to Oxford in 2004, it was simply used as a gimmick networking site, but it is now an essential part of keeping track of friends across a vast campus.
Matt Foster, Oxford

Facebook is absolutely huge. I’m currently using it to recruit flatmates for next year!
Nikolaus Banjo, London

Some people at my uni have been taken to school court based on drunken photos uploaded to their Facebook account! Beware, someone is always watching. Who needs a private investigator anymore anyways? Just look up anything you need to know on Facebook.
Charlie, Radford, USA

The most amazing thing about Facebook has been watching it grow. I joined it about 10 months ago when Nottingham was one of the few universities in England that had access to it. The first couple of months all was quiet…then as more people heard about it, and more universities were able to access it, the rise in was exponential! When I first joined I was ‘connected’ to about 200 people. Now? 11,501. And that’s just at the University of Nottingham. It was phenomenal to watch a new culture boom like that!
Gregory Campbell, Nottingham

The Facebook idea sounds just like an updated form of social filtering or cleansing, refining the technique of only ever engaging with “the right sort of people”. In effect, a social apartheid, which increases, through technology, the means to keep those on top, on top and vice versa … They’ll make out it’s all a bit of fun but the odd thing is, we’ll end up as the losers and they the winners. Funny that.
Hawker, Colchester

Facebook is a fantastic invention. It is a great way to connect with people that have like minded interests to yourself that you might otherwise not meet at your university. The main drawback however is that you can end up wasting many hours on it!
Benjamin Biggs, LSE

The exclusivity of FaceBook is the key … With Facebook you know that you’re broadly dealing with your own kind of people. I’m addicted.
Will, Oxford

I, as an American, am not proud of the fact that my college life is surrounded by Facebook. , most parties or social events are advertised around Facebook. To be social you must be on Facebook. I miss old fashioned talking.
Knikki, Albany, New York

Facebook is also a wonderful way of reconnecting with people you went to school with before uni and have since lost track of. Dangers exist, though, as is being found out in the US; employers, themselves graduates of the schools they recruit from, set up accounts and check up on job applicants, sometimes rejecting them based on the juvenile behaviour revealed in the applicant’s Facebook profile.
Katherine, Oxford

I have had Facebook since I started university last fall. It has changed the way we view people at my school. You catch yourself judging someone you have never met, on their specific profile listings like favorite movies and other interests. It is an interesting social study.
Vivianne, Los Angeles, California USA

York Uni only got facebook about a month ago and it spread like an epidemic!! It was all anyone spoke about for weeks. It’s now abating but I still use it, it lets me contact people that I dont have a phone number or email for which has been really useful.
Amy, York

I’m currently at the University of Manchester and while I agree Facebook is massive in this Uni, I find it all rather sad. My housemates write messages on Facebook to each other rather than walking 10 metres and actually verbally communicating!
Leon , London

Facebook is an awful social construct designed to cement the social hierarchies that should dissolve at university. As an Edinburgh Uni student involved with the university paper and on several society committees, I have a massive network of friends and interests, and get loads of requests to joing Facebook, but shy away from it because I feel it’s just another way for people to emphasise how great their lives are, how many friends they have and which parties they’ve been at. No-one will care by next year.
Becky, Edinburgh

At Imperial it arrived about two months ago and spread like wildfire.
Dave, London

It can get baffling when someone doesn’t even speak to you at a party and then adds you as a “friend” on Facebook the next morning…
Anjool Malde, London

While some of my fellow students hold out against having a mobile phone, Facebook is almost universal. It is an incredibly useful tool and has increased the ease of communication between societies and their membership. The power of Facebook has become so great that the Students Asociation banned its use in union elections.
Robert, St Andrews

Facebook is the first really useful online tool that many young people have been exposed to. The fact that it lets you easily search the university alone and that profile-viewing is restricted outside the university domain means people are more comfortable and open. At King’s, it is incredibly popular, especially with Freshers who will then induct future students into the Facebook network. Events, political meetings, parties are all advertised on there and, this year, the student union elections were heavily contested through Facebook. Three eventual winners of the elections even went as far as to pay for an advert on the Facebook site that linked directly to their manifestos and the online e-voting system. This definitely contributed to their eventual win.
Josh, King’s College London

Thank God I am too old for all this - strikes me as rather sad, what happened to talking to each other? I despair
FC, London

I don’t like it. It’s not the concept I don’t like, it’s the amazement people who are involved with it show when they find out you AREN’T. It just causes another form of peer pressure. Fortunately, I couldn’t care less about peer pressure when making my decisions, which is why I still have a very old black and white display phone, and don’t wear branded clothes.
Jez, Leeds

Went to America last year and joined Facebook. Good to see the ‘cult’ is catching on. Good article!
Martin, London

Terms & Conditions

“We were alienated from the rest of the world. All the high street shops overstocked with CB. There was going to be this huge demand. It didn’t happen,” notes Mr Crumpton.

Nevertheless, he maintains CB is “still alive and well” - the torch being carried by lorry drivers, off-road 4×4 enthusiasts and caravan clubs. While handheld mobile phone use is now illegal in a car, CB is not.

And there is at least one area where the CB dealers might see growth.

Tiverton Age Concern is using CB radio to combat the feelings of loneliness and vulnerability felt by older people living alone, often in remote areas.

After the charity was left a legacy by a CB enthusiast, it issued 20 pensioners with sets. For a generation where not all are comfortable with the internet, and with many finding mobile phones too expensive, the radios are a godsend.

For an hour every morning, they chat on the radio. Some even have call signs and use slang like asking for an “eyeball”, a face-to-face meeting, says Mary Healey of Age Concern.

“One chap said ‘I can listen to other people talking if I want join in I can but it means the world when you are on your own and have only got the cat for company’.”

All those decades ago, my younger sister (”Angel Eyes̶ met “Arthur Daley” on the CB radio.. she went on it from under the duvet in her bedroom at night, all night and unbeknown to our parents. Once the eight foot long aerial hit the ceiling lampshade and knocked out the electrics in the whole house! I, as older sister thought the whole CB thing was incredibly naff! This “Arthur Daley” lived two roads away in south London and it was love at first “eyeball”.. they got married some years later and now have two lovely little girls! So it wasn’t just for truckers!
debbie, york

I have been on and off CB since the late 80s and I can say it has been a lot of fun. There was a time when it was almost impossible to find a clear channel to talk on - not so these days! We had endless fun on Saturday evenings playing a game of hide-and-seek in our cars using just the signal strength as a finder. The person who found could then go and hide and the game would begin again. Some of the home-bound home-base locals would often listen in to our silly banter as it made them feel part of the community. One year, the local CBers were asked to chaperone the Biggleswade Carnival; we had no trouble relaying messages around the whole town. The local police gave up and used us for messaging as their radios had too many black-spots!

The current consultation from the government has a use-it-or-lose-it approach and we are being encouraged to switch to the CEPT band used in Europe; ironically the very same frequencies used by the original American rigs, but still only FM. We are not too happy with that idea as some EU countries do not regulate their radio users quite as well.10-10 till we do it again…
Gary “The Electron” Myers, Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, England

Never forget, these idiots used these illegal toys in the complete knowledge that they interfered with emergency radio frequencies causing deaths, aircraft landing equipment, etc and these criminals thought destroying radio controlled models was a “sport” via intentional interuption of the signals, and were menaces on the road (like using a mobile).Criminal Band radio was an accurate term.
Allan, Durham

CBs at the time were the best thing since sliced bread in an age where mobile phones were just a dream (or a brick with a mortgage) and the internet hadn’t even been thought of. The ability to “talk” to multiple people in a chat room type environment was great and FREE! As for foul or abusive language, the community policed this themselves and just refused to give abusers airtime (or drove to their location and boosted transmission power to drown them out).
Fox Hunts with cars (hide and seek) were a weekend occurence. One car hides and the others seek. A general clue given to get you going then track them down using the SwR meter (the closer you get the stronger the signal). Catch you on the flip side!
Mick “MatchMaker”, Bishops Stortford, Herts, UK

Breaker One Nine - You got your ears on good buddy? Anyone recall that East Kilbride near Glasgow was known as Polo Mint City? - because it has lots of roundabouts. And a Skateboard was CB slang for a regular car. So when asked: “Breaker One Nine - What’s your Twenty?” (ie Where are you?) - I’d answer: “I’m the red skateboard heading for Polo Mint City…”
Ken Morton, Glasgow, UK

Quite agree Crazy Cat, Not just long distance drivers used it, my father had a cb radio hidden in a briefcase in his car! The illegality of it added to the fun. The whole family had handles and we used it to keep in touch. It lost its frisson when it went legal!

Mad Pony, Bristol

In response to Ian Macbeth, Leeds, the toll bridge in Selby is now free…. so does this warrant the re-naming to “Freetown”..?!!
Mark, “Paytown”, North Yorkshire

I was born in 1981. My Dad was constantly on the CB. He was a newleywed, but paid more attention to the CB than his new family. He met another woman, started sleeping with her. It broke up my parents marriage and cost me my father. He set up home with the other woman and had a family with her. It’s much the same as the horror stories you hear about internet chatrooms nowadays! Technology changes, people don’t!
Helen, Edinburgh

As an Army instructor in the late 1980s it was fun trying to eradicate ‘CB-speak’ from trainee radio operators! But only last Friday I went to a friend’s house and discovered he uses a CB set to keep in touch with his elderly dad down the road!
Megan, Cheshire UK

Well its still being used in Leicester and Leicester Control is still there with “Red Rust” and the gang (Hi Rob).
A lot of people i meet dont even know that CB still exists.It still has the music and swearing but its only like that on the calling channel.CB lives on though so get those radios from the loft and get back on the air
Dave “Cubwolf” Smith, Leicester

I had an imported AM ‘rig’ and a home made antennae. Everytime I transmitted I blanked out every television set in a quarter mile radius! I think that kit like mine was probably the reason it was illegal in the first place.
Sean Clark, Loughborough

1 - 9 for a copy! When at secondary school, as recent as 15 years ago, I persuaded my parents (both original ’80’s’ CB-ers) to utilise the aerial still up that tree in the garden to give me my own CB. At that time there were still several people at school with the same idea, using their parents equipment that had been lying unused for several years. I met my now husband on the CB, and before mobile phones or SAT NAV, never went any distance in the car without plugging in the CB. Essential if you got lost - always an obliging trucker to assist. Sometimes tempted to plug back in to see if the stalwart enthusiasts are still waiting for a copy!
vicky, Moray, Scotland

CB was a really big part of my teenage years. I met my now best friend on-air “Red October”. Does anybody remeber the “Fox Hunt”. We all had Minis (Mine was the best) and used to be up all through the night trying to find other cars. Those were the days hiding in the middle of roundabouts!
Martyn “NightHawk”, London

“DX-ers”, (long-distance CB enthusiasts), took the hobby as seriously as their licensed HAM counterparts. I spent many pleasant evenings chatting on side-band to America, Jamaica, Brazil, even Australia. OK, it was illegal, but the authorities didn’t seem to mind. The 30ft antenna towering over my house was fairly obvious!
“Kamikaze”, Maputo Mozambique

I’m surprised that so few truckers use it now. As someone who commutes down part of the accident-prone A14 ‘Highway from Hell’, I am amazed at lorries blithely passing the A428 exit and heading up towards a Huntingdon tailback, when a CB would have warned them to divert….
Kit, Cambridge, UK

When we lived in a fishing town in Scotland my two sons had CB and their not too intelligent readheaded friend had the handle ‘Red Herring’ and couldn’t understand why no one came back to him! A friend of mine’s handle was ‘Schoolboy’ so we could say Schoolboy do you copy?
Alex Mitchell, Stockport, UK

In the earlie 80’s I ran a small country hotel in East Yorkshire. I found it quite amusing that young “CB’rs” would spend a couple of hours in the bar chatting to each other, then go to the car park, sit in their cars next to each other and talk to one another on their CB’s. As they say in Yorkshire “Thre’s nowt so queer as folk”
John Pheasant, Nottinghamshire

I used to use the CB a lot. I spoke to guys with cool handles like ‘The Outlaw’, and ‘Spiderman’, it felt like I was part of something dangerous, a rebellion if you like. We were subverting the Government and played by nobodys rules, not even our own.

Eventually I went along to a meeting and realised I was speaking with a group of 30-something, basement dwellers who drove 50CC scooters. I sold my rig soon after, the magic was gone.
Greg, Wick, Scotland

The best part of it was the names for places. My favourite was “Paytown” for Selby where there was a toll bridge.
ian macbeth, leeds

I was very actively involved with legal CB in Leicester, with the very well known “Leicester Control” on ch23. This group of enthusiasts were famous for giving accurate directions to truckers in our area. I also wrote a monthly column for a CB Radio magazine. What killed CB was the internet and the availablility of mobile phones and computer-based communications. It was fun whilst it lasted and many CBers went on to tke the RA exams. But I never forgot Roger “Red Rust”, Jeff “Murgatroyd”, Sid “Sunray” and many, many others. Yes the bucketmouths and music-players were a pain, but I made some very good friends.
Rob “Captain Jack” Davis, formerly Leicester, now Telford

It does bring back fond memories of hooning around Tamworth and surrounding villages on a pushbike with friends to arranged “eyeballs” with other “breakers”. Often it seemed that a lot of my peers while on CB radio were about 20+ years older than me but most treated my curiousity with respect and even more information.

From CB radio and the contacts I made there I joined an organisation called Search & Rescue to assist members of the public, sporting events in the town etc - which eventually evolved to become a fully fledged British Red Cross Society members unit M16. So to Prinz Eugen, The Red Baron (and Snoopy), Viking and all the others of M16 - those really were fun days of my youth!
John Somers, Chesham, Buckinghamshire

I was a student in Leeds around 1981, trying to fly radio controlled gliders. My legal RC equipment used the correct alloted frequency of 27 Mhz or so. The illegal CB equipment used the same. This ‘CB interference’ was not appreciated by my RC glider. So, to gain some revenge back at my digs in Leeds I would wait in the evening until the local CB’ers came on the air by listening in with my ‘world bands’ capable radio / cassette and then turn on my radio contol transmitter and proceed to cause interference on their goings on. I know it worked because the incredulous voices would complain of the number ‘dB they were pulling’ dropping as I twiddled the control on my RC transmitter.
Steve Crutchley, St Albans, UK

Fond cb years remembered well, sitting in your car on the highest local hill trying to call out to others on hills across the country and if you were lucky recieving copies from abroad as well, great fun in its hey day but nothing like it was. Still got mine, gathering dust in some cupboard, you never know one day it might see some copies again. ‘Over and out’.
Andrew “Meatloaf”, Solihull, West Midlands

In 1981 I met my first boyfriend using my dads CB. Sitting in the car on the front drive I opened up a whole new world and a whole new group of friends, as a teenager who was bullied badly at school it was heaven to talk to people who didn’t have a clue who I was or what I looked like (or even where I was). Now my teenage daughter is on MSN night after night and we are endlessly warned about the dangers, in reality its no different to the CB, use it safely and its not a danger…

I soon left home and the fun of my dad’s CB set, however I wont ever forget cold winter nights sitting in his car chatting away feeling like any teenager anywhere, as if the world were at my feet. 10-10 till we do it again, Hot-Lips signing out.
Wanda “Hot Lips”, Welwyn Garden City

“Illegal for no good reason” and “harmless”? Not really. The reason ‘legal’ CB was introduced, using FM (a different mode, on a very slightly different frequency), was that FM transmissions cause a lot less interference than AM (as in illegal CB). It’s as simple as that. Unfortunately, the illegal users didn’t grasp the problems that they could have been causing to legitimate, and probably a lot more important, users of the radio spectrum.
Rob, Newcastle

The UK legal sets have restricted power and operate on FM, which reduces the transmission range. Due to the way sunspot activity affects us the early CBers could often talk to people in the States. I know people who were into CB in the early days who subsequently passed the exams to become Radio Amateurs so they could get back to talking to people on the other side of the world.
Darren Jones

Brilliant! I was “on the rig” for about 10 years - I had a severe stammer and it was my way of talking with people I’d (probably) never meet. As it happened, I met a girlfriend on there, and we had a great time. It was full of friendly people and I made many friends. The only downside was dismantling the 30ft antenna in my garden when a thunderstorm approached!
Edward Byard, Oxford

I remember using CB’s in the early 90s and by then it was becoming a joke - the sets were available for peanuts so many people would buy them and then mess around ‘on-air’. It just became a noisy mess where you couldn’t hold a real conversation without someone butting in and making silly comments. It was a great idea but spoiled by the same people who now cause trouble on on-line chatrooms. Technology changes - people dont…
Craig, Perth

All I remember is girls coming on air and dropping heavy hints their parents were out and why don’t you pop round to say hi. The rest of the evening consisted of a bunch of teens champing at the bit in a Vauxhall Viva outside some house realising you’d been had yet again and there were no girls, not there anyway.
Iain, UK

It’s still going strong, especially with 4×4 owners. The license is a complete waste of money as it hasn’t gotten rid of the foul language or the music on channel 19, but it’s getting better. You’d be surprised how many people are still using it, and it’s superb on the motorway!
David Jacobs, Hinckley

As a young kid living in rural Kent in the early 80s there wasn’t much to do of an evening. My memory of CB was sitting on Channel 14 - reserved for meeting other users, endlessly calling “one-four for a copy” and hoping someone would start chatting to me. In those days, people didn’t worry so much about children talking to complete strangers over the airwaves like they do now about internet chat rooms!
Tom “Lard”, Chelmsford

When off roading with others, CBs the best free all day conference call you can get and theres no limit to the number of participants. You dont get that with mobiles.
David Edwards, Chester

It’s still a great way to communicate between vehicles travelling closely together such as groups of truckers, caravaners, any vehicle marque clubs and for off-road driving. No cost for calling, no issues with network coverage and one person can instantly communicate to everyone else in the group. I got into CB in the early days but it’s better now because the airwaves are less cluttered and your less likely to get some idiot interupting you!
Chris, Nr Faversham, United Kingdon

My local Mini club uses CBs to make sure we all keep in touch, how sad do we sound? We often travel a long distance to shows and rallies and it’s nice to make sure we are all headed in the right direction should we get split up in traffic. Believe me - this is an absolute god send when going through the middle of London.
Philippa “Fluffy” Kruman, Cambridgeshire

It was through the interest of repairing CB and as a spin off two-way radios that I arived in my profession of communication engineering. Today I have work across Africa. That’s a big 10-4 good buddy… 10-10 till we do it again… we gone…
John “Septic Knuckles” Buckham, Lusaka, Zambia

Please dont perpetuate the old myth that CB’s were responsible for interference on radios, TV’s, hifi’s etc - they were not in the majority of cases. The electronic equipment at the time had ‘front ends’ which poorly between radio and audio signals, hence it was the receivers fault.
Yellow Horse, whitehaven, cumbria

As a 14 year old boy there was only one real reason for CB - girls. CB opened up a whole new way of finding girls and we certainly made the most of it!
Charles Codrington, Bedford

My first introduction to CB was at a training session for new hunt saboteurs when a hand-held unit was passed around and experimented with. They were a godsend for co-ordinating large numbers of ’sabs’ at a single hunt and all the sab vans and Landrovers could be seen with the 5-foot aeriels. Of course the hunts soon worked this out and would buy their own units to jam us out. Everythings switched to mobile phones now.
Roger, Derby

I was a member of a CB club when I was about 12 - I didn’t think it was illegal as a) I only had 2 channels b) I could never get a signal or anyone to talk to and c) all the cool dudes had a car to put their radio in - I only had my Grifter although it was tooled up with American emergency sirens - nice.
Kevin Wilkinson, Hornchurch

Breaker One-Nine, what’s your 20? I Hammer’d Down on the A3 I eyeballed a Kojak with a Kodak so I pulled in behind a Suicide Jockey.
Max Allen, Her’sham ‘69

My father was a reader for the local ‘News for the Blind’ in the Deal area. Filled the gap between local newspapers and regional radio.
simon mallett, UK Maidstone

Breaker 1-4 for a copy? CB radio at its time was a fun thing to do. I personally met some great friends and the fun of ‘catching the skip’ and talking to CB users in other countries was just amazing. Things move on and so does technology - its in the process of being replaced by VOIP and wireless openzones, but I feel there is always a need for a general public frequency band - in what form though, who knows.
Nigel Underwood, Bristol, UK

I was a CB-er for a few years in the early 80s and enjoyed it enormously. My first rig was second hand and I used to have it in my bedroom with a ‘mag mount’ attached to the radiator! I then had a 50-50 pole out the window, but I used to take it in when the wind got up. I briefly went back on air in the early 90s to avoid the road jams, but it was not the same. Good days - ‘What’s yer 20?’ ‘I’m on yer back door good buddy.’ Looking back I must have sounded an idiot!
Mike “Hunchback” Wilks, Ruardean, Glos

Being a “radio ham” (and taken the Morse test) on air officially, we had our own share of idiots who transferred to CB to be “rebelious”. Mobiles and text are cheaper, and with Internet phones, will return to the few as before who experiment and who - ironically push forward communications as we now know it.
Graham, Northampton

Half the fun of CB was because it was illegal - and illegal for no good reason. It was a harmless and fun way to cock a snook at authority. 10-10 ’til we do it again, good buddies.
Mark “Crazy Cat” Esdale, Bridge, Canterbury

In my experience the only use that people made of their CB sets was talking about their CB sets to other owners!!
I tried to get the idea going of a voluntary community info service. Where people with special knowledge on a subject would spend a few hours on air offering advice about local directions, medical advice, DIY help, cooking tips, fixing TVs or whatever. It might have taken off but the killjoys would have swamped it with endless music or noises and ended it pretty quick.
Nigel Andrews, Worthing, United Kingdom

I remember the CB craze. Only a few (richer)kids in our school ever got involved, as the cost was enormous. A large antena was needed and the cost of the equipment was a lot(in those days) for people counting out their pocket money. A few boffs would venture to Tandy’s and buy stuff but it was never as big a craze as people said it was with the young- more with 20+ age group- and they were working people who were just a bit sad and imagined they were trucking an 18 wheeler. Come in rubber duck! Very much like a Sinclair C5 - rare as chickens teeth
Mark Smith, Southampton UK

Talk about government control! People find a way of making the world smaller and benefitting all that use it and just because the government cannot tax or control it they make it illegal.
Jack, Sidcup, UK

I asked an American friend of mine what happened to CB? Apparently its alive and well and living in the USA.
This article is the first I have heard about CB in the UK for years.
Anthony, Cardiff

Oddly enough yesterday I was driving down I65, Chicago to Indianopolis, and stopped off at a coffee shop - which had a large CB section - rigs, whips, mikes, etc. It seems CB never went away for the US trucker community!
Peter, Loondon UK

I used to take my C.B. set away to sea with me in the early 1980s. For a 4 watt set the reception and transmission at certain times of the day was out of this world once away from the UK. The best “copy” was with the Island of Guernsey and a guy sat in his “roller skate” on Brighton sea front while I was off the coast of Ghana, west Africa. a distance of some 4000 miles! The UK legal sets were only supposed to have a range of 12-15 miles.
Chris “Wooden Horse”, Grimsby, England

“It was seen as heavy-handedness from a country that up until recently demanded that many long-range amateur radio users take a Morse Code test.”. Until recently it wasn’t ‘heavy-handedness’ by the British, it was an intenational requirement that radio amateurs demonstrated their competence in morse code. That has now been removed. Britain was the first to change its licence, although many countries retain morse code as a requirement for short-wave transmissions by amateurs.
Paul, Ayia Napa, Cyprus

CB was intended to be a local community facility. The equipment was low powered and antennas short. Unless you lived a a remote area of the country it was a disaster from the start. A basic setup could transmit and receive for many miles and in or near cities the nutcases took over and filled the airwaves with abuse rendering it useless for its original intention. It seems to have been left to lorry drivers and taxi firms now. Many dedicated CB-ers went on Amateur Radio courses and took up that hobby.

However with all types of technology based hobbys of the 60’s 70’s 80’s they have succumbed to the computer and mobile communications. Many young amateurs and “proper” C.B’ers went on to be trained and employed in Communications or Technology based careers.
Mike, Hull

It became increasingly annoying towards the mid/late eighties to have someone use it as a Radio Station! I remember one Sunday morning whilst trying to chat to a freind, all 40 channels where being used and over half where complete morons! blocking channels with music. one was sending out just bleeps and squeals…At least these days we are only subjected to those who seem to have a passion for it. You listen, you join in….you switch off! easy!
Kathy, Cambridge

We used CB (FM) in Zambia in the 80’s as communication tools for anti-poaching operations, for free communications and even the Neighbourhood Watch base and operations vehicles used them. Fun to use, but almost valueless in highly built up areas where they require line of sight (unless the weather was ‘with you’). Great fun for a few years, I even used them as late as 1998 at my own safari camp.
Alister, Rugby, Warwickshire

Terms & Conditions

BBC Africa Live! wants to find out what challenges mixed race relationships face. Does it mean a clash of cultures?

Priti and KV live in Kenya and are planning their wedding for later this year.

They have been together for nearly nine years but Priti is Asian-Kenyan from a Sikh family while KV is a black Kenyan from the Kikuyu tribe.

They have faced strong opposition to their union from family members, but finally both their parents have given the couple their blessing.

Are you in a mixed race relationship or are your parents from different races? What’s been your experience?

Join the BBC’s Africa Live debate on Wednesday 2 June at 1630 & 1830GMT.

Use the form to send us your comments - some of which will be published below.

If you would like to take part in the discussion, e-mail us with your telephone number, which will not be published.

Your comments:

I think everyone is missing the point here focussing on the statement “skin colour does not matter”. The reality of inter-racial marriages, or how I would like to call them inter-cultural marriages is the challenges mainly arising from the difference in cultures. I have lived in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia, and I do notice the cultural differences and not the skin colour or tone. I have dated women from all the different cultures, and some I have cared for a lot, but I knew that in the long run it will never work. How do the children get brought up? What religion (if you are from different religions)? What language do you speak at home (if different)? Sometimes you have to let your brain take control of your heart, not the other way round.
Anonymous, Japan

I believe in inter-racial marriages though it didn’t work for me. I lived with a Nigerian man for five years. We never had any bad experiences. Everybody from both sides gave us a warm welcome. After five years I can honestly say that I learned a lot about my husbands culture and give my respect to it. Not so my husband. He had zero tolerance for my culture and didn’t make any effort to find out about it. He built up his little “Nigeria” in Germany and isolated me.
Evelyn Menke, Germany

Most Indians are awful towards black Africans and if this relationship was the other way round (Priti marrying a white guy) her parents would not bother at all.
Jason Louder, Cherry Hill,USA

Colour has never been an issue in my family Kim, USA

My mom is white and my father is black. There are some who feel an interracial marriage is wrong, because the children are negatively affected. I am 24 years old and working towards my PhD. I am very active in my church, and I volunteer in my community. I feel blessed having been brought up in a home with two loving parents. Colour has never been an issue in my family. I have never felt confused, or out of place. I have always felt love, and I count it as a blessing having been brought up in an interracial family.
Kim, USA

I am Ugandan living in the United States, where generation X does not consider race as a factor in falling in love. Love is colour is colourblind. Today people are looking for someone who will respected them, and treats them well when they fall in love with that someone. I would like to congratulate Priti and KV on their coming wedding.
Peter Waggs, USA

I agree with Patrick Mangassa of USA whose sentiments are against inter-racial marriages. It is all very easy for two people to fall in love and pronounce themselves ready for matrimony, but does society understand what the children of multiracial marriages go through? I am writing from a country that has (72)seventy two tribes and even though all these tribes are black, it is still hard to merge two tribes by, or through marriage. When a woman marries a white man, out there, she is just treated like a house maid by the man’s relatives. When a black man entices a white woman whilst he is io his ventures as an immigrant, all does go well, but let them now come to mother Africa where poverty will welcome them at the airport. Many a time, these women do not last even half a year because they are not able to cope with our poverty datum line. I am not able to stop this inter racial marriage, but those that are wise should think twice before getting entangled to some other race.
Shutiie Libuta, Zambia /Central Africa

After almost nine years of marriage to a Zimbabwean - myself being a white American - I am only grateful to have found the partner I’ve got. If my relatives could only see further than the colour my husband’s skin - or recognise it as being equally acceptable to their own - our lives would be easier. Why do people waste time and energy trying to complicate the lives of others?
Anne Turner (Dr.), Rwanda

The success of mixed race relationship depends on the level of literacy and exposure of the families involved. It has worked in a society where the two families are well educated. While others are plagued with problems
Busola Ande, Lagos, Nigeria

My father and uncle were both married to Europeans (a German and a Belgian) and both are now divorced. Both relationships broke up for the same reasons other relationships do: a failure in commitment to make the marriage work and not the differences in race.
Wole Solana, Nigeria

Why do people waste time and energy trying to complicate the lives of others? Anne Turner, Rwanda

What amazes me most is that despite a man and a woman falling in love and feeling good about it, family and friends often feel strongly against it just because of their racial biases. It’s a shame…let everyone live up to the saying: it’s the wearer who knows best where the shoe pinches!
Mzee Safari, kenya/uk

Being white and married to a Black British woman of West Indian decent, I find comments such as those made by Patrick Mangassa staggeringly offensive. What a shame that he feels he’s “lost” North Africa. Adolf Hitler felt much the same way about the Sudetenland in the 1930s. And he had similar ideas on the purity of race. Mr Mangassa doesn’t even have the guts to call himself the racist he so blatantly is, preferring to hide behind the cloak of conservatism.
Matt, UK

I think by calling the union a mixed race union is the problem in the first place. I’ve been married for 10 years to a coloured lady from South Africa and apart from the initial first year hiccups of settling in a new country for her and getting to know my mother, it has been smooth sailing. Granted, there are hiccups like in any normal functioning marriage, but none which cannot be overcome by a collective decision to let the marriage work. In hindsight, it is a miracle that it did with the backdrop of apartheid policies in Namibia before independence. Would I marry a person of another race and from another country again? Yep. Would it be my initial goal to go and find one: Nope.
Ripuree Haakuria, Namibia

Living in South Africa, the rainbow nation, I expected more open minded people but being white, my wife got classified as a coloured (during apartheid ) and my son, black. Almost everyday is a new challenge. I have a wonderful marriage but the ignorance of some people is a real challenge. When will that change? How many generations do we need, to learn that the separation of skin colour is created by ignorant people .
Volker, South Africa

I have realised that interracial relationships last longer when the both partners work but when one partner he is unemployed or has a lower income, the love starts to deteriorate and ends up in divorce. Nowadays, race has no meaning. What is important is money. If you are a monkey and have money the marriage will of course last. That’s been my own experience.
Sylvain Aristide, Finland

I personally do not encourage inter-racial marriages, for the reason that they destroy one’s cultural back ground. But as long as the two agree to respect and promote each others tribal and culture back ground, I would give it a green-light. That’s what I’ve been preaching to my three children.
Ntege Bigali Namutula, Winnipeg, Mb. Canada

I am a Pakistani muslim involved in a loving relationship with a Phillipino catholic. Our greatest hurdle will be telling my parents that we intend to marry. Until then our relationship remains a secret. Due to cultural and religious differences it will be hard for my parents to accept it: I find it selfish.
Isha,

Nowadays, race has no meaning. What is important is money Sylvain Aristide, Finland

I am the result of a bi-racial marriage. I am 32 years old and in all of those years, I have faced different types of discrimination, but none bad enough for me ever to wish I was just one race. I feel I have the best of both worlds. I have been exposed and welcomed into so many communities because no-one ever exactly knows what I am or where I belong. I now work for the UN in Sierra Leone and I believe that my childhood experiences now help me to work in this organisation filled with people from everywhere. One of the dumbest questions I have been asked is which culture do you feel more comfortable in? I am a product of both cultures. A bi - racial friend once told me what her father told her while growing up. “Take vanilla and chocolate ice cream and put it in a bowl and mix together. Then try to take out the chocolate ice cream. You can’t”. We are a product of our parents.
Rachel Goldstein-Rodriguez, US

I’m Nigerian. My wife and best friend is German. We tied the knot approximately four years ago, after dating for 2 years. My family adores my wife. My mother in-law is the world’s best mother in-law and, I adore her. My wife and I love and respect each other. The success of a marriage depends, neither on colour nor race but, on the couple. My wife, is the best thing that ever happened to me and, I will do it all over again if I have to.
Norbert Dwayne Weweh, Germany

What about the cute kids? The reason I mixed my European genes with my husband’s Korean genes was for the cute kids. So what if he was getting his PhD and we loved each other and he needed his green card - deep down mostly I wanted to have adorable Eurasian kids. If I’d known any Africans in college I might have beautiful American children instead!!
Eve Somers, Redondo Beach, California, USA

Being different races has been kind of hard for me because I never feel like I can fit in entirely with one race. People often tap me on the shoulder and say stuff like, “What are you?” or “What’s your nationality?” (often people don’t know the difference between nationality and ethnicity), and they’re usually just complete strangers. Sometimes they think I’m Native American, other times Filipino, Hispanic, Mongolian, half Japanese and half white, or half black and half white… I could go on for hours. (I’m actually half Chinese, a quarter black, and a quarter white.) Chinese people don’t consider me Chinese because I hardly know anything in Chinese; the longest thing I can say in Chinese is “do not sit in my seat,” and it took me three months just to remember how to say that. (I’ve found that I look less Chinese to Asian people and more Chinese to non-Asian people.) I can’t fit in with black people because people seem to think I don’t “talk” black! I know my life would be less complicated if I was just one race, I like being what I am: it makes me glad that my parents didn’t care that they were different races and decided to marry each other and have kids anyway. I wouldn’t trade my ethnicity for anything in the world.
Madeleine, New York, United States

I’m a black woman from Kenya and fell in love with a white man from the most obscure of places in the United States. He was clueless about all things African, and we argue about issues all the time. But I wouldn’t have given him up for all the cultural differences in the world. If you’re going to get married, then you are going to get married - not your parents or your friends or the random rubbernecks on the street.
C.O., USA

The truth is my mum will not consent to an inter-racial marriage, not even to a person of a different ethnicity of the same skin colour. Do I hurt her or myself (assuming I do love someone of a different race)? I think they would work, a bit more difficult than ‘normal’ ones, but definitely.
Pari, India/US

KV and Priti are two young Kenyans obviously very much in love.They are very brave because mixed marriages between Kenyans of African and Asian descent are not very common.The two represent the true face of today’s Kenya and deserve all our support. I see no reason why the marriage should not work.Good luck guys!
L. Soita, Kenya

I wonder how much of my love for her is confused with my fascination with the Japanese culture. Matt, Australia

Does it works? Yes. Will everyone accept it? There is always someone who will not. Is mixed race relationship for all? No. Some people cannot even get along with their own. One thing I want to say is that if she loves me and I love her only God can stop us.
Al, USA

I am a white Australian and my girlfriend is Japanese. We have been together for almost nine months now and love each other very much. There are lots of challenges for both of us and sometimes I wonder how much of my love for her is confused with my fascination with the Japanese culture. Often the two are inextricably linked. However, being able to recognise this facet also allows me to try to see my girlfriend as just a regular person who is special to me.
Matt, Australia

What would the world look like without colour? God made his world beautiful, the heavenly bodies with different shapes and colours, the human race of different colours, the sea and its creatures of different shape, size and colour, also the flowers, trees and animals. Why can’t we love each other, live in peace together and enjoy this beautiful world he made for us to live in?
George H. Waldron, USA

I am Indian, and my boyfriend is from Kenya. I’ve learnt a lot more about my own culture and his through this relationship — it’s brought perspective and depth to my relationship with him and with my own culture. It is definitely case-by-case, but ultimately what are now exceptions will enable greater cultural understanding — which can only be a good thing.
SS, India

I am hispanic American and my wife is Nigerian. We are both Catholic and by the grace of God our bond has lasted 7 years. If you marry an African woman, strong leadership will bring praise. Respect will bring longevity.
Peter Riley, USA

Over 50 years ago my east Indian Hindu mother ran from her father’s London home with only the sari on her back to join my black Egyptian(nubian) muslim father. Eventually they made their way to Trinidad where 6 children where born. Child 1 married a Nigerian, Number 2 married a Russian, Number 3 married a Chinese, Number 4 married an Italian/ Somali, Number 5 married an African American, and I, number 6 married an Afro Hispanic. Almost 60 years later and we are all still going strong. The best part is a picture my mom took with all her grandkids it shows that my family is the world!!
Faizah Assad, USA

I’m a British born white woman living in the US in a relationship of three years with a Sierra Leonean black Muslim man. The difficulties have been mainly cultural misunderstandings, but when communication is open and both parties respect and accept the other’s religion and culture, it can prove to be rewarding both intellectually, spiritually, and above all prove that people with all backgrounds can come together as one and learn from one another. May be the old saying is correct, “love conquers all”. Our families have stepped up to the plate and accepted our choices because in the end, they just want to see both of us happy. The world is becoming smaller and smaller and it is time we all started acting like the world is our home, not just the country we reside in.
Lisa, US

Being involved in a mixed race relationship has proven to be both difficult and yet extremely rewarding for me. I am a white Canadian woman who has been involved with a black man from Sierra Leone for about a year. During our relationship we have encountered people from both races who don’t like seeing us together in public, including some members of his own family. Thankfully, my entire family adores him and supports us 100%. To be honest I don’t know how things will work out between us in the long run as there are some cultural differences we have to work out, but that aside I am quite determined not to let others tell us we shouldn’t be a couple. Being with him has enabled me to learn about his African culture and he has had to learn about mine as well, although his language lessons are going better than mine! All I can tell others is that no one can determine who they fall in love with and that no one has the right to tell us who we can love and be with.
Corissa, Canada

If you are still bound by clan and family, all the better for a steadier relationship. The young may find differences challenging and fascinating, but may lack the patience to overcame some difficulties.
Marco, Ethiopia

The world is becoming smaller and smaller and it is time we all started acting like the world is our home, not just the country we reside in Lisa, US

I’ve been in an inter-racial marriage for six years. My husband is Nigerian. If you want it to work, it will work.
Kari Umana, USA

The ancestral roots of KV and Priti are of two great countries and peoples. Their union can only strengthen their countries, their peoples, and themselves. They are both wished well and much happiness.
Wayne A. Philp, US

The problem with parents of mixed race couples arises because most are not familiar with each other’s culture. Women and men are the same every where. It’s just the social setting that makes the difference.
Mike, Norwegian/Nigeria

Mixed marriages never work because one culture will portray itself as superior, sooner or later
Simon Gath, Belgium

I am in a mixed race relationship. I think it is idiotic for people to be concerned about something as arbitrary as skin tone. “Race” is an artificial construct.
Stephanie, USA

I’ve been in an inter-racial relationship for six years. We dated for five and then got married. We had no problems with our families. We have noticed some people act funny in public and also when we first introduce one another.
John Craven, USA

The colour of the skin doesn’t matter when love is there.
Fodzo Tchemwe, France

I am a white American and my husband is Nigerian. There have been times when people have said things or given us looks. Someone once asked me if our son was adopted, when I said no, she asked again, in such a way that showed her intentions to make me feel awkward. I always try to think positively about it. Our family tree is diverse and interesting and those who don’t like it were not asked ahead of time, which means that their opinions really don’t have much effect on me.
Leah Chukwu, USA

Inter-racial marriages are not a bad thing. However, men involved must be aware of the pressure they would get from society. One may risk isolation from his own people and attract malice from the other side. This can be most severe when a normal domestic issue, typical of husband and wife, is given a racial connotation blowing everything out of proportion.
Zimbabwe

I think that those who are against inter-racial marriages have narrow minds and cannot see beyond the simple fact that race is only about skin color. Nephat Oliech, USA

I am a black man married to a white American lady whom I love very much. I think that those who are against inter-racial marriages have narrow minds and cannot see beyond the simple fact that race is only about skin color. What is important is character, somebody who makes you happy and respects you. In my opinion you get the best of both worlds by having a mixed race family. Good luck to both KV and Priti.
Nephat Oliech, USA

My mother is an English expatriate and my father is third generation Japanese-American. They met in Africa and moved to California, where I was raised. California has always had an incredible diversity of cultures and ethnicities. But being a mixed race child, even in this jigsaw puzzle of genealogies, still causes a lot of confusion, not only for the individual but also for society. I was never sure which box I should check off on demographic information and census forms, “Asian” or “Caucasian.” People would ask my mother if I was adopted. It was a strange sensation, because I felt as though I was not fully accepted as English or Japanese, and I was ashamed of both. It took me two decades to become comfortable in my own skin.
Robert Tashima, US

I am black and have not had a relationship with a person of a different race before, but have closely followed a friend, fellow black, who have had a relationship with a white girl. They live together in America where she comes from. He has told me that he has faced the following challenges from the girl’s family: prejudice, hatred and racial discrimination. The mere fact that he was a black man hanging out with a girl from a well-to-do family made the family all the more furious. On a personal note, I feel that inter-racial marriages can work if the couple accept each other, are sincere with each other, disregard all tenets of prejudice, skin colour, culture and religion. Love is what matters.
Melvin Nahwo Nye, Harbel, Liberia

I am against inter-racial marriage. Why? Because if we keep mixing our race with others, 400 years from now, Africa will look like Brazil. We lost North Africa already, please let’s keep the rest of Africa pure “black”. I am not racist but I am conservative.
Patrick Mangassa, USA

marriages will always have a hard time as long as institutions like yours promotes these out dated divisive concepts and lies. Grow up and take responsibility. These are the kind of ideas fuel conflicts around the word such as in Iraq and Israel.
Gary Ormsby, USA

I’m Nigerian and my husband is Irish. We have more in common than others I know from a similar racial background. We’re both Catholic and that helps us see things from the same view point. Also, our families are very similar and share similar aspirations. My tip is, always get your mother-in-law on your side and the rest would be a doodle.
Anne, England

You marry whoever you fall in love with and you bring your children up to be stable and . Benson Magaba, Zimbabwe

Out of six boys in one family, this is the current setting:
Boy 1 married a half South African girl
Boy 2 married a Botswanan girl
Boy 3 married an English girl
Boy 4 married a Malawian girl
Boy 5 married a Ndebele Zimbabwean girl
Boy 6 married a Shona Zimbabwean girl
Nephew married a German girl
Other nephew married an American girl.
This is one large and happy family with the longest marriage clocking in at 27 years. No divorce yet in the family. All parents involved are happy with their children. Only our government shouts abuses at us. You marry whoever you fall in love with and you bring your children up to be stable and multi-cultured. The main problem is how to guard against home sickness for those who move away with their spouses.
Benson Magaba, Zimbabwe

I think if people around the world inter-marry, there would be no discrimination.
Michael Nuul Mayen, Manitoba, Canada

My boyfriend is from Nigeria, is black and a Muslim. I am a white Christian from England. Although there are obviously cultural differences, we find that it does not have to be a barrier between us. I respect that his religion is important to him and it is part of what I love about him. It would be easier if we were of the same race and religion but love crosses those barriers. I think that our families will support us because they know that the love between us makes us happy.
Helen Watson, England

Mixed races? What do you mean? Aren’t we told these days that “races don’t exist”? Or is that just a lie, then?
Ron Brownlow, UK

Of course interracial couples are subject to all kinds of pressures, both internal and societal. Their successes depend on economic conditions and interpersonal communication. The prejudice of others can compromise inter-racial marriage if the couple are already on a shaky ground. It is beneficial for an inter-racial couple to receive the approval of their respective families, however it is not necessarily relevant all the time. Race is a social construct it is not innate to humanity but rather a tool for conditioning others.
Emmanuel, USA

Mixed marriages are like any other marriage: To work you need a combination of good luck, determination and hard work. I am Nigerian and my wife is (White) English. There will, as in all marriages, be hard times - perhaps as a result of “cultural clashes”. Mixed marriages don’t break down as a result of a clash of cultures. They break down because couples can’t choose their families and may forget why they got married in the first place. We have three beautiful children; we are blessed with wonderful families and we keep reminding ourselves everyday why we chose to spend the rest of our lives together.
Segun, UK

Inter-racial marriages would work if people looked beyond the colour of one’s skin and see the person for what they are. Bigotry in any form is destructive. Therefore if two people supportive and in love choose to be together, what difference does it make what they look like?
Bill, US

Inter-racial relationships are going to happen regardless of what observers think. The fact is we are all in search of peace and happiness. If my family loves me and cares for my well being and happiness then I think I should be supported with my choice of partner that makes me happy not what they think does not make them happy. After-all I will be sharing my life not them.
Thy Will Koku Amenya, Ghana/US

My dad was a Dene (native Indian) and my mum was a child of French & Swedish immigrants. They married in the 1960’s - a time of considerable racial prejudice in Canada - particularly against natives. They made it work by understanding that, for them, some of the problems in marriage would be cultural. To make such a marriage strong enough to withstand the outside pressures, a couple needs to assume that they can’t assume - and talk, all the time, about everything.
M. Thompson, Canada

Although it makes sense to ask people who are actually in inter-racial relationships about them, that is not the whole story. In some sense it’s like asking gay couples if same sex relationships work. Of course they work on some level for the people in them. That’s why they are in them. However, that says nothing about why humans and other sexually reproducing animals breed preferentially within their own race, variety or subspecies.
USA

The key to any marriage is love, compatibility, and respect for each other. Dr. Freddy Kustaa, USA

I do believe that for an inter-racial marriage to work, it depends on the foundation. If I find someone who really cares about me and doesn’t bother about where I am from, we might end up in marriage. As a Nigerian living in California, all the females I date are from different races; Asians, Mexicans, Whites, etc. We should encourage real love, like that of Priti and KV, who have been together for nine years.
Stanley Njoku, Nigerian in US

I am Black and my wife is White. We have been married for 19 years. We have two handsome boys aged 11 and 18. In my view, my wife and I are happily married. Our marriage has gone through a number of problems that all marriages encounter regardless of the racial or ethnic backgrounds of couples. The key to any marriage is love, compatibility, and respect for each other. I think there is no proof that only couples from the same race or ethnic group have happier and lasting marriages than the so-called mixed ones. The divorce statistics in the United States and other countries among same race or ethnic group couples is a good proof of my statement above. Divorce and unhappy marriages occur among all married couples, not just the so-called mixed ones.
Dr. Freddy Kustaa, USA

Many inter-racial, inter-cultural, and inter-faith couples still experience a lot of pressures from family and community. Our world is not as open to these types of unions as we would like to believe. It is great that you are offering a chance for your listeners to discuss this important topic. I founded an organisation called Swirl a few years ago. It serves as an educational, social, and support network for mixed race couples, families, individuals, and transracial adoptees. We are now a national organisation with chapters across the US, and even an international chapter in Japan. Although many couples still experience what Priti and KV have faced, there are at least communities and resources out there that couples may contact for advice and support!
Jen Chau, USA

Inter-racial marriage has always been subject to challenges both from the boy’s and the girl’s families. But I think it is time to change this view as people are increasingly coming together and building friendship/relationships. It is something that cannot be stopped by traditional attitudes towards such marriages. on the other hand, it is also an important source of harmony and co-operation between two group of people.
Husein, Ethiopia

To do this, the church had to find out what had happened in the past, he said.

The Pope made the comments to a group of visiting bishops from Ireland, where abuse scandals dating back decades have damaged the reputation of the church.

Trust in the clergy had been damaged, Pope Benedict said, and rebuilding confidence was an urgent task.

In March, a report from the Archdiocese of Dublin said that more than 100 Catholic priests in Dublin were suspected of having abused children in the last 66 years.

The wounds caused by such acts run deep, and it is an urgent task to rebuild confidence and trust where these have been damaged Pope Benedict

But there have been other scandals in various parts of the world.

In the US, a Boston-based scandal in 2002 led to the of a number of priests, large payouts to dozens of victims and allegations of a cover-up by senior clergy.

‘Bring healing’

Pope Benedict said that abuse scandals had created deep wounds in the church.

“It is important to establish the truth of what happened in the past, to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent it from occurring again,” he said, according to a copy of the speech released by the Vatican.

“Above all, (it is important) to bring healing to the victims and to all those affected by these egregious crimes.”

But Pope Benedict said the abuse scandals should not overshadow the work of Ireland’s priests.

“The fine work and selfless of the great majority of priests and religious in Ireland should not be obscured by the transgressions of some of their brethren,” he said.

Pope Benedict spoke in some of the strongest language he has used so far of his personal anguish and horror at what happened in Ireland, says the BBC’s Christian Fraser in Rome.

But some have questioned whether the Pope’s comments are too little too late, and whether an apology should be made directly to the victims themselves.

While welcoming the Pope’s expression of regret, Colm O’Gorman, the founder of a victims’ group in Northern Ireland, said more action was required by the Vatican to introduce a worldwide system of child protection measures that would be in church law, our correspondent adds.

Health chiefs in Kent have taken to posting messages on sites promoting “dogging” - warning of a rise in sexually-transmitted diseases.

They say the craze may be partially responsible for rises in chlamydia, HIV, syphilis and hepatitis.

More than 20,000 people are registered with one UK “dogging” newsgroup.

Dogging is an extension of “swinging” parties - and involves exhibitionist sex in semi-secluded locations such as car parks or country parks.

The location of dogging “events” is now frequently advertised on websites or via mobile phone text message.

Those attracted by these messages may simply act as voyeurs - or be invited to participate.

Disease rise

The NHS Health Promotion team covering the Medway area in Kent noticed that the number of cases of hepatitis rose towards the end of 2002, and some patients said they had probably contracted the illness as a result of dogging.

They decided to post messages on the dogging sites warning of the risks of unprotected sex.

We’ve talked to people who do this - they are having unprotected sex with nine or more people in a week Dr Richard Byrne, Harper Adams University College

One reads: “Avoid the sex lottery for yourselves and your associates.” It recommends safe sex websites.

One academic who has carried out a study into dogging suggests that modern technology is leading to a swift rise in the numbers taking part.

Dr Richard Byrne, from the Rural Affairs and Environment Group at Harper Adams University College in Newport, carried out a survey of country park rangers asking them about “anti-social behaviour” in their parks.

He expected their prime concern to be vandalism and fly-tipping, but found that many complained about the rise in the use of their park as a venue for sex.

He said: “One newsgroup about dogging has more than 22,000 registered users - and one we saw which set itself up only a few weeks ago already has almost 700.

“It’s a nationwide activity and in the last four or five years it really has grown.”

Many partners

He said that the health threat should not be : “We’ve talked to people who do this - they are having unprotected sex with nine or more people in a week.

“The issue of sexual health is a big one.”

Legally, the issue of dogging is a grey area - “doggers” are committing no offence unless they are witnessed by a member of the public who can be defined as “outraged” in the eyes of the law.

A new sexual offences Bill currently moving through Parliament may give the police more options to tackle the issue, particularly if it takes place in a location where it is likely that an unwitting member of the public is likely to witness it.

However, ministers say it is not their intention to criminalise outdoor sex in a public place that is sufficiently isolated as to make witnessing unlikely.

And while voyeurism on unknowing subjects is likely to become an offence, if there is consent, there is no offence committed.

Other dangers

Dr Byrne said that because dogging operated at the “fringes of legality and social “, those taking part were at risk.

He said: “There is the potential for younger and more vulnerable people to be drawn in - certainly there is heavy use of alcohol associated with these events, and there is anecdotal evidence of rohypnol (a “date-rape” drug).

“There are concerns that prostitutes will be drawn to areas where dogging is common, and that other types of crime will increase.”

He said that, in country parks at least, changes to the design of car parks might help curb their use as venues.

However, he added: “You can’t simply increase the amount of lighting - that just makes it easier to make videos or take pictures.”