I learn while growing up that the school is the first comprehensive High school in West Africa and the biggest in the country. And so there are pictures and memories I had kept all my life and many more but now, the school is in its ruins and shadow of its self. The memories of the good old days are fast fainting as year’s rolls also along history lines. I started keeping these fast declining memories when my mother first mention to me about the schools to me. ‘You have to study hard; you know it’s a school with a lot of prestige and people with different background’. My mother who had done her teaching practice in the same school several years before then started while I looked on petrified. “Just take care and face your studies. Also remember the son of whom you are anywhere you find yourself’. She walked out of the room to attend to some other things begging for her attention. It was the day that precedes my first day at school. My mother had made me park my cloths neatly in a Portmanteau she had bought for me months before while my younger brother looked on. Jibola was younger then and could not understanding the reasons behind my parking. And only to be asked several neck breaking questions later in the night of the same day. Early the second day, we embarked of the journey that defines what I have become at the moment. My trip from Lagos to Aiyetoro which also doubles as my home town was quite interesting. Driving from one city to another with my mother’s interesting chronological naming and brief history as quick as possible of each of these cities caught me awe. After several hours of traveling, we finally arrived our destination. The hustling, bustling and maneuvering on the road is a story for another day. The entrances to the Aiyetoro city through to the heart of the town were flanked with old houses from right to the left even though it has all changed now. Beautiful sight to behold. As at then I was seeing that for the first time and several questions run through my mind begging for answers that I knew I will get as time goes on. My first day at school was different. Different in that it was the first time I will be joining the big “league”. Since the instruction at home was that “when you walk through the big gate, join the assembly and then ask for JSS1 students. Join them and after the assembly, you ask for JSS1 SW. That is your class”. As instructed by father who had earlier discharged my mother few hours after our arrival the previous day, and so I followed the instruction strictly. Then I met my first class teacher, Mr. Akinremi who also doubles as the French teacher for the whole school. Handsome, quit, intelligent and always neatly dressed. I liked him at the first sight. And then there were clicks within the class. Click of day students who had known each other from their different primary school. It was easy for them to relate. And then the second group are those that are in the boarding house. They appear clean and sounded more polished. And then the third cluster are those of us who had come from all part of the country just as the second cluster I had mentioned earlier, but had to reside in town for one reason or the other. So it was easy for the third group to relate with the first group. And then I met my cousin for the first time. A female student like me in the same class but different harm, Odun. She was from the second cluster of students that I mentioned earlier. We got acquainted easily and quickly since we have been told from home that we will be meeting each other and then I learn more on how to relate with others easily from her. In all, what trilled me most was not meeting new people and the new challenges of learning that I got over easily as time went by. But the serenity, the passion, the attachment, the life style, the sights seeing, the best of views, the school farm, the every Tuesdays environmental experiences, the hostel sights, the general laughter at the schools assembly hall, the excitement you feel when a student is been beaten and walks away as if nothing had happened (We call it dusting). The scampering for food at the dining hall (le base), the academic articulacy students cultivated, the juvenile delinquencies that got most of us into trouble, the jungles while on the run from senior students and teachers for the fear of grass cutting with a machete and carpeting. Pot hole feeling, the games, the pride, the walk ways (gang way), the inter house sports (between green house, blue house and crimson house), the literary and debating days, the respects you earn from other schools far and near, the smell of festivity in the air, the songs that we sing when we all journey home in the same commercial bus from Aiyetoro garage to Lagos on vacation day, the tension before the collection of results, the streams, the staff quarters, the beautiful flowers most especially the beautiful tree at the gate in front of the mosque that showers down beautiful whitish flowers every early December to late January, the schools general lay out, meeting your fellow students, days students, later in the evening heading to the farms with their parents, the love stories among students which I was also parts of at some times, the school uniform fashion and then almost above all, the school gigantic bell and the siren stationed at the administrative block always sounding irritation at 7.30 am every day, but also always also sounding interesting every 2.00 pm. One event that also shaped my memories is also not nu-connected. I had gone back to school one evening to look for one of my textbooks that was lost earlier in the day when I met two of my friends who also happens to be my class mates panting heavily while trying to negotiate their way through one of the jungles (escape root) and I almost seek for cover in a nearby bush. But when I discovered the two were having a blast, I beckoned at them. “Biodun where are you going, why are you trying to run at your sight of us?” One of them asked. “No am not running, I was just thinking over where I could have left my English text book”. The two of them pause for a minutes, looked at each other eye to eye and burst into a cynical laughter. “Don’t even trying going because we had gone round the whole classrooms and we didn’t have any sight of such|”. The two said while stylishly walking away with two heavy bags loaded with what I later got to understand to be loots from their every evening classrooms raid in their hands. I was startled and decided to check for myself. “Those boys are right”, I said to myself while I make my way home since it was getting late already. ***************** “It has come to our notice that all the schools lamp holders had been stolen even under the watchful eyes of guards that we have stationed everywhere”, the principal, Mr. Olanrewaju, on the high pedestal at the assembly ground started the next day of my encounter with the two boys. “If you are the one doing this, please stop for the long harm of the law not to catch up with you. And if you are caught, remember there are consequences for every action”. He concluded while the students rise to their feet as he makes his way to his office for other activities to take place for the day. At some point, the school principal had been rumored to have magical powers of detecting and fishing out earring students who had in their own wisdom might have beaten the long hands of the school law after going against it. Some said his transfer to the school was mystery and he belong to a cult group that wears white garment to their meetings. It was later that I got to know that he was a member of the celestial church of God, a white garment church. Student’s rumor was rampant those days and mostly, it was always hard to get to the root of most of it. One of such was when some senior students rushed pass my class one morning throwing everyone in confusion after the assembly. They were running towards one of the female hostels with about two other male teachers. I had thought that probably there has been a fire outbreak in one of the quarters only to find out later that a female student had reported to her class teacher that she saw headless human being walking on a single line… towards the hostel and that was the end of classes that day even though it was on a Friday. And over the weekend, I thought about the possibility in a broad day light and it doesn’t speak sense to me and could not conform to the rules of logic. And then more and more came also from different students so I resigned to the stereotypes. One afternoon while in class, the principal with some school prefects walked in and match all the boys in the class to the principal’s office. We were all linked to a crime and most of us were suspects. And as we lined up walking into the office, we were instructed to head straight into his toilet we were locked up for hours. So many things ran through our minds while we kept quite in the dark not been told of our crime. Then we saw the door open and some names were called. The first three set of boys are my close friends and during the cause of interrogation were beaten mercilessly under the watchful eyes of teachers and prefects who had been briefed earlier about the offence. Then three names again followed and then we were all called out after about three sets were called to witness the final judgment. “I am not sorry that you were all lined up and locked up like a criminal”. The principal started. “I did that for the criminals will not escape. These boys were responsible for the sudden disappearance of all the lamp holders in the school. We all almost busted into a general laughter because it sounds absurd for someone to think of stealing lamb holders and on the other hand it was cleaver of them. But we all adjust quickly not to be reprimanded. “We have replaced it several times and they kept stealing them and now it’s their time to buy it and face suspension”. He concluded. And I keep wondering why many names was not mistakenly mention because they were my closest friends and two of then I had met earlier with sacks that I had wondered its contents. Another of my discoloration was my fling with a female class mate whose friends went behind to inform her house mistress of the intimacy. I was summoned one afternoon after biology class by her house mistress for interrogation and I was sweating profusely even when I do have answers to most of her questions. I remember the look on my friend’s face when I return back to class. Horror was written all over their faces. I became another Daniel like someone that had gone into the lion’s den and returned alive. And instantly, I became an instant imp. Nobody has ever gone on that kind of a call from the house mistress and return not having a story to tell and a suspension to show for it. And now, it’s all gone with the wind. The school hardly survives. Our land of birth has been taken by foreigners and given away to them by our ancestors who has remain sleeping in their graves. The aura has disappeared and the streets are yearning for the good old days. The landscapes have been polluted like the Ogoni land and her babies are crying for help. The walls had lost her ears and the tress has lost her first seeds. The birds had gone and the rabbits had lost their natural habitat. The songs are dead and the glory of our land had faded. There are no more sights to be seen and the streams are dried of fish. The hunters and now hunted with dreams of hunger and the lands are troubled. The teacher’s fancy cars had turned scrap. Drought had bewitched the land and the rains are begging to the revamp the land. Morals are dull and the burning fires are not happy to burn the dry grasses also protesting the absence of happy extinguishing by its fun scavenging land owners. The memories are all gone and so I wished those days of Dr. Adam Skapski, Chief B. Somade, Judson T. Shapli and John Monro were here. But they are long gone with the wind. The ancestors are sleeping even in death. We are now prodigals and slaves even in our land. The student statue standing in front of the administrative block that had seen the good old days now stand alone winking in the dark. Cold and tired of standing the many trials of this limbo world, stripped naked of his antecedents and his sights are blurry. The old glories that holds the pillars of the land since we had our first labor hunts the existence our pride. And yet, we remain big on the inter spaces’ called the web for nothing. Every night was a different night and we look forward to the next day. One night, I was at home, with my father and my step mother when news came that some students were apprehended the previous night for cult related activities. I never knew what it meant, until father told me that it’s a secrete gathering of students to unleash terror on any community. Seven seniors were picked and detained at the township police station. But were subsequently released on bail. Few weeks after their release, a panel was set up by the school that finally rusticated them. One of them was a family friend. Of the seven boy arrested, four travelled out we heard the following year and the tree others made their way to the university. At that time, brilliancy was not a problem among the students. At least eighty percent of the students were extremely brilliant and ninety were fashionisters. Those were the days when Mr. Velume was the chemistry and probably the physics teacher. The only white men I met but left before I graduated. And now, I wish those days remain as it were. But I never judged those days for not been here. I have learnt that nature is neither static nor stagnant but at least we could have done something when but we did nothing. We could have preserved our culture, who we are and were. Not only in our memories, but with our structures. Because it’s our land, were we call home… for it’s the land of the brave and the land of our birth? Yes, mother was right when she told me I should remember the son of who I am, but I am sorry mother, I cannot remember where I did come from any more, because it belongs to strangers, I can only gasp for breath to remember that I once had a place called ‘the Land of my birth’.
1 comment:
Great school of honour and glory....... missed ma days in sch.
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