The Eagles must return to rescue, repair and restore the roost
(A homecoming message to GSSAOBA, October 2009)
As you go on homecoming this week, we who are unable to come home at this time, would like you to know that we will be there with you in mind and spirit.
Home is where our hearts are.
True, home has been defiled and desecrated but home remains home. True, home has been neglected and abandoned by her irresponsible custodians yet home remains home. True home today wears a look a far cry from the one we all remember yet home is home.
Home is more than buildings, more than brick and mortar. Home is a place of memories and meaning. Every last standing brick, every dilapidated building, every empty space that once contained a window or a door has a story behind it and thus still carries a significance that transcends its current condition.
Look at Okpara House. There is an invisible sign that says: “ABC Nwosu once lived here.” One can still hear his boisterous laugh echoing through Okpara House and all the way to the Assembly Hall. Look at the main field and hear the crack of the cricket bat as S.E. (Anene) Obukwelu bats a 4 (or is it a 6?). One still sees “Eroja” being chased across the field by “Egbe” on a PE morning. Enter the Assembly Hall and you can still hear “Egbe’s” gravely and cracked voice as it trails at the end of each verse sung during morning assembly. Look at the main classroom block and you can hear the Maths master, “Mantissa”, telling boys who think they should have scored higher in a test to “Stop begging for marks”. And the other Maths master “Unwound” calling on a student: “Azuka, Azuka, Azuka” to which the latter comically responds “Sir, Sir, Sir! Had I three ears I’d hear thee” (a la the weird sisters and Macbeth). Look at Afikpo House and recall that Professor Mba once held sway here as House Captain. The steps? Who can forget them? This was where as oins we ran the gauntlet of class 2 boys who sat on either side waiting for us to leave the dining hall on Sunday evenings. As we left the dining hall, we were met with the order “Oins! start greeting the steps!” And we greeted the steps.
Yes GSSA is a place of memories, precious memories. You cannot look at any building or vista without being reminded of something. Like the day (Monday, 4/4/66) I was walking in front of Okpara House, made the left turn at the corner of the building to go to Charles Low House only to come face to face with my townsman, Leonard Ezegbunam, who blurted out excitedly: “They say you made Aggregate 6!” Or that last day in July 1967, as the storm clouds of war already hung low over us, as we stood between Okpara and Ibiam Houses waiting for transportation, unaware that decades would pass before some of us might again set foot on that spot.
None of us takes the School House common room at face value, the absence of a roof and the crumbling walls notwithstanding. For we recall that within these four walls, standing on this very floor now overgrown with grass, once every week, 50 boys assembled in devotion to worship God during house prayers – one of the routines that gave purpose and meaning to their lives. Dr. Richard Oboka, Dr. Joshua Anyiwo and Arc Ruby Okafor were among those boys.
Even in their crumbling state, these buildings still stand tall, proud of what they accomplished. These buildings whose roofs – if they still exist – have been cracked by mindless neglect to create leaks which are “like a breach in nature for ruin’s wasteful entrance”… These buildings know what they have done. No amount of neglect can deny what they have already accomplished. Like the ruins of ancient Egypt or Greece or Rome or Zimbabwe, their dignity remains intact but their condition is a silent but potent rebuke of the times – a decadent and dark age in which values are inverted and corruption and theft no longer carry a stigma and corrupt leaders neglect the education of children and hold the future hostage to naked and unbridled greed by stealing public money to build gilded tombs. (Do the fools not know that “gilded tombs do worms enfold.”)
These decrepit school buildings saw a past in which they were not merely shelters. They were veritable incubators of futures of substance. Thanks to their service, the hatchlings of yesteryears have made good. The once fledgling eaglets have grown strong wings. The eagles must now return to rescue, repair and restore the roost.
Happy Homecoming! May God bless you. Let the words of your mouth and the meditation of your heart and the deeds you decide to embark upon be acceptable in His sight and let them all be to the greater restored glory of this place we all call home.
Long live GSSA! And may God bless and preserve her for countless future generations.
Obi Nwasokwa, M.D., Ph.D. FACC
School Captain, GSSA, 1967-1970
Chairman, Board of Trustees, GSSAAA