The Song of Our Father

"Son, would you like to go to school?"
Asked Grandmother one afternoon;
Abo stood rooted there, and all
Thought he would go into a swoon

Then "Yes", he blurted, weighing well
The prestige and the lurking cane;
Besides, this offer, who could tell
Might never come his way again

The tailor took a week to make
His uniform, and that would mean
He was the only new intake
Who came to class like an urchin

The building was a roof on stilts
One with thatches, to be precise;
The floor was cold, compacted silt
And the four walls were yet to rise

With more pupils now in the school
Few young men went into the bush
To harvest palms for some uncle
Or carve, or farm, or even fish

After a year, another school
That now taught subjects in English;
But just because they brooked no fool
The class sizes would diminish

But Abo loved his schooling days
And prepared a strong foundation
That would translate in later years
To ventures in education

Now Standard Three was beckoning
At the St. James' School, Ekowe;
Though it was half day’s canoeing
He had to join the eager queue

Okon Ekpo Okon was then
The Headmaster there at St. James';
A character whose weathered cane
Was known to be his claim to fame

School began with the caning of
Defaulters of the previous day;
Then came assignments hard enough
To keep all the nuisance at bay

Then off he went to UAC*
To eat and drink with bosom friends;
And then at break he'd say, "I see
The morning session’s now at end"_

To pupils passing by the joint
Where he and his friends had converged
To argue on the counterpoint,
Declaring that Government had erred

And when he was ready to teach
History was the subject he chose,
As this appeared to be his niche:
An appetite for vivid prose

The History book had Calabar
As cover, and his stock story
Which sounded more like from a bar
Was one of reverse injury:

Once upon a time, went the yarn
There was a man in Calabar
Whose very surname was Inyang;
He told his slave: let’s go and buy_

Some goods you’d help me carry home;
But in truth, he wanted to sell
The bad slave for a worthwhile sum
And that done, get his peace as well

The slave, intuiting, marched ahead
With zealous steps through tedious mile;
Arrived before his master did
And said he had a "Slave for Sale"

He got a buyer, sealed the deal
Before his master came along;
So: "Inyang took a slave to sell
But the slave sold Inyang"_

Became a proverb in the land;
Okon Ekpo Okon would then
Make sure that all would understand
By setting questions One to Ten

And while they worked, he would return
To UAC for coco-cream
And W. W. Peters gin
With his emotive debate team