Of Teachers And Et Cetera (Kinda late, but blame me not. Na sallah enjoyment cause am) My mom is a retired school Principal. She specialised in Mathematics. My friends still wonder to this day, especially when it comes for us to foot the bill after drinking at roadside joints, at how easy it is for me to calculate the money faster than the bar-girls calculator. Well, blame it on my mother. I am damn good with figures thanks to her - and my dad. (Though when it comes to the area of being good with Figure 8, I think that that is something I got from Oga Adam - or Uncle Lienus. Nuff sed. Let us kwontinue.) Being brought up in a family with a chartered accountant dad and a teacher mom, it was little wonder that I learnt how to read quite early and got to do well in school. There was an academic air in our household. Being the bibliophile, I learnt secrets beyond my years from books. But my school teachers have been an odd mixture right from my kindergarten days. Right from my ota akara days, I have always been my female teachers favourite. I guess there is something about me which brings out the mother in women - and the murder in a few women as well. Either way, I have never been able to sail through unnoticed by my teachers, especially the female ones. The male ones na anoda tori - thank Jah. But let me mention only two teachers from my Primary School. My Primary 3 teacher helped me grow in confidence academically. Through her, I learnt that there was nothing to this academics thingy. Within a space of three terms, I moved from the 35th position to the 1st position in a class of 43. My Primary Six teacher was a former classmate of my mother back in their Secondary School days. She seized my Mayor Of Casterbridge because, for her, I was still too young to understand such books. Funny though, by then, I had read Shakespeare and other far more complex books. It was also the same teacher who wrote in my School Leaving Certificate that I will be a writer when I grow up. I do not know if she has been vindicated. Secondary School happened during the military years. Babaginda and Abacha, with a Shonekan interlude in-between. It was there that I met mind-shapers and Boko Haram guys. Mr Ogbe was a mind-shaper. Mr Omeke was Boko Haram. Mr Ogbe was a failed writer who was passionate about literature. He pushed me to read good books. I lost my taste for trash lit at that period. He often praised Yours Yamly in his Literature classes as an example for other young men and young women. Mr Ogbe helped me also to get chix in his extra-mural classes - albeit unwittingly. The girls wanted to be with the big-headed genius who spoke like an audio copy of a Michael West dictionary. Big ups, Mr Ogbe. Thank you for everything. Mr Omeke was an Attila who used to seize any book which was not in our school syllabus. The man stole many books from me. Back when we were in SS2, a few years after our encounters, somebody arranged for Coal Camp mechanics to beat him up. He was absent from school for a month. He came back, sporting a black eye and a disfigured face. I spit on the memory of that Book Ibori, that Shekau of the 90s, that tinpot terrorist. Tufiakwa gi. Then I entered the Seminary and studied Philosophy. Dominican Institute, Ibadan, had many erudite lecturers. All our teachers were professors or Ph. D.s. I remember Fr Joseph Kenny, a Professor of Religion at the University of Ibadan. Man Genius, he could speak at least ten languages at that time. I remember him speaking Igbo, Yoruba, Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Greek and some other languages. Fr Kenny was an old American Dominican. During lectures, Fr Kenny would sometimes forget where he was and lie on the table before the lecture-room. He would raise his tee-shirt and start picking at his white-haired belly, while teaching a bunch of students who had to make tough efforts to keep their faces straight. But the man was a genius. I dunno if he is still alive now. I am yet to meet anybody who is as brilliant as he was then. Fr Kenny, I say ase and more picking to you. There were also other lecturers. Ekanola was the UI genius who loved to show off and tell us of his First Class and etcheteram etchetaram. Olaoba was the poet and Patrick Obahiagbon who taught us Anthropology. There were other lecturers. They were all very good. I remember Dr Oriaku. He taught us English Language. He taught us that we should never ashamed to speak our authentic Naija accented English, provided say we tried vis-a-vis the pronunciations and sentence constructions. I remember all my teachers. And the ones who taught me Law. Standing out from the pack is Professor Okere who taught us International Law. Brilliant man who studied in France. He would intimidate the whole class with his immense erudition. One of his favourite indulgences then was to single out the hottest girls in the class and ask them arcane questions like what is the capital of Iceland? and etcheteram etchetaram. Big ups to those who taught me Law. There were also the dead folks who taught me creative writing via their works. I single out Joyce, Neruda and Pound, and that disturbed D.H. Lawrence with the craxy Viriginia Woolf. I am still learning from my dead teachers. There are also living ones. I say a shout out to all my teachers. I do not know where a teachers reward lies, or whether teaching itself is its own reward. I do not know and I do not care. I am not a teacher and have no intention of being one - at least for now. But all I know is that I could never have been this Bardmus you guys know without my teachers - both living and dead. I am grateful to all my teachers. Teachers rock any day, any time. This is a long piece of masturbation - wordsturbation - but it is only my own little way of appreciating teachers everywhere. Thank you for being yourselves. Thank God I met all of you. Selah. P.S.: I have deliberately omitted teashers who taught me the bad things of life: drinking, toasting, kissology, goat-meat devouring, and other such related matters. Their reward dey for God hand. Na God go judge them. Amen. Uncle Lienus, you taught me how to lie. May Jesus be your fence both now and forever. Iseeeeeee. Bene, I done tire. Make I stop here. *goes off into a yam-farm*
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 11:01:01 +0000
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