Shell Camp (A Couplet) Poem by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

O Shell Camp, I enrolled in you in 1977 September
This and other things I will forever remember

Those days were smooth, halcyon and benevolent
These days are crooked, hellish and violent

Swathed in white on crimson, I inhaled the air
Of supreme confidence that wafted sweetly from ear to ear

And I laid prostrate to the tutelage of pedagogues
Who traded in mind-enhancing rhetoric like priests of synagogues.

And I gamboled with boys through elated whims of all things boyish
From girls, I learned to fret feebly over all things gibberish.

Paths came under the lining method of trees, shaping bowers
In the mould of canopies that shielded us from showers

When the heavens spat like hell, from May to October, through early
November, when thunder rumbled angrily as it always does yearly.

The Paternoster and Psalm 23 built panoplies that egged us on.
From crumpled, colourless papers, we issued morning information

O Shell Camp, you were truly an academic camp
Where one encamped with every other thing except lamp.

Where we began with Nigeria, We Hail Thee
And ended with Arise, O Compatriots, a hymn that has come to be

Songs and madrigals and poems reigned from Monday to Friday
Humpty Dumpty, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Solomon Grundy.

Little vagrants, we traipsed, wind-dispersed, to all places –
Alvan and IDC quarters, and returned to classes with all traces

Of waltzing matilda: vermilion lips and stressed animation.
Protean vagaries of life limit one’s search for coordinated adumberation.

To the Craft Centre we plodded, with sweat fatigue and solar humiliation,
Just to add craft and skills to our overburdened sense of education.

Esteemed Shell Campers, let us breathe spring unto the verdure
Of our reminiscences, to curb the stench of ordure,

Frowsy and sickening, from harming our culture
Which, in essence, should be cast in sculpture.

And if this tiny poem is to be read aloud
Let winking adults and wincing children be allowed

To hear without the least fathomable rage,
Testimonies to an adorable age.

(Dedicated to all pupils of Shell Camp, past and present, dead and alive.)