Post date: Aug 11, 2014 4:18:13 PM
15 March 1965
I’m on the ferry from Calabar to Oron, returning from a long mid-term weekend. I installed a tiny pipe organ for Eyo Ita. He thinks he has something great, but it only has two sets of pipes. Cost his students $5,000. He runs a school which is much like Aggrey.
While down here I inquired about teaching in Calabar next (my last) term. I must now get PC approval. Our plans to write a chem test folded when a Nigerian published one which is pretty good. If I move to Calabar I will sell my motorcycle and buy an old bicycle.
Mick and Nancy still teach in Arochuku, but they are getting very anxious to go home. Nancy will leave two terms before her planned stay.
My trip to Germany will be by air. Fly to Lagos Friday afternoon 30 July, then to Frankfurt direct 31 July 2am to 8am. I will have all Saturday to shop in Frankfurt for clothes before going to Ulm for the language course, which starts 3 August.
25 March
What a fiasco! The students are practicing marching (of all things) for the “march-past” (parade) on Youth Day, tomorrow. The Boy Scouts carry large staves and sing “Long, Long Way to Tipperary” and other native songs. Mr. Akpan is making a proper fool of himself getting the whole student body to swing their arms violently and come to attention on command. The students take it as a joke, which it is. Boy Scout program in this country has no connection with reality. The children learn nothing useful like how to find fruits or berries, build a shelter (which they don’t know because they have left the village). It is just a parlor game.
Last weekend I had a couple of visitors. I showed them the juju museum and the bridge which the Germans built before WWI for a railroad and we watched a rubber tapper pour the latex into shallow tins, add a teaspoon of acid, whence it set into sheets in about five minutes. Practical chemistry.
My Fulbright was turned down, but I still have application for any other money available.
Class Four boys requested me to teach them Additional Maths (calculus) during breakfast, but I refused. Enough work already.
I put in a request for transfer to Calabar, partly to get out of this Bedlam, and more so I can do a proper job on the organ repairs there.
There are two plants which give me a poison oak-like allergy here: Mango skins and cashew fruit. I have the latter now. The blisters don’t ooze so much, but it sure itches. Had it in my eyelids last weekend.