It was some time in the academic session of January to December of 1960 at Queen’s School Enugu. What started as fun amongst the juniors in Dormitory 3 was to spread like wild fire through the entire student population to some staff including the Principal Mrs. Mary Kirkpatrick.
After the lights out at 8pm, the dormitory activities quietened down, sleep was just catching on, some student swots moved into the small hall that led to the box room and also the two central house dorms for Lander and Clapperton. They were just settling down to swot using very low turned down hurricane lamps.
Suddenly, a clatterer of winged movement broke the peace of the night. A fearsome and urgent fight of rights to survival broke between the swots and a “huge” night bird. Brooms, books, bags and any available armory was used as defensive weapons by the student swots. The enigmatic fearsome night bird used its claws, dangerously pointed beak and clapping its strong wide wings to attack zig zaggedly the opposition. Both parties were bent on beating the life out of each other. Screams and shouts, fear and tremor filled the hallway as student reinforcements came to support the few swots. With whatever weapons were available to the girls, the night bird was clobbered down.
Now the entire Dormitories’ sleep had been driven away. We all came out to see who this enemy was. What we saw caused sorrow mixed with joy to us all. For most of us, we had heard about Ernest the Owl. Besides the nursery books and paintings of the bespectacled Professor Ernest, most of us had never seen a live owl. The Owl is a night sojourner whom we heard in the comfort of our beds tweeting and hooting. Our sorrow was that this owl was so real to the pictures painted of it in the story books. It was so beautiful, serene in death with the feathers so richly arranged. The colors of its feathers were white with black spools.
We ‘cried’ for its death despite its intrusion and our violent fight to the finish, and we wished we could have adopted it as a pet just as the parrot is. However, some associated its flight into the box room as the presence of a witch. We remembered tales of owls which tooted on the roof of homesteads thus predicting an imminent death of some occupant there. This incident gave us the excuse to stay out longer from our bedtime on that Friday night.
Next day after the inspection of our weekend duty, Dormitory 3 juniors converged to deliberate on the remains of dear Professor Ernest. Without any planning committee, a burial was arranged. Someone provided a shoe box for its coffin. A dead march started; the corpse was carried from this last dormitory i.e. Dormitory 3, in a formation of choristers and relatives. The procession took off and by the time the train got to Dormitory two, more persons joined and as we proceeded, more and more students joined. In a slow march, we got past the dining hall, then to the Cana-Lily garden in front of the Staff room and by then the entire students had been aroused and solidly joined in the march. Through the Cana-Lily roundabout, we slowly marched to the Assembly hall in solemn songs.
Somehow, Mrs. Kirkpatrick was stirred by the sound of songs and came out to enquire. The picture she saw moved our dearest Matriarch. She joined us from a distance allowing us to sing and cry as some were moved to, and she gave words of encouragement for the loss of our dear Professor Ernest. As words of comfort were concluded, the casket containing the remains of Professor Ernest was lowered into Mother Earth’s arms of love. As many as could, placed earth into that improvised burial ground and amid tears and sorrows, Mother Earth welcomed Professor Ernest the Owl.
As I reflect today, looking back with joy at that spontaneous improvised act of burial, the burial of a bird we did not even know, one that we had perceived as an intruder, trespasser and an enemy but chose to love in death after we saw its true colors, I marvel and shudder at the society we have found ourselves in today, one where death has become so cheap and a burial no longer mournful and sorrowful. Only the immediate beneficiaries are now seen to grieve for their loved ones. The event of Professor Ernest’s requiem simply indicates that we all have a choice to make in life, on what we choose to value.
This fact also makes me ponder on what our children and grandchildren engage themselves in nowadays. How much extra-curricular affairs such as arts, crafts, drama, skill acquisitions, sports and other activities were done in their schools prior to the lockdown? Unfortunately, the love of social media and online games have replaced all social engagements. Their real friends are now mainly on Facebook, with growing followership on Instagram and other online portals. A good number of our children no longer have empathy nor feelings for reality as they isolate themselves from networking face to face, but rather they choose facetime. The increasing loss of moral values, with cultism that abound in institutions of learning, both in the secondary and tertiary levels and sometimes even at the primary levels. Street gangs and cultism in the neighborhoods in addition to the much more serious and devious crimes of armed robberies and kidnappings have made human life become so cheap.
The present global pandemic has further alienated mankind with the lockdown in almost every part of the universe. Learning has become online and e-commerce have now fully emerged. Zoom meetings have taken over the real face to face interactions as the world goes virtual. We are all being transformed so fast without carrying along our humanity, a fact that has unfortunately become the new normal.
Indeed, my own time with my contemporaries was phenomenal and I consider my peers and myself to be the last of the Mohicans.
By Dame Adeline Uchenna Nwazota (nee Ikokwu) MSc. (RAS), KSM, JP.
Email: adelinenwazota@yahoo.com
Retired Contract Lecturer Dept. of Animal Science
Faculty of Agriculture
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Igbariam Campus Anambra State.
Abstract from Queens’ School Enugu Through the Years: Founded in 1954. (C.2016.) Additional input on the present state of mankind, made by Chinwe Ezeanya.
