Ode to my Hope Waddell

Ode to my Hope Waddell

Sometimes just being me is being you
That I lived all of 11 years in your campus
Eleven years from childhood to adolescence
Five of those eleven, as student
I just live with traits of you in me
Then being my father’s son,
I could just but imbibe more of you
Because my father was also you
Having passed through your tutelage years afore
So, loving my father was loving you
Father was much more attached to you
Later teaching there 20 straight years
And he told me the tradition runs longer
His own father was also a traveller there
So I am just a third generation of tradition
Today it is 122 years long
Since you appeared on the Calabar firmament
And began shaping and changing lives
From far and near they came
And near and far their influence go
So whenever I reference you
When your name drops off my speech and writing
Whenever I put on a memento of you
It is not just because I choose to brag
It is that the Hope Waddell foundation in me is solid
(Obo Effanga, March 8, 2017)

*On the 122nd anniversary of Hope Waddell Training Institution.
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