Searing Heat…

A Sojourner’s Return

Searing Heat….

Obad had barely invested two weeks of his sojourn in the city, which was to be home for the near future when the searing heat creeped up on him. It was under the oppressiveness of this searing that he completed of some formalities at the Human Resources Department. He had known and experienced oppression before from his secondary school and university days but this was as a student. He had been tutored in some principles that he had to withstand oppression wherever found and offer leadership in times of confrontation with evil. 

He had taken the principled stand in the past, that an offence against one Nigerian student was one against every student. He had assumed a role of mobilising others in the general populace of students. For all his cherished principles he had paid a heavy price. But his life had always never been that simple, it was a complexity of  straddles, of diametrical opposed tendencies, between being in the vanguard of overthrowing the old order and ushering a new socialist and democratic one or simply concerning himself with basic welfare issues on the campus and the general condition of students. 

This day, the oppressive sun’s heat, however, presented a varied form of challenge. In his futile bid to resist it the drippings emerged from the bald patch on his head now resembling a lake surrounded with shrubs. The drippings transformed into a drench and then the inevitable soaking of sweat followed as he trod purposively away from the Administrative buildings into the inner recesses of the campus.

The University terrain and its buildings appeared very deceptive and concealed within it a prettying.  Its structures were in dippings of pure white, glazed over with subtle blue at the edges. In Obad’s imagination, edging on the febrile, he thought with impression that this was a successful attempt at distinctiveness and of branding. What he conceptualised as he walked through the lanes are structures which at first glance presented a compact row. But as he was enticed further, inching bit by bit into the depth of its bowels the revelation of much beauty, complexity, intrigue and the variety of its architecture was exposed to him.

The University campus was broken up by the lows and heights of valleys, shadowed by hills in the background and with an undulating expanse of land before him. In the inner core, the under belly, a stadium broke up the architecture, it was surrounded and bounded with spectator stands.

Obed was jolted back to the land of the pragmatic as he arrived at the Faculty of Law, drenched in sweat with his black suit top slung across his shoulder, and clutching his academic laurels masquerading as credentials. Here he found the grandest of buildings and was catapulted into a nicely apportioned ground floor arranged into offices and seminar rooms all sequestered around with iron bars glazed in blue to protect its open courtyard. He proceeded with feeble attempts laced in weariness up along the staircase leading to the Faculty Dean’s office. He swept past the Personal Assistant and found the Dean nestled in the large expansive office with smatterings of law books in the background. With certainty of purpose and carefully affected sentences Obed introduced himself.