My continual odyssey on campus always culminates in a rewarding pursuit, an ordained quest, an adventure worth embarking, which ultimately leads to not only rifling the pockets of the learning towers of legon at six thirty, exposing her volatile conscience and its failure to embrace modern trends of education, of the pursuit of knowledge, its reverence for conservatism and tradition, of the evil forces that are stalking in the darkness to pounce on her, of the accursed lips filled with demented rumors and hearsay ready to defame her, but to self knowledge, and understanding, the place I occupy in the premier university, and the meaning of my sojourn there as a student, a force, an entity. At times, there is a chagrin sense of guilt and betrayal. Because when the learning towers crumble down, collapse into debris, I would be involved, because I am involved my ordained quest must be the ultimate quest, even if others attempt, aneas like into the underworld. It would be a collective vision, which will be transformed into potent pillars of the intellect that would support the learning towers.
When ever I was free and the atmosphere friendly, I followed my ordained quest. Taking a walk round campus of tall majestic trees and towers, of serene beauty and intellectual magnificence became a ritualized habit. This time I took the complete poems of Thomas grey, a pre romantic and around the world in eighty days. Gray’s matured piece elegy written in a country churchyard inspired me greatly when I was reciting it. Where the lines the paths of glory leads but to the grave.
I was so engrossed with grays poems that only the approaching darkness was able to stop me. I started towards my hall. It was six thirty. I went past Balme library and forked left on the road. With Volta at the right hand side. My uneventful walk was suddenly transformed into a blazing drama when I saw the black saloon car again. This time packed in front of Volta hall with the dark man in it with a lady. It was plain from their behavior in the car that they were not father and daughter. But lovers. The dark man in black attire gave the young lady a kiss and she came out from the car. Take care she said and hurried to the main entrance of Volta hall. I was taken aback. When I realized that the young lady was Evelyn, kwame, my roommates girlfriend. What is she doing with the dark bald man with potbelly? I kept my silence and the whole affair was unraveled by two guys who were in front of me. I was not strained to follow them headlong to devour the mystery for the young man was shouting it so that the solemn buildings and the tall trees resounded the saga of the ill mismatched couples.
Did you take notice of the man in the dark plush car who just dropped the girl? The first guy said with a tone unmistakably tinged with disgust and cynicism.
“I saw them but I was not the one to bother or even think about them for a second for I know that it is a common sight on campus especially in front of Volta Hall. I know for sure that, the man cannot be the father of that girl. His manner and the aura of timidity around him and his fixed gaze betrayed his dark conscience and flagrant and hellish irresponsibility!” The second person responded.
“The man is a public figure. He is well known. I think you could not catch a clear view of his face. The first person said with heightened interest and enthusiasm while I followed them silently absorbing the revelations of the dark dealings of people who hold public offices who preach virtue and practice vice. They abuse power and authority invested in them by poor folks who have staked their lives and destiny on them for the betterment of the nation after numerous disappointments and setbacks. I listened to my friends who were also seriously concerned about the mania that has now engulfed campus, suffocating it. Blackening the once famous and illustrious towers of edification and the most respected and trusted principles, which no one can deny its potency and power to propel the nation forward.
What at all motivate and compel these men to indulge in such an outrageously vile crime against the earth. Shameless lecherous old men who cannot resist the temptations of the flesh. Depraved men who are engulfed by sensuality. They transform their duty to the state to carnal satisfaction. Learned, responsible, married and leaders. The very conscience of the state. The society repose absolute trust in them and some of the highest ideals unattainable in human standards is what they are believed to encompass.
These baldheaded lecherous carnal old men with demented passion for expensive wine bought at the expense of the nation, hence their protruding and disgusting bellies. They not only betray the nation, the masses, and their on revolutionary ideals but also commit an abomination against the earth. They defile it and present sham policies to the masses telling them about good moral conduct while they themselves are corrupt, sexual perverts, wretched men.
How can the nation move forward if our leader with grey hairs, which is a sign of wisdom and maturity, is caressed by a young girl who is unaware of the vicissitudes and intricacies of life and motherhood at midnight. What advise can her daughter give him? Why should a man with wife and children lose his senses humanity and conscience in front of a young naïve jezebel who claims to be a university student?
They haunt the learning towers in the darkness like vultures waiting for carcasses with their expensive cars that they bought with money stolen from the state coffers to seduce avaricious legon girls the age of their daughters.
Why should a public figure, an honorable, corrupt, scandalize and squander the treasures of the state to waste it before a young lady? Buying cars, renting apartments and moving about with in a very expensive public places, keeping them in hotels that bills in us dollars!
What an irony! What a paradox! Why should a young university student with well proportioned body, nice features, young, fresh modern voluptuous and enchantingly captivating turn down offers of equally young men also receiving university education with high aspirations and ideals for old withered crooks the size of their fathers’.
If not ignorance and avarice. False perceptions and wrong notions. Fallacious and childish notions of sexuality and beastly modernism. The desire to lead well expensive lives on campus. To ride in latest models while her colleagues in the house perceived to be ignorant of the world of modernism wallow in squalor, filth waiting for proper marriage for the sake of the health of the society and virtue.
Who at all allowed these susceptible and vulnerable ladies to the hill of knowledge? It is indeed paradoxical for the tower of learning to harbor such abominable wretches!
I was emotionally purged by the vociferous charges of my friends who seemed unable to tolerate immorality for seconds. From their actions and reactions I was fully convinced that they have noble ideals and ideas and are confident over its validity. Only that they are trapped in space and time and the place they find themselves are averse to such things, it is now fast losing grip on what sustains it. So as I was later to learn, my mates who would opt for a sexual pervert to be burnt alive were from vandal and can actually vandalize, they are students, mere tiny creatures in front of the evil men who seem to have all the advantages.
When I reached legon hall, it was almost getting to 6 pm. Kwame was in a cheerful mood. He shouted accolades on me and hugged me. I was baffled. Because for sometime now, kwame was the very epitome of the crypt. Silent, morose and meditative, at times tearful.
You look happy and joyous. I am very happy for you. But I must ask for forgiveness if what I have to tell you offends you. I regret to taint your happy mood. You know nowadays you seldom laugh. Kwame laughed.
“I am ready for whatever you have to tell me. I promise you it will not tickle my mood a bit. Go on and tell me Julius.”
“Well, I will tell you if you are ready and happy to hear a bad news. I saw the DEMON LOVER on campus today and two angelic creatures who scathingly condemned their actions. The Demon lover was with your fiancée.
Kwame burst into uncontrollable laughter. He laughed loud and indicated with his hands that I should continue telling him more.
I grew apprehensive. I actually thought that I had made kwame mad by my horrifying revelation.
Kwame stopped laughing and grew serious. Julius, he said. The demon lover you saw with Evelyn was in fact the cause of my emotional affliction and dissolution. This same demon made me almost go mad. But I was able to go about it and now I am more than triumphant. Don’t think you are scaring me with the lecherous saga of a bald man with pot belly on campus and a greedy girl who is ready to sell herself, exchange her pride for money. I may be poor, I may come from a very poor home but my priority is education, knowledge of the sublime and not the pursuit of a campus girl who would have to keep me as a standby campus fiancé and follow old men for money.
I was affected by kwame’s impeccable reasoning and emotional development. His faultless maturity.
These are some of the ideals I had wanted you to attain long ago.
I understand. Kwame said.
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