My Thoughts are With You

Delta Steel Company Ovwain-Aladja is a tale that grips the heart and makes you ponder on man's insensate actions and how it affects other men. A company built from the proceeds of the oil boom of the 80's in Nigeria, has been left, bereft and abandoned with legs splayed like a oversexed prostitute. Retired staff are dying each and everyday, their eyes ever to light on the proceeds of decades of loyal service. Facilities and utilities left abandoned.

This company was a big dream of development and economic empowerment outside crude, but the relentless cruel few have thrown her into the dustbin of history. Those of us who grew up there; whose education was fostered among superb educators; whose parents had worked there, we have felt the care of the Nigerian government. Yes, they have shown us what it means to strive; we shall strive and indeed overcome.

This poem is dedicated to the entire former staff, staff, including those that have passed away (May they rest in perfect peace) of Delta Steel Company; Ex Students and present students of D.S.C Technical School, Primary Schools 1-4 and Challenge Academy. Our Strength and resolve remains strong. We shall overcome. peace

MY THOUGHTS ARE WITH YOU TODAY

D.S.C Township, my thoughts are on you today.

I remember your buildings vividly

Like an HD view of a documentary on pain.

I remember White House

With yellowing walls, port-holed roads

And stinking gutters.

I remember Yellow House

With whitening walls, forgotten playground

And uncompleted dreams.

I remember Red House;

The Indian’s remnants,

Light red storey buildings.

The ghetto of this ghetto paradise.

I remember Permanent Camp

The paradise of the ghetto.

(Used to think it was heaven on earth)

Weed grown roads, silent pain on heady afternoons.

I remember Camp Extension;

Fakers club.

(Used to call it extension camp)

Where everyone wore a smile and talked through noses

That had smelt poorly made stew without meat.

I remember the basketball courts,

Swimming pools, lawn tennis court

Where we pretended we had it all.

I remember my steel town today.

I remember Mobile Camp

The outskirts of my thoughts doth skirts

Your bushy rendezvous.

I remember T.H.S that hath fallen

Like the colossus at Rhodes.

I remember Atumu Pre-Nursery

Where my education was fostered.

I remember School One

Aunty Onai, Aunty Stella, Mr Efebomo and all

I remember School Two, the twin of the secondary

With an open air auditorium and little field

Now empty and abandoned.

I remember School Three

Friends I had there,

Friends till date.

I remember School Four

Misbegotten and misconceived

Out of relaxed and marinated brains

Competitors for cups at inter-school meets

With parents cheering on struggling kids

In school vests carrying banners proudly

Depicting their school badge in the wind.

I remember and I weep.

I weep Oh D.S.C!

My hometown cause I know no other.

I weep for I see you

With my child eyes;

Bold and beautiful,

Symmetrical and carefully laid out.

I see you in the morning buses

That picked daddy for work

And brought him back home

I hear you in the alarms that rang

In the mornings and evenings

I weep for I see you now

With my adult eyes;

Dirty and abandoned,

Bereft and dislocated.

I see you in the men gathered around newsstands

Jobless, hopeless, hungry and bitter.

Alarms ring no more,

Padlocks only jingle in the wind.

I see you my steel town.

My thoughts revolve around you today.

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