| Plus |
|
|||||
|
Fragments
of an autobiography - Part IV - by Prof. P.G. Cooray
Having her address, we decided to call on her, and when she opened the door to my knock, she nearly collapsed in surprise! We spent a few pleasant hours with her and her husband, who drove us around Malta and showed us some of the sights, before continuing our journey. After spending Christmas in London, we sailed for Nigeria from Liverpool on an Elder Dempster Line ship. On the way to Lagos, we called at the Canary Islands, where I was fascinated by evidence of their volcanic origin, then at the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown where we met an old friend, former Wesleyite K. Nithiyanathan, who held high office in the country's legal system, and also at Accra. When we got to Nigeria, we were taken to Ibadan, where the University of Ife was temporarily housed, next to Ibadan University. We stayed at the university's guest house, and were entertained to dinner by Professor Oyawoye in his home on that first night. The meal was cooked in palm oil, which we were not used to, and it caused Joan some digestive problems. We also met Hugh and Ruth Balmond, and Al Rogers, who had been appointed Head of Department. As it was a new department, Al and I spent many hours working out a geology honours' programme and the syllabi for different subjects. We lived in Ibadan until 1970, occupying a flat on the outskirts of the town until we were given a house on the campus. During those first few years, we had our own lecture rooms and staff offices adjacent to Ibadan University, but we had close contact with the Geology Department of that university. Among the staff there were Kevin Burke, now in the United States, and Yoop Dessauvagie, whom I came across many years later at the ITC in Holland. Another friend we made in those years was John Wright, who was teaching in Ahmadu Bellow University in Zaria, northern Nigeria. The first time we met was when he came to see me in Ibadan, and my recollections of that visit were of a highly energetic, highly motivated and restless spirit, who kept walking up and down my room while talking to me. We have remained friends through the years, and though he has calmed down somewhat, John is still a highly motivated teacher, now of marine geology. In 1968, we went to Prague to attend the International Geological Congress, after being assured that it was safe to go in spite of the Russians massing on the borders of Czechoslovakia. The night before the opening, we went to a 'cello recital' in one of the fine churches in Prague, and met many old friends. The opening session was impressive, with the Czech Symphony Orchestra playing Smetana's Vltava, that epic musical picture of the river which flows through Prague, and at the end of the first technical session that day I presented my paper on "Charnockites as Metamorphic rocks", which was well received. The next morning, when I looked out of our bedroom window, I saw groups of people gathered on the road outside our hotel, and when I went down to the reception, I found many of the staff in tears! I was told that the Russians had invaded the country in the night and their tanks were in occupation of Prague; we could see the tanks just outside our hotel as we looked out of the window! That was the end of the Congress, and after a few days of restricted movement and meagre meals, we managed to get on a train to Nuremberg, from where we flew to Fishlisbach in Switzerland, where Joan's cousin Neville Schneider-Loos lived. The University of Ife moved to its own campus in Ile-Ife, which is famous for its chieftain, the Oni of Ife and for the bronze and terra cotta heads of the 11th to the 15th centuries found there. The new campus was built on many, many square miles of virgin forest land that had been cleared, and its beautiful campus was spread out, with an imposing drive from the main gateway leading to the main library, with magnificent playing fields on one side. The Geology Department moved to the new campus in 1970, and we were given a brand new house which was not completed and was surrounded by bare earth, with not a blade of grass growing on it! We well remember the first night we were there, because we were sitting around after dinner when a tall, imposing looking Nigerian walked in through the front door to find out how we were getting on. It was our Vice Chancellor, Professor Oluwasami, and that concern for his staff was the hallmark of that remarkable man. One consequence of our move was that there was no suitable school for Shantini there. She spent a term in an American school some miles away, but was not happy with the system of teaching there, so when I had a six-month sabbatical in the latter half of 1970, we went to England, and I spent my sabbatical in the Geology Department of Leeds University. We took the opportunity of putting Shantini in Hunmanby Hall at Filey, on the Yorkshire coast, one of the leading Methodist schools for girls. We saw her every weekend, either by our going to Filey or by her coming to our little semi-detached cottage in Bramhope. After some years at Hunmanby, Shantini went to Trinity College of Music in London on a scholarship, studied flute and piano, and has lived in London ever since. My first appointment was as senior lecturer, but I was promoted to reader in 1969, and to full professor and head of department the following year as Al Rogers had left. By then I had a competent staff of Nigerians and expatriates, among whom were Drs. Kayode, Adegoke and Azis among the former, and Prof. Artsybashev and another Russian professor, who introduced a degree in geophysics to our programme, and Jan Verhofstad from Holland, with whom I still keep in contact. All of them gave me their full support in running the department, and I had an excellent chief technician, Stephen Quartey, a Ghanian who went with me to Zambia a few years later. One thing I well remember about life is that Joan and I used to drive to the playing fields for an evening walk, and as the day came to a close the sky became black by hundreds, probably thousands, of bats winging their way to their resting places in the forests around us. That was a spectacular and unforgettable sight! Our closest friends were Hugh and Ruth Balmond, and often at night, seeing our lights on, they would drive down to our front door and we would sit talking about one thing or another till long after midnight. I did my best to stress the importance of field work not only at Ife but wherever else I taught during those years abroad. This was something that had been drilled into me at Imperial College, and which I carried with me in the years after. We took our students on many field trips, and held many field camps where we taught them how to map the geology of an area, make a geological map, and how to write a report on the geology of the area mapped. Every final-year honours students had to map an area independently, with little supervision, as my philosophy has been that you cannot be a good geologist unless you know how to map. One year we took our students up to the Jos Plateau, which is famous for its Younger Granite intrusions and Ring Dykes, and they and the class from Ahmadu Bellow University in the north, under the supervision of Professor Dave Turner, mapped a whole valley. Our students mapped one half of it and the other group mapped the other half, and at the end of the week we put the results together and came up with a geological map of the whole valley. That was a useful experience for all concerned. One other activity I was involved in at Ife was coaching the hockey team, and the day before we left, the Sports Master and some of the players came home and presented me with a brass replica of an Ife head, an act that touched me very much. That head still dominates the top of my bookshelves in my study at Mahakanda! About 1972, Professor Oyawoye approached me about going to Zambia to set up a geology department in the new School of Mines that was being set up in the University of Zambia. This was a great opportunity and a challenge, and I accepted it for two reasons. One was that I had already served six years at Ife and the time seemed ripe for a change; the other was that one of my Nigerian colleagues was breathing down my neck, wanting to take my place. Leaving Ife was going to be a big wrench as we had grown to like the life there and the extrovert Nigerians very much. A few weeks
before we were due to leave, one of the senior members of the Science
Faculty urged me to stay on at Ife as they wanted me to be the Dean
of the Faculty. However, I had already committed myself to going
to Zambia, and it was too late to change that decision. |
||||||
Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
