She sprawled across the breadth of the land. She lay humbly
Like someone listening to the Ocarina of time
Wasting away to carefree and careless governments
Losing the charm it was once known for
And settling for lesser things and lesser people
Ogbor hills abbatoirs lay with blood of sheep, pigs and cattle
The river of the Waterside wash strange men’s nakedness
Cow dung, pig leftover feasts and human wastes
Graciously find their way into the fast flowing rivers
Ogbor hill lives peacefully, she co-exists well with others;
The mechanic, the merchandisers, the retail marketers
The manufacturers, industrialists and fabricators
The wood smith, the metal smith and the vulcanizer
The educators, the transporters and the market!
In the grim darkness of the nights
Came tiny illuminations from thousands of light bulbs
From the surrounding hills and falls of shanties and slums
Came noises of man, machine and animals
Each hussling to stay alive, each fighting to survive
Some weak, some low, some high and some strong
The Waterside, the gateway to the hills stay cool
Warming the over heating causes of the industries
And man and his numerous mad machines
Driving nature mad with unrelented determination
Roads scatter, tarred, untarred, patched, degraded
Yet men thrived and moved about their business
Some build on the small roads, some on the drainages
The great quietness of the day only comes at night
This humble city is full of queer whims and caprices
Up the hill lives another town with her own lifestyle
The tentacles of this little city spread like the war ants
Sprawling across the vales and the hills, consuming everywhere
The team of strange people conquer the lands
Spoiling, tilling, living, farming, working, building
A nice example of environmental degradation
A fine instance of industrial waste and global warming
The little town serve as a breathing space
Safe from the much hustle bustle of Enyimba city
Imagine awakening those moribund factories
Imagine more industrial and human waste
Imagine living in a city of wealth but a plenipotentiary of waste
Commentary.
Ogbor hill is a town, part of Aba in Abia state of Nigeria. It is known for her enterprise, people and industries. Many schools, crafts, factories, religious bodies, governmental agencies, private concerns and residencies call here home. I was born and brought up here. The common language if not the corrupted English is the Igbo language of the Eastern Nigeria.
