Calabar gave enterprising empires cheap labor and palm oil but gave us its legendary yams, a culinary treat in its own right within the annals of African cuisine especially to that motley of peoples who occupy 
the space that sits East of Bakassi and West of the River Mungo, uncomfortably wedged between the debris of history and the faults of tomorrow.
Calabar was our home [away from home], its nectar drawing the likes of students, traders and adventurers of all inclinations. It became our first Diaspora, a gateway to adulthood where youth was extinguished and the possibilities of a colonial-free existence boundless.
Thirty-years later, Poet Ba’bila Mutia’s adieu to Calabar gives us reason to examine and, if time permits, reexamine that magical city that today still resonates with the ironies that characterize its person:
Adieu Calabar (August 1978)
No regrets
Amidst pangs of
Hunger-ridden bowels
The vultures perched
Relishing expectancy for carrion
Your yellow-faced
Bleached whores,
Bodies coated with camwood,
Discovered talents
Between ready thighs
Running riot at the
Vapid touch of cupidity.
Sustained by maggots
The vultures preyed
Down on my scorched soul.
Balanced on the roof of
The arrogant Metropolitan
They gaze down
In ego-styled apathy at the
Crushed-millipede-soreness
Of thatched poverty.
Starved to coma
I did, of late,
Host Mary Slessor’s wraith
In mournful retribution,
Witness to the thunderous
Charge of apocalyptic horsemen,
Bloody scimitars, wrath avenged
On fleeing scavengers.
My mock-salute and triumph.
The ferry calls,
And am not yet carrion, not yet.
*Adieu Calabar was originally published in Coils of Mortal Flesh, Langaa Publishers, 2007.
Ba'bila Mutia teaches oral and written literatures, creative writing, advanced writing and research methodology, at the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon. His poetry and short stories have been featured in anthologies and reviews worldwide, and his work has been broadcast on the BBC. In June of 1993 Mutia was honoured by the Berlin Academy of Arts as special guest writer in an international writers' reading. He is the author of Whose Land? (Longman), Before This Time, Yesterday (Silex/Nouvelles du Sud) and "The Miracle" in the Heinemann Book of Contemporary African Short Stories.
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