Boys Must Be Boys (childhood Reminiscences) [Paperback]

This book, Boys Must Be Boys, by the poet-playwright, Efe Isibor-Guobadia, will evoke pleasant nostalgia in the hearts of that generation of Nigerians born within the years 1940 to 1950. Especially for those who grew up in the Edo-Delta regions of this period, the escapades of the boys of Agbado Street axis is representative of all the boyhood adventures of those halcyon times; the years which spanned the closing days of the 2nd World War in which their fathers became men and West Africa exposed its social system to Western Education and modern civilization. Since Camara Layes African Child, there has not been any book in this genre that compares with what Efe Isibor-Guobadia has done in Boys Must Be Boys. The author presents in this book a refreshingly original approach to modern African literary expression to with an eye for details, an endearing heart for truth and an alert head for communication. Boys Must Be Boys is the reminiscences of a boy, told by a man who now has children of his own, and in his desire to communicate with his own boys who must be Boys, he has spoken a very unique and apt language, and spoken it from the perspective of boy who was a Boy. The pupils of the famous St. Jamess Anglican Foreigners Primary School (Aforeena) now Agbado Primary School, represent a generation of bridge-builders stretched all over the west African Costal Atlantic community in which boys  Who Must Be Boys were becoming men whose umbilical cord were the last to be sewn in the indigenous culture of a land changing inexorably in historically dialectic evolution. What child, in the then Midwestern Nigeria in particular and, West Africa generally, did not play the Snake Hoax, hunt with catapults, fly the ubiquitous paper kite, give grandmother invigorating tantrums? The Agbado Street urchins did al l these and more  they made bird cages that were castles, manufactured candles and spirit light that mesmerized the old and the young, and grew,l³q