By Gilbert Nii Okai Addy (Knight House, 1973)
May 1998

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Saturday 14 March 1998, Speech and Prize Giving Day

The speech day ceremony had been planned for the mid-morning because of the electricity supply crisis. In our day the ceremony was always in the afternoon and sometimes went on till the evening. Obviously any evening ceremonies might require the school’s electricity generators to be on full blast for most of the day and the evening. I went for an early morning walkabout taking pictures and talking to some of the students. I went round my old Knight House dormitories and Common Room. I had a chat with a number of boys in their early teens .On my telling them that I had come to Form One in 1968, they all screamed out "Shiiiee !!!". Okay, so I may be middle-aged but I never thought I was that old. They obviously thought we ( the Class of 1973) were a real bunch of "ancient old men " since we came to Form One way back in 1968 - a good thirty years ago ! I guess when I was in Form one back then, I would have thought of any old boy who came to Form one thirty years before in 1938 as commensurately "ancient". The boys went to some length to explain the new Junior Secondary School ( JSS) and Senior Secondary School ( SSS) to me. I say "new" even though the system has been in operation for some time now simply because I’m not sure I fully understand the system or its merits and benefits.

At about 8 am we were joined by other of our mates who had just arrived from Accra who could not make the journey the previous day. We all went down to Adisadel Village for a heavy local breakfast of Fanti kenkey, freshly prepared pepper relish, fish and lots of other local delicacies that I hadn’t had for a long time. It was really just like the old school days. We had to rush back after such a heavy breakfast to don our suits and other formal outfits for the Speech day Ceremony.

The ceremony itself started at 10 am in the morning and it was pretty much as we remembered it in our days. The only difference was that in our day it was held in the Canterbury Hall whereas these days , it is held in the much enlarged Dining Hall because of the much higher numbers of students. I remember the school population in our time was about seven hundred students whereas today the figure stands at around nineteen hundred ! there were seats reserved for members of our Year Group present on both the podium and the front row of the audience. As well as the prize-giving ceremony for outstanding students, there were speeches by the Headmaster , Mr. J.E. Kitson who taught some of us physics during the early 1970s; the Chairman of the Board of Governors, Mr. Stanley Pierre, the outgoing Headprefect ; the Guest speaker the Reverend Kankam; and the chairman of the Class of 1973 Dr. Jimmy Heymann.

The Headmaster, Mr. Kitson , in his speech, went out of his way to assure the parents and old boys present in the audience, that contrary to some concerned rumours among the Santaclausian fraternity, particularly those based abroad, academic standards in the school have not fallen and that the school’s academic record under his stewardship has been true to the school’s motto of " Vel Primus Vel Cum Primis" or "Either the First or with the First". He asserted that in the SSS examinations of last year, Adisadel came third nationally and top of the schools in Cape Coast and the Central Region. This is of course meant that the school, as usual and as one might expect, outperformed "the other side" which to some Santaclausians is all that matters. There was naturally a very loud applause to this. "The other side" , for those – non-Santaclausians - who may not be aware, is the "M-School" up the road in downtown Cape Coast; the fraternity of which – even though deep in their hearts they wish they were Santaclausians - likes to remind us and rub it in, that it is in fact they, and not us, who are the country’s premier higher educational institution. I am referring of course to our age old rivals, Mfantsipim. A "Kwabotwe" friend of mine has often pulled my leg that our Santaclausian motto " Vel Primus Vel Cum Primis" meaning "Either the First or with the First" is merely a poetic expression of our frustration with Mfantsipim beating us to being the first secondary school in Ghana.

The ceremony was punctuated with some inspiring performances of various musical genres by some of the school’s musicians. We were treated to local Highlife, Jazz, Rap, Reggae and Gospel and Brass Band music. The school has always had a very strong musical tradition which I personally benefited from as a musician myself and I was most glad to see this tradition being maintained. Some of the school musical instruments though are rather old and in need of replacement. It was most noticeable how many of our contemporaries at school – both our seniors and juniors – are parents of students at the school today and it was really great seeing so many old faces. Among the old boys present were some who are far more "ancient" than our class of 1973 . The day coincided with the burial in Sekondi later that day of one of the old boys from the 1930’s Mr. Krakue Mercer, younger brother of the late Mr. James Mercer and Mr. T.M. Kodwo Mercer. As such there were a good number of old boys from those days who had to attend both events.

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