Essential Elements: The Rising Sun of Biafra by Edward C. Halperin, MD, MA

Essential Elements

Figure 1.

The Rising Sun of Biafra

Edward C. Halperin, MD, MA

I am the Chancellor/CEO of a university. While seated in my study at home, I was Zoom interviewing a candidate for a professor’s position in microbiology. The faculty candidate’s resume indicated that she had made stops at universities on three continents for her undergraduate and graduate studies and post-doctoral fellowship. I asked if that amount of relocating was diffi cult.

“I am an Igbo,“ she explained. “And almost anywhere you go in the world you will fi nd other Igbo people to make you feel at home and comfortable in your new community.”

She told me that she had immediately taken a liking to our university’s central administration building because, on the building’s pediment, there was a decorative image of a rising sun. The administration building was a repurposed tuberculosis and polio children’s sanitarium from the 1930s. Prior to the discovery of antibiotics, part of the therapy for tuberculosis was fresh air and sunshine – thus the rising sun decorative motif. The rising sun on the building reminded her of home, she said, because it had symbolic meaning.

“That means you’re from what we would call, nowadays, southeastern Nigeria, I would guess,” I replied. “When I was a teenager, it was the Republic of Biafra for a brief period of time. The symbol of Biafra was a rising sun.”

“That’s exactly right,” she said while staring at me on the Zoom like I was a creature from another planet. “And how in the world do you know that?"

“It’s simple,” I said, “I am a stamp collector.”

328 November-December 2022 www.collectorsclub.org

I asked her to wait for a minute. I got out of my chair, went to a shelf in my study, and pulled down one of my stamp albums. After I located the album page I was looking for, I pulled out an envelope and held it in front of the computer camera (Figure 1).

“Look,” I showed her, “when I was 13 years old I read an article in the stamp collector’s column of my local newspaper. It said you could write to a philatelic dealer in London and order the postage stamps of Biafra. I received a reply from London with the price list. I placed an order and they sent me the stamps in this envelope. I put the stamps in my stamp album and, 55 years later, here they are. Look at this one (Figure 2). It shows the rising sun upon the fl ag of Biafra. A major city in the country was Port Harcourt, wasn’t it?”

My faculty applicant was astounded. “It was Port Harcourt! Please, hold the stamp up again to the camera, I want to take a picture with my cell phone and show my husband. I can’t believe that I have met someone who knows about the rising sun of Biafra. Thank you for sharing.”

“On the contrary,” I replied, “It is I who must thank you. After sitt ing in my stamp album for 55 years you’re the fi rst person I have had the opportunity to show these stamps to who appreciates them! Now I can truly say I am glad I bought them!”

Figure 2.

By the way, she got the job.

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Collectors Club Philatelist Volume 101, Number 6 329