RSS Mischief V - The gods with no balls

Mayflower, our nemesis

Traditional school rivalries are inbred, there is rarely an alternative frame of reference that the negative ones so easily begin to define you. Up the road from our Methodist roots Remo Secondary School (RSS) was the humanist strong Mayflower School, Ikenne.

The competition for entry into Mayflower School was stiff that some who attended primary boarding school there did not make the cut and defaulted to RSS.

We seemed to always play the second fiddle to them, in academics and quite evidently in football games. I never knew of a time that we ever beat them, no matter how we tried and that called for extraordinary measures not predicated on our Methodist provenance or the motto of our school, For God and Fatherland.

Pleading to clueless gods

Apparently, the gods, animist, fetish and dreadful had the answer to the nagging big question: How do we defeat Mayflower School at football?

We were woken up by seniors who had consulted oracles and shamans at 1:00 AM and coerced at the threat of violence and severe punishment to contribute funds to procure kurubé (fetish) services of a medicine man to gain advantage of Mayflower School at our next scheduled match.

Why this urgent need could not wait until during the day escaped me, nor did I believe there was any way we could beat Mayflower School without both the luck and the skill, and I was just annoyed that someone was ready to take money from gullible and impressionable students promising something to us that was too farfetched and unreal. Besides, what is to say Mayflower School had not procured similar services and so cancelling the presumed advantage we had purchased?

Snitching for justice

All that together in my mind fired the sense of injustice that led to my writing an anonymous letter about this nonsense and dropping it in the front car seat of the vice principal’s car. They no doubt took it seriously because the principal talked about it the next morning at the school assembly and put out a notice for whoever wrote the letter to come forward without fear of exposure.

Thinking long about it, I visited the principal the next afternoon about the matter, he assured me nothing like this would happen again and the seniors involved will be told off. Then he gave me 5 Naira and send me on my way. For the rest of my time at school, we were no more harassed for fetish seeking contributions and we still lost to Mayflower School anytime we met at the game of football.

Blog - RSS Mischief I - Yikes! A snake

Blog - RSS Mischief II - The fundamentals of fluid mechanics

Blog - RSS Mischief III - Swimming like crabs

Blog - RSS Mischief IV - Post the pots