A Reckoning With Remo Secondary School at 80

A Reluctant Beginning

It is a part of my history I cannot ignore: a ploy by my parents to move me from the privileged environment of international primary schooling to experience integration into their culture, norms, and values, in order to foster independence and resilience during secondary boarding school, within the context of their tribal roots.

In the 30th year of the founding of Remo Secondary School, Sagamu, I gained admission after sitting the common entrance examinations and arrived from the north, ill-prepared, ill-equipped, and scarcely excited by the prospect. At age 10, my only options were between this school and Odogbolu Grammar School.

A Blur of Survival

The five years of being a student are a blur; I do not retain any particular friendships or bonds from that time. The people I considered friends were probably just fellow survivors trying to cope in a hostile environment, as we have scarcely maintained those connections since graduating.

If my memories are to be recalled, they would be in the names of the teachers rather than my classmates. The principal during my admission was Mrs Adebambo, a stoic lady who seemed to have eyes everywhere; you could hardly hide when not in the designated student assembly.

Yet I do remember hiding in a cavity behind the shrubs backing Falode House hostel as she walked by. I broke that myth.

Houses and Early Years

I was in Adedoyin House, and for my first three years, we took the wooden spoon at the Inter-House Sports Day. I was never a sportsman, but we cheered just for participation. Mr Abiona, I remember him as a kind housemaster; one of his sons was my classmate. The other two houses were Igimisoje and Mellor.

Remo Secondary School (RSS) was founded 80 years ago today by a Methodist missionary and community leaders as the first coeducational secondary school. Reverend William Frederick Mellor died in my first year at RSS.

Teachers Remembered

Of all the people who taught me, I remember most fondly Pascal Housenone, my mathematics teacher from the neighbouring Benin Republic. He taught me in my third form. Mr Adekoya taught English; he tarnished my school report that year by remarking that I was a truant. No one wondered why I was bothered, disinterested, and distracted in class; I preferred being in the library.

Of the malevolent lot was Mr Okonji, who earned the nickname Study-Study but was never able to enthuse us with his French lessons. He failed at imparting knowledge, relying on the cane; a sadist whose gratification was inflicting pain. With Mrs Odutuyo, the Yoruba teacher; the only lesson I learnt from her tutelage was adding diacritical marks to Yoruba; they both personified wickedness and abuse without accountability.

Collective Punishment

In my final year, we attended summer classes, and some classmates, intent on meeting girls one night, ran amok and caused damage and injury in the girls' hostel. Instead of investigating who the real culprits were, the school decided on collective punishment, expelling us from the boarding arrangements for the final year.

I remember the vice principal coming to the hostel and saying loudly that she knew these boys were not involved, but the decision had been made. That shaped my view and experience of RSS since the summer of 1980. I graduated in the Class of 1981; I have not returned since.

A Distance Maintained

I have observed activities of the RSS Old Students' Association from afar but have never been persuaded to join, as some of the leadership in the UK are reliquaries of memories I’d rather forget. For the record, I post this note.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Adolescence: Revisiting the RSS Class of 1981

Calling from the deep

This morning as I got to work, my phone rang and at the other end of the line was a voice I could not make out. A name and my memory went into a tailspin, I was trying to remember a quinquennial period of my life that ended just a few days over 36 years ago and my recall was not recalling much.

Apparently, one of the most enterprising of my secondary schoolmates, and I mean that in every way, he drove his own vehicle to school, but was not given a parking space within the school walls. He had set up a WhatsApp group and invited the class of 1981 to join. I was added to the group and very few could remember who I was.

Now, that I think of it, apart from my sadness at the way the Parents and Teachers Association of my secondary school treated my class in the summer of 1980, I have hardly written about my secondary school life. Yet, it is not without event and adventure.

More fiends than friends

One other thing is I have not necessarily kept contact with the closest friends I made in secondary school, from the scoundrel to the evasive, the fleeting contacts we made afterward only showed how divergent our lives had become. The common strain that brought us together was kids born abroad and with another bedwetters, but that did not beyond school materialise into friendships.

It is strange that in a conversation with my dad some time ago, he noted that I had not cultivated friendships with my secondary school mates. Then I think of friendships I have tried to rekindle from my primary school days and other friendships that have lasted a lifetime from my post-secondary school days.

There are issues that seem to set my secondary school relationships apart and I do believe the time has come to begin to document those parts of my history. Then again, I have acquaintances I made in secondary school who have indeed become friends, not only that, I have made friends with their relations too, who in some cases have married into relations of mine.

My large family of One

However, this collision of the shadows of the past with the intricate and delicate balance of my present brings some interesting areas of complex and somewhat strained conversation. We all make assumptions about the lives of others following a particular trajectory when in reality, that is rarely the case.

I have to tackle the very extant and pertinent question, “How are you and your family?”. Indeed, I have woken up in a jolt from the nightmare of dreaming I had a wife and two children. The thoughts even in the dreams questioning how all this happened to me without my involvement.

I was once integrated with a nuclear family until I was 10 before I was sent to boarding school, after that, the family was a nebulous mix of close and distant relations, many of whom I now hardly know, some have already passed on and others I relate to on Facebook. I have three half-brothers I have never met, one of whom is already a father.

In my bowels, I have reached the age of grandfatherhood, I know this because one of my very close friends who is much younger than I am has been a grandfather for at least 5 years. Yet, I cannot say I do not have a family, rather, I do have a family, it is a large family of one. I never married, I have never had kids. To enter into much more detail about that would challenge the seemingly conservative disposition of some of the entrants into the WhatsApp group.

Conserve on the detail

Suffused with religious supplication and the grandiosity of prayerful incantations, the more liberal matters of a life less ordinary may not be understood, neither would I want to impose any of my worldviews into the Remo Secondary School (RSS) Class of 1981.

My family is well, I am glad to reacquaint myself with you all, of all I can remember, we at least liked each other and there was rarely if ever, any hate or animosity between us. I look forward to recalling the wonderful memories of my early teenage years. I finished at 15, and I guess most if all are now over 50.

For God and Fatherland was the motto of the school, I guess, I am not doing much for either today, on reflection, there is much to be said and much more to be forgiven.

Childhood: Yikes! A snake visiting boarding school

Preserved for posterity

That night, there was much clamour as much of the boys' hostel emptied to chase after what then happened to be a yellowish tanned snake with a white belly - as I can recall - Poisonous snakes of Africa and Asia.

It measured about 2 metres and it was eventually preserved in formaldehyde in a large jar and put on display in the biology laboratory where specimens of other once wild and dangerous but now dead animals were racked on shelves to fill anyone with dread and fear.

Our biology teacher was a Canadian, much unlike other teachers, young, agile and rode a motorcycle, generally friendly and never menacingly cruel nor wielding a cane as the other sociopaths masquerading as teachers that our parents entrusted our care and education to.

Named for discipline

The aftermath of that night would have been grave for some, the commotion at close to midnight when lights were supposed to be out had roused the principal, a matriarch with omnipresence and omniscience that saw through you with a gaze that made you dissolve into nothingness in her presence; strict and motherly, Mrs Adebambo defined the regime of a tight ship.

She called out the sleepers; the spies and the eyes of the authorities, prefects in other words, to gather the names of the noisemakers who had breached every rule of discipline and order, that list almost as long as an arm included the great and the small, we only had to wait until the morning for the verdict which was most likely going to be a suspension rather than interminable hours of bush-clearing.

Bamboo and palm fronds

The grounds of the school were on the edge of a forest and it only had walls on the sides bordered by roads, the forest itself stretched for kilometres, I do not think we were ever sure of where the grounds ended and when we had begun to trespass on the property of neighbouring farmers.

For our annual sports days, each school house; Falode, Mellor, Igimisoje and Adedoyin built huts of a bamboo framework and palm fronds made up the walls and roofs, gathered from the surrounding forests though not too far from the hostel was a bamboo bush, probably decades old, a good few metres wide and a haven for much more than could be imagined.

Fire raiser

I had happened upon a box of matches, exuberant and carefree, as I walked past the bamboo bush, two fingers slid the match box out of its sheath, picked out a match, struck it on the igniter coating and threw it – the fire caught like kindling to tinder and I hurried my steps with the innocence of an idle pedestrian.

As the boys gathered in front of the staff building to receive the verdict of the council who were not aware of the cause of the commotion, the snake was laid lengthwise on the steps at the main entrance of the staff room, mercy came, relief came but why that all happened is only revealed today, I set fire to the habitat of creatures that could have brought a much different story than one told now.

The mischief of almost 35 years ago and that was a typical boarding school day.

Childhood: Last year at RSS

One morning in Form 5

It was during morning assembly, we were exempt sadly having been kicked out of boarding house the September before by a Parents Teachers Association that felt blanket punishment of everyone was better than determining who the culprits were who for the refusal of girls to come out to play had stoned their hostels harming the girls and damaging property during summer school.

It was literally a ruinous year for many because the strictures of boarding school were lost as parents had to find ways to handle their wards that had become day students where a majority had no family.

Substitutes of sorts

I was fortunate, I could stay with my aunt but the regimen of boarding school amongst peers after school for study, interaction and the preparation for final examinations had been lost.

To augment that, we attended remedial classes amongst those who had not been too successful the year before, but we were mixing with another crowd. With hindsight, I doubt it was extra classes we needed what we needed was the adequate setting for better understanding what we had learnt within the regular school system.

Our rotten lot

As if to compound the problem, the last session of the Sixth Form students who we had tussled with about positions of student leadership was leaving too and we found ourselves having to defer to our juniors who were now the student leaders.

That 3-set Sixth Form experiment was a disaster for our morale though even though until the time that it mattered to us, we literally adopted uncles and aunties of these sons and daughters of Anak who were giants in frame and knowledge to us puny kids barely into our teenaged years.

However, in Nigeria, no humiliation is too great for the punished because in some warped way of thinking, the punished will learn lessons, no one however audits those lessons to determine if they are the right ones.

The riot we became

What did I not see of those who were left to fend for themselves in town from parties to vices and ultimately a gang-rape that this time could not be swept under the carpet? The youngest in our year would probably have been around 14, I was barely 15 and the age range went up to about 23 or so.

I was quite tall for my age if my face did not belie a pre-pubescence of sorts, in the right crowd I did gel. At home, I also had my problems that made my parents agonise about where elements of my personality could have been derailed to become the reviled imp that had the tendency to suddenly shame them.

Seeds of life

It is probably then that the seeds had been sown that I could not possibly afford to have kids like me of what was visited upon my parents either from the emotional issues that were beyond my control that took a toll on all of us to the character issues that were in formation but had their wildly scary deviations – in the deep recesses of my mind even though I know now I am incapable of having them I still harbour the fear of having my own children.

As the examinations approached, we found study cells around town which got infiltrated with rumours of exam leaks and confidence tricksters circulated false answers to questions that many were smart not to use.

That morning

On that morning a teacher saw me in a classroom waiting and thought I was in a lower form skipping assembly, without first finding out, scolded me as they were wont to do ready to wield his cane when I told him I was in Form 5; sitting down, it seemed I could barely pull off the fact that I was in the right class.

When we completed our exams, the school did put together a valedictory service for us and for all the pride we have of having passed through Remo Secondary School, not one apology has been issued to the innocent boys who were unjustly punished in the Summer of 1980 apart from what the Vice Principal said that fateful afternoon whilst we packed our bags to leave – I know that these kids were not involved – and we weren’t.

Childhood: Ghosts and ghouls of my past

Seed thoughts of evil

I had an impressionable young mind, ripe and fertile for imagination and the imagining of things that take fear to another level.

I alluded to this in Childhood: Shocked into adolescence the two paragraphs appear below and I’ll continue from there.

I had a very terrifying experience when I returned home after 4 months down South when my aunt and our houseboy were chatting about appearances of evil and to the mind of an impressionable 10-year old there was fertile land for imaginations that could produce untold realities.

That night as my parents entertained guests, our kitchen was detached from the main building and as I went to place the dishes out at the washing area, I saw what I believed to be the devil and my life changed completely from then on, I knew fear, I knew terror, I found out that having my parents present did not save me from what my imagination could conjure for my seeing.

Ghouls and ghosts

In my first term at secondary school as a boarder, I arrived late enough to take the top bed of a bunk bed, the chap below lived to regret it, that, I wrote about in Childhood: Atòólé.

However, there was a bigger problem, we slept in pitch-darkness and the experience I had at home after a while followed me to school, my sleep interrupted one night and as I opened my eyes, I thought I saw something white fall from the high ceiling to the floor and that set me off.

I recited Psalm 23 out loud incessantly until I fell asleep out of exhaustion; it was a nuisance to others because it meant no one else could have sound sleep.

There were times I woke up and I thought I could hear things being dragged across the floor, all sorts of remedies were tried to no avail though bunking with others did seem to help, the nocturnal enuresis was intolerable.

Dark jungles of the unspeakable

I ended up with all sorts of nicknames from holy ghost to pastor, it was the latter that stuck. When the term break came, I was sent home and my parents were told I could not return to the boarding house until they had sorted the problem out.

This time between my aunt and grand-parents every kind of animist remedy was tried, baths in the strangest places, potions of suspect concoctions, an amulet belt and chewing razor blades – a story for another blog.

It was a deep dark world of all sorts of trials by anyone and everyone not to talk of the different incisions with things rubbed in on the chest, on the scalp, on my cheeks – all because a seed thought was planted in the mind of a child with a very vivid imagination.

The power of the mind

Now, one can reflect and wonder if the best thing to do was to tell better stories of triumphalism to wipe out those thoughts rather than what we all went through – the problem was my mind, my imagination and the grip it had on my reality.

There is very little you can do externally to arrest that and for all they everyone tried, the answer could have been a lot easier if we had a religion that was not steeped in superstition and fear but one that espoused a bold all-conquering Jesus.

I returned to the boarding house for the second-half of the second term, not as fearful but the mattress needing sunrays every few days.

Nigeria: Gulags of learning

Suspended for rightful protest

Some areas where educational institutions do not seem to have improved in Nigeria are those of situation analysis, student discipline, leadership and fostering an atmosphere where ideas and opinions flourish.

I write this as I read in the papers that 5 students were suspended indefinitely [1] from the Olabisi Onabanjo University having been recorded on television protesting against the raising of school fees - nothing in the story suggests they were up to anything else.

I would not go into details of that, but I would relay my own experiences of this failing.

Summer School gets hot

In the summer of 1980, I returned to school for Summer School in preparation for secondary school final examinations, we were to spend 4 weeks and for me some of those lectures were quite enlightening and instructive, I probably gained a lot in the first two weeks than I did in a whole half-term of regular school.

One weekend night, some of the more adventurous, if not the more idiotic boys in my class, who had their hormones running wilder than their brains could control them to remain human, went out to the girl’s hostels to meet up and do more with the girls.

When the girls refused to come out to play, the boys went on a rampage, destroying property and harming a few of the girls in the process, I think a few needed hospital treatment.

Judge and jury without justice

In the morning, the teaching staff and the Board of Governors met to review the situation and decide on what to do. Without interviewing any of the boys and on the emotive situation of observing the girls, they decided to close the Summer School with immediate effect.

They also decided none of the boys would return to the boarding house for the rest of their final year, having been a boarder for four years I spent my last and most important year in secondary school as a day student.

Now, the Board of Governors might have thought they were offering the best disciplinary action in excluding us from boarding school, but they never considered that without the regimen of supervision in a boarding house a good few of the boys would go off the rails.

The damage and the harshness

I believe the set of 1976-1981 could have been one of the highest achieving sets with regards to the final examinations but that unfair punishment of everyone without the investigation of who really was involved and culpable probably destroyed what could have been a solid foundation for the future of many.

Much as I did get into polytechnic the next academic year, in the end, I lost a good few years before I finally got my education back on track.

In what was a very striking observation, the vice-principal came round to supervise us packing our things in readiness for leaving Summer School, she saw two of us and said ruefully, “I am sure you were never involved in the fracas but a few unruly boys have spoilt it for everyone, even with this fate, I wish that you still encounter good fortune.”

It remains one of the things I hold against Remo Secondary School, Sagamu, I was only 14 and they never once admitted they did us wrong and it would always be a black mark on every other good thing that that school brought to helping mould the person I am now.

A letter to the hounds

Another instance was after a students’ unrest at Yaba College of Technology in 1984, we were sent home and then on re-entry we had to sign an undertaking of conformance to rules that registered us into some sort of slave camp.

One student had written a letter to the Nigerian Guardian questioning a number of unsettling activities in the school which for the sake of objectivity was critical, truthful and balanced.

However, the authorities would have none of this, so every lecturer was trying to find out who A. Joseph was, and because my first name begins with an A, I was asked at least thrice if I was the A. Joseph.

Where they should have been working together to resolve the issues raised, they were baying for blood like hounds, they wanted a scapegoat and thankfully, they never got that particular person.

A good number of us rather vocal student activists just never managed to make it out of the college with a result.

Manufacturing drones

Schools are stripping out individuality, independence and initiative; people pass through school but the school does not pass through them, we end up with drones that have excelled in regurgitating information rather than expressing knowledge, their intelligence is stifled and intellect is mediocre because they have been through the educational mangling machine that produces clones not thinkers.

You cannot express yourself, you should subsume self to the commonality of sameness or you would be punished severely – our schools are mortgaging our future because teachers, lecturers, principals, professors and chancellors would not be challenged, they would brook no questions and condemn every alternative thought.

Gulags of learning

Debate is for the outcasts, people on the road to rustication because they upset the peace equilibrium that dictates that your freedoms are only the ones you enslave yourself to and your rights are theirs to dictate – they are the benevolent masters who know what is best for you, you can never think through any problem.

Our schools have become worse than prisons, they have become gulags of learning; learning to conform, learning to obey, learning to submit and learning to be silent – they have become a malignant cancers that need to be excised from our society forthwith – the 21^st Century cannot afford to have drones, people schooled for military style obedience, people whose brains have become so idle they can no more think.

The power of the school

Forget the concept of freedom of expression, the school can make or break your life and almost always get away with it even if you win your case; you bare the mark like Cain and would never be forgiven.

How schools acquired this malevolence escapes me except for the explanation that many teachers are not in their jobs for the love of the impartation of knowledge and the development of minds but are frustrated failures that have no goodwill or inspiration.

I am still thankful that I have had teachers, lecturers and professors who have promoted the thinking culture all for selfless and noble reasons; I commend them and hope they can take hold of their schools and turn them around for the greater good of society.

Sources

[1] THISDAY ONLINE / Nigeria news / Keyamo Flays Suspension of Ogun Varsity Students

NB: I have used school in the broadest possible sense to encompass all institutions of learning.

Shame on you! Sagamu

Literary day

When I was in secondary school (Remo Secondary School) just about 30 years ago, we used to have a day of social events called the Literary Day.

Really, I must say, I never saw anything literary about that day apart from people trying to get dressed up to the nines and each prepubescent male trying to get dance with that girl he has had his eye on since he knew he could blink.

I would say, I was never trendy, not by apparel, ostentation nor shoes, but I still tried to look my best and hoped that all that time of practice with my two friends who seemed to be better dancers than one would shine on the day.

There usually was all sorts of entertainment and though we were in Sagamu, Ogun State, the traditional Eyo parade was imported from Eko (Lagos Island), it allowed boys to dress up in white hoods, hats and white masquerade wraps holding a long branch of a shorn palm frond as a beating stick, they made whooping sounds hopping about on one foot, any female who strayed into their path got whacked on the shin.

Menace and violence

The bad side of the Literary Days was evident in Lagos where groups of students would assemble as thugs and hooligans accost other students and guests to these events and by menace strip the hapless kids of their shoes, valuables and designer wear.

In my last year at school, we were off-campus and I remember that the class after ours had planned to menace and harass with violence anyone who appeared in a particular style of fashion which was called Pinto - basically it was like the Pied Piper's costume in a variety of garish colours - an unhealthy development, one must say.

Let's dance

The highlight of the day was from the early evening when we gathered in the main hall and danced to the reggae music which was the rage of the late 70s till Boney M took on and then other American fare.

Within the campus, the girls were quite astute in accessorising themselves, never did one look like the girl in class, however, only a few wore trousers, there had always been this thing about women in trousers, the chauvinistic outlook of men feeling emasculated meant females in trousers could be harassed or even worse.

The trouser thing

When we were invited to the Literary Days of sister schools, most of the other schools in Sagamu were across town. The girls who wore trousers had to wear a full wrapper over the trousers just in case they came across nasty old men whose only mission was to curse girls who strayed from the "norm".

In fact, we did learn that there was a rule in Sagamu, large as it was and it probably having the largest community of Hausas from the North in the South, women were forbidden to wear trousers.

So, imagine my surprise 30 years on, learning that the local authorities have outlawed the wearing of trousers by women in Sagamu. It makes me feel that the cocoon of my secondary school which was on the outskirts of town then, just on the edge of a forest was oasis of freedom of expression and the emancipation of the rights of women.

Sagamu is a town of quite learned people, one does have doubts about its sophistication in the light of this development and obviously the misconception that education can bring enlightenment to people steeped in the tradition of dominating not only their wives but extending that mantle of domination to cover everyone of the female gender, it saddens and it is shameful.

This is a human-rights issue, but I would not be surprised if a bible-thumping person comes up with one verse about women in men's clothes but none about men in 40% cotton and 60% polyester shirts. Shame on you! Sagamu.

Remo Secondary School (RSS) at 60

Early through school

Time passes as the 4th of February marks the 60th anniversary of Remo Secondary School in Sagamu, Ogun State, Nigeria.

I had the interesting advantage of doing a lot of things early, such that I was a year below the class average age in primary school and almost 2 years below that average in Secondary School.

My immediate sister even finished secondary school at an earlier age; she was only under 15, whilst I finish in 1981 at just 15 and a half.

We were up North in Kaduna when my parents agonised about where I should have my secondary education.

There were lots of options in the North and a very close friend of my mother really wanted me to school nearby, but there was a feeling that I needed to learn more of our traditional Yoruba background and hence, the South West offered the best opportunity.

More so, I was not that fluent in Yoruba, and with the entire commendable grasp I now have in Yoruba, I find that I speak Yoruba to almost everyone except my parents with whom I mainly converse in English.

Selection selects the worthy

Sometimes I wonder about the debate about admission selection that dominates the political debate in the UK when it comes to education.

For six months, I was in home school in Lagos with a relative who ensured I had what was necessary to do well. In one instance, as we were on our way to one of those entrance examinations we had an accident as our old banger ran into a rather expensive car.

That gave my guardian the impetus to acquire a new car which with the help of my father happened to be a Peugeot model 504 that was the car of the middle classes in the mid 1970s.

I attended a number of entrance examinations and in the end had a number of choices, but realised that whilst we did Arithmetic in the North, they did Mathematics in the South; the concept of negative numbers was alien to me, but I survived with a few lessons from an aunt.

Spooked in decisions

Odogbolu Grammer School was the nearest to my ancestral village Ijesha-Ijebu, but declined the offer when I noticed that the school literally shared its grounds with a graveyard.

I have seen a few ghosts; the experience was terrifying though the phenomenon sometimes begs for lucidity in explanation.

Mayflower School in Ikenne was considered the cream of the crop, but I was not successful in achieving the grade, so the next choice was Remo Secondary School.

As it happens it was the very first co-educational school in Nigeria, previous attempts at that model had foundered that no one expected it to work.

However, on the fourth day of February 1946, it opened its doors to new students, and I was in the class of 1976.

Admissions selection ensured we had a mixed bunch of students from all works of life and experiences, which was both wholesome and healthy.

Privilege of a good start

I was indeed a child of privilege, many who travelled from the North did so by train, which could be a very unhealthy exercise and probably unsafe for young ones too.

I flew in, was chauffeured around and kept well supplied with provision and necessities. I definitely did not lack for anything; my parents did almost too well in ensuring comfort in a wild place.

Certain events of terrifying nights which had me reading Psalm 23 aloud for hours on end lead to my being called Holy Ghost by some but more popularly Pastor.

One had to deal with the shame of bed-wetting on the one hand and just the desperation to carry on and out live that foible.

A hard life out there

The first two friends I made were just I was, born abroad with quite a bit of the tenderness that indicated we were not used to the hardships of boarding school, it probably made us ready targets for bullying, but we did have our wits about us.

You have to be wily and smart to survive in a setting where abuse could be meted out with importunity and some seniors did get their kicks out of that.

Part of the orientation included the selection into school houses; I was in Adedoyin house which came last for my  first three yearly inter-house games, the other houses were Falode, Mellor and Igimisoje all of which were names of founders or pioneers of the school.

Reverend Mellor who was a Methodist minister died in his eighties just at the end of 1976.

An academy for life

I did well in most subjects except Yoruba which was a compulsory subject until after the third year.

In the fourth year, my scores in the sciences were poor such that I had to do arty subjects like history and literature, but after the first term, it just was not my vocation and immediately, I switched to the full sciences and did quite well there.

Between the fourth and final year, we had summer school which was to help us prepare towards the West African Examinations Certificate, and in one of the most unfortunate cases of co-educational co-existences, some of my colleagues went on the rampage and attacked the girl’s hostel which left quite a few with injuries and material damage.

Judgement was swift, pervasive and indiscriminate; the summer school closed, we were sent home and not allowed to board in the fifth year.

A last year of lasting injustice

The fifth year is the most crucial year in any secondary school student’s life, the experience definitely marked everyone, especially those of us who had nothing to do with that fracas.

The board of governors then in their “all-knowing” and parochial manner did not even seek evidence from anyone, but it was also evident that the vice-principal then knew that many of us were not involved and would not get justice.

I barely did as well as I was able in my finals, however, it was enough to move on, I somehow still hold it against the school with regards to the way we were treated.

My last year was also quite interesting because then, the selection process had been abolished for just moving all the pupils from local primary schools to neighbourhood secondary schools.

Only once did I hear any of those new intakes complete a sentence in English flawlessly, it made me weep.

Schoolboys and pranks

I was quite adventurous, we went swimming in a quite notorious river at which we saw a medicine woman walk on water that much we observed as we could have broken the 100m dash record – heels touching heads – back to school, we could hardly tell the tale.

The worst times were the “mass attack” events which really meant the cutting of grass around the school which was just etched out of a forest, I never completed my allocation, sometimes, I got a good friend to help out, if he was not being feted by the girls.

We read so much pulp written by James Hadley Chase even made statements out of the book titles such as “You’re safer dead” and “The dead stay dumb”.

This in fact got other guys into trouble when they were suspected of being members of the Bucknor and Bucknor Chambers of Inquiry, I being Philip and my co-conspirator being Larry.

Well, we made our mark, in one instance; I posted a letter to the authorities about activities that involved us being forced to contribute money for voodoo amulets which would help us win the inter-school football competition.

Unfortunately, we were always second-best to Mayflower School, no matter how hard we tried.

Looking to celebrate at 70

As memories are recalled about those days, it is a shame that I did not make enduring friends of the boys I met at school; I suppose my strict upbringing forced my focus to educational pursuits to the exclusion of other adolescent pleasures.

As the school does wax older and more mature, I hope to be able to visit for the 70th anniversary, as the injustice meted out 26 years ago mingles with the joy of seeing all those whose lives were moulded as they passed through the school and the school passed through them.

RSS – Happy Birthday!!!