My life is full of experience of different kinds, acquired from different places. most of my most cherished memories were acquired in my days in boarding school. it wasn't rosy at first but eventually it started feeling like home. one of the most amazing thing about life in boarding school is our culture and rules. it might not seem like much but within the jurisdiction of the hostel our rules and regulations were very effective. it is a form of colony or community, with hierarchy of authority starting from the hotel captain then coming down to each level SS3 to JSS1, each level exercising authority over the other.
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We all get accustomed to the rules despite the challenges we face adapting to our new environment. my boarding school was not an ordinary oneπ
because the school premises was so large which gives us the boarding school student the privilege of exploring, we go into the bush to in search of things or cultivate farm lands and claim ownership of it. i planted corn during my own time, though I was not able harvest it all because some of the students have secretly invaded my farmπ.
Among the numerous cultures we practice in boarding school one especially is my favourite, that is if it works in my favour. occasionally on Saturdays after we are done doing our hostel chores which involves cleaning of the hostel and washing of our hostel appliances like bed sheet and school uniforms. each of us have our daily portions that must be taken care of, especially on the weekends we spend more time dealing with sweeping of the hostel premises and clearing of the grasses.
After all that is done, we go to the dining hall for our breakfast and we head back to the hostel. starting from 12 noon the presence of our hostel masters, hostel mistress and hostel wardens are limited because it is our sport period so they allow us to have our own me time. during this time frame we are governed by our own rules and regulations. immediately it is 12 noon a bell is rang to inform all of us that we can head to the field. which is from 12 pm to 3pm. some people who are not interested in sport like me use this period to iron out clothes and prepare for our movie night Which happens every Saturday night.
It is not just any kind of movie night because Despite being in a boarding school we still engage in a lot of fun activities. when it is 3pm the sport time is over we move down to the dining hall to eat lunch and head back to the hostel. this is when we start plotting our plans to commit a lot of atrocities π . Most times in the evening we don't usually have electricity, so under the shadow of darkness we moveπ . there is a particular culture of ours that take place during dinner on Saturday evening, immediately we noticed that there is a black out and the bell is rang to inform us that dinner is set, on a normal day we would head to the dinning Hall, sit down on our tables and chairs. we have a representative member on each table that will serve the rest of the student their meal.
But this is not the case on Saturday evening during Black out, it is survival of the fittest. immediately the bell is rang to inform us dinner is set, we will hurriedly rush down to the dinning Hall, you would hear a loud voice saying "consume" Meaning no dinning rules is applied, just take as much as you want and eat itπ . Some people end up not having anything to eat on Saturday night, especially the girls though their hostel is closer to the dining hall than ours but we still have the strength advantage. but that doesn't mean the girls don't participate in this event, they have their way of making sure they are not left out.
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I always get to to the dining hall early, even if I don't get there early during my set we created a plan to avoid forfeiting our meal. the plan was that each individual find a way to create a small group of friends or classmates so whoever gets to the dinning Hall first among the group takes the responsibility of getting a meal for all members of his group, this way everyone has something to eat and share but there are some people who prefer to work alone and eat alone.
After the whole dinning looting has happened each member will gather in their rooms known as bay, each person will bring out their loot and share, there no room for a lazy member but we also accommodate those we know are not capable enough to loot for themselves And for people like that even if they were not able to get anything for dinner they will go and eat their provisions. it is something everyone of us has.
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it was a Saturday evening, there was power outage so it is business as usual. immediately the dinner time bell was rang, I ran straight to the dining hall. the dinner for that evening was Moimoi and bread. I went along with a sack, pouring different pots of Moimoi into a sack and bread into another immediately I felt like I have had enough in order to avoid running into a senior student that might hijack my loot from me, they are the kind people with the power to loot the lootersπ. I quickly head straight to the hostel and moving towards my bay, as I was moving fast through the path ways in the hostel I ran into a bed bunk, which was purposely placed in the road to obstruct lootersπ.
The whole idea behind placing bed bunk on the road is to obstruct looters because everywhere is dark if you are running too fast you might not see it, so immediately someone runs into it, definitely you are going fall flat on your back probably in pain depending on the part of your body that got hit by the bunk. while you are still trying to pick yourself back up some students would have stolen your looted items or meal.
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In my own case, the bed bunk was placed by my bunk mate or room mate who is also a part of my group, in this case the bunk was not placed to loot looters but to prevent senior student from walking into our territory and hijacking our loot. on that day I was not aware of the bed bunk it was not time to place the bunk yet but my bunk mate decided to place the bunk early because senior student were already parading our bay.
After running into the bed back I just passed outπ , everything just went blank. I was picked up by my group who thought their trap has caught a senior student. I woke up after a couple of minutes and figured that it was my bunk mate that placed the trap, I was so pissed that I nearly bite his ear offπ.
I believe that was the only time I ran into a bed bunk because ever since then I was very careful while moving through the hostel during power outage.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled "Power outage" in hive learners community.
