Tales from my finicky daughter’s school
My daughter has been regaling me with tales from this Catholic girls’ school located somewhere in the Eastern Region of Ghana that she attends.
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This girl used to be very finicky when it came to food. She did not like ‘koko’, oats, yams, cassava and other types of food. She did not also like milo and said the crumbs in the milo looked like something.
She was so into rice, pastries, jollof rice and surprisingly, ‘kokonte’.
A friend who attended this school looked at her story and advised me to choose the school for her to be infused with discipline, hard work, comportment and appreciation for all types of food. She told me that after one year, all her dislikes and finicky eating would be history...
Headmistress’ address
Thankfully, she made it at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and when we went for her prospectus, there was an interview of some sort and the headmistress, as part of her welcome address to the anxious parents, intoned, “This school is a serious school. We take girls from various backgrounds, rich, poor and pampered from all religious inclinations and prepare them well for adulthood.”
She added, “When your child enters this school, one of her legs is in the university, the rest is up to her because we would make sure she learns and the teachers made to prepare the students very well.”
Another word from this headmistress, garbed in her white Catholic sisters’ attire was: “When you enter this school, you put away all your religious inclinations and persuasions and become a Catholic and follow the religion with all its practices. Simple!!!”
I had bought a proper nice suitcase, a chop box and other accoutrements, but at the briefing, we were told to bring only three ‘Ghana must go’ bags and to pay for the cost of a cutlass, hoe and a scrubbing brush.
Opening day
We were delayed a little on the opening day and reached the school at 6 p.m. and joined the latecomer parents at the car park as the school was virtually on a lockdown observing the Angelus.
The Angelus
According to my daughter, the Angelus, a Holy Catholic prayer, is prayed three times daily at 6 a.m., at 12 p.m. and at 6 p.m. to sanctify the day and plead for Mary mother of Jesus’ intercession with God. During that prayer, the students respond with three Hail Marys. By my reckoning, by the time she finishes this school, she would have recited thousands of Hail Marys in supplications to the Holy mother who many Catholics revere.
After that intermission, I joined some parents and carried one of the heavy bags to the office block for the admission process which involved the verification of receipts and low hair cut like a police recruit, the handing over of a cutlass, hoe, a scrubbing brush, and a house dress or jersey to the new student, who was then escorted to the dormitory.
PTA meeting
I attended the first Parent Teacher Association (PTA) meeting upon some promptings that absentee parents would be fined and the student punished. The cars the parents brought to the school defy description.The big field of the school and nearby streets were filled with hundreds of the latest vehicles and it looked more of a government in power’s party convention than that of a school’s PTA meeting.
I tried to count the vehicles but lost count at some point when l overheard my mother-in-law's daughter muttering that I should make more effort to acquire a better car than my jalopy old Mercedes Benz which broke down during the journey to the school.
Getting to the end of the PTA meeting, l saw groups of closely cropped young girls marching briskly to the dining hall in what my daughter described as "calculated madness".
Some of the galore of instructions at the school include walking very fast like a British lady, no dawdling, fast eating at the dining hall and keeping a short, cropped hair. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see some barbers cropping the hair of some recalcitrant students to the standard size. Another instruction was for every student to carry two handkerchiefs and tissue all the time, not to litter and to put all small litter in their pockets.
Dining hall
The food is not anything to write home about but it suffices. When l met my daughter after the meeting, she told me that they had just finished eating the Saturday special cassava and ‘kontomire’ stew and appropriately nicknamed, spring rolls and salad.
Tea and bread is served once a week .There is a type of stew that is disdainfully nicknamed stoup or stew soup. No wonder the large quantity of provisions parents send to the various dorms in these "maya yie" bags to supplement the school food can feed an army and make even a Bishop's mouth water. When my wife helped the girl carry her things to the dormitory closet, she came back with her mouth opened. The corned beef in cartons, horlicks, beverages, sardines, short bread biscuits, milo, bottled water and the likes made the woman cajole me for some additional pension cedis to quickly purchase some more sardines to increase her daughter’s stock of it.
Changes
I have noticed some subtle changes since she came back for the easter holidays. She had put on some weight and she partakes in all the fare. The choosy eating has reduced considerably and she wakes up at dawn to help in the cleaning of the house, a chore she earlier detested, and she is now more serious with her books. All these have reduced the constant criticism from her mother as to why I sent her daughter to a strange school where they eat cassava with kontomire stew and are always reciting the rosary. A few days ago, l overheard her claiming credit for that decision.
So far so good from this school which was established in 1961 by some Roman Catholic sisters to contribute to the education of girls. Ironically, the students, the future women leaders in the country, have nicknamed the school, the Akwatia Prison for Girls.
Writer’s e-mail : [email protected] or [email protected]
