The past week or so has been quite a frenzied one.
On the political scene, the Accra-Kumasi expressway to heaven, multiple drug-related stories, vituperative political language and the issue of alleged offences, remand and bail are all criss-crossing the firmament with vigour, almost as if they are trying to drown out each other.
Suddenly, jollof rice, sacred national dish that has been the subject of a food war between Ghana and Nigeria since time immemorial, has also adopted a faceless political flavour laced with explosive language that would make a devout nun faint. I wonder what our Nigerian friends make of this ‘palava’.
It is that season
Away from the political melee and its drama, it has been quite a busy week in many homes, as parents and guardians got their teenage wards ready for their first day in senior high school.
Some have been to hell and back to secure their preferred schools for their wards.
Others are still frantically trying to work the system through ‘protocol’, whilst others have resigned themselves to fate and convinced themselves that the school one attends does not determine one’s future.
I agree only to an extent, but that is another long argument for another day.
Across town, the iconic black-and-red trunks, chop boxes (I am not impressed by the new plastic version, being bandied about because it lacks authenticity, but again that is another story), student mattresses, khaki trousers and buckets have popped up by the roadside because it is that season of the year.
Various second-hand clothes markets are doing quite some brisk trade too, supplying white shirts and bedsheets.
Of course, beyond the standard items on the school prospectus, down to Bible/Quran, hoe, machete and detergent, the chop box too must be fed proper food. Gari.
‘Shitto’ (pepper sauce). Milk. Sugar. Tinned fish.
It goes on and on, almost unending, punching vicious holes in parental wallets and purses across the land.
Rite of passage, old memories
Perhaps one of the most life-changing rites of passage many Ghanaian teenagers in this country go through is entering senior high school (‘secondary school’ back in the day for some of us).
For many parents and guardians, the excitement is that the child is going to the next level on the educational ladder.
But it is also tinged with some anxiety, especially if the child is going to be a boarder.
Will he or she cope with the new environment?
What if their food runs out?
What if the child falls ill, especially if the school is some hours’ drive from the family home?
Many parents have not been separated from their children for even a few days prior to boarding school, so the fretting (mostly by mothers) is to be expected.
Many prospective boarders must have heard stories about boarding school life from older friends or siblings — the good, the bad and the ugly, and are not quite sure what to expect.
In October 1980, when I was leaving Tarkwa for Kumasi with my mother to begin life as a boarder at Opoku Ware School, resplendent in my crisp white shirt and khaki trousers, with brown sandals to match, I could not contain my excitement at the prospect of a sense of independence, away from the strictures of my parents.
I could smell freedom in the air.
I was to find out very quickly that independence in boarding school as a Form One student was a pipe dream.
It was a very regimented and regulated life, from rising bell at dawn to lights out after prep and hardly any breathing space in between, with tutors, prefects and seniors breathing down your neck, sometimes simultaneously.
Suddenly, I missed proper food and the famous Osofo Dadzie show on Sunday evenings on GBC after the dreaded ‘Talking Point’ show.
Yet in a curious way, even within that grim space of rules, regulations and senior students whose sole mission in life appeared to be to make Form One boys’ lives miserable, there were quite some fun moments.
In a way, I suppose we experienced what is known as the Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological response where a captive or abuse victim develops an emotional bond, sympathy, or loyalty toward their captor or abuser.
So yes, boarding house — with its cold showers at dawn during harmattan, among many others — was harsh but we grew to love it.
The food was what it was, but the soups and stews had nicknames that evoked smiles and made us plough on to fill our teenage stomachs, especially when one’s chopbox was bare.
Some Form Five boys in particular were terrible.
We found a way to outwit them by developing our own creative countermeasures, yet in an almost perverse way, we bonded with them at a certain level.
The school system was strict, but when we went for inter-school competitions, our fierce patriotism was literally out of this world.
When we became seniors and life became a little more bearable, we watched the new Form One boys every year with amusement as they tried to fit in.
Perhaps one of the reasons SHS (I still insist on ‘secondary school’!) alumni groups are so strong and effective is precisely the varying range of shared sentiment we evoke about our time in school at that young, impressionable age, so that even when we meet former tutors or seniors who tormented us in school back in the day, we are able to laugh over their antics and mention to their face their nicknames that nobody dared even whisper within their range of hearing.
Enjoying the experience
Whenever young people of the SSS/SHS generation tell me five or seven years in boarding school back in the day must have been terrible, I laugh hard and remind them they have no idea what they missed, and that only three years in boarding school seems like being rushed along a conveyor belt rather than something to be savoured, like fine wine.
Some believe the boarding system must be scrapped in its entirety. I disagree fundamentally but once again, it is an issue that merits a full discussion another day.
Ghanaians in the main seem almost hopelessly and romantically wedded to the boarding school system, given the widespread desperate attempts by many parents and guardians every year to have their wards’ residential status changed from day to boarding.
As our freshly minted boarders begin life in a different environment and try to adjust to school rules and dining hall food, I wish them well and hope they will enjoy the experience.
Dear parents and guardians of boarders, just note this: they will return home at the end of term having lost some weight and with half of the belongings you spent good money and time buying gone.
That is a key part of this important rite of passage.
But they will be fine and will blend into boarding life literally seamlessly, quicker than you can say ‘trunk and chopbox’.
Fret not!
Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng
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