Nostalgia: My Time In A Boarding School

This is a post for @buddyup word of the week which I was supposed to post yesterday but thank to me being a little bit lazy and changing the topic last minute, I am posting it today.

I attended a boarding school for a part of my secondary school and it so happened to be a great one. We created memories with friends, went through a lot, sharpened our minds and well, became smarter (I guess). It was a whole lot of experience!

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How Did I End Up In A Boarding School?

My sister suggested the idea to my parents out of the blues, because according to her it was a great way for me to learn some of life's basic “survival” skills. Like taking care of myself, my properties, washing my clothes and keeping my space in order. My home was too much of a comfort zone and according to her, I will do very little of that kind of learning there.

My parents were against the idea, but I was so thrilled with it! My friend Josh, from school, will often tell me stories his neighbors that attended boarding schools will tell him once they were on holidays, somewhere horrifying, some fun, others mysterious, some were thrilling and others were outright outrageous. But, I was fascinated by it all.

My Dad could see the excitement on my face when my sister brought the topic up and was like “for a girl who is quite clingy and can't even wash her clothes, you sure seem too excited. How are you gonna cope?”

From that day, I made it my mission to convince them with the help of my sister, who at that point thought “I badly wanted to better myself”.

I was 13 then, in Jss 3 and once I was done with jss3, going to Ss1, that was when the decision had to be made. I told them I wasn't going back to the school I was in because I was so tired of it. I haven't changed school since I started going to school from Nursery 1, while my friends keep changing, I said. I guess at that point, it seemed to me that the more school you change, the more “cooler” you seem. Lol!

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Well, with time, we managed to convince them to get the forms for the boarding schools, and they got that of two boarding schools; Federal Government College, Maiduguri and Federal Science College, Sokoto. I wrote the exams and passed and there came the time for reg and resumption but a part of them still wasn't convinced about the whole boarding school idea.

They said I should choose between going back to my former school or another day school which I turned down. I was running late on resuming school and FGC Maiduguri said they were done taking in students for the year. My parents were stubborn but so was I.

As time went on, I was enrolled into Federal Science college, Sokoto (which I actually preferred to the FGC), the school complained it was late but they gave us a chance anyway.

The day of the journey came (after it was postponed for a week because I fell sick) Sokoto is really far from Maiduguri where I lived, about 16hrs journey or so (by road).

I have never really bothered to properly count but I can recall reaching school at around 2am (if not later) after leaving home at about 6am with my schoolmates. The government provided buses to convey us to school then but I went together with Mum the first time.

My mum decided on breaking the journey into two parts. We slept in Kano first and then continued the journey the next day. We reached Sokoto and the sun was really crazy! Maiduguri too has a really really scorching sun (often believed to be hotter than Sokoto's) but I guess the tiredness from the trip made it all worse for me. It was on that trip that I realized that I hated long road trips though, I was literally sick when we arrived (and my other journeys after that, worse)

Well, we reached school at around 3 pm and we were lucky to still find the Vice principal Admin, and he was kind enough to call the senior perfect to take care of me while my Mum sort out some things about reg and get me some other stuff from the market that we didn't buy from home

We reached the hostel and we bumped into this girl who was in SSS2 then and the SP was like, “Martha, this is your state girl ooh”. Martha seemed excited and asked if I was Afi and I said, “ yes”. Apparently, her Dad told her about me, I had no idea that my parents even knew someone from there, well, apart from one boy that was in the same class with Martha, he helped me copy some of my notes. The SP thought that since we were getting along, so she let me go with her.

We went to Martha's room, a room of 6 with most of them staying in another hostel and room other than their own, I was soon to learn that that act was referred to as “parasiting”. They had 3 SS1 students, 2 SS3 students and one SS2 student who happens to be Martha.

I removed my clothes and freshened up and got ready to rest while they got ready for prep/extra lessons. Martha offered to make some cereal for me but I really wasn't in the mood to eat anything at that point. There was a whole lot of nudity surrounding me at that point, but that was something I had to get used to, well, some apologized after showing too much. And I would say “its okay” but deep inside, I was like “can't you take your towel to the bathroom with you”. Well, soon I was to learn that some of them took their bath in the center of the compound. Yeah, you heard that right!

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I was treated nicely or maybe overly nice and it was quite overwhelming that night, I was the center of attention for a while and for some reason when I talk, my mouth will move but you wouldn't hear any voice😂😂. I felt suffocated!!! Well, from time to time, the SP would check on me to see if I was doing good and she even brought food from the dining for me on my first day.

The way I was treated was definitely far from how I was told I will be treated. Well, that was my first day! My mum left the next day after getting everything in order, she saw me with my roommate and thought I was adjusting quite well. Well, Martha got me a uniform and house wear to use before mine got ready.

That night, I heard my room seniors talk about getting me school mothers, it was more like a “necessity” in the school. There was a crazy relationship between the classes, Ss1 and 3 were often seen as good friends while SS2 are often seen as enemies (or may be rivals to SS3&1). To make the relationship a bit better when the SS2 students get to SS3 and have the “ultimate power”, SS2 girls are given SS1 girls as daughters and the Mum is supposed to wash the daughter's clothes. The washing time was supposed to be more like a bonding time. The idea was that the Mum wouldn't wanna hurt her daughter unnecessarily once she is in SS3.

Soon, I kinda adjusted to the system. I was coincidentally given the “unity” hostel, Martha's hostel but not the same room though. But I ended up staying in the room since most of the roommates didn't stay there anyway. I adjusted to the fact that I couldn't call my seniors by their first name and I had to add “senior” in front of it (like, senior Martha). It was a different world in there.

I got into a few troubles with time, once because my voice was too “low” I greeted a senior and she didn't hear me, another was because I looked at a senior in a certain way, according to her “I eyed her” which was seen as disrespectful but that wasn't it. That was how my eyes were. Well, my room senior came over and explained to her. The thing is, I never got comments on how I look at people until then, well, except for the fact that I wink a lot. That was when I started realizing that I was actually far from home, miles away…

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I made a whole lot of friends (that I miss a lot), met different people and created beautiful memories together. Those memories are quite a lot to fit in here, so maybe next post??

Much Love — Audrey❤