SNEAK PEAK INTO B. HOUSE LIFE

When you are in school you just can’t wait till its all over, I mean all the homework and assignments, the classwork, the waking up early to go to school, having periods with different teachers who just won’t slow down even in the slightest way for the slow ones to catch up or those of us who slept in class and have so many holes in our notes. There is always that one teacher who seems to enjoy giving you and your friends headaches maybe because of one bad episode with him or her that just ruined your brand in his or her eyes. But then as we all know it all must come to an end right, its just a matter of when and how long you can hold out.

I just finished the senior secondary school and I’m at home right now feeling liberated from the oppression and the rules of the boarding house and all its downs. Chale it wasn’t easy in the slightest way because in the first year we had to be the first to wake up and take our bath before the seniors also come in to take their bath. This is how a typical day begins and that is where you see the importance to have a school father who can lobby for you a little so that when work is being handed out you don’t get something so tiring or dirty. After you take your bath the next thing is work.

It’s not that we enjoyed taking our bath before we went to work but it was either that or not bathing at all so you just pick the one that best suits you. If you are lucky or unlucky and your school father gets you something like wiping shutters every morning then you should know that it’s not going to come cheap. There are like 50 other first years who also want the easy way out every morning so you should be prepared to close in on the deal with some sweet talking and painfully some amount of your provisions. I was allergic to dust but then it was either that or scrubbing. That was going to be my routine for a whole year but at least I wasn’t smelling of parazone each morning right?

Then form two came. I moved up in the aggressive boarding house food chain which meant less work for me but then again more responsibility because I had to make sure the juniors did their work well. That is the job of a monitor. Yeah, I made it to the position of monitor with a few of my friends. We were supposed to make sure that the juniors did their work well and on time. Life became a bit easier because now we could add a few more minutes to our sleep time but at the back of our minds we knew that we still had seniors who run things in the house.  

Form three, hmmmmm. That’s the peak of the food chain. Now you are the boss, you get to have school children of your own who feed you and are always around to do every silly thing you tell them to do. There is one prank which has stood the test of time. On the day the first years arrive and settle down, you send him to go and look for senior ‘Mudwei’ (there is no one like that but then since it happened to almost everyone we all know how to go about it). The unsuspecting boy goes to every corner of the house looking for this senior who does not exist and each time he asks for help the others just redirect him until eventually someone tells him the person he is looking for does not exist.

Form three seems fun at first, there is no one to tell you what to do or what not to do, we didn’t work anymore, we woke up late, etc. You are just left to yourself. That’s when the boarding house gets really fun until WASSCE draws nearer and you see people get a little more serious and stay up till odd hours. But then like everything, the day of the final paper arrived and the hours flew past like the day had only two hours in it. We could finally go out into the outside world without restrictions and not worry about being caught or without thinking of coming back the next semester.

 

All in all boarding house is an amazing experience, well it was for me anyway, because of the people I met, the silly things we did and though sometimes we got caught and punished, that’s what made it all the more memorable.

To all those who just finished their B.E.C.E. and don’t know what to expect, I don’t know which Secondary School you would go to but one thing runs through, in order to survive you need to be smart, know when to be obedient and quiet and also know when to just run away as quickly as you can. Trust me, it worked for me so when it does for you, you can thank me later.