Entertainment FGC IDOANI School stories BRUCASBLOG 2021-08-17 1 Comments

FEGIDO TALES (Episode 2): So it Begins

So it Begins!

The first week for every new student then in Fegido was known as the honeymoon stage, sometimes if you are lucky, you get two weeks for your honeymoon. After these weeks elapse, your new reality begins. Academic work for me, weren’t the highlights of my time in Fegido, it was the life away from academic works. In my honeymoon stage, I had made a couple of friends. Layo, Rukewe and Amara. Layo and I became friends through a fight. From what I can remember it happened during prep in the dining hall, Alani house section to be precise. Layo claimed that where I sat down was her seat even though I got there first, I refused to stand up and she reported me to her school mother, Senior Wura, who was the Labour prefect then. To her disappointment, Senior Wura asked us to sit on the same seat together and that from that night she expected us to continue sitting together. Layo was a hot head, she pretended to do as she was told, but before I knew it, she had found another seat at another table. Later on when we both realized that we were both Js2 students, although not in the same class because I was in Js2 B and she was in Js2 A, we became fast friends.

Rukewe and I met when I went to fetch water, it was a long line and I had no hope of leaving there any time soon. Her school mother came with her to fetch water and bounced (a slang which means to overtake) the juniors who were there before her. Rukewe collected my buckets and kept it with the pile of buckets her school mother wanted to fill with water. I was so happy. The unfortunate thing about having a school mother in a class that wasn’t Ss3 then on school was that she was still a junior to someone just as you were. Senior Yeni was a good school mother, unlike other school mothers she didn’t expect me to fetch her water or bring food for her from the dinner hall or even give her my provisions. She took care of me, but only to a limit. Meeting Amara on the other hand was through my guardian, Mrs Okolie. My guardian sent her to call me on my first visiting day, the first Saturday of the month when parents came to see their children with provisions and food. As expected my mother was no show, neither was my father. Lagos was too far from Ondo for them to make that journey for just a day’s visit. Mrs Okolie tried to soften the blow of this realization but inviting me to her house at staff quarters and treating me to a nice meal, properly cooked, until what was served in the dining hall. Amara had been in Fegido since Js1 and was surprised that they admitted a student on Js2. Meeting these three girls made my first weeks in Fegido more bearable.

Read more: The Most Tragic moment of my Life!

So right after my honeymoon stage which lasted for two weeks, I was among the lucky ones, I had to participate in my first labour, and believe me, it was no fun at all. My hand suffered from bad blisters, I couldn’t hold my pen properly for a while, the sun on my back was pain, the ground too hard and my hoe too blunt. The Ss3 student made ridicule of me and my friends about how we cut the grass, they called us ajebo children who haven’t seen the hard life yet and didn’t know what we were in for. I thought I was going to faint from the work until an Ss3 student who was also a ward of my guardian came to me and my friends rescue. Turned out he was my house captain, Senior Winner. He knew Amara and had seen her with me on different occasions, so he decided to send for both of us. He was sitting in the dining hall, Olaniyan section when we went to meet him, we couldn’t go back to the hostel because that will only get us into trouble so we sat with him until labour time was over. He told us tales of his junior days, how seniors punished them, how one teacher or the other punished them when they tried to report these senior. There was a word then in school called ‘oka’, when someone says ‘I get oka for you’, it simply meant they had you in mind for something you did, or something your sibling in a senior class did to them. A senior in Ss3 could have oka for a student because the student reported them to a teacher. Senior Winner told us about how him and his friend sneaked out of school through the bushes although the official name was ‘step’ then in school. It was fun listening to him, more fun because I’ll rather be here listening to him than bent over cutting grass. At the end of labour, I had my first school father.

Another memorable first time for me in Fegido was my first beating. It was not from a teacher, but from my house captain. We were only seven Jss2 girls in Alani that year, and we were most time given a portion together. This particular week, it was the laundry room. One of us had forgotten to sweep it during the mid week inspection which was on Wednesday. The main inspection took place on Saturday, it was a time when the hostel was thoroughly cleaned and teacher came to inspect and on Monday the cleanest house to the dirtiest was announced. The mid-week inspection was not announced during assembly but the house captain was sent for by the house mistress if the house is discovered dirty during the mid-week inspection. My house mistress, Mrs Ajayi, sent for my house captain. She complained about the laundry room and after class, our house captain asked us to kneel in the middle of the square, in 2011 before it was cemented, the middle of the square which Alani house shared with Owena house was filled with sandy soil. And believe me kneeling on sandy soil is really painful, we knelt for a long time and then she came out from her room with a flapping hanger (a broken hanger known to be very strong and painful). She gave each of us 7 strokes each. Oh… I cried my eyes out, I planned to tell my guardian but Amara warned me against it. In Amara words ‘telling mummy (that’s how we addressed my guardian) is no use, she might beat and warn our house captain but you live in the hostel with these house captain. Mummy won’t be here to save you’. And she was right in every sense, I saw student who did that and lived to regret it. My first term was just short and unadventurous because I was still learning the ropes, I excelled in my academics and played it safe in the hostel. Things got real in my second term.