Dabira's Diary

3

Saturday 14th September

Dear Diary,

It’s almost been a week and I’m fully convinced that I’m in hell,first of all, why are the beds so small? I almost rolled of my bed last night thankfully I had my mosquito net tucked in so I didn't fall.

I have a long list of things to complain about, I haven’t spoken to mummy since I got here, I have to wake up so early in the morning, I’m barely functioning as a human being, there’s barely any hot water, someone stole my half bucket of hot water yesterday and Mummy K wouldn’t give me more,

“Are you a child?” she said when I went to ask her “ You’re in boarding school now, you’re supposed to learn how to be responsible and keep your things well” she paused a bit to take a phone call, I thought she was going to give me more and then,

“Why are you still here?”
“I thought you were going to give me more hot water ma”
“There’s no hot water, go and use cold water like that, this is a lesson, next time watch your things properly” as she said this, she stood up to enter her quarters,
“But there’s cold ma, I can’t use cold water”
“Please leave this place, you had better go and take your bath before your seniors send you out” with that, she walked into her quarters and slammed her door leaving me outside.

I didn’t really have my bath that morning, thankfully the “Rub and Shine” method, as senior Christabel called it, came to the rescue.

There is another thing on my long list of things I hate about boarding school, the food was nasty, and I’m not being dramatic about it,

The yam was so hard, I could barely eat it, the stew was more water and oil than stew and I guess there was supposed to be fish inside the stew but I didn’t see any in my food,

The swallow was horrible because I don’t like Eba and Fufu and those were the only options we had, the vegetable soup was more of grass than vegetable and I definitely do not trust the ogbono soup, God knows how it was prepared,

The bread wasn’t so bad but the egg was green and I’m not joking, it’s probably from the onion or something but there was no way I was going to eat that, the tea was even worse; it tasted like water and sugar and the color was discouraging,

The only foods that I managed were rice and stew which they served on for dinner almost every night since I’ve been here and Moimoi, but they only serve it on Saturday mornings, I ate it this morning and I wanted more but the seniors told us juniors to start leaving the dining hall, while the senior classes just started eating,

This brings me to my next complaint, why seniors had more time to do certain things while we juniors had to rush through everything, I believed it was unfair but senior Christie, as she allowed Feyi and I to call her told me that I would understand when I become a senior, that wasn’t an explanation but I didn’t ask any more questions.

My next complaint was my table in the dining hall, it seems like I’m complaining about everything, but honestly I had a reason to complain,

My table consists of five boys and five girls, that’s nine other people apart from me, I only like 3 people, that’s Feyi, a girl named Tomike and this really nice boy named Henry, he always smiled at me, the remaining six were honestly unlikable,

Jessica always acts like she’s bigger than the rest of us because her brother; senior Joel  is a senior prefect, the head boy I think,
She always has to be the one to serve the food, that’s probably why I never get any fish, she doesn’t like me because I don’t try to be her friend and get on her good side like the rest of them on the table, why should I, she has a terrible personality and I don’t think I’ve seen her walk without pushing out  her chest unnecessarily,
She only smiles at our male tablemates I honestly don’t get why anyone will beg to be her friend,
She smiles at Feyi too but that’s because her sister; senior Funmi is one of the food prefects and I think she’s really close to senior Joel, so Jessica just doesn’t want to get on Feyi’s bad side, she’s so fake, anyway I don’t like her,

Then there’s Love, she’s Jessica’s follower, that’s what I’m calling those that beg to be her friend, she agrees with everything that Jessica says and I find it really funny, It’s only been 5 days, I wondered if she planned to do that throughout her stay in secondary school,

Then there’s King David, he’s strange, he always talks to himself and he never uses proper cutlery to eat, he uses a knife to eat everything and anything, we reported him to the prefects but that doesn’t stop him, he also has a water bottle that he obviously used a marker to write the words “The dark liquid” on. He claimed that the water was from a dark forest, it’s obviously a lie but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t scare me,

Then there’s the three musketeers as Feyi and I call them, Daniel, Dominion and Damilare, they always come to the table together and leave together, they are all in yellow house, and they only talk to Jessica and on one occasion they talked to Feyi, they asked her if she was Yoruba or Hausa, I found that really random.

I have just one more thing to complain about; Senior Daniella, she makes it really obvious that she doesn’t like me, she brings her friends over and introduces me as her rude and disrespectful bunkmate and now they all see me like that. She always finds something to complain about, it’s either my locker is scattered, my bed is not laid properly, I always take cereal and I’m being wasteful although I don’t think that’s any of her business, she also complains that I’m not neat enough and that I have a strange smell, I don’t smell it though,

Senior Christie said I should ignore her without being disrespectful, she can’t really stand up for me because no one takes her seriously, all the seniors in the dorm treat her like she’s one of the Jss1 students, they say she’s dirty like Jss1s.
She always smile at them and acts like it doesn’t hurt her but I know she doesn’t like it, Feyi and I are the only juniors that relate with her, I don’t get it though, she’s really nice and she’s always smiling and I don’t think she’s dirty, a bit disorganized but not dirty but  there’s nothing I can do about it.

Well that’s enough with the complaints, we got our uniforms, house wears and church wears, I didn’t know how to iron, thankfully Senior Funmi helped Feyi and I with our ironing, but she was only helping us once, after that we would help ourselves,
I personally don’t care about ironing except my clothes are totally squeezed but Feyi is obsessed with ironed clothes so she has been ironing for the both of us since Wednesday, Jss1 students don’t get ironing space but once again, senior Funmi came to our rescue by giving us her space to iron, being a senior is so cool.

We’ve been going for our orientation program everyday throughout the week, I spent most of the time with Feyi, I really don’t know how to relate with other people, but she’s quite the opposite; she smiles with everybody and a lot of people came up to talk to us, well mainly her, I just sat quietly while she talked, smiled and made friends,

“Why weren’t you talking? those girls were really friendly” she asked as I got my bag from my seat, we were preparing to go for lunch,

“They weren’t interested in talking to me, everybody wants to be your friend, they only smile at me because I seat beside you”

“That’s not true, they want to be your friend too, and you just make it a bit difficult because you don’t respond to their smiles and greetings”

“Can we please not talk about this, I’ll make friends eventually, for now I’m fine with having just one friend”
if I was being honest, I was actually scared to talk to other people because I didn’t want to be ignored so I ignore them first, but I’m sure I’ll make more friends eventually, my biggest worry for now was the fact that I was starting classes on Monday.

I was nervous.