Boarding School

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by Reetarh33

by Reetarh33

At the age of ten, I started secondary school (js1). Coming from a catholic family, my parents deemed it fit to send me to a Catholic school and not just any catholic school but an all girls' boarding school (just the boarding school was all girls the school itself was mixed..thank God). I had no issues with going to a boarding school to be honest, to me it was like freedom (or so i thought) and anyways my sister was also in the same school too so it wasn't like I was alone. I remember when my parents dropped me off, I saw a lot of kids crying about leaving their parents but not me I was one of the few dry eyed kids. To me it was just funny and stupid the way they were all crying. I didn't understand why they weren't glad to start something new without their parents watching their everyday move (that's how I saw the whole boarding house thing).

After checking in and all, I finally got to my hostel(room). I realized I had 19 roommates, yup that's right we were 20 in a room,there were 4 rooms in a house and there were just 2 houses; O.L.A and St. Agnes (I was in O.L.A). Anyways, in my room there were like 3 other new students like me, the rest were seniors (anyone that is older than you in class is your senior). In Nigerian schools, everyone takes seniority seriously (not just the schools basically in Nigeria), so you have to add senior to their names (for example senior Esther). To me the seniority thing goes to some people's head though because some seniors were just wicked, punishing juniors for no apparent reason (smh). Anyways, my room had 4 js1s i.e junior secondary (including me), 5 js2s, 4 js3s, 3 ss1s i.e. senior secondary, 3 ss2s and 1 ss3. As a js1 student, we were the youngest and the ones everyone could bully.

Each room had 4 bathrooms for everyone to use, so basically 5 people to each bathroom. In my bathroom we had one senior( she was in ss3) and 4 juniors. So she being the oldest gave certain privileges, for example using the bathroom first. So basically the remaining four of us had to struggle to be the one to bath immediately after her because no one wanted to be late for morning prayers. Basically the boarding house schedule was like this:

5:00am-5:30am- wake up and bath
5:30am-6:00am- morning duties(chores)
6:00am-7:00am- mass(prayers)
7:00am-7:30am- breakfast
7:30am-4:00pm- school (school starts with the morning assembly at 7:40)
4:00pm-5:00pm- siesta (nap)
5:00pm-6:00pm- laundry
6:00pm-6:30pm- rosary (prayers)
6:30pm-7:00pm- dinner
7:00pm-9:00pm- prep (study)
9:00pm-9:30pm- night prayers
9:30pm-10:00- basically go to bed and prepare for light outs
10:00- lights out (sleep)

Punctuality was a really big deal in my school since the administrator who is a Reverend sister hated people who weren't punctual so basically if you are late you get punished (cruel right? I know).

So 5 people had to share a bathroom within a duration of 30 minutes - 1 hour. Normally every person is meant to spend 5-12 minutes in the bathroom to ensure no one is late for morning prayers but sadly the senior sharing the bathroom with us always took her time when bathing and this left the remaining four of us scurrying to manage the little time left. To use the bathroom after her it was a situation of first come first serve. So as soon as they rung the bell to wake eveyone, every junior jumps out of their beds to be the ones to bath immediately after the seniors.

Now being someone that enjoys her sleep a lot you can see how this just didn't work out for me. I didn't like waking up early at all so I never did and just accepted my fate that I will always be the last to use the bathroom therefore I was always late for morning prayers but after always being the last for like the first term of the school year(there were 3 terms) and always being punished for being late for morning prayers, I decided that I had enough. So I decided waking up super early and having my bath before 5am to avoid fighting with anyone to use the bathroom (note: it was against the rules to do this but I didn't care I was just tired of all the punishments I had to endure). So I made sure I was super quiet(basically i was like a ninja ) and everthing was going well, I was never caught and nobody really bothered to question how I had my bath before anyone else.

So all was well till one day I woke up late and I just didn't want to stand up from my bed, I finally did at about like 5:30am (now that was super late) and I seriously wasn't in the mood for any punishments that day so I did the unthinkable, I had my bath in any available bathroom,that is a bathroom that wasn't assigned to me, now I know what you're thinking what's so bad, well its against an unspoken rule formed between basically everyone (it had never been said but everyone knew it) but desperate times calls for desperate measures.

As soon as I entered the bathroom the person that was supposed to be using the bathroom came and immediately started hitting the door shouting at me to get out, I was going to come out and accept my fate but a part of me thought since have gotten this far I should just finish up and accept the consequences so I ignored all her shouts and enjoyed my bath. As soon as I came out everyone started shouting at me and telling me what I did was wrong but I didn't really care because I was fresh out of the bathroom and I wasnt going be late, something everyone should have accepted and moved on but noooooo *sighs* so basically they stole my uniform and underwear and hid them and I had to look for it with just just a tiny towel wrapped around me. I didnt really care about the towel thing because we were all girls anyways. But what annoyed me was the fact that after everything, when I got to the chapel (where we had our prayers) I was still late and was punished by our house mistress who already knew my name because of the amount of times I was late *sighs* (karma is a BITCH)