THE SOILED BOWL OF GARRI

THE SOILED BOWL OF GARRI

This is a true story about the uneasy relations between senior students and junior students in boarding school.
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FIVE YEARS I REMEMBER


During the five years I spent at Sacred Heart College, Mankon-Bamenda
from Form 1 to Form 5, the most popular meal in the refectory was rice
and beans. We had the meal on Thursdays in the afternoon; so for
lunch. I can`t now remember how that popularity came about but I do
remember that practically every student relished it and always looked
forward to it with baited breath.


WEEVILS IN SPITE OF OURSELVES


It didn`t matter that there were dead weevils in the beans. These are
parasitic animals that bore holes in our beans and fed on their
inside. I believe that the insects were so many in their invasion that
the cooks decided not to bother to sort them out of the beans before
preparing the meal. So, they just let them be. We students in our
haste to eat the meal also did not have the time to weed them out. So,
we consumed them along with the beans. Some students used to crack
jokes to the effect that weevils were a good source of proteins.


DUE RESPECT TO ST. THOMAS` HOUSE


The entire student body was divided into "houses", named after some
biblical saints, since our institution was a catholic religious one.
We had four houses:  St. John`s (mine), St. Francis, St. Thomas and
St. Peter`s. I recall this to land by saying that for some reason, our
popular meal of rice and beans was said to be "a St. Thomas House"
meal. I don`t know why.


A MEAL IN A CLASS OF ITS OWN

The incident I am about the recount happened when I was in Form 2. It
was a Thursday afternoon and we were having our lunch of rice and
beans in the refectory as usual. Some of us liked to have our meals
accompanied by various food items, depending on what the individual
student could afford. We could peel and slice pears and add them to
our meals. At other times, it could be raw onions, or lettuce, or
leeks. On days when we had beans like the famous Thursdays, it was
common to find students accompanying their rice and beans meal with
garri soaked in cold water with or without sugar added.


A CONTACT POINT THAT WAS TO COST ME DEARLY

On this particular day, a student who was in Form Five spotted my bowl
of garri as he was passing by and decided to stop by and help himself
to it. He wasn`t just a senior student but also a Prefect. In our
school, prefects wielded a lot of power. In fact, . . .
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