If ever you’ve been a school boarder, will you really appreciate how much it has given you. No parents to guide you in your daily activities, you manage yourself instead. Weekdays, you wake up to your own methods, to ensure you have a bath, dressed for school and in mess before breakfast begins. You pray before receiving your meal and you pray to give thanks after your meal. You then have 15mins to prepare yourself before the first lesson of the day. There’s no recess, you learn all through to lunch where again, you will have 30mins to prepare for lunch with plate and spoon washed and ready. Another 15mins break before the afternoon period starts. By 3:30pm when all classes end, you have 30mins to get into your work gear for work parade. After an hour of grass cutting, raking, weeding, drainage cleaning, ablution cleaning, meal preparation, or whatever else you were assigned to do, will you have an hours break before dinner. Many after a shower tend to visit the afternoon markets where the local villagers come sell their produce in the likes of Fruits, betel nut, smoked and fried fish, mumu tapiok(mashed cassava, cooked in an earth oven) and Kulau (Young coconut). Many go for the mumu tapiok, banana and Kulau combination. Others with more finance visit the trade stores for coke and biscuit, and by the way, cold water is a luxury. By 6pm the buzzer sounds for dinner and all head to the dining hall for dinner, normally consisting of brown rice and tinned fish, two tins for a table of 10. An hour and a half of night study takes place after dinner in one’s own classroom where the duty teacher ensures all is present for roll call and ensuring quietness is maintained during study. At 8:30pm the buzzer signals the end of study to give each student 30mins preparation for sleep before the lights go out at 9pm, yep that’s right, the school’s uses a generator which supplies the school with its electricity, the government’s power grid hasn’t reached the schools location as yet. Weekends are great with Saturday starting off with an hour of work parade and then the rest of the morning is free. It is also market day for the nearby communities who come to market at the school, and this is one of those times where you get the chance to eat different kinds of food. After lunch is sports for the boys and the girls are locked away in their dormitories. Saturday sports include basketball and touch rugby whilst Sunday afternoon sport is soccer. Sunday begins early with church at 7am where of course all have to attend; the class in charge of providing music has to be in church earlier then 7am to prepare. The church service ends an hour later with students going for “peace walks” down the beach before heading to breakfast. There’s free time after breakfast where most spend the rest of the morning doing their laundry if not done on Saturday. After lunch is, sports again for the boys and girls stay confined in their houses till the afternoon. All in all, I can say that, one who has undergone a boarding lifestyle will face life equipped with the skills for life as an independent individual.
Note: Some of the times mentioned may be a bit off as its been some 10 years ago now :)
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