Of rat catcher, ambitions

It was the day for the interview. Boys as small as 11 and as old as 22 and numbering about 120 were scheduled to individually face a panel of three to justify their inclusion in the first year list of students of the secondary school that was their first choice.

The Common Entrance Exam (CEE) marks would be added to marks obtained at the interview, out of which a borderline would be drawn to make way for 80 new students. The rest could go to hell or become cocoyam farmers if they chose.

Incidentally, that was the year the school authorities decided not to enrol ‘grandfathers’. Hitherto, bearded men were admitted into form one primarily because the school needed physically powerful students to represent it during sporting activities.

Apparently, most of such muscled, macho candidates had stayed all their lives in the villages chasing rats and racing with grass cutters that didn’t want to end up in the soup pot. The skills of such candidates were thus harnessed to win hundred-metre races at inter-school athletics, meetings. Some could also run 800 metres like the antelope.

Some of these over-aged students loved school and had ambitions. They started school at the age of about 12. By the time they got to Form 4, they’d hit 22. They sat for the CEE, passed and got enrolled into secondary schools where they featured prominently in athletics because of their rat-catching skills and styles.

Normally they were not good footballers because they were notorious for scoring ‘own goals’. Neither were they good table-tennis players because they held the bats as if they were going to weed a cassava farm. But in the school-choir, they were fantastic as bass singers. In fact they sang double-bass and the school buildings shook with the resonance.

It was often the tradition that the biggest ‘man’ in the school was made the dining hall prefect in his final year. By that time, he should look like a Rwandan militiaman, and should eat like an idiot. However, they kept the discipline because of occasional slaps they dished out to recalcitrant juniors.

It also became registered that because the older boys developed uncontrolled appetite and passion for double-plates, they instigated the students to riot whenever there were lapses in proper nutritional management.

The big students, were, therefore, useful in certain ways but problematic in others because they were also bullies.

That year, the authorities decided that the tall middle-weight candidates wouldn’t be admitted, but they came for the interview all the same thinking that they would even be given preferences because they could compete with grasscutters in any free race.

The biggest and tallest entrant that year was a Togolese. While the lad was schooling at the primary level in Togo, his father was in Ghana. Having completed, he joined his Dad and attended middle school in Sikaman and studied Anglais. Luckily he passed the entrance exam although his English was quite damaging to the human ear.

Before the interview session, the headmaster came round to look at the candidates present. The Togolese copper arrived a bit late and when he landed, many mistook him for a pantryman. He grinned contentedly and was quite magnificent with his shirt tucked into a tight pair of shorts. His muscles bulged

When the headmaster saw him, he was awed. This was a classic example of men they didn’t want to admit into the school; a perfect specimen of the undesirables. The boy, sorry man, was almost 25, barefoot, completely shaven with close-cropped hair like a convict, hard face with a noble ambition to become either a lawyer or doctor.

His colleagues curiously studied him and agreed that he’d be a good sprinter for the school although they also admitted his appetite for food will be a problem to humanity.

The headmaster called him to have a chat.

“What’s your name?”

“Kormi,” he replied and grinned sheepishly.

“That’s the only name you have?”

“No. Kormi Drakey”, he said crudely.

“You’re a big boy”, the headmaster observed.

“Why have you applied to this school?”

“I can do sports well”, Drakey declared. “That’s why I apply”.

The implication was that he applied to help the school through its sporting problems and that his enrolment should be a matter of course, an issue of undisputed priority.

“You can run well?” the headmaster asked.

“Yes. Look at my thighs; couldn’t you see it? I be zonal champion. 100 metres, 200 and long jump. Nobody fit me.”

The headmaster was doubly impressed with the curriculum vitae. The boy was not a giant, he was indeed going to show his class.

 “Okay”, said the headmaster. “Run round the park and let’s see your stamina.”

Drakey immediately took off like an Olympic champion as the headmaster called out the name of the first candidate on the list to begin the interviews.

Drakey circled the large park 13 times, and when he became very tired, he stopped and headed for the master’s office where the interview was taking place. He was sweating and bedraggled. The other candidates laughed because the Togolese machoman’s destiny was becoming quite tragic.

 He opened the door and when the headmaster saw him, he was amused. He has forgotten all about the six foot candidate was becoming quite tragic. “Is that all you can run?” he asked.

This, certainly, was an irritating question.

“Didn’t you see me?” Drakey ejaculated. “I ran be a hare 13 good rounds. No be joke at all-o”.

Okay go and wait for your turn. It turned out that Drakey was indeed not given an admission letter after the ordeal, whereupon he became furious and insulted the headmaster.

“If you know you won’t took me why should you take me run like that? You don’t have sense? Is that how to treat a woman being? Your mother!”

Of course that wasn’t the right way to treat a human being much more a “woman being.” The case would have been referred to the then Ombudsman.

I was reminded of this incident when Samuel Adade was sacked from school because he was married, apart from the fact that he was grossly over-aged. The guy wanted to be somebody in life and saw education as the way out. Why should he be denied the opportunity?

His wife is dead and they still do not want him back in the school. This is clearly unjust. Sikaman Palava submits that a man’s education cannot be stifled because of age and marital status at this time when we are even encouraging the idea of functional literacy for our fathers and grandmothers. If 60 year olds are being encouraged to learn, why should a 22-year old be denied the opportunity just because he is married?

In some overseas countries, even 90 year olds are pursuing degree courses although they know they’d die the next minute.

If Master Adade cannot be enrolled because of his “old” age of 22, then functional literacy is no longer anything to encourage. Don’t you get my point?

This article was first written on Saturday, September 17, 1994