Features
Vikings stir up
The Viking Spirit is Holy Spirit. It is a cool, quiet, powerful spirit. It descends like a dove on official residents of Mensah Sarbah Hall and they prophesy. The tutors are likely to speak in tongues and the honourable hall master may do signs and wonders.
Unlike the Holy Spirit, however, the Viking Spirit can be rebellious. The Vandals of Commonwealth know it. The only hall Vandals are uncomfortable with is Sarbah. The Vikings have often used wits and chicanery to tame the wild Vandals.
When I was a young Viking, I was a strategist of the hall. I was also the hall astrologer and told the fortunes of the hall when it came to war with the Vandals. My room-mate, Akortey Anaara, was at the time a numerologist who used figures to read the outcome of conflicts.
It often turned out that sometimes the Vandals saw it fit to sue for peace. And peace was granted. I must admit, however, that when it came to football, the Vandals thrashed us bad.
Today, we can all be grateful that the Viking spirit is still intact. A little sign of it emerged recently when Vikings rose against their senior tutor. It is rebellious and unacceptable. But it means the spirit is very much alive.
Anyhow, it was not exactly a coup d’état. Far from it. Just a stir, a harmless mutiny. They’ve been asked by the senior tutor to send out all refrigerators from the rooms of the hall. Wallahi! You lie bad!
Well, in our time, the students would not have over-reacted, probably because life was a bit more manageable. Today life is difficult for the students. They are over-crowded, they have to get their own food, and there is no romance because one student cannot ‘narrow’ five or six others without precipitating in a civil war.
The last time I visited Legon, I was sad. No breathing space! When students were paired, life was good; today, the rooms are like secondary school dormitories, when some students are senior citizens with children and grand-children, and even great grandchildren.
To live with five or six others in a tiny room can have its own social, religious, economic and political implications. For all you know, there can be political alliances formed, and this can be interesting until it degenerates into a boxing showdown in the corridor or balcony. The NDC guys are specialists in upper-cuts. With the NPP ones, you certainly have to watch your balls. Asee ho!
However, the most dangerous is religion. A Muslim student must wake up at 5:00am to say his prayers. Allah Ku Baru! Allah Ku Baru! The guy next to him might be a Bahai who enjoys his sleep only at dawn. Moreover, he is macho and does not tolerate nonsense. The other guy on the far east may also be a born-again who can only catch the Holy Spirit over-speed at exactly 4:00 am. When he speaks in tongues, the building shakes.
The paddy-man sandwiched somewhere in the mezzanine west has a problem with his alimentary system. He easily develops gas in his colon, and he is only comfortable when he releases the gas on regular basis. So the rook is always air conditioned in a manner that can cause nausea, vomiting and nightmares.
So it turns out that every student contributes his quota to the general discomfort, and this is bound to affect academic work in a very radical way. When some of the students want their peace to sleep, others want to cram throughout the night. The next morning everyone is restive, sleepy-eyed, furious and ready to punch. And the good news is that Madam Amoakohene wants all refrigerators out, defaulters to face revolutionary action.
Well, students are supposed to be obedient. In our time, we were very obedient. May be, it was because we were not ordered to send our refrigerators out and we were not as frustrated as today’s students. We were very nice with the hall tutors and often shared lagers with them.
I am sure the senior tutor means well, except that she did not understand the viewpoint of the students and, of course, their frustration with life on campus. One refrigerator could be allowed in every room for the common use of the inmates. Of course, more than one refrigerator per room can create space problems, and every student cannot bring his own refrigerator.
I hear the hall is thinking about a common room for refrigerators. The students aren’t pleased with that. You can’t trust others – stealing and poisoning are cited as possible.
Whatever it is, the hall tutors will have to sit down with the students and find a compromise bearing in mind that the students are already suffering and need some comfort to cope with academic work.
Fact also is, some of us old Vikings aren’t pleased with the bad publicity about the hall. It went to the extent that, the issue had to be discussed on a radio station with Madam doing a lot of elaboration and some damage control.
She is intelligent, very articulate and sounds like a Beijing activist. May be she is the best person for the job, after all. A bit of patience on her part would do, though. The students need it. They need love and understanding because they are highly-strung and in tight corners.
If you hear them complaining you’d be sad. A Volta girl was complaining to me the other day. Her mates are just not neat at all. They are noisy, unkempt and disgusting. Some bring their boyfriends to the rooms. Sometimes the boys sleep and snore hard. Jesus Christ of Nazareth! If the girl fails her exams no one should blame her.
The university needs lots of hostels to cope with the current situation, I bet.
This article was first published on Saturday April 7, 2001