I AM NOT YVONNE NELSON

Examination Council (WAEC). It was the examination that determined who was good enough to enter secondary school. A candidate’s performance in that exam also determined whether one was good enoug

is unclear why the A.M.E. Zion Mission expressed interest in the school, but it may have something to do with the man in whose memory the school was established. In 1898, it was the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church that gave Kwegyir Aggrey the opportunity to study at Livingstone College, North Carolina, U.S.A., and at the associated Hood Theological Seminary, where he later became a professor. With student numbers gravitating between 3000 and 4000, Aggrey Memorial—as we further shortened the long name—has been the biggest secondary school in Ghana in terms of population. A school with such numbers and without the corresponding infrastructure and teachers is bound to face challenges. Its victims are those who go there to determine their future. Things may have improved now, but when I enrolled there in 2000, Aggrey Memorial had no proper supervision and discipline. If you did not pay serious attention to your books, the numbers provided you some form of cover and you enjoyed anonymity from the eyes of the teachers and school authorities whose duty it was to counsel you and put you on the right track. When I realised I was straying too far away from academic excellence, I did not get the needed help and support. Part of the blame ought to be borne by my parents and the school authorities. In the first place, I did not choose Aggrey. My stepfather, Lt. Col. Davies, had a strong influence in the school. He had been a chairman of either the parent-teacher association or the school’s board at some point, so his word carried weight in the school. My two half-siblings had both attended Aggrey Memorial, so when I completed junior secondary school and was made to go there, it was a continuation of a family tradition. Unlike my siblings, however, I was forced to study a programme against my will. I wanted to study General Arts, but the school said that course was fully subscribed. The only way I could keep my admission was to accept Business Accounting. I hated figures and calculations with passion but I was compelled to pursue that course. In class, all the noise about double entry principles of bookkeeping, balance sheet and the rest of it entered in one ear and went out through the other. I was there to make up the numbers. My best moments in Aggrey Memorial were on Saturday nights, when we had entertainment. During the week when academic work preoccupied the students, what kept me going was the expectation of Saturday night, when I would mount the stage and perform. I competed in the Miss Aggrey beauty pageant and won, a feat that attracted enmity among the senior girls. A junior girl who won a beauty pageant provided strong competition to the senior girls who aimed to catch the attention of the best boys on offer. There was the assumption that I would be disrespectful because of the crown and attention from senior boys. And it didn’t help that I wasn’t the quiet and submissive type. I was assertive, which, to the senior girls, was synonymous with arrogance. That was, however, not the main problem I had to contend with in that school. Aggrey was an experience I didn’t prepare for, but it turned out to be a kind of endurance test that prepared me for the future. My mother made sure that my boarding school wooden box (chop box) was always filled with the provisions one needed in a boarding school. She didn’t have to buy many of them because she stocked them in her shop and was generous when stocking my box for school. My chop box was what saved me when the dining hall failed me. And it failed me often. To say that the food was terrible is the mildest way to put the situation in Aggrey Memorial, which defies description. I remember the soup we nicknamed “moftoto”. It was either groundnut or palm nut soup. It was so light that if you looked into it, you could see your image. When left untouched for a few minutes, it settled in layers so that the water was on top and the other particles beneath. It was a kind of scientific experiment whose results we didn’t make use of. I still grimace at some memories in the dining hall. A friend once saw a toenail in the kenkey he was eating and another student saw the wing of a cockroach in her food. The stories of boarding school food aren’t pleasant in many schools, but Aggrey was on a different level. When our digestive system distilled the nutrients which our teenage bodies needed and we had to discard the rest, it came with another adventure. The toilet and bath facilities were oversubscribed, making it almost impossible to have them in sane and sanitary conditions. Sometimes we bathed outside. And the only way to avoid smelling as if you had swum in the toilet was to resort to what we called “take away”. The girls’ dormitory was up the hill. Down beyond it were farms of indigenes of Brafo Yaw, the suburb of Cape Coast where the school is located. “Take away” was simply emptying your bowels in polythene, wrapping it and throwing it as hard as your hands could into the bush. Wherever it settled or how the content spilled was not your business. If your friend said to you, “I dey go do takeaway,” you got the memo. Not many could stand the harsh conditions of the school. My best friend at the time, Fianko Bossman, told his parents he could not cope and needed a way out. They found a way and he left for Pope John Secondary and Minor Seminary in Koforidua before the second year. Another good friend, Laurina Mensah, left before we got to the third and final year. Her mother came for her to Italy, and that was the last I heard of her. Those of us without an option had to make two choices, either give up or make the best of the situation. I chose the former. I wasn’t an “A” or “B” student. I was just hanging in there, knowing very well that my soul, mind and heart had left the school, but I had to be physically present to tick a box for those who sent me there. Music was what kept me going. It was what helped me to endure, and I couldn’t wait to leave the school. When it was time to leave, the headmaster gave me my worst memory of Aggrey Memorial. The day before my departure from school, he slapped me in a way I would never forget. My offen