School Memories: Our own kind of Valentine's Day

Most of us didn’t have boyfriends. There were many reasons why. Some of us were afraid that our parents would find out and treat us to a good caning. See unlike now, you couldn’t boldly walk up to your parents and pronounce your love for a boy. As far as your parents were concerned (and until you were done with the full cycle of education) you were supposed to be a robot, incapable of having feelings. It didn’t help that the school counselors closing line was always, “Boys are only after one thing.” Indeed, if a girl at our school got pregnant, it was always the counselor’s chance to remind us of the evilness of the male species. “Stay away from them. They are lions waiting to devour you,” she would say, with much conviction in her voice. But none of the reasons were as unique as that of the ‘savedees’ who simply couldn’t accept that adolescence was a time of raging hormones and that it was okay to desire the attention of a boy. Their love was reserved for God and God alone. To have feelings was to be lustful. And to be lustful amounted to being an idolater and what sin could be possibly greater than idolatry? If one of them so much as smiled at a boy, they vehemently repented of lust and idolatry. So in the end, we had only each other on Valentine’s Day. I should mention that to have feelings for a girl was a much greater offense than lusting after a boy. In fact, those girls who were caught in compromising positions with their fellow girls were treated with much more contempt than those who were found with humans growing inside of them. Nonetheless, we didn’t want to be left out on the day that people celebrated love. The idea of ‘secret friends’ came in handy. How the idea worked was that the class counselor would write out all the names of students in your class on tiny pieces of paper. She would then fold them up and each student would pick a name. You were not to reveal the person you had picked. You were their secret friend. If you were lucky, you would get a thoughtful secret friend. She would invest time writing you notes wishing you a nice day or a good night. Sometimes, notes would come with small presents such as sweets, chewing gum. And if she was rich, she could even buy you yogurt. But her identity would remain concealed until Valentine’s Day. On Valentine’s Day, we would gather in our classroom to reveal our secret friends and to give and receive gifts to and from our secret friends. By this time, some of us already knew who they were but we acted surprised in order to protect their feelings. One time, I was picked by Nancy Mirembe, a girl who utterly and out-rightly hated my guts. As soon as I discovered that she was my secret friend, I began to worry that she wouldn’t buy me a present on Valentine’s Day. I was therefore surprised when she showed up with a big box. I tore it open as soon as I went back to my dormitory. The box was full of grass and a blue Bic pen.

Education

School Memories: Our own kind of Valentine's Day