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Chapter Thirty Nine
- LANGAA RPCIG
- Chapter
- Additional Information
239 39 f by our becoming involved in joint activities, Forche and I had started to dream of romance of some sort, a jarring note occurred which made us think again. St Patrick was a Roman Catholic school which lived up to certain moral standards. While boys and girls were not prevented from coupling up in order to do things together, their activities were expected to be benign and useful and should fall within a strict moral code of conduct defined by the school authorities. Pupils were encouraged to form study groups and share knowledge, to come together to discuss the Bible or stage plays and even to embark on sightseeing excursions for fun or in relation to their school lessons. Romance of any kind was totally frowned upon and forbidden. Of course, not to talk of lovemaking! It was pure anathema and seemed even more remote than traveling to space. “When you grow up and you’re married, you’ll have all the time in the world to taste the forbidden fruit, to start licking honey of the loins,” the headmaster, PaNwafor, whose sense of humor we enjoyed, kept reiterating. It was against this austere background that a certain pupil nicknamed Yoyo ventured into the forbidden territory. It would be extremely difficult to understand this misadventure without a brief appreciation of this rather unusual character. Yoyo was a tall, nice-looking and very experienced boy with a birthmark on his right cheek. He was more mature than most of his classmates, having been exposed to the epicurean lifestyle common among dwellers of Mungo East where he partly grew up. Like most people who had been to that part of the country, he was a dandy and knew how to talk to girls and even what to do with them. I 240 It was from him that I first heard words like “kiss,” “romance” and “sex” and felt so scandalized when I got to know what they really entailed. Older girls daring enough fluttered around him and he regaled them with stories from his inexhaustible collection. The stories were often heavily colored and spiced with some Benge. Even though the headmaster sometimes felt he could be a bad influence in the midst of much younger pupils, there was nothing particularly terrible he had done to provide any serious cause for concern. Almost every pupil in school knew that he secretly drank, smoked and played with women. It was even rumored that he had once contracted a venereal disease and had design to hit on Miss Theresia, the only female teacher in Yakiri. Miss Theresia had been assigned by the headmaster to keep an eye on Yoyo whose social meanderings and flirtatious conduct were increasingly attracting the attention of the school authorities and making them a bit worried. It was in the course of this surveillance that the female teacher saw him discreetly slipping a note to a female and much younger pupil. She approached the girl and on reading through the note, realized it was destined for Kende. The letter’s contents were a big scandal, at least in the context of the extremely high moral standards to which St Patrick ascribed. It read: My sweet-loving Kende, Only the Lord alone know the way my heart loves you. Each time I think of you it talks krijim! krijim! krijim! like our school drums and make me to want to fall down and dead for you. I loves you more than oxygens and dreams of the day I will come close to your breath which smells like ripe pineapples. Tell me you love me and wanted to kiss me and do one important things with me. After you read this letter, destroy it because it can get us into serious trouble with that jakajaka headmaster. He believes that after Jesus Christ went to heaven, he replaced him here on earth. Your lover, [44.193.80.126] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 18:23 GMT) 241 Yoyo When the letter was handed to the headmaster and news about it started to circulate, the whole school was abuzz with gossip. Pupils, especially girls who tended to have a keener sense of observation and had long suspected that something was going on between the two, gathered in groups to wax lyrical about the scandal. While the pupils went around with the news and speculated on the outcome of the school disciplinary committee, the staff held endless meetings, usually presided over by the headmaster...