In 1998, I joined Bishop Angelo Negri College in Gulu, Uganda. I was an adolescent. Little did I know that my adolescent adventures would soon lead me to a police arrest at a girls' school, a shirtless 'sentence', and an unforgettable lesson.
Bishop
Angelo Negri College is a boy boarding school owned by the catholic church.
Students from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds attended Negri College
school then. Being a single-sex school, the lack of female company was a
significant problem. Our solution was simple: escape our school's confines and
go to other schools with girls. Though fenced and heavily guarded, the
neighbouring Sacred Heart Secondary School was too tempting to resist. So, my
friends and I would often sneak out of Negri College school to chat with the
occasional Sacred Heart School girls through their school fence or simply walk
past the school and enjoy seeing beautiful girls moving around the school
campus. This was the charm at the time, and when we returned to school, we had
stories to tell because we were in the A-League of Boys.
One
fateful afternoon, a group of boys from my school, including my friend Lakony
and me, decided to take another walk—this time, with no real plan except to
find an excuse to talk to the girls at Sacred Heart School. We set off from
Negri College as if heading to Lacor, a small town west of Sacred Heart. Of
course, Lacor was not our true destination. We planned to casually take the
route conveniently passed by Sacred Heart, hoping for a chance encounter with
the girls on their campus.
We
did not meet any girls as we passed their campus and casually strolled past the
campus towards Christ the King Primary Teachers' College. We then walked down
to Christ the King Demonstration Primary School, where we encountered two plain
cloth police officers who kindly approached us. They asked if we were from
Negri College School, to which we, in all innocence, answered, "Yes, of
course!" They then told us about some boys from Layibi College School
(another boy single-sex school) who had caused trouble in Sacred Heart
Secondary School earlier and that the police had arrested them but that the
boys had denied that they were from Layibi College. The police argued the
arrested boys claimed they were Negri College students, and the police said
they needed our help identifying them. The plain cloth policemen did not have
guns and sounded so harmless, and this was the beginning of our trouble. We
agreed to walk with them to the police detachment at the extreme end of Sacred
Heart Secondary School land, bordering Christ the King Demonstration Primary
School and a sports field with many shed trees where some girls played or sat
under the trees to read.
On
arriving at the police detach, we did not see any boys. Suddenly, one of the
policemen in the detachment ordered us to take off our shirts and shoes. Things
changed dramatically fast. Well, it turns out that the police officers
were not asking for help. We were the ones in trouble! The police began
searching and questioning us. And suddenly, we realized: we were under arrest.
In our confusion, we were forced to remove our shirts (for reasons we never
entirely understood) and slash grass around the police compound. We were now
shirtless, wielding slashers, and crying as one of the police with a gun
inspected us as we slashed. Not exactly the "manhood" we wanted the
girls to see us for and which we had in mind.
To
make matters worse, Lakony was sent to fetch water from a distant point at
Christ the King Primary Teachers College (about a kilometre away). He moved
shirtless, barefoot, with a 20-litre Jerrican in hand and a policeman with a
gun behind him. It was on this journey that the police made an even more
significant discovery: a condom in his back pocket. This discovery only fueled
the police's suspicions, and they began accusing us of having
ulterior, impure motives. One Police officer remarked, "Afande, these
boys sneak and sleep in the girls' dormitory. You can see they have come well
prepared with condoms." The discovery of a condom in Lakony's pocket
turned our arrest into more catastrophe. Until this day, I had not asked Lakony
why he had carried a condom in his back pocket. Lakony fetched forty litres of
water as I swept the compound of the detach, and we both later slashed the
grass. We painfully slashed and cleared the grass, and one of our classmates,
Amese, saw us slashing. He had moved with another group of boys who had used
another route next to Sacred Heart Secondary School. As they approached Christ
the King Demonstration Primary School, Amese saw me and Lakony slashing, and
they ran away, fearing the police could also arrest them.
But
the worst part was not slashing the tall grass. As we slashed grass like
slaves, some of the girls from Sacred Heart who knew us saw us. They looked at
us with pity. And let me tell you, there is nothing more humiliating than
receiving sympathy from a group of girls while you are bare feet, shirtless,
slashing grass, and in tears. Even worse, I could not tell if they were being
kind or just laughing at us—either way, it made my tears flow the more. I was
surprised by Lakony's resilience. He never shed a tear.
Eventually,
after what felt like unending labour pain, the police released us. No charges,
no apology. They just handed us our shirts and shoes, sent us on our way, and
told us never to return to Sacred Heart Secondary School again. We felt
humiliated, and the pain of the injustice hurt more than the arrest. The news
about our arrests spread like wildfire. In Sacred Heart Secondary School, word
was spreading about police arresting some Negri College boys. Luckily for us,
we were young and unpopular. We were not among the notorious playboys that many
girls knew and hated. These playboys were notorious for breaking young girls'
hearts, writing rejection, and insulting letters like jilted lovers to the
girls. The letters were commonly known as scud. I later learned that scud was a
type of missile used during the Cold War. I cannot imagine a more befitting
name for these letters. I will return to talk about these letters one day.
Back
in Negri College, the news of our arrest also spread quickly. When we returned
to school around 6:00pm, we did not know that more agony awaited us. In our
school, the older boys were ready to teach us a lesson for 'being arrested'.
They had their own version of a "laundry meeting," where they would
gather the younger boys at around 8:00pm, and usually, someone would be
humiliated. That day, we were the chosen ones. In the laundry meeting, they put
a table and a stool on top of the table. They made us climb the stool on top of
a table, interrogating us while other students watched. One needed to be calm
and extra careful during the interrogation to avoid falling from the stool.
The
older boys and other students made fun of us as we stood before the night
assembly, trying to explain ourselves. I do not think they cared about why or
how we had been arrested. They just wanted to blame us for supposedly
tarnishing the name of Negri College School. The entire thing was a cruel joke
with no sense of justice. The big boys mocked and insulted us; some wanted us
to get strokes. But luckily, we were pardoned.
Reflecting
on it all now, I cannot help but laugh at its absurdity. We were just a bunch
of boys in a hurry, trying to experience what we thought was
"grown-up" life. But the truth is, we were just kids with a lot of
curiosity and clearly the wrong timing.
The
lesson here is that everything has its time. And in those teenage years, the
best thing you can do is wait for your time to come because if you rush it,
you'll probably end up naked, slashing grass, and crying in front of a bunch of
sympathetic (or not-so-sympathetic) girls.
As
an adult, I look back on these memories with no regrets. They were part of the
growing-up process, the wild, awkward, and hilarious journey from adolescence
to adulthood. And if nothing else, it gave me one hell of a story to tell!
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