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The Great Sacred Heart Secondary School Escape: How I Got Arrested for Flirting

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!

Comments

Opiyo said…
We also made such reckless passing on regular basis through Sacred Heart Secondary School for same purpose as yours and one day, it was approaching Easter Day and about 16 of us all were Senior 4 students of Negri College School were almost about to be arrested by police just around Mary Immaculate Primary School before reaching a valley entry point to Sacred Heart premises and the valley is/was commonly known as "Disappointment Valley" but we survived.

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