Running scared
The most daring thing I did in school was probably this. We had a senior (young man) that had transferred to the school to finish his final year. He came from another well-known school due to some disciplinary issues at his previous school. On a Saturday morning with literarily the whole boarding house student body watching, he took off his towel and ran completely naked down the walkway in front of the long block of joined labs and offices that held the physics and chemistry labs alongside some teachers offices as well. Now this was really daring because a housemaster could have turned up, or some student who took offense at the derring do could have reported him. I should mention he was maybe 6 foot tall with his thing dangling every which way as he ran along. Let’s call him FB. Well it became a challenge and I believe a few others repeated the act later.
I have to confess that on a dreary early evening when l think it had rained, the weather was quite cool, and most boys were cooped up in their rooms and it was still quite bright out side, I did the same thing. Even though there was no one there to see me, my heart was pounding as if it was going to leap out of my chest, but it was exhilarating because I was breaking rules and living on the edge!

What goes up
Sometimes when it’s getting to the latter end of the term (semester) the boarding house students find themselves “broke” and generally with little to no provisions (cereal, dried milk, sugar, garri, etc). That’s when all sorts of creative ideas come into play. A small group of students will pool their meager funds, send a couple of  the group to sneak out of the school to the neighboring village and buy a small quantity of rice, onion, a little cooking oil, a few bell peppers and maybe a little habanero pepper as well. 

Now we are not really supposed to have cooking stoves in the hostels since the school fed us three times a day. On top of that, during that lean period seniors are also on the prowl to hijack anything eatable they find with juniors. 

The solution to that problem was not to cook the rice in the boarding house. Instead we put everything in a metal bucket (wash the rice, cut up the peppers and onions), then pretend we were going to one of the school halls that were story buildings to study in the afternoon or early evening. A couple of boys would  take the cooking stove and the metal bucket and climb up into the space between the ceiling and the roof. While they hurriedly cooked the rice in the metal bucket on top of the kerosene stove, the rest of us sat at the metal desks and pretended to be deeply studying our books while salivating once the rice starts to cook and the aroma starts to waft down from the ceiling. The rice was almost never properly done, and we ate it piping hot, but oh, we were in heaven! 

Cool breeze 
There was only two places with ceiling fans that were relatively accessible. One was the big assembly hall that also served as church on Sundays. But it was locked outside of Sundays and assembly days. We also had other school events there from time to time. The second place with a fan was much smaller and cozier, and that was the school mosque. On hot evenings or even when things were slow, some Christian students will turn up at the mosque to enjoy the cool breeze from the fans. Now the Muslim students were generally tolerant of us, as long as we left our shoes at the door and are respectful of the place by remaining quiet. Though while no prayers were being said, we could chat quietly as well. Some of the Christian students would even sometimes go through the motions of standing up, kneeling down, and so on, though of course we had no idea what the Muslim students were reciting. 

Thinking back, knowing the Muslims were in the minority, I have to assume one of the reasons they allowed us in the mosque was hopefully some of us might “convert”, and yes a few boys switched “sides” from time to time, but it was usually a Muslim becoming a Christian since Christians actively evangelized and Muslims didn’t quite, at least not with the same fervor of saving souls from burning in eternal hell fire. 

Now, It’s not uncommon for friction to occur between boys that were a year part. But it was relatively unheard of to challenge boys that were say two or three years ahead of you. I had a Muslim classmate that we will call Tee. Tee was fanatical about the religion. He will come into the mosque and vehemently berate us and drive us out. He will even challenge any seniors he finds there and they would in general backdown because obviously they weren’t supposed to be there. 

Two bonus stories

No Greek hero
I wasn’t really part of any sports team. But one sunny afternoon I was on the hockey pitch in front of the principal’s office when various teams were having a practice. Anyway I was near the section of the field where the javelins were being thrown. At one point it landed near me and I asked if I could get one throw. I was told to go ahead, so I picked up the javelin and let go. It was an unimpressive throw and the javelin landed awkwardly, bounced once and broke in two. I was so terrified of the consequences since I wasn’t on the team, but fortunately the senior boy that was in charge said not to worry and he would report to the sports master that it broke in the course of practice. I couldn’t have been more relieved if I had damaged the Mona Lisa. 

Ghost story 
My recollection is a little muddled up, but I believe I wasn’t on the trip. Several boys snuck out of the school one night. Now the main school area along with the hostels was maybe a kilometer of paved road away from the school’s entrance (“main gate”), and you have to walk all that way to get outside. On their way back possibly sometime around 11pm, with the hostels almost in sight, they had to pass a big tree that grew right next to the road, with its upper branches hanging over the road. And the bushes on that side of the road was really tall and thick. 

As they passed the tree, they swore a giant carnivorous animal of some sort that was taller than them, about as long as the width of the road, and possibly had more than four legs crossed the road into the bush beside the tree. They described it like a super giant dog with a long snout and teeth for days. There was an abrupt silence while everyone processed what they had just seen with the hairs on the back of their necks prickling up, then it was every boy for himself and they ran helter-skelter all the way to the hostels. Arrived out of breath, and initially no one was willing to admit or verbalize what they had seen.