I must admit that I have missed you guys! Judging from the number of messages I got in my inbox, I guess you missed me too (or at least you missed Capital High). Been a long break but it is good to be back. I have done a few changes on the blog- take a look and let me know what you think. I have also started a vow-writing service (you can check it out in the menu above-Vows by Kenikodjo) which allows you to infuse your love story into your wedding vows or a poem. Yes, we are growing! Like I said, it is good to be back! Let’s dig in, shall we? 
‘I saw it too’

‘The blood?’

‘Yes, the blood’

Lawrencia’s stomach tightened. Nobody was supposed to see the blood. She had tried to wash all of it away but at 1am, there was only so much you could do with a torchlight. She looked away and pretended to be looking for her bucket in the bucket cage. Sometimes it felt like the house prefects had OCD- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The buckets had to be arranged according to colour and size. Most girls had buckets in the blue, green and purple bracket so it sort of looked uniform to the untrained eye. She was reaching for her bucket when she blacked out.

---

Christoff’s eyes darted around the courtyard, very well aware that the other students were also watching him curiously, as they filed past him to go for dinner. He instantly regretted wearing the neon green and orange Nike sneakers as his eyes fell on their uniform brown sandals. His plan was to fit in, not to stand out. It was hard enough to do that with his Caucasian skin, rebellious hair and German accent. Clearly his shoe choices needed to be more subtle, going forward.

Coming here was a bad idea…

‘Don’t worry, everything would be just fine.’, Auntie Akua reassured him. It was almost as though she could read his mind. She meant well but he just didn’t understand why she was bent on enrolling him in a ‘Ghanaian’ school so that he could ‘imbibe the culture’. It wasn’t his fault that his father had not taught him anything about Ghana before shipping him off to Auntie Akua. As usual, he was getting the shorter end of the stick in this divorce. His mother could not stay two hours without drowning herself in vodka so the legal custody battle was not even a battle to begin with. Dad won fair and square and that is how he was now standing on the stairway to the upper courtyard, being sized up by the curious Ghanaians who were going to be his new family for the next two or more years.

One guy nodded and smiled at him. He smiled back and the guy left the line to stay hello to him. ‘K Beck, get back in line. You are not above the law!’, somebody at the end of the line who obviously had a lot of authority yelled at the boy. The boy got back in line quietly and moved on. Christoff mentioned the name under his breath and made a mental note to look out for him. He needed a friend as soon as possible.

---

The girls could not stop talking about the pool of blood they found in the bathhouse. Nobody was interested in siesta and even the prefects were joining in the conversation.

‘Ah, so whose blood is that? It is not hygienic to just expose us to blood like that. Plus it is disgusting. Not everyone wants to be a doctor. Some of us feel sick when we see blood. Didn’t the Health prefect talk to us about how to take care of ourselves during menstruation?’

‘Who said it had anything with menstruation?  Maybe it is an abortion gone wrong.’

‘Ei madam! How do you know how abortions are done? You koraa, I have always suspected you. I am not fooled by your Bible-holding, tongue-speaking, ‘holier than thou’ antics. I have been seeing you during entertainment- you and that Greg boy. And oh, save me the Christian brother speech.’

‘Ah, don’t you watch movies?’

‘I do. I certainly don’t watch movies with abortions in them.’

‘So who could it be?’, Abigail cut in, clearly tired of the banter.

‘I don’t know. Maybe it is one of the Form 3 girls.’

‘It could be Lawrencia. I hear she fainted this morning.’

‘Really? She doesn’t seem like the type silly enough to leave evidence behind.’

‘Silence! It is siesta time!’, the girls prefect yelled out as she glided past that dorm to her prefects’ room.

‘This Jessica girl koraa, I am tired of her. I can’t wait for her reign to end. She walks as if the ground is contaminated. And she is not above reproach sef. We all know she has a phone in that room of hers.’

‘Ei chic! Don’t make allegations you can’t prove oo!’

‘SILENCE! If I have to come out again, all of you will go and weed behind Liberty House.’

This time, nobody dared to quip a rebuttal.

---

When Lawrencia finally regained consciousness, she felt nauseous. From the smell in the room, she knew that she was in the sick bay. She tried to recollect what had happened before she got here.

It was all Uche’s fault. He had promised that she would be fine and she had believed him. Just like she believed him the day he convinced her to try it without a condom, during the mid term break. It was reckless and stupid but she had nothing to lose at the time- or so she thought. When she missed her period, she panicked. Her father would probably be too busy to notice but her mother would throw a fit. She could already envision it.

‘My enemies! They have succeeded oo! My enemies are throwing a party as we speak. Shame is knocking at my door. Jesus Christ!’

Then she would probably exclaim and sit on the floor, with tears streaming down her face. After she had wallowed in self-pity for a while, she would turn to Lawrencia to insult her.

‘Shameful girl! Who sent you to open your legs for any dog with a weapon between his legs? How is your father supposed to stand and preach on fornication in church when his first daughter is pregnant without a wedding band on her finger? Where did I go wrong with you? Where? I have brought you up in the fear of the Lord, prayed over your head and done what a good mother is supposed to do. And yet, you allowed the Jezebel spirit to descend on you! Whore! Harlot! I am sure you seduced the boy. You must be the type of woman that Proverbs 7 was referring to.’

Yes, that was her mother. The most judgmental person on earth. It was fear of what her mother could do or say that pushed her to call Uche and ask him to find her a pill for the abortion. One thing  she liked about Uche was that he was resourceful, so she was not in the least surprised when she received a package from him the next day, complete with instructions. It was a set of three pills. She was supposed to take two of them first and the last one 24 hours after she had taken the first dosage- and she had done just that. And yet, at 1am, she woke up with excruciating pain in her abdomen. Her bed sheet was soaked in blood and it looked like there was more where that came from, so she staggered to the bathhouse with her torchlight, afraid of waking anybody up.

The bleeding was not stopping. She was getting weaker and weaker. She dragged herself under one of the showers and stood there, watching the clots on the floor. She tried to pour water over it but she was too weak to do a good job. She managed to drag herself back to the dorm and wore a sanitary pad. Her head was throbbing with pain and she was sweating profusely. She grabbed the package that Uche had sent her and scanned it for side effects of the drug. She wore a maxi pad and tried to close her eyes.

And now here she was- under the watchful eyes of Auntie Thelma. Auntie Thelma was the school nurse. Gagert was a legend- but so was Auntie Thelma. She could spot the difference between malaria and an ‘I want to get out of a test’ excuse from a mile away. Right now she was sitting at her desk, quietly watching Lawrencia.

‘Good. You are awake now. You have lost a lot of blood. You should eat something.’

Lawrencia nodded, afraid that her voice would give her away. She looked around the room. There was nobody else in the sick bay. She was grateful for the privacy. The pain was still there and she could still feel the blood. She closed her eyes again. She knew that the whole school would be buzzing with rumors by tomorrow morning.

---

 

Polar Bear entered Liberty House and demanded a roll call. Someone had called the school to say that he had seen two boys in the school uniform in town. He had a hunch that it was somebody from Liberty House. He did a sweep of the dorms downstairs and came up with nothing. He moved upstairs and entered the prefects’ room to ask them to help him check the dorms upstairs. Just before he left, he heard a vibration in one of the lockers.

‘Open the locker’

Larry’s palms started to sweat. He struggled to open up the locker because he knew what was waiting for him once that door was opened- demotion and probably deboardinization. He cursed his stars for not putting off the phone when he was done last night. He had always been careful. Now a Samsung Galaxy S3 was going to mar his spotless testimonial.

Christoff was excited. He didn’t expect this much excitement in a Ghanaian school.  An abortion, prefects with phones and people breaking bounds. Capital High wasn’t half as bad as he thought it would be.

See you next week!