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Hello good people,
In the secondary school I attended , we had two vice principals,both of them were women, one’s office was located at the junior school side and the other located at the senior school side but they both serve the two sides of the school.
When I got to junior secondary school class three, my classroom was two classrooms blocks away from the vice principal whose office was located at the junior school side.
I cannot even remember her name but there is a particular nickname that she’s well known as -“Eje jesu bomi” ( the blood of Jesus covers me). This is more of a prayer than a nickname.
Sometimes we call it in full and sometimes we just go by “eje jesu”( the blood of Jesus) whenever we refer to her.
She became well known by this name the very first week she got transferred to our school as the new vice principal academics. She’d say her school-wide known slang “ Eje jesu bomi” before she flogs or punishes a student and she does this every single time.
The funny thing is that she says this slang/prayer dramatically in Yoruba language whenever she wants to do her act so, every other student around would laugh whereas the victim would be in great fear.
How else would the victim be in fear if her flogging techniques aren’t top notch. I’ve been a victim of her flogging before, but that's not the story for today.
“Eje jesu” had passed by my classroom a few times that morning to warn us to stop making a noise and the last time she came, she’d asked the class monitoress to put down names of the noisemakers on a sheet of paper and secretly bring it to her office.
The remaining classmates continued their lifestyle as usual but later that fateful day, something happened before closing time.
“Eje jesu is coming”
Someone screamed from the front seat and everyone else in the class maintained decorum.
That student had seen her walk towards our class from afar and she decided to inform the whole class about her arrival.
When she arrived, she summoned the class monitoress and asked her to call out the names of the noise makers that she wrote down.
After calling a few names of my classmates, she called my name and I stood in tears.
“All of you, follow me”
The vice principal said and she turned her back.
We (the noise makers) followed her to her office where she lectured us about obedience for the first 10 minutes. Then she goes..
“Eje jesu bomi” ..while gesticulating the holy Mary sign.
“All of you, go out to the front of this office and kneel facing the assembly ground.
Kneel your way to the assembly and back, twice.”
At that point, we became very scared but we had no choice but to do as we'd been ordered.
The assembly is like a plot of land away from the front of her office and the floor wasn’t tiled. It was a clay soiled ground with dust, so many small and big stones, and ups and downs.
We began our journey under the hot scorching sun.
She stayed under the shades of a tall mango tree and monitored us.
We started the journey but we couldn’t go past the first lap because our knees were over bruised and covered in blood.
She eventually gave us three strokes of the cane and freed us.
We all landed at the school clinic immediately after the departure.
This is the end of my story on this prompt “punishment that I can never forget in school”
Thank you for reading.