This Life: A Boarding Experience

This morning, a friend told me about an experience that made me smile.

She had ordered a meal, and when it was delivered, her colleague asked why she had ordered something containing pork. Apparently, the colleague was Muslim and would have loved to share the meal with her, had it been something she could eat. However, she was notorious for never ordering or bringing any food and would always want to eat out of others.

It was an innocent observation, perhaps, but it reminded me of something that happened many years ago during my secondary school boarding days.

Back then, most of us were boarders. We lived in the school hostel and depended on meals prepared in the school kitchen. A handful of students, however, were day students. They came to school every morning and returned home after classes.

One thing the day students had going for them was homemade breakfast. They often arrived with food packed in containers, and some were generous enough to share with the rest of us. We called it bases. A spoonful here, another there, and suddenly someone who had missed the comfort of homemade food had something to look forward to.

There was one particular student, Gbenga, who stood out.

Gbenga rarely shared his food. Ironically, he was also one of the students who consistently brought the most sumptuous meals. His food always looked inviting. Fried plantain, rice, fish, meat and beautifully prepared stew. The aroma alone could make you reconsider whatever you had eaten that morning.

His meals were always a little too attractive for their own good.

However, asking Gbenga for a bases was almost an exercise in futility. On the rare occasions he entertained such requests, he had a rather peculiar way of discouraging further interest. He would spit into the food, stir everything together and carry on as though nothing unusual had happened.

Understandably, that was enough to send most potential beneficiaries back to their seats.

Then came one particular morning.

Gbenga arrived with what appeared to be his favourite combination. Rice, fried plantain, fish, meat and stew whose aroma practically announced its arrival before he opened the container. To complete the picture, it came in a container of Danish butter cookies.

It was a feast by boarding school standards.

As usual, two students who could not resist the temptation approached him for a bases. Gbenga performed his familiar routine. He spat into the food, mixed everything together and was just about to take his first spoonful.

Then something unexpected happened.

Tayo.

Tayo was one of the quietest and most reserved students in our set. He was not the sort of person you expected to get involved in such drama. He rarely made a scene and generally kept to himself.

However, on this occasion, he walked straight up to Gbenga, stood in front of him and did the unthinkable.

He spat into the food too.

For a moment, the atmosphere changed. Those who witnessed the incident were simultaneously disgusted, surprised and intrigued. Nobody quite understood what Tayo was up to.

Gbenga, on the other hand, was completely stunned.

The expression on his face was priceless. He could no longer bring himself to eat the food. He pushed the container away, looking at it as though it had suddenly become something entirely different.

Tayo, apparently satisfied with his intervention, picked up the container, stirred the food and began eating.

We were shocked. Some of us wanted to laugh, others were simply fascinated. We loved what had happened, even if we were not bold enough to say so openly.

Suffice to say, that was the last time Gbenga brought food to school.

The lesson in all of this?

Sometimes, the very things we do to protect what we have end up making them undesirable, even to us.

Gbenga loved his food so much that he was unwilling to share it. His solution was to make it unappealing to everyone else, forgetting that he would eventually have to eat from the same container.

Perhaps he never imagined that someone would be willing to take the same approach.

Life has a funny way of teaching us that we cannot always make something unpleasant for others without occasionally making it unpleasant for ourselves.

There is a fine line between protecting what is yours and deliberately making it unpleasant for others to enjoy.

Sometimes, we hold on so tightly, guard so fiercely and protect so aggressively that we eventually lose the pleasure of what we were trying so hard to keep.

This life.