A True Red Tale

Achimota School Ad-blockphoto credit:ac 2010 by Suzette Ayensu

• Our dining hall in Achimota School eastern compound, was large, with the prefects' high table raised on the west end and the teachers'dining room on the eastern end, up a floor and overlooking the hall. A loud bell at the school tower summoned us highschoolers to every meal. We had to be on time for meals or else face discipline!
  
  In my day, the tables were arranged in three columns and twenty rows and I do believe there were fourteen people on each table. This means there were probably 840 students in the main dining room and perhaps 20 prefects. Each table was cleared after meals by two junior students -form 1-3, (equivalent to grade seven to nine) unless someone from a higher grade was being disciplined or punished as we called it.
  
  Red-Red was just about the most popular lunch available but inspite of this fact some students, noticeably the mid senior cool girls of form 4 and 5 (or grades 10 and 11), would quite often leave food on their plates uneaten- a behaviour we described as 'posing', in other words, creating a sense of cool aka sophistication. (Cool adopts many different expressions especially in co-ed boarding schools where wearing uniform is compulsory.)
  
  Everything in boarding school was based on a hierarchy of seniority and therefore it was also the duty of juniors to serve food, giving the best portions to seniors. So the softest fried plantains went to the seniors and the hardest pieces went to the juniors. We were the juniors this day in 1975, when my friend G served Red-Red to the fourteen students on our table. Then it was time to clear the table and as usual some of the best pieces of plantain lay uneaten on the plates of the posing semi-seniors. G loaded the tray and carried it to the pantry where the pantry-men were waiting to wash the dishes. I guess she was still hungry, otherwise she just could not bear to see that succulent looking plantain in the garbage, so she grabbed it quickly and shoved it into her pocket, no doubt looking forward to a snack once she got to the house. But G hadn't thought far, for Red-Red is fried in palm oil. Oh the laughter, when she returned to the table to await announcements sporting a growing red oily wet stain forming on her pocket, colouring the white flowers on her dress, red! It was clear what she had rescued from the pantry. Inspite of this embarrassment, I'm sure as a true Akora, she still loves Red-Red.