Image is mine||Edited on canva
Excursions were always set aside for either the art students, school prefects(if they behaved well) or the final year students. Right from my first year in highschool, I always wished to go on an excursion someday. This was because the students who went always came back with lots of goodies; monetary gifts, stationeries, food! And above all, exposure.
It felt as if they visited a different universe because such excursions were always a topic of discussion for weeks. Unfortunately, I wasn't an art student and my set was already given the tag "recalcitrant" because we had a record of breaking rules, or so they said.
I eventually reached final year and I already concluded that I wasn't going on any fun excursion. Emphasis on the fun because sometimes in my junior class, we went to a livestock farm which was close to school. I didn't classify that as an excursion because it felt like I had moved from one hell to another. Looking at pigs and goats was no fun, not at all.
As final year students, our schedule wasn't so tight as all we were doing was preparing for our final examination(WAEC). I was randomly walking around when a teacher walked up to me and said that I should go and dress up as we were going on an excursion. Hold up, how ?. Lots of questions on my mind but before I could ask them, the teacher thundered;
"You have thirty minutes to do so. Come along with three of your friends".
Okay, at this point, I didn't have a choice. I was feeling different emotions ; happiness, panic, indecisiveness. I sprinted to the hostel and announced to the rest of the girls that didn't have classes to attend. Not so many people seemed interested as they wanted to read till they dropped. I, alongside some of my close friends, dressed up and were ready for the adventure of a lifetime.
With sweaty palms and increased heart beat rates, we all dived into the bus. It's worthy to note that we didn't even know where we were headed, all we wanted was the adventure. We all started chatting in the bus and playing the "guess where we're going to" game till the bus moved.
Honestly, I felt like an elite because not very many people had this opportunity. After about 45 minutes, the bus pulled up at a location and we were all told to alight the bus. In my mind, I was like "is this it? Are we done?", Hehehe.
We were all ushered into a hall and as we stepped in, we were officially recognized by the master of ceremonies;
"Okay, let's welcome the students of…."
We were given seats in the front row. After reading a few signs and banners, I realised that we were there for a "women empowerment program". Yay! Not the place I had in mind but at that point, any civilised place was better than school premises for me. And again, it wasn't so far away from school but this was still better.
After an hour and thirty minutes of lectures and discussions from esteemed guests and dignitaries, the event was slowly coming to an end and so was our excursion. We hoped to stay till the end but the woman in charge of us came to the place we were seated and ordered that we should start moving back to the bus. We tried to tell the woman that we had stayed throughout the event, why not just stay for the closing prayer and possibly the refreshments. She said that she was following orders and so we didn't even budge.
About five minutes later, our principal got up, gave us a dead stare and walked out of the hall. Guess what? We still didn't move an inch😂. Two minutes passed and we heard the familiar honk of the school bus we used and so one of us stepped out to check and saw that the bus was leaving. She came and notified us. You needed to see how we ran out of the hall. The once elite students were running helter skelter. We almost missed the bus. Almost.
As we all got in, the principal told us that she would have made us trek back to school since we didn't want to leave. She was very annoyed. Seems like someone had annoyed her at the event.
The bus was so quiet on our way back. I'm certain that everyone was thinking about the food and goodies we had missed. We arrived at school, quietly alighted the bus and walked back to our hostel. Our faces were devoid of colour as we were utterly devastated.
Our classmates came to get the gist of what happened and all they did was laugh when we narrated the story. It was funny no doubt. People usually had interesting things to talk about when they got back from excursions but us? Well, if you consider public embarrassment and with a sprinkle of devastation as something interesting to talk about, then yes, we did have something interesting to talk about.
We all lived with this heartbreak until two days later. We were summoned by a teacher. A little apology was rendered to us and then, gifts were shared. The teacher said that they had sent down our stationary gifts and monetary gifts . In the end, we got the gifts but the food? We missed out on the amazing dishes on the buffet. This is one very interesting memory that lives rent free in my head. The excursion of a lifetime. Till date, I don't know what they did to our principal to get her so annoyed but well, I still got to go on an excursion and that was enough for me.
This post is a response to the #prompt-excursion which can be found in the hive student hub community. Here is a link . Do well to share your stories with us.😊
With love, wongi✨