In this perilous time when medications is equivalent to a gold mine as a result of prices of commodities skyrocketing. despite we humans being surrounded by various contaminated items and substances. there is barely any food item that has not gone through the process of fermentation reducing its natural nutrition that is meant to provide humans nourishment, strengthening the immune system and increasing our chances against disease.
It makes you wonder what are the chances of living a healthy lifestyle but then it all comes down to each individual effort to ensure we stay healthy at all times. During my days in boarding school, we were taught about a lot of survival tips to ensure our own safety. it is kind of necessary because most times we are always by ourselves without the guidance of our parents and despite the effort of the hostel masters it is just never enough. So instead of worrying endlessly about our well being they decided to nurture us in way that will enable us to be able to care of ourselves at all times.
We perform a lot of activities in the boarding school but the most common one is maintaining an hygienic environment at all times which begins from each student taking care of their rooms before leaving the hostel for school. it involves cleaning of our room and laying of our beds with a clean bedsheets. failure to do so will attract punishment and public embarrassment, I mean if you think being flogged publicly in the dining hall is not enough embarrassment, wait till everyone start talking about it. the funny aspect of it is that this gossip can last for weeks.
As if that isn't enough, every Saturday the hostel masters comes around to inspect our cloths to see how clean they are. this usually happens on Saturday evening after we are done watching all our valuable items in the morning. There strict policy of ensuring a clean environment can be overwhelming sometimes but during those days we never knew they were doing us a favour. there are times we curse them behind there back because of the pain of being flogged. I would not say I was exempted from the punishment but mine was never about my cloths or room but something entirely different.
We were not allowed to make use of our hands while eating, especially when eating local dishes such as eba,Amala e.t.c we were always asked to make use of cutleries which might seem kind of unusual because it is kind a popular thing to use our hands to consume these dishes. the thing is that our hostel masters do not trust our capabilities of washing our hands clean enough before eating. you know there are times when a child can just hurriedly start using their hands without washing it properly just because he/she is hungry.
So whenever we are in the dining hall, our hostel masters come around to check us out one by one, table by table in no specific order. sometimes they can just appear from behind without noticing them. Normally their main focus is to check out cutleries and see who is not using them but along the line there are other things they notice such as our finger nails, Well that is when I always get in trouble. I'm known for keeping long finger nails which most people do till this day but is it really hygienic? I mean the chances of germs getting stuck in our fingers nails is very high. To make matters worst, you could easily use your hands to consume your meal without noticing anything in your finger nails but that doesn't mean it is clean.
I was reprimand a lot for my finger nails eventually I learnt to oblige, I never really liked the fact I was forced to cut my nails. there are times I try to hide it but our hostel masters develop the habit of checking me out first before moving to other students. I never appreciated all their efforts till eventually I realised that by maintaining an hygienic environment, we the students barely fall sick or have any sort of infectious diseases.
After years leaving boarding school, I still continue to cultivate the same hygienic habit because it worked. I mean it is better for me to maintain an hygienic environment than being subjected to medications, believe me I'm not a fan of consuming drugs not to talk of injections. I discovered that people who end up with infectious diseases never realised that it is not something that occurs in a day, it is due to lack of maintaining an hygienic lifestyle that resulted to the disease. When you hear of the cost of what it takes to cure this infections and how long it takes you would realise it is better to stick with a proper hygiene.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled "One health tip" in hive learners community.
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