with “school spy”

I remember being told of the ‘wonders’ of Presec. I believe they were seven in all, at the time. I do not remember all of them but I do know that the Dinning Hall was one. Has anybody seen such architecture anywhere on any campus in Ghana ?

There was a mystery to that building: physically it remained the same with no expansion but somehow it was able to absorb any increases in student intake. It did not matter the number of student-boarders, the Dinning Hall could adequately accommodate all of them.
Somehow, it manages to ‘expand’ to create more room for more students. That was the mystery to this building ! Another unique feature was the siren that was housed in the Dinning Hall. And here I mean the original siren that we met in form 1. The very one donated by the late Major General F.W.K. Akufo (Odadee). I guess that was unique too. I mean there were schools still using ‘drums’, ‘gong-gong’ or some other improvised mechanism or ‘appro-tech’. For a form 1 boy (at least for me) very few things in the school could compete with the thrill that the siren brought. Being asked by a ‘prefect’ to go ‘sound’ the siren was just ‘celestial’. You start with 2 or 3 quick ‘pushes’ or ‘bursts’ and then follow with a long ‘spell’. It did have quite an extensive range-it could be heard from the University of Ghana, and some parts of Madina (Kotwikrom included).

 
But what really made the D-Hall unique were the ‘happenings’ inside the hall. One could not write about the D-hall without touching on some of the human-interest stories that took place within its walls - and there were many !

One of my favourites was the mystery of the ‘thirteen loaves’. To the best of my knowledge this remains unsolved.
One morning, we were all seated at our tables. The D-Hall Prefect said the ‘prayer’ and all was set to go. We all do remember those ‘famous’ loaves, right? Ok, I think we used to sit thirteen to a table (I stand corrected). There was this table that had just six students present. Now here comes the tricky part. When the saucepan was passed around, one student had nothing. Yes I said six students for thirteen loaves and one student came up short. I have no idea what the mathematical model is for such distribution but it did happen. Now this student was in no mood for ‘koko-sakora’ so he drew the attention of the D-Hall P The other five students produced one loaf each and showed it to the D-Hall P. D-Hall P decided to check all surrounding tables to make sure no loaf had been passed around; he came up with nothing. Nobody had seen any loaf ‘moving’ across from any table! Eventually the student was asked to go to the Prefects’ table and help himself. This incident happened in our ‘junior’ years. I can’t remember whether it was form 1, 2, or 3.
To this day, students on that table insist that they took one ‘loaf’ each. So what really happened? That, to me, is a mystery if ever there was one!

We can all come up with theories as to what might have happened. We can even convince ourselves that we know for sure how they did it, but the truth is that besides calling these guys liars, we have very little to go on with. When we insist that the 5 students did actually take extra loaves and lied about it, then we may have something; but before you rush to any conclusions remember that the 6th student was sitting right there at the table the whole time! Wouldn’t he have noticed something?
So what really happened? How did 6 students, sharing 13 loaves left one with no loaf after the 5 had taken one loaf each?

© 2010 Odadee91. All Rights Reserved.