Things we did in high school that would be weird if you did them today

   I don’t know about your high school experience. But from what I heard mine was better than most. I find that being in the Kenyan public school system there are some things that are commonly done across the board. Therefore let me present a list of things I think most high-school leavers would never admit to having done.

1.       Barter trade

Somewhere, somebody came-up with the logic that one small tin of crisps is equal to 10 medium-sized biscuits. And 20 medium-sized biscuits are equal to a 250 ml packet of plain UHT milk. Of course if the milk was flavoured the price automatically went-up!  I don’t know what the current exchange rate is, but this came in handy when you were running low on supplies and had too much of one thing.

2.       School-made chocolate

Aka: Mkorogo*. Ingredients: Blue band, sugar and drinking chocolate. All blended together into a nice thick paste. Yuck! What were we thinking!

No, it did not look anything like this. Yes, I put this here just to tempt the chocolate-lovers!

3.       Leg-warmers in public

In Pangani we made this an art form. You’d tie the upper part an inch below the knee, but at the same level for both legs. You made sure that an equal amount of sock peeked out at the top of each leg warmer. The bottom part of the leg warmer was tucked in on all sides and then placed to rest perfectly just at the top of your shoe. The outfit was paired with a short fitting (read tight) skirt...for those who’d risk it! Lol!

Something like this. Only that our leg-warmers were dark blue. And our shoes were flat and black.

4.       Mass responding to love letters

I remember when we were in form one, one of the girls in our class received a love letter that was...well...not impressive. So what did she do? She passed it round the class so it could me marked and corrected by every girl using a red pen. Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors were pointed out and at the end of it all; the letter was graded and sent back with re-used stamps (Apparently re-used stamps guaranteed a fine from the post office for the recipient).

It ended-up looking something like this.

5.       Wearing a man’s shirt

...in public. The thing is, a man’s shirt is big and baggy and comfortable. It’s probably the same reason why girls today wear dress shirts. So these were perfect for the weekends when we could walk around with our shirts un-tucked and nobody would bat an eyelid. Again, preferably paired with a short skirt.

But with a skirt.

6.       Using the windowsill as a make-shift refrigerator

We live in Africa and as much as the days are hot, the nights can get even cooler. Thus the perfect way to preserve say a cut avocado was to put it in an airtight container and stick it out your window before bedtime. The next morning it would have minimal discolouration so you could have it for breakfast!

Feel free to comment below with more!

Ciao...

*Mkorogo – Swahili for mixture