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What is life like at St. James for girls?
What is life like at St. James for girls?
A clanging school gong at 5.00am signals the end of a peaceful night, and if somehow one sleeps through this, the vigilant dormitory matrons ensure that no-one is left in bed. The dormitories accommodate around 30 girls each, some of them in bunks, whilst the more privileged 6th formers have partitions dividing each bed from the next. After early morning showers, the girls proceed to the dining hall in two shifts for breakfast, which consists of a mealie-meal porridge and bread.
School begins at 7.30am either with an assembly in church, a Eucharist service or, on a Friday, a flag-raising and singing of the National Anthem. Then follow nine school lessons of 40 minutes each throughout the day, with a half-hour break at 10.00am when huge chunks of bread spread with jam are consumed and a lunch of one hour and twenty minutes. The lunch meal often consists of sadza - ground, cooked mealie meal which looks like solid semolina and is rolled into balls and eaten with ‘relish’, a type of vegetable sauce often made with spinach, rape or tomatoes, sometimes with meat added.
Classes end at 3.50pm and thereafter, girls must undertake various duties, or ‘manual’, as it is referred to. Activities cover cleaning the classrooms, dormitories, toilets, and clinic, watering the vegetable garden, doing their laundry (by hand), feeding the school chickens, or collecting fruit from the citrus orchard to name but a few. Needless to say, most girls don’t like these chores, but the prefects supervise diligently!
There is very little time between these tasks and dinner, (again consisting of sadza, or rice, with eggs or meat), and then from 7.00 - 8.30 pm compulsory prep takes place, when homework is done in the classrooms. Bedtime is from 9.30 pm with the 6th form having the option to stay up later to continue working if they wish! All this seems to leave little time for leisure but, since most of the girls remain at school during the weekends, there are various extra-curricular activities and clubs that the girls may take part in.
On Saturday evenings the whole school congregates in the dining hall, perhaps to watch a film, have a talent competition or a fashion show, all extremely popular events.
As you can appreciate, life for Praise, Blessing, Memory, Goodness and many others with equally charming names is considerably different from life for British school-girls. However, they value their time at St. James, a thriving community where friends are made for life.
With acknowledgement to David and Elizabeth Wakefield, this extract from one of their USPG Project Newsletters, during their time at St James.
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