Mama Tee Series -My Rag Day Experience

Do students in tertiary institutions still observe Rag Day?

I ask this because it's been years since I last saw students doing Rag Day.
The first time I saw a male student wearing a bra and female leggings, face painted in red and white chalk with a wig on his head chanting and holding something that looked like a tin of MILO wrapped in white paper, I ran far away. I thought he was a madman. Then, I was still in junior secondary school. When I got home, I told my mum in the presence of neighbours how I saw a young madman with an ID card hanging on his neck. 

My neighbours laughed and told me students in the University in town were doing Rag Day. They explained what it meant but I still did not understand why a young man would dress like a madman and be doing 'bambiala'. Lol.

Fast-forward to my first year in school, I and two of my friends decided we would take part in that year's Rag Day. I especially wanted to experience it.
So we planned to go to a nearby town which was more busy than where our school was located and carry out our madness cum begging.


On the D-day, dressed in our 'madness' inspired costumes, we set out. Having put little stones in our 'alms collector', we jingled it as we displayed.
After trekking, dancing and begging along the road for about 1 hour, we decided to board a bus for the remaining journey.

All the buses we waved down refused to stopped oh. Lol. I later learnt the reason was because students don't pay on days like that. We then decided to wave down private cars, the third one stopped and we told him our destination, he laughed at our appearance and told us to hop in.


When we got to the town, we alighted at a popular market. As soon as we approached the main gate of the market, people started running, some were laughing and pointing at us.

Two men passed beside us and said in their native language "these ones have not been mad for long, their madness is still fresh, they've not started stinking yet". Hahahahahaha
I told the others that we should leave.

That was how we left the market and entered the town. We combed the major roads till around 3:pm and then decided to head back to school. Surprisingly, the first bus we waved down stopped for us. The bus had started moving before I noticed we were the only females. There was the driver and two other male passengers. One stood at the door like a conductor but after we were seated, he sat close to the entrance and closed the door. Another one sat on the seat behind the driver. I immediately knew something was not right.

After, about 10minutes, the guy in the middle brought out a gun and ordered us to surrender all our belongings including our 'offering boxes'. After that, they dropped us along the road. We had to beg for a lift to school.

So, that was how we were robbed of our phones and money on my first and only Rag Day outing.

Now I'm wondering if Rag Day still exists.


Mama Tee