Nigeria: The Long Grass

For anyone that passed through the boarding school system, Nkem Ifejika’s story, bizarre as it sounds, is not in any way strange. What may, however, seem strange is that anyone could be convicted for violating immigration rules and sentenced to gardening. Yet life at Nkem’s school might have been much worse, with bullies always on the rampage. “Imagine being given a matchbox and being asked to cut grass to the exact dimensions of the box, and not with a razor blade, but with our huge machetes,” ^[1] He wonders.