HOSTILE HOSTEL

HOSTILE HOSTEL

HOSTILE HOSTEL

Four years ago, I sailed towards the shores of the University of Ghana, carrying the hopes and excitement of a new beginning. Gaining admission felt like a dream come true, and for most of us, it was an answered prayer. But no one told us that the real battle would not be in the lecture hall, but with our basic need: accommodation!

Accommodation sounded very basic until it became the very factor that threatened your education, and there are two groups of people who sing this lamentation of accommodation. The first group has the means but cannot access good accommodation. The rooms are few, the lists are long, and the prices keep rising.
The second group, however, does not have the means, let alone attempt to afford the few spaces available.

I found myself in the latter group.
And as Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” My why had to become stronger than my how.
This is not just my story… this is a path threaded by many students across universities in Ghana.

Many students are literally homeless. Most of them spend their nights in unthinkable places, from Wi-Fi zones and 24-hour libraries to departmental benches and empty lecture halls. This is not hearsay or a one-time occurrence. It is an everyday reality on campus.

It feels loneliest when darkness settles. You sleep with the scripture in your heart: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). Morning comes, and you join the crowd, silently bearing the back pains and swollen feet from the night before.

If you are fortunate to be perching with a friend, it is a huge relief. But it comes with its own burden of sneaking in and out of the hostel, so you are not caught. You learn to keep your belongings minimal, so you remain portable and easy to accommodate when you lose your current spot.

When you look ahead, it feels like you are making no progress. Yet at that point, the cost of giving up far exceeds the cost of pressing on. There are even times you want to blame your parents; but you cannot complain, because you know they are also doing their best.

These are the hard lessons life whispers into your ears: the world owes you nothing, but demands everything from you.

You have to make all these compromises so that your grades do not suffer. Your academic performance must become the extreme opposite of your circumstance. 

Then before you realize it, the end is at hand. The four years has come so quickly, and your own memory and body seem to have betrayed you. You barely remember all you endured - both the struggles and the hardships!

And that’s it. Four years of sleepless nights, borrowed spaces, aching backs, swollen feet, silent tears, and prayers whispered in the darkness are reduced to a line on a certificate. You wear your gown, smile for the cameras, and celebrate an achievement that many will never know the true cost of. 

Perhaps, years from now, the memories will fade. Life will move on, as it always does. But somewhere within you, a part of that student will remain—the one who kept going even when the circumstances gave every reason to give up.

HOSTILE HOSTEL is more than a story of accommodation. It is a story of dreams that refused to die in uncomfortable places.

Authored by: Bernard Ayaaba

Published by: Arthur David