Community: Sticking your hand in poop for a friend!

As absurd as it sounds, I promise that the story I’m about to tell is true. Seriously people, you can’t make this stuff up.

Its freshman year in HS and I’m in boarding school in Nigeria which is the equivalent of boot camp for minors except your teachers are actually allowed to beat you.

And by beat you I don’t mean ‘spank’ you with a wooden spoon. I mean, teachers hit you as hard as they could with specially shaved branches [canes] they purchased [If anyone from Nigerian is reading this, feel free to confirm this. I think my haitian readers can attest to this too]...

The choices were always 6, 12 or 24 strokes on your hands, back or bottom and you got ‘canned’ for everything from missing class to sleeping in class and sometimes passing gas in class.

Needless to say, I got caned more times than I want to remember... although there’s one I’ll never forget.

Someone pooped on our dorm floor in the middle of the night because he was understandably afraid to use the outside latrine where a python had just been killed a week earlier.

For some reason our teacher didn’t find this as funny as we did. He gave us 2 options.
24 strokes to the back or out the ‘pooper’.

Seemed like an easy choice but what our teacher didn’t know was that we had all decided a while back that if there was ever a choice between one person suffering and everyone suffering, we all suffer.  

So believe it or not, even after 24 strokes to the back, no one said a word.

Our teacher, obviously frustrated came up with a desperate idea. We all had to stick a finger in the poop and then stand outside in the sun with that finger pointed to the sky until we gave up the pooper.

Might be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever done but i gotta tell you, there was something incredible about standing out there with friends you knew would take a bullet for you-or stick their hands in your poop-before outing you to suffer alone.

Its one of the most amazing displays of community I’ve ever seen.

Some thought we were crazy but really we just loved each other and true love would rather suffer with or for you than see you suffer alone.

What is the craziest thing you or someone you know has ever done for a friend?