The pest I’ll never forget: the rats stood six or seven deep on the lawn beside my dormitory

All it took was one or two careless teenage girls giving the vermin a taste of their snacks and they became the most well-fed animals imaginable I’ve written a fair amount about my boarding school years in Nigeria in the 90s, but never about the rats that accompanied my school experience.

Picture it: thousands of girls from across the country, each bearing a suitcase or two of a term’s worth of “provisions” – cornflakes, sugar cubes, powdered milk, hot chocolate powder, and so on. All it took was one or two careless girls giving the rats a taste of the exotic and they became among the most well-fed rats in the country, enjoying a steady stream of delicious teenage-girl snacks. I will never forget the sight of rats – six or seven deep – congregating at dusk on the scraggly lawn next to my dormitory, like an illegal gathering of political dissidents. They were large (what with their rich diet), thick tails…