Selecting a secondary school

You start to look at secondary schools by the time you get into class seven.In primary school, we always had an admiration for those that had gone to college(that is what secondary schools are called in Cameroon).
Before we sat for the common entrance examination, you had to fill out a form on which you decide on which government school you would like to attend, if you passed in List A, and which college you would want to attend if you passed in List B.There were five government secondary schools at this time.Bilingual grammar school Buea,Bilingual grammar school Yaounde,government grammar school Mamfe,government grammar school Nyassoso, and lastly government grammar school Mundemba.
The glamour governments schools were first,Lycee Bilingue Buea(they had dormitory facilities) and second Lycee Bilingue Yaounde(no boarding facilities at the time).You actually could get a bilingual education in both of these institutions.You had to choose two schools from the above mentioned five.Lycee Molyko was my first choice and lycee bilingue Yaounde was my second.
From the B list, I had PSS Besongabang as my chosen school.Dad actually made the choice on this one.My elder brother, Dennis had attended the school and it was also located in Besongabang,the village in which I was born.Deep down though;I knew I had to pass in list A to make it into college.Dennis had a lot of difficulties going through secondary school because of school fees.As a matter of fact, once he passed his GCE ordinary levels, he applied and got admitted into Lycee Bilingue high school section.He had a lot of good things to see about the school.Joseph Marine(a family friend at the time), who lived in Ndongo camp was attending lycee.He will be a form four student by the time I get into the school.He is now of late, dying under some very mysterious circumstances.I believe he was murdered after he was just about to obtain his bachelor's degree from the university of Yaounde(he did bilingual series there).He had just returned from a student exchange program in France.
To get admitted into secondary school you have to go through an interview process.One of the reasons is probably that I lot of people lie about their ages.The interview process will then filter out people who had not been truthfull during the application process.When the common entrance result came out I was thrilled to learn that I was successful.I started preparations for the interview process.This involves talking to friends and present secondary school students about their experiences during interviews. Interviewing, did not involve any further studying.It was just a matter of your showing up and the people in charge will then decide on whether you were to gain admission or not.
Interviewing for admission into government school took place in different campuses and ours was conducted in the lycee Bilingue campus in Molyko, Buea.The intervew takes place while students are still on campus, so you actually get to meet some of your future school collegues(one of the students that was interviewing at the school was Ilongo Fritz).I arrived Molyko, accompanied by my father and I went through the interview process.
After interviewing, you had to go home and wait for the results to be annouced over the radio(Radio Buea at the time).I remember vividly the day that the results were annouced that I had gained admission into lycee Buea.The annoucement went like this"TAMBE ERIC NKONGHO", very sweet music to my ears at that time.