That was the topic of today’s reflection in our House Assembly.

As before, we brought Aijuka, Chady and Zihao on “stage” to talk about their experience.

Aijuka is this very open person, who really gets on well with everyone and is appreciated by everyone in return. Aijuka has no limits to his perception of friendships. For him Boarding is all about embracing as many chances as possible and since there is not many people from Uganda in the community, he feels that he has to link with everyone at the same level and he doesn’t feel the need to find cultural or language features in common to start building a friendship.

Chady is very much like Aijuka… he numbered some of his closest friends and they are from different nationalities. However, a certain pattern could be spotted where his friends who are francophones slightly outnumbered those who aren’t.

Finally Zihao, told us about his experience and acknowledged that his closest friends are all Chinese. They feel this feature is a great binding force among them as they understand each other better and share so much in common. Having said this Zihao does not exclude friends from other nationalities… he simply tends to bond more with the ones from the same language and nationality.

Our key point is that there is no right or wrong answer… this is simply a reflection point. In Boarding we are faced with this variety of scenarios when it comes to friendships and the most important thing is that each student finds his balance within the spectrum and we all live together in harmony and sane values.