One sure way of knowing the new
semester is on the horizon is the slow resurrection of the
till-semester-do-us-part relationships just like vegetation burgeons with the
onset of the rains. People who said good bye somewhere in April and pledged how
much they’ll miss you will start proclaiming their undying seasonal love. They
will start by a subtle message of,” Babe, kukumiss
nayo” and probably ask whether good old Cheboi, he of HELB has ‘done something’.
They then will proceed to ask you if you got a room not coz they care but
because of obvious reasons that you understand cannot be said in this blog if I
am to retain my church membership.
Mzee Varaq is however not looking
forward to the new semester and who to open my heart to than you my faceless people?
Just for the record it is not coz I’m not looking forward to my sweet
till-semester-do-us-part soul mate but for other reasons that are of more
depressing nature.
The good old director accommodation
and her team, in their infinite wisdom, decided to give me a room in Nyayo Three
as a present for my final year in Campus. Now, as you might be aware this is a notoriously
bedbug infested zone. I don’t know what I did to deserve this injustice of
being lifted from State House (Kilimabogo), but whatever the reason it has cost
me a year with this little vampires. This is the time I regret not paying
attention in my parasitology class in those two years back, maybe I could have
learned something about eliminating them from my precincts. I can only hope that
my A in Conflict Resolution will enable us to coexist in perfect harmony and
understanding. So if there’s a reason am not looking forward to opening school
that would be my first. Unless am able to collect the required number of
signatures to force a referendum.
I must admit that when schools
closed I wasn’t as thrilled with Practicum Attachment Two. As I did indicate in
my piece, The Diary of a Rookie Health Worker,
field attachment one was full of tribulations, low involvement and generally
did more theory than in school. One could excuse my inability to master
enthusiasm at the prospect of giving the first experience a reliving. To the
contrary, being an intern in the Ministry of Health is for lack of better words
engaging, unbelievable and a great chance to do meaningful work for my country,
not for the jubilee government. I must add that just so I have no problems with
Baba.
So you can understand why
the prospect of going back to school and
abandoning my swinging chair in my office to sit in a cold metallic chair for
one year is not any bit tantalizing. Tweeting all day and downloading movies in
the high speed net as compared to walking all the way from one corner of the
school to the Post Modern Library to use the restricted low speed WI-FI is doesn’t
seem as bright. The feeling of importance and grandeur as the ‘IT “guy though
mail merging and editing photos was the much I could do is something that I was
getting used to. What I’ll miss the most is that reverence you get every
morning from the female security guard as she opened my doors every morning and
welcomed me with the warmest of smiles. I think it will take me longer,
probably the rest of my campus life to get used to the not so friendly Brinks
Security people at the Post Modern Library who don’t understand that whenever
the First Lady calls it’s an emergency. The thought of the housekeepers who reverently
worship the oppressive ten to ten rule and take great pleasure in restraining my ‘serious’ visitors do little to give one a
reason to be excited about school.
Over the last four months my
dietary provisions have changed and the new semester fills me with worry on how
my nourishment needs will be met. See, by the end of last semester the Blessed
Hotel was among my favorite joints in campus serving delicacies like Harara and
Macho Punda. The former is not a donkey’s eye, just so you know. Dropping in
the Hiltons, the Sarovas, the Sankaras and other five star establishments at
will have made me question the position of my immediate former favorite Hotel
in the cadre of ranks of the hospitality industry in Kenya.
This kind of life also means that
one has to upgrade his liquor choices. This upgrade is rather involuntary as
long as people with cash to burn are doing the purchasing. I still don’t know
how my Kibao people will take the desertion of the drink we drank together and
swore our allegiance to. The arrival of the new semester would mean that I face
the Kibao Jury and who knows they may find me guilty and order me to stop all
indulgence with alcohol for some time. This of course can be catastrophic on
the social front.
In matters culinary, I have
always prided myself as being a top chef. I’m not of course claiming that I
could earn a berth in Hell’s kitchen but am sure that if KU hosted a local
version of ‘So you think you can cook?’ I would make it to the top one thousand
which is still a big deal considering most of the over 44,000 KU students know no
other cuisine but boiling water for tea. I r had forgotten that being a brother
of many sisters meant being out of the confines of the kitchen for long. Am
afraid I can’t prepare meals that meet the basic WHO standards in terms of
calories, sugar level and taste now. The ability to cook is of course a skill
that I have to reacquire fast if I’m to feed myself and keep my sportsman’s
super frame and also to be able to pick girls with loose morals from time to
time.
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| presenting serious docs |
As you are aware the most
important item in my back-to-school checklist is cham. You should know that
playing hockey at the top level requires not ‘a child of ugali’ but ‘the
grandfather himself’. For three years now I can comfortably said that my flour
needs have been ably taken care of from the abundance of my mother’s farm. This
year however, the old lady won’t be able to send me to school in sacks of maize
as the farms lay fallow due to poor health. The advantage of having your cham
in store is that it gives you the freedom to eat to your fill whenever you
desire to. Even in the most severe of financial crises one can still prepare
ugali in the morning and have it alongside imported omena from the People’s
Republic of Nyanza. I have formed an ad hoc committee to quickly come up with
resolutions on how we need to go about this ugali business. In the mean time I
have to rekindle my flickering bromance with Jaduon’g Omosh and who knows he
might donate some of his sacks to a fallen comrade.
Despite the classification of the
university as a word class facility due to the recent infrastructural leaps characterized
by the construction of new buildings in every street, comrades will agree with
me that the inside is not as rosy as portrayed by the broadcast and print media.
The biggest concern in this cold weather would of course be the cold water in
the showers. Let’s just say that the prospect of showering with cold water in
the morning does not fill me with so much interest in school right now.
My biggest phobia though is the
sheer lack of privacy that automatically comes with living with your brother in
law, your friends, your girlfriend, your girlfriend’s friend, your pastor and
anybody who knows you at a social, professional, romantic, religious level on
the same compound. Being in the same environment as certain people creates disappoint,
frustration and cumulatively unnecessary enmity especially with those who can’t
resist the urge to just drop by whenever they are in the ‘neighbourhood’.
Sometimes all a guy wants is to be a little mysterious.
I, like Martin Luther had a dream,
a dream of a university where each student had access to free unrestricted WI-FI
from the comforts of their bed, a university where all 7 am classes were abolished,
a university where lecturers set humane exams and where there are reimbursable
trips to exotic locations every week in a month. But the hard truth as I came
to realize is that politics isn’t just a game of numbers, there are several intrigues,
machinations, malignment, backstabbing, strategizing that goes on behind the
scenes. I’ll soon write to you the experiences of my botched political campaign
.For now all I’m saying is that I won’t be in the ballot for the upcoming KUSA
elections after all.
Hasta la proxima…………till next
time……..learn some Spanish bwana.
