Sunday 8 September 2013

RESOLUTIONS OF A TIRED FOURTH YEAR STUDENT




YEEY! It’s a new academic year. This year may be significant on very many fronts but it is a great year for me because it is the academic year I get to ‘finish school’. I don’t know about other finishers but I must confess I’m pretty much excited. It just seems like the other day I got a letter from J F Koga congratulating me on passing my KCSE and accepting me into this institution of higher learning. It’s been a long walk, a journey just like one aboard Nya Ugenya Bus from Oyugis to Nairobi .Anyone who has ever had an opportunity to travel to Westy that is Western Kenya using these luxury buses will tell you that it's a long adventurous journey punctuated with couple of arrests along the way, stopovers in the bushes of Ntulele for obvious nature calls, rendezvous with livestock, live and dead fish on the bus just to mention but a few.

I remember with nostalgia those days when we were finishers in a certain primary school in Oyugis.We were treated like kings, given the first opportunity to eat in the tiny dining hall, enjoyed other privileges like ndeko and exemption from manual chores like picking litter every morning and mopping on Wednesdays and Fridays. You would know how a great deal exemption was if your head boy was a gigantic hairy scary monster with a deep husky voice and absolutely no sense of humour. But there’s always one thing our master used to say that the ship capsizes when it is just about to hit the shore and even today if there’s anything I can remember  Mr. Ouko Akeyo Banda for of course apart from his impeccable English and the position of his trousers above the navel is that word of caution.

I have thus taken a deliberate measure to avoid certain things that might jeopardize my chances of squeezing my upcoming belly into the graduation gown.
After careful deliberations, I have made the conclusion to avoid the following people/things:

The kikuyu lady
Before you write me off as a tribal jingoist, allow me to explain why. When I say okuyu am not just talking about the tribe but according to my grand ma’s definition. According to her a kikuyu has certain inalienable characteristics e.g. ;

She has cooked herself....this is direct translation from my mother tongue and it means she’s spotting excessive make ups, a plaster of lipstick on her lips,clean shaven eyebrows marked with thick pencils .She would probably take you to the ICC for accidentally messing with her nails. How is such a woman able to take care of the nutritional needs of a true African man whose favorite meal is homemade Matumbo? She may be an expert in chakula ya bingu but as the son of God once mentioned man must not live on chakula ya bingu alone but ugali too. I think it goes like that. You should know my CRE teacher died before he finished the syllabus.

The kikuyu lady of course loathes Baba and every time Baba is addressing the nation she is quick to ask 

Huyu ogwambo wenu,si aretire 2 polepore?”

In my four years of campus to be fair ,I haven’t seen anything not to like in them but ma grandma,Getruda  was very explicit in telling me not have anything with them.

I hear  anything is possible with them  including conception via osmosis, so  I need to stay away from any possibilities lest my Getruda's worst nightmares  come true that I’m married somewhere in Karatina and I have to ask for permission from Wambui if I'm to go to the County. 

Nyayo 1 Hostels
When I say Nyayo 1 Hostels here I don’t really mean that specific hostel, I meant all ladies hostel that strongly adhere to the ten to ten rule. I think I’ve gotten enough sexual escapades to tell my sons the story of how I met their mother. I’ll avoid Nyayo 1 because we all know what happens when you hear the dreaded housekeeper’s voice. The sudden influx of ideas ,whether to hide behind the door, or the bed or just to believe you are athletic enough and go for the dive from the second floor of the hostels. Let’s just say that am not looking forward to the possibility of a displaced limb over a moment of pleasure. Aruji is expecting her son to graduate with all the limbs intact.

Riots
If you ever thought that you are just but an anonymous face in sea of KU students, you couldn’t be more wrong. If you have ever doubted if the system works then don’t try anything now, trust me, she see’s everything. Even if Ouru ‘steals the referendum’,  just as he is likely to do, I will not be joining any riots or demonstrations in campus or even grace the media with any of my prepared thoroughly researched statements calling upon who to do what,or severely criticing person z,maybe just showering praise upon the Queen Mother of KU. It thuse goes without saying that I will not call a press conference in campus condemning the 16% VAT on certain essential commodities. I love my tribe, am loyal to Luoism, I worship it but no, whenever you decide to protest against Ouru or stolen KUSA elections, count me out.

I will not be participating ,watching or having anything to do with demos this year


Passing through Githu

I’m now a very busy man, shuttling between serious conferences with senior health officials in this republic and social interactions that I won’t be having time to go connect and aboard those Matatus that consistently loose brakes or just erupt into smoke barely five minutes from being pushed to start. This will also enable me to phase out the coins from my pockets. I cannot risk coin holes in the pockets of my expensive imported Chino pockets. There aren’t any local spare parts as of yet. Mzee Sad new and Mzee Ragen my fellow chino people will confirm the same.

Mwakenya

If there’s a long and serious relationships that has passed the test of time and could even put to shame Alejandro and some girl in this soapies it’s the love Mwakenya and I share. I still remember summarizing all the geography notes from form 1 to form four in half a page green A4 paper. It’s not that you have to use it but its presence in the exam room gives you confidence and assurance that you’ll never walk alone. Google too has been generous all this year’s especially in the units whose lecturers are prospecting for Gold in Migori and thus have not imparted any knowledge upon a willing head. I’m not the kind of guy to just drop a loyal ally like that but the proverbial forty days of a thief may soon catch up with me. This academic year is thus a year of honesty, integrity and all those things we used to cram to pass CRE. In all fairness to my brain I don’t think it can be that bad to drop my GPA by double digit.

People who drink Bluemoon
Bluemoon here is not a brand, but refers to all those brews which concocted herbs and some grotesque materials and quickly labeled tipple distilled. These categories include all types of alcohol which are served with warm water as the mixer or ingested using straw.  This category also includes all manner of experimenting with drugs, solutions and plants that induce highness. One again Aruji is expecting a degree not a blind son or a mentally deranged cohabiter destroying the peace and tranquility she’s enjoyed throughout this years.

K’Ogalo Matches
 K’Ogalo matches are state events and thus I’m obligated to attend. However, I think it’s definitely time to cut on hooliganism a little bit lest I be caught in the cameras pelting motorists with stones and singing anti-establishment songs. Bwana am now a media personality, writing for some serious magazines and discussing issues health concern in international radio stations like Mayienga FM. You should know that this is  a big deal especially because articulating sexual and reproductive health issues in Luopean is not child's play.

People not calling Mzee
This is of course very important and non negotiable. The busara that oozes out of this head definitely requires recognition. You’ll serve to remind me that I’m finishing school and thus accelerate the process of looking for the perfect mate to share  with this quality seeds of an athletic, intelligent……handsome, Luo .


Have a jubilee year, won’t you?