Remembering Campus

It's a hot Friday afternoon in Oyugis Town. My soon to be ex-girlfriend, her future ex-boyfriend and I are sitting on the edge of the bed. The air is loose and uneasy. It's that kind of feeling you have when a beautiful lady walks into a lift and finds when someone has ‘spoilt’ the air and left.  You are torn whether to assume she can't feel the stench or to open up and say it wasn't you. So you steal glances and smile sheepishly when caught.

The friend and the soon to be ex-girlfriend must either be doing it or planning to do it. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this development. I think I was annoyed that they thought I was too dumb to notice. But it was exciting to play the game. Don Corleone, The Godfather, says that it's better an enemy overestimates your faults than a friend overestimates your virtues. 

I remember getting a text that the 'list' was out and I should go check what university and what faculty the all-powerful JAB had given me. I excused myself from the amorous duo and went to a nearby cyber to check. Back then, the kind of gadgets that we had as phones could not successfully load a page without running out of memory.

The course that had been chosen for me was Population Health.  My dream of being a city lawyer dressed in shiny suits, cross examining 'ignorant' witnesses in scandals of Biblical proportions, in the full glare of the local and international press, and letting my clients off the hook while getting filthy rich in the process, had met its untimely death. It meant I couldn’t strut in the court arena in the Perry Mason swag- the type I had but visualized in detective books and tried, successfully, to the chagrin of many an opponent in moot courts. 

I couldn’t let them know that I was disappointed. 

No, they were already behaving like they had gotten away with murder. The realization that good JAB had condemned me to an inferior course would be news most welcome to them. So, like a guy holding on to the last shred of dignity left, I extolled the virtue of the JAB choice. I told them that I hadn't really wanted to do law. That course X was the new thing in town. It actually helped that the course was new in the University and was only being offered in one other institution of higher learning in Africa. 

Prof J F Koga would send a signed admission letter a fortnight later later but it would be several months before Kenyatta University would open its hallowed gates to us. By then, I had decided to be the bigger man and seduce the ex-girlfriend’s best friend and the friends now ex-girlfriend.  

The thing about time is that it passes too fast to notice. New Buildings come up, people get married and beget kids, others grow bellies and die from heart attacks, others break up and beg each other on those sleazy breakfast shows, wounds heal, you meet interesting people and life generally goes on.

I've met really interesting people in campus. People who are so fascinating that just mentioning them in this rushed blog post won't do their characters real justice.  These are People who deserve their own blog post.  People like Omosh Jilali. The only fresher I knew who had an actual TV set. Not those laptops fitted with TV cards or TV boxes. He used to watch news religiously and he would tell us what Baba has done or what Baba planned to do. I hear he nowadays doesn't watch TV. He isn't interested in anything those two camera loving silly boys have to say. Not my words.

Omosh was the first guy I saw who actually ferried sacks of maize from the Nyanza Republic. At the beginning of the semester three full sacks used to stand erect in the corner; at the end of the semester, the sacks would be lying on the floor like a spent penis. 

In deed he was the kind of guy who would share with you his fish but would think twice about letting you into his plate of ugali. It's a shame he won't be graduating alongside us because he raised his voice when KU, in cohorts with IEBC decided to steal Baba's kuras. 

Then there was msee wa shorts.  He was always in shorts. Word had it that they were easy to remove whenever the lasses visited. The smell of fried waru would float across the rooms followed almost immediately by the sight of his four roommates suddenly leaving for the library or group discussions and then the almost ubiquitous loud hip hop music to muzzle the expected sound of people fighting for their lives. Literally. 

There's this day that one of his concubines must have found the going too tough. Msee wa shorts could be seen in his OMEN boxers, large veins protruding from his forehead, thick sweat freely flowing from his face as he dashed from his room carrying a seemingly fainted lady wrapped in blue sheets across the hostel’s corridor and into the abolition block, obviously to sprinkle cold water. She survived.  She was back the very following day. The music went up too. Msee wa shorts was now the undisputed Usambara Hostels msee wa shots. Jaduon'g Thuol and Adush Latif (rest in peace) would threaten to snatch the title from time. But it would only be a matter of time before Lord Rungu entrenched himself as the undisputed champion of the arena. 

What about Gythy? The only guy I know whose relationship survived the four years.  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she was a student from another campus. Every Friday, Gythy would shower, apply expensive cologne, lock his cabinet (his roommates were Maseno Boys who thought everything was communal), pack some gloves and the Manpower’s book he read like a Bible. Only then would he make his voyage to Kabete. He would return on Tuesday evening and head straight to the gym, perhaps in preparation for the next weekend. 

You see that's just the thing about campus.  You meet people who make you question everything you once considered normal. The kind of guys who start putting their livers to the test on Monday and do not stop until Monday, when they start again. 

You meet those guys who wear their slim colorful trousers on their knees and spot dirty Green Boxers. They, in most cases, have very colorful earphones, matching trousers and those uniform T shirts written something like MY MONEY GROWS ON TREES. They are either spotting Mohawk or their hair is braided.  You can bet your arm that in the whole setup there's a chain somewhere.

You meet those whose idea of lunch is boiled water and yellow mandazi, the broke ones who buy two ugalis at the school mess at five shillings each knowing very well that the good university will throw in two leaves of cabbage and a jug of soup. You meet sons and daughters of hooligans just as you meet sons and daughters of Kikuyu tycoons who make money by selling the government air. Their sons and, by extension their weekly chicks, will without a doubt never be spotted in the students messes or those ‘dirty low class’ hotels in KM. 

In campus you learn that there will be good and bad seasons. You appreciate that you won't be at the top always, neither will you be at the bottom always. You get to understand that powerful people (read HELB) may dictate your highs and lows. You will not always be in control. And you get Okay with that. There are times you laugh, and there are times you cry. I remember my stillborn KUSA race with a glee of disappointment just as I replay my medal moments with the Vultures Hockey Team with pride.

You meet those guys you can always relay on. The kind of guys you call at 11 pm and tell them that there's an assignment due the following day, and they'll offer to edit their cover page for you and make minor textual changes to the assignment and hand in.  Mzee Mchil and your Inda enterprises I raise my glass to you.

You meet lecturers who see you as a threat to their mating habits. You meet field supervisors like Jacques, the one I wrote about in the Diary of a Rookie Health Worker who was just too eager to remind yours truly here who the boss was.

You meet those nice girls who will always invite you for fried omena and come over and surprise you with sweet uji severely laced with citric. Lady V and Lady B thank you. 

In campus you meet those friends who are always having great ideas. 

                                      Tuende Swimo Lambada usiku.

         Bwana tupike mayai na omena pamoja (Mzee Fisi and Wekemeu am not talking about you here)

So this is not just for those graduating this week. This is for all of you who made campus, campus. This is about all the roommates who started reading immediately a beautiful girl walked into the room. This is about all those girls who made me clean the room upside down, changed sheets, missed classes or hockey training, cooked chicken knowing very well it was that time of the month. This is for all of you. This is for my big sisters who are big sisters in every way. 

So congratulations to all graduands at the 37th KU graduation! Graduating from some of this public universities is just as easy as finding well behaved Paradiso touts. 

Aluta Continua.