WHY AM NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO THE NEW ACADEMIC YEAR

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.

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.