Pirating in the hostels,,,chronicles of a fresha
Rooms in the hostel have always been an issue of contention almost in all the universities. Most people have endured this tantamount experience...
Most universities admit people on September; hence, they report on January for their second semester. I was not an exceptional, so during the December holiday i maneuvered all the streets and crossed all the villages preaching how people live in universities. Actually, i had a phrase copied from the famous musician Clifford Harris (T.I) : i have got spirit of a hustler and swagger of a college kid. How cool was that? i thought. I was a demigod who could not be shaken even by a dark horse wishes. My ego was too high to be comparative to any other living thing in the universe. I was the epitome, creme de la creme in the village just like Chiefs during the Moi era. Just because i had joined an institution of higher learning forgetting that Mwai Kibaki graduated in 1955 and he does not brag and the villagers have witnessed people attend university for almost a century and i was there bragging. I was very excited indeed that i forgot the circular had said we should go to the school website and book for the hostel rooms if at all you are interested.
After sobering up on 3rd of January since 19th December (its Christmas men, who cares), I remembered that we were supposed to book rooms. I rang my friend to confirm whether he had checked the website, you know college peer pressure. "Yangu nilibook around 15th December" he replied. Oh goodness, i had to rush to town just to find that the was no internet in the only cyber cafe that had been opened in the entire town, sorry market place (it does not qualify to be called a town). Internet was so new that we were charged 5 shillings a minute and we had to wait for the "network." I persevered all this and "phewks! I managed to log in at last. However, there was a clear message that read..Rooms fully booked.
Back to the university, i was still new in Nairobi and my financial stature could not allow me to get a room outside the institution. This is when you know hell is closer when everyone goes to his room to rest and you are just scratching your head thinking of where to keep your bag full of cassavas and mangoes.
Thanks heaven that my friend said he would accommodate me as i sort an alternative. You know the common lie people give, "just accommodate me for two weeks and i will have secured a room." Two weeks became a month and so forth. But there was a bigger problem, yes a big one in deed. I became a "nyuni" meaning bird, most of you call it pirate (that is a person who is staying in the hostel illegally).
If at all you managed to step a foot in any PUBLIC university hostels, you clearly know the size of the bed. Actually, it is not larger than the high school one, only that it is stronger so that people can bring their girlfriends. Just imagine two people on that bed. Just imagine please imagine bearing in mind these two people are of the same gender so they have to leave a space between them. Another problem is that i was not included in the school eating program. Eish, man without food "yawa" is like trying to censure the national assembly speaker or silencing Duale. That can never happen.
To ice it all, there is a hostel manager who checks how people live in there. This is the second most feared person in college after the exam. I wonder what qualifications they ask for when employing this guy. He is fearsome and can control anyone he wishes, secondly, he can make you be chased away from the institution with an immediate effect. Now you have a glimpse of why we were called "nyuni", it is because when you saw this person you had to fly away-hide. Our manager was called Oti and he usually narrated of how he played rugby and how he managed to fight seven people while closing his eyes. There were rumors that he had a black belt, cjui yellow belt and all that nonsense people say when they fear you.
During this time, nyunis were too much to match and contain the university resources. There were constant water shortages, electricity was going dim each evening, people had to wake up early to book bathrooms due to the long ques. That is when the university decided to do an impromptu check and catch the "nyunis". As usual, we would use trickery to source food from the kitchen and go with it to the rooms in order to avoid the manager. But this day, they decided to check early in the morning on a weekend as they knew everybody will be sound asleep nursing hangovers.
Oti gathered a hoard of security guys, all the lists of students accommodated in the hostel. One advantage that Oti had is that he knew almost everybody in the institution. He would tell people who have come only to visit and the pirates. On this Saturday morning, he ensured that the gate was closed and all entries guarded to avoid any escapees. We were in the room the six of us which was slotted for two people. The first room that Oti opened he managed to capture two of them and he confiscated their belongings. Fear flew through the entire hostel as everyone knew the day of beckoning had come.
After i peeped through the window, my heart started throbbing and panting profusely. I knew this was my day to quit education and cease bragging to people. I wondered whether they had cast a bad omen upon me to destroy my education due to jealousy (like the Nigerian movies do). Oti was coming and there was no way out...to be continued.
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