As
my friend is working hard to get admission to Stanford, I can’t help
but empathize with him because I know why. You see in Kenya, Higher
education/learning is simply a façade; another four years (or more) of
your life going to waste. Yet you still ask why life is so short.
In
JKUAT, the narrow-mindedness is so sharp; it actually cuts your IQ into
half. The boys here have only two motives; get a sub- woofer and get a
girl to move in with you. It’s all about status quo and the more the
noise that blasts from your room the higher your ‘status.’ For those
living within the school compound, the story is a bit different; who
cares about status when the bedbugs are baying for your blood! It is
easy to be a girl in JKUAT as there are very few; just be as rare as
possible, rarer than Jadeite, which is the rarest gemstone. You are not
to be seen in the mess or hall where simpletons gather. You are to be
revered. Of course it doesn’t help if you are unsightly. By that, I mean
that anyone who casts a glance on you always tries to erase that memory
as soon as possible lest they get ghastly dreams. I swear if it weren’t
for wigs and skirts, I would confuse quite a number of girls for men.
As
for K.U., the first thing you learn is that buildings are more
important than students, students are a commodity that bring in money to
fund the expansionist plans of that mad woman, Olive Mugenda. Ohh, you
got a fail in some units, it doesn’t matter. Olive doesn’t want to
discontinue you because it means she’ll lose money. It doesn’t help that
K.U. awards more first class honors than every other university in
Kenya combined. The first thing you learn in K.U. is that Olive is The
Fuhrer, the law, the alpha and omega. When she builds a mall instead of
building more hostels, you are not to question her. You are simply to
pay school fees, and in time. If K.U. was a bakery, it would be the kind
that produces half-baked bread. If you aren’t cheating in an exam in
K.U. then probably you are the lecturer’s mistress. If you are a boy,
too bad, you only have one avenue. Maybe they should append the
universities doctors graduated from to their titles. I don’t know about
you but I personally never want to be treated by a doctor from K.U. or
Mount Kenya University for that matter. I’d rather die. What is medical
treatment anyway, isn’t it delaying the inevitable?
Talking
about medicine, I have a friend who wants to do Medicine simply because
no other course befits his ‘A’. Now let that sink deep in for a while.
Has it sunk yet? No, give it a minute or two. By now if it hasn’t sunk
in yet, then you are probably a product of Zetech College. When I asked
my father why he chose to pursue Medicine back then, he gave me a long
story of how he used to volunteer to help in a small hospital in his
hometown during his teenage years. The story is actually long but the
bottom line is that he had a passion for it from the onset and knew what
it took. Nowadays if someone isn’t doing Medicine for the prestige,
they are probably doing it for the money.
It
doesn’t help that half of the class in UoN Medicine is privately
sponsored aka ‘parallel.’ There is money to be minted in Kenya, not even
earned; you just need to be the dean of some medical school. 500,000
KES, cold hard cash per semester! I’d rather use that money to study in
South Africa, India or even Australia. Good Lord! People have money in
Kenya. Why was I born so late?
Then
the lawyers. At this point, the creators of ‘Suits’ should give
themselves a pat on their backs for having unleashed an entire
generation of young visionless Kenyans whose only dream is to become
Lawyers. Their dream is so clear; donning jet-black designer suits, with
sheer mark of genius solving the cases that even Sherlock couldn’t
fathom, finally popping some Chardonnay to celebrate the victory in
court. I hate to be the one to wake you up from this dream, good as it
may be but the Kenyan Law system is almost defunct. My crystal ball
tells me that these herds of young lawyers unleashed upon the Kenyan job
market will be so many that Kenya’s main export will become lawyers.
That is when you see people rushing to do MBAs and other what-not’s
because they wasted their years in Law school. Blame Suits people, blame
Suits. No don’t blame suits, blame herd mentality.
If
my sources are true, UoN students will be striking next week. Which is
kind of a surprise, I mean, what took them so long, the scene was a bit
dull without their stone- throwing, road-blocking, window-smashing
shenanigans. UoN is like the Gor Mahia of universities in Kenya.
Obstinate, smug, rowdy but most of all, we know where they both excel.
I
mean, what do you expect when your own student leader is friends with
the likes of Kamlesh Pattni and Raila Odinga. UoN is a perfect mirror of
Kenyan society. The classism is so well defined. The rich are rich and
the poor are nothing. Elections there make Samuel Kivuitu grin in his
grave. Campaigns, murders, rigging, more campaigns, more murders, more
rigging. By the time UoN is done with its students, it leaves them with
only one predisposition; to always correct people when they forget to
add ‘The’ before saying ‘University of Nairobi.’
If
USIU is where rich parents dump their dumb children, Strathmore must be
where rich parents dump their not-so-dumb children. Strathmore is the
kind of university that will make sure the whole Kenya knows that Bob
Collymore or Willy Mutunga gave a speech in their university. Yes,
Strathmore is a great place but until it produces the next Steve Jobs or
someone close, I’ll keep my reservations about it. At most, it is
simply a compensation for kids who couldn’t make it to study abroad and
were too cool for parallel programs in these public universities.
It’s
not that I have anything against religion but I just can’t stomach
these church based universities. A place like Baraton, you are
definitely better off in Nazi Germany. SDAs are like modern day
Pharisees, so stuck up. Now imagine attending an SDA university. High
school rules are even more relaxed in comparison.
I don’t know much about CUEA but it’s like the Strathmore for broke parents though it seems a bit more laissez-faire.
There
are these peripheral universities; Moi University, Egerton, Masinde
Muliro etc. They just make you think peripherally. Students from these
universities are nowhere to be seen, it is like they just disappeared
into nowhere. Honestly I don’t even know what to write about them
because they can hardly be felt. It’s like they are not even part of
Kenyan History. Finally, the mushroom universities. You know them. They
are usually named ‘something something university college.’ HAHAHA. They
are always springing up left, right and center. The degrees they are
offering are even more questionable. Something like driving becomes
transformed into Automobile Transportation Engineer. Like mushrooms, I’m
waiting for them to disappear.
So by all means, to my friend, apply to Stanford. I hope you get admitted.
In Kenya, there is nothing like higher education/learning.
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