HOSTEL WASHROOMS IN DEPLORABLE STATE. By Ranjeev Kharriz

It’s official. Moi university hostel washrooms have entered the unofficial Guinness book of records as the worst maintained ever. An eyesore to behold, a nauseous uneasiness creeps up my spine every time I harbor thoughts of visiting any one of them. Moi University students must indeed be a very tolerant lot.

Ever imagined wading through a flooded toilet floor of a supposedly ISO-certified university, day-in and day-out? Well, that is just a tip of the iceberg that is the torture that comrades have to undergo, despite having diligently paid –in full- their accommodation fees. In hostel L, for instance, one requires a combination of martial arts and faultless patience to be able to use the bathrooms, which are perennially flooded with murky water. A simple problem of blocked drainage pipes and wanting institutional value system is to blame for this.

The showers which are supposed to `rain’ water lash it out like a crack-whip instead, thanks to missing shower heads, which of course no one cares to replace. The toilets’ flashing systems are in terrible state of disrepair. Picture a toilet visited many dozen times a day without flashing! You would have to be blindfolded and supplied with a gas mask to achieve your desired mission.

The sinks would do more soiling than cleaning your hands and woe unto you if you lose your balance on the disgustingly slippery floor! I don’t have to mention the cleaners who do a bad-good job on the floors daily. There is a particular one who relishes flooding my doorstep with water every time she does her thing! And I feel she is justified in a sense. . . how do you feel cleaning real adult faecal waste every morning? These workers have guts, don’t they?

I remember an incident where I had to use the toilets at ICDC, with a dripping pipe overhead diligently spilling its contents on my back! And I swore to move all the way to school of information sciences every time I have to do my thing, just to avoid the eyesore that is ICDC washrooms. Have you been to hostel J washrooms? It’s another study in digestion system gone awry!

The J residents share their miserable story with their hostel H brothers. A friend tells me he has to go from hostel H all the way to the extreme end of hostel C to be able to use the lavatories. Reason, the sit-on toilets in H are awfully terrible. Kaput.

Now, why and how does one install sit-ons in a students’ hall of residence? Basic rules of hygiene dictates that such toilets are only suitable for close-knit users, say members of a family. Fix it in a hostel meant for hundreds of students and that’s a hygienic disaster in the waiting; quite pathetic indeed.

And now that some abolition blocks are springing up at a pace we all don’t particularly like, we are left to see whether they will be better managed than the ones already existing, if they will get any clients at all. Maybe they are meant for the numerous boda-boda operators who criss-cross campus grounds like it is their backyard, nkt!

Hygiene is one of the most basic of all my needs and yours, not unless recession has begun knocking hard on your door! I always wonder, who is in charge here? Who creates this silly mess we all are forced to manage and grudgingly live with? Can he or she be the type my lecturer usually calls the guy who sits in a carpeted office on a swivel chair? You may be perturbed to know such a junk has a degree in something from this same university.

Surely, our money can do far much better stuff than flooding corrupt bigots’ stomachs with god knows what.