DIASPORA, THE FORGOTTEN

By Kinyua Njeri

A lot has been said about students who live at Stage and its environs. Though other hostels have got problems too, residents of the diaspora must be the university’s most unfortunate lot. This is the forgotten group indeed!

In the last fortnight, residents of Blue Gates, Comfort, Forest View and other ‘satellite’ hostels have persistently experienced dark nights (and dark days too). It all started when those living in VeeCam were evicted from the then prestigious hostel after a prolonged electric blackout. They were then allocated rooms in Comfort, a ladies’ hostel by then. 

Though many found it favourable, I never got the logic behind the whole issue. What was easier to do? Or better still, which was the best solution to the problem? Evicting the students or repairing the faulty circuit? Though logic would have definitely favoured the latter, the administration had a higher affinity for the former.
The students thought their problem had found a lasting solution until the now horn-grown KPLC (Euphemists will call it Kenya Power) found it sound to repair a faulty transformer. To my amazement, it took two weeks to repair a circuit, all in vain. Once again, the students cursed things they couldn’t see. The university had taken them from boiling soup to the fire itself!

The rooms had no hint of electricity. Hard water from the filthy wells was not nutritious enough to see them through. Those who HELB ‘disliked’ had nothing in exchange for Chela’s cookies. They simply had to relive the forty-days-in-the-wilderness experience!
When the good managers noted it, they had another awesome idea. Everybody was given an ultimatum to clear from the rooms within countable hours. 

With the great submissive nature of our Moi student hood, all reactions were internally displayed.

Demoralized murmurs could be heard here and there. What was beyond belief is that none of them had a clue of where to go. All they had been told to do was clear from the rooms and get others elsewhere. 

That is definitely not right. It can never be right to displace a person from his residence without giving him a better or similar alternative.
As usual, our good old MUSO had nothing to offer, neither the hope they orate when they have nothing to say nor the technical appearance they make to prove to students that they still exist. Being a hostel-far-away-from-school, little attention was given. The victims murmured curses that did not go beyond their bitter glottis.

They had nothing but bitterness to swallow. No student leader, not even the mouthy ones, dared to address the obstinacy of the issue.
But can a full MUSO official, elected by comrades to serve for a single academic year, but serving a bloated tenure of two full academic years aided by the unpredictable calendar and enjoying the opulence of an embezzled MUSO kitty in a self-contained room in Eldoret town, find the time or energy to present student grievances? He’s simply too busy for that. 

That’s why they will hold Kamukunjis then literally run away from us. They know how to ignite tension but are totally illiterate to manage it. Though they were able to convince voters with envisioned ideas during the crossfire, they confused many with the eloquent lies.

Now, the centre cannot hold anymore and therefore, things are falling apart. How comes almost all of the hostels in the diaspora lack electricity? Who has ever heard of such a coincidence? Moi arise!

The writer is a 2nd Year Literature Student.