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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Campus is Sin City, Do parents really need to know that?

I am embarrassed. The last time I blogged here was on the 29th of November in the last year of the last decade? Then a friend of mine happened upon it while reading @savvykenya‘s old blog ‘The Diary Of a Kenyan Campus Girl’ and texted to ask why I have no current posts. Talking of Savvy, she graduated from campus which means that a gap remains that must be filled. I do not think I can, her shoes (although I have never met her) are far too big when it comes to blogging. Every good writer has an area of expertise, as it is with porn stars and assassins. I am more of an academic writer (and I make a decent living off of it) and my mind is (or rather used to be) too dynamic to keep up with the stagnation of campus. Suffice to say, life always has its way.
A lot has happened since last year. Some of which cannot be blogged without a legal agreement from the parties involved. Martha (read the second post) is now headed to her second year, baptized with fire from ‘Judy’, the girl who ran away with her 16 k. Life has taken its inevitable toll on all of us, I think I spotted a single hair on my chin, maybe I wont be a thirty something year old with a chin like a baby’s butt after all. Something got me thinking today, reading through the different witness accounts of those who were present at the party where Mercy Chepkosgei Keino was seen alive last before her body was found on Waiyaki Way. Morbid as my interests in life might be (I think death is God’s gift to humankind, it is the question we answer with our lives), reading the dad’s candid defence on why he knows for sure that his daughter had never touched a drop of the –COOH products brought me to near laughter. How many of us partake without our parents’ knowledge? That would be 97 %, and the biggest number is obviously the ladies. For guys, suspicion begins once you hit puberty and your mother catches you in the house with a girl (or fondling the house help, whichever comes first).
The first time I ever tasted beer was when I was in my mother’s womb (story for another day). I avoided it for about 16 years after that, until a few months before I joined campus and I blacked out on 16 bottles of Smirnoff Black Ice (unbroken record in a house of drunkards, do not underestimate that ‘panty remover’). Even for a narcissist like me, it would be unfair to say I drank it all in one sitting and in my right mind. I also think I took 15 and a half because, if my memory serves me right, I poured about half a bottle on myself when I missed the glass. I woke up four hours completely sober, and sat through a lecture by my grandmother as to how moderation is key.
Fast-forward to a few months later in campus when one Thursday (it was the only day on the timetable that we had a single class, meaning much of the day was do-as-you-wish) I had my first taste of a brandy. Piece of advice, if you are going to introduce someone to brandies, please make sure it is not Napoleon. The small brown bottle retailed at 140 /= if my memory serves me right, and my classmates and I bought about four. We walked to the hostel and at 10 am in the morning, listened to music as we sipped through badly mixed coke and cheap brandy. Hours later and four more such bottles down, Eric was on the floor, having thrown up all the bread he had eaten, Levi was trying to salvage Phil’s laptop after a jug full of water tipped on it, Tim was fast asleep on his bed and I....I was staggering to my room to meet up with this girl I had been trying to get for the previous three weeks. Picture a room in slow motion, everyone doing things at -10* speed, at 2 p.m on a Thursday afternoon.
Karma can be a nasty bitch, when you are not prepared for luck, she shines it upon you. Mercy forgave me for throwing up so close to her feet that some of it splashed onto her long dress (tells you something, does it not) but she has never forgotten. She also helped open my door after I missed the keyhole about five times (could have been more, everything was so blurry). Now? Now my friends and I are the gurus of pinting, we hardly ever pint together and I have been on a sabbatical for no logical reasons. I can never do brandies, even the sweet Viceroy (bloody drinks nearly annihilated my libido *shudders*) and Phil is the guy you buy ten beers and he still drives you home and gets to his place without a mishap. Levi does not drink now, and Eric knows better than to eat bread while drinking. Do our parents know of our experience? You all know the answer to that question, they were once in campus too, were they not?