The Dirty Sock on the Door

If you have ever read Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People then you would remember the part where Odili, the main character, details how he laid the ‘hardest girl’ on campus. His friends waited on the hallway for proof that the mighty lioness had been devoured and indeed, after sometime, the creak of the door opening was unmistakable, and he thrust his hand out, holing the condom full of seed! Mad, is it not? Remember that Achebe went to campus when it was for the select few, and yet how he describes the act is so vivid you can tell some parts are written from memory.
Everyone knows the legend of campus life, the dirty sock on the door. It is the crudest, yet most ingenious method ever devised by budding academics to warn their roommates and friends that they are not to be disturbed because they are engaging in coital matters. I have always wondered who came up with it, at some point I even suspected that it had something to do with voodoo, at least its origin. However, let us not bore ourselves with where it came from, but what it means.

No one hangs a dirty sock anymore, with the invention of phones; a text message should be enough for you to have the room to yourself. I have a million tales about ‘exile’, some that I have witnessed, some stories retold.
A friend of mine sent a text saying “ Niaje msee, unamind kwenda exile leo?” to his roommate on a Sunday evening. When his roommate replied in the affirmative, he sent another one “Aki sina rubber kwa keja, unaweza nigetia pack mbili nitakurefund?” As you can imagine, his roommate was mad as hell so he decided to revenge. He did buy two packs of trust Condoms, back when they cost 10 bob (things our children, pun intended, will never believe), but then he did something else. He ripped apart the pack, took the six condoms and placed them on the reading table in the room (don’t beat me to the genius part). The idea behind it worked perfectly, you all know that unless it is your wife or long-term girlfriend, or someone you will pay after, you need to appear aloof to what you are going to get. It is the nature of the hunt that once you are sure you have the prey, you do not have to remind it that you are going to eat it, if you catch my drift. Now, imagine you walk into a room with a girl, and being the man that you are, you let her get inside first only to find six condoms lay neatly on the table! It’s back to square one again, huh?
Legend has it that if Hall six in JKUAT Main Campus was to burn at any time of the day, there would be more girls than guys running outside, which would not be weird if it was not a guys’ hostel. It is the same in all campuses, there is one hostel that carries with it tales of broken beds, exiled roommates and blocked toilets. Irony is, if you walk into the washrooms in Ngong Hostels in KU, for example, the condom dispensers always have several packs, new as the day the government shipped them in from wherever it is they get them. Compare that to guys’ hostels where the dispensers are rusty because the rubber never gets there. It is handpicked before it the caretakers can lift the packs and empty them into the dispensers.
Campus is where mindset about shagging takes a completely new dimension. Where we all shunned it at first, it becomes a way of life. For example, Mark, a classmate of mine, once went to his friend’s room. It was one of the big rooms meant for elected student leader’s officials, but they are always full of people. So he walks and finds a couple on the upper bunk watching a movie on a laptop, four guys huddled on a computer and a nerd reading, but he could not see his friend. So he approached the lower bunk, which had one of those makeshift curtains you make with an extra bed sheet (I first saw them in high school, creeped me out). He lifted it without much thinking to find, alas, two naked beasts getting on with it right there. She was on top (small detail I thought I should add) and Mark just dropped and walked out. Everyone else just continued doing what they were doing, minding their own business.
Then John, who lived on my floor, left his door open once while she was down there blowing things up. SO you can imagine my shock when I banged through the door and found him lying down, eyes closed, sighing like he was asthmatic. When she looked up, those big eyes, that full mouth…suffice to say I have leverage on him now, he is very careful around me.
I have only been sent on exile once, by my last roommate. Actually, it was somewhat self-inflicted because I had introduced him to the girl. It was the first Mashujaa Day, last year (no pun intended, do not ask how I remember) and I spent it in the library online, doing much of nothing. When I got back to my room they were high, and the smell of rubber, the stench actually could have been the worst thing if my forensic skills did not indicate that they had done it on my bed! Being a self-confessed metro sexual, a fresh change of sheets and pillowcases still did not do the trick. But he was a man now (did I mention he was a fresher).
The moral of the story is, dirty sock or not, unless you live alone or with Jesus, someone is bound to exile you sometime in campus. They say when Lady Luck smiles your way, then you have gotten lucky, but please do not do it on someone else’s bed, it is rude. If you sleep of a top bunk, do it there, you never know, she might be into gravity and all.