Pages

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Know Thy Rule Book

Going through my old stuff the other day, I found the shopping list I made for my first year. It was a comprehensive list, but it was just so that I could justify the money I was asking my father for. The hoax worked, except for the part where he withheld a small percentage and told me to get it from my HELB loan (story for another day, the worst things people have done with this ‘free’ loan). Anyway, I just though, if someone had written a manual for me before I ventured into this institution of higher learning, maybe I wouldn’t have had to learn the hard (and heard way). Therefore, I thought I would make one….

1. Know Your Campus: Visit at least once or twice before your date of registration, nothing screams FRESHER like asking for directions. Which reminds me, a friend of mine who-shall-not-be-named-because-he-has-a-dossier-on-me, did the blondest thing…So Day One, we are provided with a map of the campus, and the campus is vast as hell (which I presume, is vast, and really fun and rowdy, with the occasional Catholic priest doing his thing). So he-who-cannot-be-named marked the Graduation Square as his focal point and used it for the next four days to find his way around campus. It gets funny when you know that it was not only his focal point on the map, but also physically, which meant that he would walk all the way to the G.Square to figure out where his Department, which he had just passed on his way there, is located. He runs away when the story comes up…

2. Know Your Condoms: It is no secret, Campus is where morality met its death (some hints of it are still there, in the zoology labs where they breed turtles). Know thy rubber, it will separate you from the brood, or make you one in a thousand, which is not such a romantic number. Most campuses have condom dispensers, Government Issue ones that have a KEBS tab (talk of vanity) and come in yellow, gold, or a weird shade of grey packs and a horrible odor. Point is, rubber might save your life, whether you are male or female, or both. Trust Condoms are now 20 bob (Inflation caught up with this slippery bastard!) and Durex (The Lamborghinis of the super car collection) are about 160. Each of these pieces is quoted in ascending order of the probability to get lucky. Nothing tells shagzmondoness like pausing foreplay to run to the washrooms to frisk the dispensers, and nothing tells sophistication like a pack of Durex, but then again, you are working on a lean budget (unless it’s your HELB loan).


3. Know the Dealer: This point should know your shantytown, but that is not really the point. You do need to know your shantytown, know the cheapest hotels, the ones with the best food, best servers (wait, we are talking about shantytowns here). This shantytowns always have weed dealers ( I do not know about sterner stuff, and if I did, I would not), ghosts who keep the First Class Honors and Dropouts running. There are many reasons why you might need this person, the first of it being that second, to whatever deity you worship, he has something that can lift you up. Know him, even if you do not partake, just know the person (ant stereotyping here, unless someone knows a female Marijuana dealer who is sensitive about gender), you both might need each other, and more often than not, if your experience is a normal campus one, you will directly or indirectly use his products.


4. Know your friends: Unless you aim to vie for posts in SONU, KUSA, MUSO (Someone from Moi PLEASE tell me that’s not what your student organization is called), or any other, just keep a few friends. Nothing speaks of loneliness than not having a place to crash when your roomie decides to ‘hang the dirty sock’ on the door. Even for the loner, you still need someone to notice if you’ve been missing for too long (the normal period is 1-2 weeks, depending on the gender of the missing person, some might be gone for a whole sem, the girls of course) but if you are in UoN, you don’t need friends, there are people there who take amber alerts very seriously, they will kill a motorist to demand your release.


5. See no Evil, Hear No Evil: You will see things, You will hear things, You will be told things, You will do things, You will smell things, You will taste things, You will meet things, You will learn things, suffice to say, rub off your moral pedestal and make a new one as you go, adapt to what suits you and find a way around the things that threaten your innocence (it will come under threats more times than your life will).



6. Know Your Priest: Whether it’s the religious priest, your imam, guru, minister, barman, drug dealer or little voice in your head, know the one person who can bring you back to sanity without expecting something from you (except a bill of some kind, a collection, tithe, offering or black eyes). At the end of your period, just before graduation, seek a hypnotist to make you get amnesia. You will need to start afresh, your mind will be scarred, either by a boring campus life (you non-experimentee!), a moderate life (yah, yah, so you let your guard down in second year and stayed at a party) or an insane life (Like some guy who slept in a trench, or the girl who can outdrink most men I know)



There are many things that can be written about campus manuals, but the rules are clear, except for those posted on different posts in the campus, Mututho laws, those of organizations, clubs and societies that you will join, those that your deity requires you observe, and those your mother told you would attract the boogeyman, you make the others as you go. You are your own person now, do things!


and JKUAT( Juja Boys and the rumor of a girl), I take it that you haven't thought about rioting about this...

4 comments:

  1. Come on! What's wrong with MUSO?

    ReplyDelete
  2. MUSO?? do you not remember when the SsangYong Musso was Range Rover Sports??

    ReplyDelete
  3. Me thinks that with the graduation looming and with the Campus guy having been so quiet, we should get one final (or several (preferably several :-) )) articles. Soon we wont have a Campus guy.

    ReplyDelete