Varsity Press: Everything else matters not,just the culture week

Charl Chotto(budddingmind@gmail.com)

You wake up in the morning, most probably late for a lecture and look at yourself in the mirror. And what do you see. A tired face courting age .At the back of your head pain begins to throb and before long it spreads to all parts of your precious skull. Then the realization that you are in KU and things are not really good dawns on you.

You are broke, having spent your HELB during the first week of reporting to campus and the bamba mbao you got from a good friend isn’t productive. No one is willing to pick your calls. You hate queuing but it is a must in KU. The term papers come and group members disappear only to surface when you have handled everything. You are the bookie, the exams come and you scoop meager grades together with missing marks which are nowhere to be found. You think of last sem and all you can remember is going home with no clothes after they were sanywad by “a good Samaritan” together with your laptop, your investment of the year.

At such moments the reality painfully sets in, that this is not the life you thought you’ll have in KU.

Life becomes one painful drag and before you know it, you are stepping into the "free world" again, perhaps a semester if you happen to have been taking an extra unit every sem.Such times excitement sets in as you think of a job waiting for you somewhere and then the chums. I differ with my pals who harbor such thoughts and so they brand me a pesimist.Life no longer follow that old script: go to campus, get your honors, get a good job and live a good life happy ever after. You need to be creative and versatile to court success much sooner. And knowing this is being realistic.

Everyone at a given moment gets fed up with stuff in KU.Things always aren't working right.So,like everyone else, to nurse my frustration, I pass by the Mbug's in KM for a sip of the "holy-water “to calm my nerves. But here it is not different. I am forced to sit at a table with guys who are brooding over their drinks. The mood is tense as they talk about the many relationships that have left them dry and hopeless.

The first thing on the lady's mind on meeting a guy is that here comes "Mr. Playboy". True, many are. But to think that there is a clan of guys who too get unfair deals in these lavish contracts calls for another glass to drawn this discovery .It is our culture, our heritage that here relationship do not have the fairy tale attached to them. They simply do not last and if they last than a semester then you are a worker and beyond that people begin to wonder what you are up to. Heartbreaks are like a UCU, just like knowing KM, which if you never knew is part of everyone's course work.

Many of us, if discos were to be offered in this faculty, would be disillusioned by now, hopelessly watching over our fallen castles that never stood the breath of storms. Why most of us have retakes in this precious unit I don't know and I wish not to hypothesize a remedy. I am learning to walk too in this slippery path.

The sun comes up and it is Sunday, but only a handful of guys to church; the clock strikes 6pm on weekdays and 9.45 pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and the TV rooms are overpacked, all eyes on the TV, everyone having gone soapy. You wonder why this massive following ,whether it is because soaps have much of love offerings that face thousands of storms but always end in “happily-ever-after” ,one thing that many of us only achieve in our dreams or it is just the love of soap, the way I love ManU.

October wears out and culture week draws closer. You think of more than four days of pure entertainment and fun that comes with it and your little frustrations and miseries are put aside; perhaps to be picked up once culture is over. And it comes at no fee. Maybe this is the better side of it; many of us if not all love free things. And thinking of it, it can be the time to meet someone real and exciting. I can feel the songs, the poems, the music and the drums coming in slow but in sure tones and I can’t just wait for this year’s culture week. Everything else matters not. Just the culture week.

Charl Chotto