 |
Dan Ariely quipped that, “We
are pawns in a game whose forces we largely fail to comprehend”.
Ever wondered what happens in KEMU Towers that is along University Way and directly opposite Ambank House. Well I had always had the same issue boggling my mind for more than half a decade. While I was a student at the nearby Main Campus, I had always had this hanker of knowing what was happening behind the imposing structure. The only contact I had with the building was the fast food restaurant that sold unpalatable fries and a couple of snacks and junk that my appetence could not savour as the chow only qualified to being sec.
Hitherto, the building had always thrilled the design crave I ceaselessly had albeit it just being a stone through away. However the interior was too bland upon entry and the intrinsic values that I had assumed it had, all but ended up being an antithesis or say counterintuitive because it was used by students.
In high school, I had always had a passion for being an architect, but as circumstances would dictate, I studied a course I had an abortive period with while in Campus. In fact there was a former Starch student whom I knew who was doing architecture and the fact that he was lamenting of only scoring straight Ds in exams was quite appalling. I did pity him, but he had vowed never to fail again. I doubt if he stuck to the regimen of perusal because his flirty behavior was quite surfeit.
“So many kiosk universities have mushroomed in Nairobi in the recent past.” I recall one of our lecturers while a first year student speaking ill of and bad-mouthing the universities that were being housed on buildings that had formerly served as offices. Then as now, every form-four leaver wanted an association with Nairobi, especially the central business district. I bet that was the reason why many of them had started town campuses. To cash in on the many employees who wanted papers and the growing number of students who could not be accommodated in the congested public universities. And true to its billing and owing to matters liquidity, the quest for knowledge in universities is a goldmine that never ceases to bring in more gem. I should invest in a university.
As a former student in a public university, we had been brainwashed that we were the best students in the country having qualified to join the university. I remember a student leader boisterously making sense of words of how our campus was the place to be, the elixir of life in matters academics. You would imagine that upon completion of studies, employers would be hot on your heels in need of your services because apparently the university was the best in the country. Bulshit, if it were so, many of us would not be among the class of jobless graduates who are in search for internship (which I went for an interview for and failed like a genius having gone for swimming exams) because like Duale said, “Hii kazi si ya mamako” when teachers refused to go back to be recklessly butchered by a militia that seeks revenge through human souls. As a person with no contacts you start from somewhere.
Flash-forward and five years down the line, I am still jostling like a real Nairobi hustler hoping that someday lady luck will smile on me and I will reap the benefits of the roots of education. But even though I am not complaining, I want to transcend this apathy apace but hitting the jack-pot of being a proletariat has been a confounding tussle. I am indeed fed up with cyclical unemployment.
A blind respect for authority is sometimes the greatest enemy of truth. No matter how much I have tried, I find it sometimes too tiring sitting behind a computer. Just to type words that sometimes I am not passionate about. That was a by the way.
Life has ways in which it balances out everything that a person has to go through. Sometimes we crave for that which is beyond our might, which is right. Why? David tackled Goliath and he was successful in it. He used a weapon chastised for being less substantial in making one run out of time on earth. But it led to the fall of a giant.
When seeking knowledge, it doesn’t matter how smart you are in life. Knowledge is power, and should be appreciated for the sole reason that they better humanity. There is always something new that one gets in a classroom setting. Again going to class breaks the monotony of solitude and gives one a better perspective about life in general. You realize that you are in fact not alone in the dilemma of making ends meet.
Indeed, classes in Kemu were more skill oriented as opposed to being academic. Being in Kemu classes was an eight hour day of mindless drudgery. However, there were a few facilitators who gave a text-book approach by reading notes while in essence they should have given those attending the courses skills through endeavoring to inculcate practical ways of going about life situations. Some were very interesting.
Ideally, the youth generation is in need of skills that are quite deficient in them (peer pressure and hopelessness may kill this generation which should be the future of our country). This has led many to be vexed as a result of going through a tumultuous journey when they are not getting to the next level as quickly as desired.
On the flipside, I must give the Kemu security detail a thumbs up for what they did in ensuring the institution is well secured. Their sentries and security detail were thorough. Entry entailed having a name tag or knowledge of the office where you were going. Frisking was done using metal detectors and even though I sometimes did doubt the severity of the gadgets, they in a way curbed crime to some extent.
However, there was a certain CID officer who told me he occasionally bypassed the scrutiny even though he had his gat concealed under his belt.
Then there were these Naswa crew who loved filming their caught unawares videos next to the towers along university way. Somehow, we had got wind of them and even though they tried had to NASA us, theirs were efforts in futility. We were too nifty for them. The first persons we usually spotted were the cameraman and the support staff who made a barrier to hide the camera from view. The problem with the cameraman was that he never let another person handle his gadget. As such, if you were a regular, you easily noticed them because they came at a time when we were having a short break from the monotonous classes that I felt were eating into my precious time.
One of their acts that caught my eye was a hobo who subconsciously approached some ladies and they ran helter skelter because they feared they would be smeared with excretion from the open executive chambers of release. He was carrying a dirty sack that was filth grey. Since we were aware of what was happening, we had to giggle. However some betrayed us as they sounded more like an evil cackle than an expression of amusement when they could not suppress the chortle hence bursting into loud laughter.
But there was one pastor who was role playing pretending to be praying like the ubiquitous fake preachers in Jevanjee or next to Hilton or near Archives. The ones with the ulterior motive of collecting alms from the unsuspecting public. And he did it as he took out an offertory collection bag and started soliciting from those unaware. This Naswa preacher was however not successful with the act as someone on the frustration benches near Kemu which we had branded our DSTV (to check out on the babes and cars) was almost slapped by a job-seeking vagrant whose visage had the wrinkles of a wretched chap even though he was trying hard to shrug and pretend stoicism.
One of my pals, Willy, was once a comrade in this campus (Kemu) and was able to help me to cascade the building in detail. Like we sometimes went to the rooftop to bangaiz and eclipse from others. It was either to watch TV or just engaging in palaver about our frustrations with our predicaments and how someone was taking us for a ride.
Mark you, there are chaps in Kemu (Kemu comrades) have this flair of feeling hyper. Always twanging in some borrowed accents and feeling dope even though they adorn phony haute couture and cleats and quoins that give them some lackadaisical posture because they try to act that which they are not. Who knows, fake it till you make it. Life is what you make it.
Something about the ladies though. I never knew that some ladies are just plain Janes. For once I appreciated the notion that even if a lady is not a looker, a little bit of makeup would just be fine, even research collaborates the same. Like there was a certain chic with very dark fingers that were also sandpaper like, you had the feeling she was either from Kano plains or Mwea because I have a feeling the combination of water and the plants leads to the sore distasteful look and feel.
The choice of Kemu for classes was a very bad decision. The general ambience of the rooms does not auger well for a classroom set up. Especially when the loo cleaners have not acted on the small rooms and the weather is torrid and the scorching heat from the sun meant that the door should be ajar. The classes should have at least been equipped with a fan to counter the stifling air to reduce exhaustion because the choice of glass used was a disaster albeit the fact that it should have contributed to placid air conditioning. Again the classes had very few windows which contributed to the rooms at times being stuffy since there was controlled ventilation.
Then there were Kemu elections. While I had though of it being intense. The candidates contesting for posts were callow and the air was not as tense as elections should be. One did not get the feeling of the euphoria that characterizes such occasions. One of my friends had a hot curvaceous chic who was a platonic friend. He wanted me to hit on her. She was contesting. She wanted us to go vote for her during the plebiscite (sic) but we couldn’t. The reason why I failed to hit on her was because she was material girl and my wallet was wallowing in aridity plus it being a Friday.
Ever wondered what happens in KEMU Towers that is along University Way and directly opposite Ambank House. Well I had always had the same issue boggling my mind for more than half a decade. While I was a student at the nearby Main Campus, I had always had this hanker of knowing what was happening behind the imposing structure. The only contact I had with the building was the fast food restaurant that sold unpalatable fries and a couple of snacks and junk that my appetence could not savour as the chow only qualified to being sec.
Hitherto, the building had always thrilled the design crave I ceaselessly had albeit it just being a stone through away. However the interior was too bland upon entry and the intrinsic values that I had assumed it had, all but ended up being an antithesis or say counterintuitive because it was used by students.
In high school, I had always had a passion for being an architect, but as circumstances would dictate, I studied a course I had an abortive period with while in Campus. In fact there was a former Starch student whom I knew who was doing architecture and the fact that he was lamenting of only scoring straight Ds in exams was quite appalling. I did pity him, but he had vowed never to fail again. I doubt if he stuck to the regimen of perusal because his flirty behavior was quite surfeit.
“So many kiosk universities have mushroomed in Nairobi in the recent past.” I recall one of our lecturers while a first year student speaking ill of and bad-mouthing the universities that were being housed on buildings that had formerly served as offices. Then as now, every form-four leaver wanted an association with Nairobi, especially the central business district. I bet that was the reason why many of them had started town campuses. To cash in on the many employees who wanted papers and the growing number of students who could not be accommodated in the congested public universities. And true to its billing and owing to matters liquidity, the quest for knowledge in universities is a goldmine that never ceases to bring in more gem. I should invest in a university.
As a former student in a public university, we had been brainwashed that we were the best students in the country having qualified to join the university. I remember a student leader boisterously making sense of words of how our campus was the place to be, the elixir of life in matters academics. You would imagine that upon completion of studies, employers would be hot on your heels in need of your services because apparently the university was the best in the country. Bulshit, if it were so, many of us would not be among the class of jobless graduates who are in search for internship (which I went for an interview for and failed like a genius having gone for swimming exams) because like Duale said, “Hii kazi si ya mamako” when teachers refused to go back to be recklessly butchered by a militia that seeks revenge through human souls. As a person with no contacts you start from somewhere.
Flash-forward and five years down the line, I am still jostling like a real Nairobi hustler hoping that someday lady luck will smile on me and I will reap the benefits of the roots of education. But even though I am not complaining, I want to transcend this apathy apace but hitting the jack-pot of being a proletariat has been a confounding tussle. I am indeed fed up with cyclical unemployment.
A blind respect for authority is sometimes the greatest enemy of truth. No matter how much I have tried, I find it sometimes too tiring sitting behind a computer. Just to type words that sometimes I am not passionate about. That was a by the way.
Life has ways in which it balances out everything that a person has to go through. Sometimes we crave for that which is beyond our might, which is right. Why? David tackled Goliath and he was successful in it. He used a weapon chastised for being less substantial in making one run out of time on earth. But it led to the fall of a giant.
When seeking knowledge, it doesn’t matter how smart you are in life. Knowledge is power, and should be appreciated for the sole reason that they better humanity. There is always something new that one gets in a classroom setting. Again going to class breaks the monotony of solitude and gives one a better perspective about life in general. You realize that you are in fact not alone in the dilemma of making ends meet.
Indeed, classes in Kemu were more skill oriented as opposed to being academic. Being in Kemu classes was an eight hour day of mindless drudgery. However, there were a few facilitators who gave a text-book approach by reading notes while in essence they should have given those attending the courses skills through endeavoring to inculcate practical ways of going about life situations. Some were very interesting.
Ideally, the youth generation is in need of skills that are quite deficient in them (peer pressure and hopelessness may kill this generation which should be the future of our country). This has led many to be vexed as a result of going through a tumultuous journey when they are not getting to the next level as quickly as desired.
On the flipside, I must give the Kemu security detail a thumbs up for what they did in ensuring the institution is well secured. Their sentries and security detail were thorough. Entry entailed having a name tag or knowledge of the office where you were going. Frisking was done using metal detectors and even though I sometimes did doubt the severity of the gadgets, they in a way curbed crime to some extent.
However, there was a certain CID officer who told me he occasionally bypassed the scrutiny even though he had his gat concealed under his belt.
Then there were these Naswa crew who loved filming their caught unawares videos next to the towers along university way. Somehow, we had got wind of them and even though they tried had to NASA us, theirs were efforts in futility. We were too nifty for them. The first persons we usually spotted were the cameraman and the support staff who made a barrier to hide the camera from view. The problem with the cameraman was that he never let another person handle his gadget. As such, if you were a regular, you easily noticed them because they came at a time when we were having a short break from the monotonous classes that I felt were eating into my precious time.
One of their acts that caught my eye was a hobo who subconsciously approached some ladies and they ran helter skelter because they feared they would be smeared with excretion from the open executive chambers of release. He was carrying a dirty sack that was filth grey. Since we were aware of what was happening, we had to giggle. However some betrayed us as they sounded more like an evil cackle than an expression of amusement when they could not suppress the chortle hence bursting into loud laughter.
But there was one pastor who was role playing pretending to be praying like the ubiquitous fake preachers in Jevanjee or next to Hilton or near Archives. The ones with the ulterior motive of collecting alms from the unsuspecting public. And he did it as he took out an offertory collection bag and started soliciting from those unaware. This Naswa preacher was however not successful with the act as someone on the frustration benches near Kemu which we had branded our DSTV (to check out on the babes and cars) was almost slapped by a job-seeking vagrant whose visage had the wrinkles of a wretched chap even though he was trying hard to shrug and pretend stoicism.
One of my pals, Willy, was once a comrade in this campus (Kemu) and was able to help me to cascade the building in detail. Like we sometimes went to the rooftop to bangaiz and eclipse from others. It was either to watch TV or just engaging in palaver about our frustrations with our predicaments and how someone was taking us for a ride.
Mark you, there are chaps in Kemu (Kemu comrades) have this flair of feeling hyper. Always twanging in some borrowed accents and feeling dope even though they adorn phony haute couture and cleats and quoins that give them some lackadaisical posture because they try to act that which they are not. Who knows, fake it till you make it. Life is what you make it.
Something about the ladies though. I never knew that some ladies are just plain Janes. For once I appreciated the notion that even if a lady is not a looker, a little bit of makeup would just be fine, even research collaborates the same. Like there was a certain chic with very dark fingers that were also sandpaper like, you had the feeling she was either from Kano plains or Mwea because I have a feeling the combination of water and the plants leads to the sore distasteful look and feel.
The choice of Kemu for classes was a very bad decision. The general ambience of the rooms does not auger well for a classroom set up. Especially when the loo cleaners have not acted on the small rooms and the weather is torrid and the scorching heat from the sun meant that the door should be ajar. The classes should have at least been equipped with a fan to counter the stifling air to reduce exhaustion because the choice of glass used was a disaster albeit the fact that it should have contributed to placid air conditioning. Again the classes had very few windows which contributed to the rooms at times being stuffy since there was controlled ventilation.
Then there were Kemu elections. While I had though of it being intense. The candidates contesting for posts were callow and the air was not as tense as elections should be. One did not get the feeling of the euphoria that characterizes such occasions. One of my friends had a hot curvaceous chic who was a platonic friend. He wanted me to hit on her. She was contesting. She wanted us to go vote for her during the plebiscite (sic) but we couldn’t. The reason why I failed to hit on her was because she was material girl and my wallet was wallowing in aridity plus it being a Friday.
SITUONANE
[Photo Source: Google Images]
[Photo Source: Google Images]
