When crooks ruin your Christmas and gift you with kicks and blows

The thing with having exams in this season, as I wrote last week, is that by the time you are done, getting transport back home is hectic.

I am sure this cannot be said of my Kikuyu friends, because come on, your ocha is just a thirty-minute jaunt from Nairobi. And as for Kiambu dwellers who live near the CID offices, please do not even raise your brows.

You are closer to Nairobi city center than a chap coming from Umoja at 7am. I am talking about the chaps who have to go back to the Western and Coastal areas of Kenya.

The ones who sit in buses for eight straight hours. I always scoff at people who cry about being jetlagged. I mean, you are on a plane with some pretty lassies at your beck and call, and you still complain of being ‘eaten up by the flight’.

These people know nothing about being in a matatu, where you are not allowed to shift your position until you get to Kisumu or Kakamega, eight hours away.

The trick is usually to book the buses before Jamhuri day. That way, you might not have to use the matatus, and the buses are fairly comfy.

But when you have exams breathing down your neck, and pending assignments demanding for your attention, there is really no way you can think about transport back home.

So I understand why my pal Ian decided that it was a good idea to wake up at 3am to get to the bus stop. To get the first ride out at fairly good rates, before they start charging bus fare worth kidneys and livers to the lakeside city.

What he failed to consider was the fact that from his campus, there are no matatus plying the route at that time. Also, the road to town at 3am is jewelled by rogues and chokoras who are looking to secure themselves a good Christmas.

There is no way they would let Ian just find his way to the city centre; not with that fat suitcase, that cellphone that gleams in the dark, and that wallet weighing almost a ton.

When they descended upon him, he tried to put a fight. He kicked, stood guard for his property, typical of campus students. They never go down without putting up a decent fight. They do not know how to pick their fights.

Defiant, gallant Ian gave them hell. Brave to the end. But those filthy miscreants overpowered him. We were coming from the last campus rave of the year when we found him at the gate. No shirt. No shoes. Cold, broke, but with his head held high and his dignity intact. Atta boy!