University student struggles

Ting!! Ting!! Ting!! Let’s do the count; well, 20, 10, 5, 1 shilling, 50 cents the 5 cents. That’s the financial worth of an ordinary campus student’s wallet at some point within the semester that is if privileged enough not to have a Safaricom one. So broke, dead so. The first coin is for breakfast, the second and third coins are for lunch then the other three will be the “bait” for more currency. My grandfather is the one who gave me the 5 cents coin. He said that “its presence in my possession will ensure I acquire more, maybe notes not necessarily coins”.

But I thought, realistically, that coin will never depart my wallet because it has absolutely no business worth out there. In fact, I usually-sometimes involuntarily (it is kind of a reflex)-shield it from the ever prying eyes of my roommates, course mates or anybody else from whom I need respect lest they make a big deal out of it. I know it will appear weird and funny.

Only God knows our struggles more comprehensively. How we eagerly wait for that loan, it is a pity.  How we sometimes steal from each other, only for the aggrieved to go to the nearby market and find the same trouser or shirt, it is simply unfair. However, the way we spend the loan when it finally matures in our ever- nearly empty broke accounts, meaning a few minutes after maturing, its none- forecasting.

The best trouser, shirt (Versace maybe), footwear and all have you. That’s our confession, that is our shortcoming and nobody, absolutely no one has the right and maybe responsibility to punish us whatsoever. You know what we think sometimes when the loan is delayed that much, we believe that the monies are reinvested in some short term profit maker and therefore we eventually get the principle of that transaction. But in any case, we will service the loan, in a brief time to come, with a massive 4% interest. Although some of us plan to evade all this in future.

That said, there is a more serious perspective. Some of us depend on that money so much, for practically everything; the school fees, semester mini-budgets and so many other stuff with vocabulary not appropriate or rather suitable for this medium. By the way, for a long time now, maybe since time immemorial, striking is the only language that really rings a bell in the government officials’ eardrums.  We are just fed up. If there are times when university students are most compactly vocal are brought about by such circumstances.  Though we deeply appreciate, we do not want to be played for fools. Hello Mr. Ringera, how I wish and hope your relative depended on that money this much.