Sweet lies Varsity students tell to Extract extra cash from Parents

Campus is a place full of activities to do and events to attend, a place where your pockets take a few knocks from time to time. Its weekend, Yes weekend but form ya weekend enyewe huoni! That deni ya mama mboga needs to be settled less you remain ‘Mbogaless’ for the whole week. Your ‘yellow yellow butterfly’ anadai apelekwe out Highlands Inn yet what stands between you and poverty ni kale kafinje ulikabakishiwa na ‘mama pima’ the previous evening.

Its End month, the money your father send you two days ago to settle Mr. Kimani the landlord is all gone thanks to your gluttonous idea of wanting to multiply the amount on Multi Bets! You not only have little money, but you also don’t have enough tangible ideas on how to change that situation. But nevertheless, there is always an easy way out! Comrades are coming up with crafty tactics day in day out to get extra cash from their unsuspecting parents in order to sustain their lavish campus life.

Today, lying to parents is becoming the norm to every comrade in campus. If you are lucky enough to have passed through Campus, then you will be in a position to gauge my view. One day I nearly fell while laughing when I overheard a literature student phoning the parent to send her sh1000 to buy a lab coat! She further went on to exaggerate that a notice had been put on notice board that whoever will not have bought the coat in one week’s time will be sent back home. Deadlines are the most important parts in such cases.

Kenyan campus students are renowned for concocting all sorts of beautiful lies and serving them to their parents for consumption when it comes to money related issues. Here are the most common ones:

We are going for a trip to Mombasa. Nearly every campus student has used this lie to extract thousands of shillings from their parents. The academic trip to Mombasa is guaranteed to have mummy or daddy sending cash immediately. Such students are always keen on insisting that the trip is purely an academic trip and whoever fails to go will not graduate! Most parents will agree with me that they have paid for trips which do not exist but since the comrades use convincing language, they give in easily. Furthermore, when they get home, they start narrating created stories of how joto kali na maji ya chumvi ya mambasani iliwatembeza.

Handouts. These are essential documents in enhancing learning as they give extra notes on what the lecturer didn’t give out in class. When it comes to academic related things, parents always give full support to their sons and daughters. Students therefore take advantage of this by giving exaggerated prices and lying on the exact number of handouts to be bought or photocopied if there really exists any. My HELB money never came through. Even though the money is safely tucked away in your bank account, you still have to lie to your parents that the loans board has neglected you like you don’t exist. Consequently, you are battling an internal famine crisis and you need some urgent help. Wait till you graduate and the time of paying back arrives! I don’t know which kind of narrative you will use to convince your parents!

My phone has been stolen….I need money to buy a new one. Then when you parent asks how you are calling them, you claim you’ve borrowed your friend’s phone. Since they want to assist you to keep the Googling spirit high in exam room and also to keep in touch with you at all times they have no option but to send you money for a new phone. This is the same Money that you end up using on clothes and weekend extravaganzas.

The lecturer told us to buy…. [Insert any expensive academic related item here] Be it a laptop or an expensive textbook. The heck, some students even lie that they were ordered to buy an app that is actually free on Play Store. Especially students whose parents are old school and have a strained relationship with the internet. Overstating the prices and costs of items. If you cook using gas for example, then you want to refill it, you claim its 1500, yet it’s actually 900. An extra ‘punch’ will go a long way.

I am sick and the campus hospital is too full. Hahaa need an explanation on this? Ask your roommate…. So you insist that you need to go to another hospital and the parent ‘anaingia box.’

Someone has died or is battling serious illness, we need to make contributions. Quite a ruthless lie but what has a campus student got to do? This is Campus, you ought to survive at whichever costs.