An open letter to campus girls

BY Bill Odunga

KENYA: I am sorry I cannot sum up the courage to walk up to you and spew all the spiel I have in mind for you. I am, therefore, using this medium, hoping that at least, you read newspapers. That plus the fact that I have never been so angry as to pick up a cane over a quill.

First, what did vowels ever do to you? You sent me a text message that sounded like xkhosa, and I can’t help but wonder what vowels ever did to you so bad that you have decided to lock them out of your vocabulary. Nkt!

Pardon my backwardness, but in my opinion, the Queen’s dialect was invented in England, not in Nyapiedho — your village. So since you do not own it, you have no standing to change it. Perhaps it is a Nyapiedho thing, I don’t know.

Perhaps it is the latest thing to send messages swarming with consonants only; I must be stuck in the dark ages.

Second, I am a tolerant person — or so I think. I can bear vocabulary that makes fun of your KCPE results slip. I can bear the T-shirt that says, “What are brains for when I have these?” I can understand why you go to the pool side only to lie on the pavements and pretend that you are not being admired. I can stomach all that. We are all allowed a moment of vanity once in a while.

But the one thing I cannot bear is a fake accent. It ticks me off. What churns my stomach is the fact that I have been with you since First Year, and I know for sure you have never seen the boarders of Kenya. You picked it up that day when we had a joint fellowship with the rich folk from USIU. Pitch folk like us do not say ‘gonna’ or ‘wanna’. We only use that on Twitter because of the limitation on characters.

Feasibly if you were more true to your identity and spoke like an educated girl (albeit village bred), then you wouldn’t be single.

If you actually rolled on the floor and laughed your butt off, instead of simply saying ROTFLMAO, someone would have noticed you.

Seeing as it is that you already have everything else working for you; your bright future from behind.

Fake accent

Most campus men will stomach a fake accent and a vowel-less text long enough to get you to bed. Once they take a bite at the cherry, they take off with the wind. You are the kind whose day job is to fantasise all day as you wait for your night job.

If you give me one good reason to remember your name the next morning, then maybe I would introduce you to my friends.