The sorry state of hostels in Kenyan universities

Horrifying memories still haunt Jay Makorani years after he narrowly survived the grip of the infamous axe-wielding “Pita Mashoka” gang that roamed Moi University’s main campus, Eldoret, for close to a decade. Makorani escaped with a dislocated jaw and broken bones. Most of Mashoka’s victims were students who had rented houses outside the university and would return to their houses after nightfall.
Makorani, a geography graduate who lived at Blue Gate, a private hostel secured by the university to accommodate students who fail to get rooms in the university’s hostel, still finds it hard to believe that he survived the ordeal.

“I was walking along a muddy poorly-lit university street from McKay Building, a student’s resource centre, to my room when the attacker ambushed me. It was around 8.30pm,” Makorani recalls.
He says that a man caught up with him in the darkness and attacked him with a blunt object, hitting him several times on the head. He passed out and woke up the following morning in the university’s dispensary. He was later taken to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital for specialised treatment. Another student was attacked in a similar fashion the same night.
A few years after Makorani’s brutal encounter, attacks suspected to have been carried out by Mashoka continued to be reported, sometimes ending up in deaths. Students stumbled upon the body of a comrade who had been raped. The third year female student met her death at night on her way to her rented house in one of the university’s surrounding villages.
Her colleagues staged a protest, demanding that security be beefed up, especially for students who didn’t live within the university. Several years after the ordeal, Makorani urges the university management to take advantage of its vast resources to provide for student accommodation within the university premises where they can be protected. “Moi University main campus has enough land to build hostels that can accommodate all its students. Providing security to students living within the university is easier than extending security measures to private hostels,” he says.

Although insecurity has since gone down at Moi University, many students are still exposed to a lot of danger outside the secure walls of university housing. A look in the university hostels in Kenya reveals the true nature of student housing in most universities. No university is capable of providing top-notch accommodation facilities to all the students it admits. This, according to Prof David Some, the Commission for University Education (CUE) CEO, does not bode well for student development.
“A university graduate is supposed to come out as an all-round individual and the kind of life that a student is exposed to in the hostels plays a big role in this development,” Prof Some says. “All universities in Kenya are aware of their accommodation challenges but none of them is addressing the challenges.”
Ranging from inadequacy of university hostel housing to the sorry state of the few available rooms, students are exposed to an unconducive environment as they struggle to scale academic heights.
Prof Some says Kenya’s public universities should borrow a leaf on student housing from South Africa and India. In India, he says, no public university admits students it cannot provide housing for.
Some students, though, choose to rent houses outside the university “to have a feel of personal space”. According to Sylvia Olesi, a fourth year education student at the University of Nairobi, nothing can make her stay in the university’s hostels.
“It is cheaper out here as one can cook their own food unlike living inside university halls where one has to part with money every day to buy meals. Again, one can enjoy their own personal space,” Olesi says.
Stephen Ndege, who is winding up a four-year international business administration course at the United States International University, disagrees.

“There were times, especially when I was out of session, I would rent a room out there and my experience made me pity students who rent rooms outside. Much as they say they enjoy private lives, I think they put their lives in danger because no one cares about you out there unlike campus hostels where our hostel keepers are our parents,” Ndege says. Last year, students at the University of Nairobi were speechless when one of their own, Kevin Ikatwa, who was a midfielder for the National Super League Wazito FC, was found murdered in cold blood in his rented house in Kangemi, Nairobi. Ikwatwa’s girlfriend was arrested for the murder that took place at his rented house.

Elsewhere, 24-year-old Sharon Achieng, a student at Mount Kenya University, was found dead at a house she had decided to rent in an estate in Nakuru. “A lot of things happen to students who live outside campus, some which are concealed by university administrations,” Olesi reveals, adding that students who play hardcore and leave their private hostels to attend meetings, discussion groups or even go to the library at night are usually faced with untold of dangers.
At Kenyatta University, hostel room allocation is conducted on a first-come-first-served basis, making a whole lot of government-sponsored students seek alternative accommodation outside the school.
According to Job Masinde, a Medical Lab student at Kenyatta University on Thika Superhighway, the university offers cheaper accomodation compared to other alternatives outside the school premises.
“While we pay only Sh2,200 per semester in a hostel room shared by four students, students who are forced to stay in privately owned hostels part with at least Sh15,000 per semester to share a single room with four others while those who rent rooms pay about 3,500 per month,” Masinde says.

The third year student lives with three others in a hostel room, which has been partitioned into two to accommodate more students. He says that there are a myriad of challenges occasioned by sharing a room with other students of different personalities and urges the university administration to allow the students to choose who to stay with. Those who are lucky enough to get a room within the university are, however grateful, all challenges notwithstanding.
If you went to Kenyatta University and were attacked by bedbugs, you may have left behind a culture that thrives to date. Bedbug infestation is still a menace at the university, making students prefer to stay in the libraries out of spite. The accommodation situation at the University of Nairobi is similar to that at KU where efforts to create more rooms from the existing few spaces is still a drop in the ocean compared to the number of students qualifying to stay in the university premises.
Rachel Ayuma who studies Education at the University of Nairobi, Kikuyu campus, feels gratified in the opportunity to stay in the school premises and sympathises with her friends who are forced to rent houses away from university. “Some of my classmates literally miss classes and group discussion sessions, especially when it rains because some of them get houses away from school and fear gambling with their own security,” the second year students says.