Fridays are happy days in campuses across this country if not across the world. There is a unexplainable joy that engulfs the soul and excitement that stimulates the heart when one leaves the lecture halls satisfied that you have done your share of the lectures on a Friday. I was therefore in such a mood after I cleared my Television and Cinema lecture at 10:16AM and was enjoying a cheerful banter with the youthly lecturer when chants of “haki yetu!”And “comrades??Power!!!” filled the humid mid-morning Narok atmosphere.
The source and reason of the demonstration
From the onset of the semester, the freshmen have been spoiling for a demonstration. They have been complaining about a range of problems affecting them; from the uncompleted hostels where they are staying to the other general problems affecting other students such as the long queues’ in the students mess. They therefore seemed to have had enough when the electric power in their hostel was disconnected. In the new Mara hostels they had been enjoying the power from two double sockets in every room with each socket being able to serve each student. In Serengeti and Suswa hostels there is only one socket and hence students are forced to buy extensions so that they can share the power effectively. The four sockets used by the freshmen were withdrawn and only one left. The only one left was also disconnected and hence they had to go to other hostels to charge their electric applications such as computers and phones. On the second day, they couldn’t bear it and hence the demonstration.
The actual demonstration, and the Martin Luther wanna-bes,
What happened took my mind recalling several ages ago about various human rights activists who have walked the earth and left a mark to be admired and enjoyed by others. I mourned their souls and celebrated their achievements. In their various speeches; Malcom X and his speech on the black revolution, Che Guevara and his speech “the Great Revolutionary medicine”. John Kennedys speech “ask not” as well as the famous speech given by Mandela. The speech was titled “I’m prepared to die “and was concluded in the following words, “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die”Perhaps this is the same spirit that got into one Kirong Kibet,a freshman majoring in Political Science when he gave his now almost famous speech to the principal and other fellow freshmen seated on the tarmac road which heads to the campus from the main gate.This man Kilong,!He bellows like an ancient Roman bull fighter and commands like an army general. “Wasee Wasee!!Tulieni”is all he needed say and the students would get calm like a horse bound and controlled with reins by a master rider. It was during that period of calm which he commanded from the fellow freshmen that he broke into the speech.
“Mr.professor with all due respect we want you to know that we respect you by virtue of being our father, leader and principal. We honor your decisions and have profound believe in your guidance, BUT we have a problem which we would like you to SOLVE RIGHT NOW. Our rights have been trampled on in this institution for so long and thus we want you to explain to us if we are students of this institution or not. We have to share sockets and the risk of us losing our property is high because nobody is sure of anything anymore.Sir,im a poor son of a peasant from the slopes of Mt.Elgon and I fear I may lose my laptop in the confusion of moving from room to room charging it, where or when do you think I may ever acquire another laptop ever in life? It cost me a miracle to get that one” From where I was watching all the drama unfold, I saw Prof Serems’ face trickle a bead of sweat. He looked at Kilong with a eye of secret admiration and he knew the son of the peasant farmer from the slopes of the ever-politically hostile and volatile Mt.Elgon had him cornered the good professor at last.
Prof. Serem tried his side of speech in his usual calm way but it did not seem to grab the attention of the charged and agitated comrades like that of the young Kilong. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are like a family. We have important visitors around who have to behave well till they are gone. We want to have them help us in sciences and technology and if we disrupt the meeting we may not get the 10m donor funding. Can we wait till they are gone and then…..” “NOOOOOOO!visitors are not important than us” was the resounding answer in unison. And I knew as they say in Kiswahili, “kimeumana”
Then enter Robert Oduor with his traditional whistle. It’s hard to fathom how this computer scientist was in the forefront of the demo instead of being with fellow scientists in the hall. Some fellas were just born to speak for the weaker members of the society, it reminded me of the young Che Guevara who was a doctor by profession but a human rights crusader by birth and hence his words when explaining his translation of careers. "Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger, and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize that there were things that were almost as important to me than becoming a famous scientist or making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people. And the only way was championing for their rights.” Probably, young Oduor, had the same thoughts when he put his whistle tied on a old thread and hung on his neck and blew it like his life depended on it. It reminded me of the Ikolomani MP Dr.Bonny Khalalwe and his love for traditional circumcision songs and the whistle blowing!!They calmed down for a tea brake and to let the meeting on science continue to the relieve of those responsible over the meeting.
The media houses present.
The media are news vultures. Said one American politician.Onother President had very bad relations with the media people and he declared “If one day I walked on top of the Potomac river, the headline that morning would be “President can’t swim!!”.The saying that media are vultures was displayed by the journalists who were covering the science workshop in the hall. By nature, I know science and mathematics are not our favorite subjects. the journalists, we would rather be in the drama and cover dramatic events rather than long boring scientific explanations that we neither those explaining don’t understand fully. That’s why all the journalists left the hall and were soon at the centre of the scuffle within a minute and was recording the events excitedly before the camera-shy freshmen said cameras off. But they will never understand how yours truly captured the best of the shots and sound clips!!Hope the media people will be here to cover the coming elections for its going to be such a big day.
The politicians and other students
When the freshmen took to the pavements around campus, the other students watched from the sidelines and admired the oratory skills of the freshmen leaders with a tinge of jealousy and admiration.See?demos don’t work in NUC, a few brave souls screams themselves hoarse as others watch on the sidelines waiting for the ones demonstrating to be victimized and sent home or to meet the committee of disciplinians.But it has never happened hence the spirit of comradeship is almost normally dead. The constitution gives a right for peaceful demonstration and nobody should be victimized for it. The freshmen displayed a beautiful spirit of cooperation and comradeship. The elections are looming and so the politicians who were around lacked a quorum to express themselves. I saw some of them dying to address the freshmen but the chance never arose. I saw some wish that they had oratory skills like those of Kilong but they should know good public speakers are born but you can also train. There is a unit on public speaking offered in communication department of this campus and so before the cross-fire on Wednesday, if you doubt your public speaking, time you went down to Runda looking for the department have mentioned above.
Incoming elections
Those to vying in any seat or aspiring to vote can or should have learnt a few lessons from our younger brothers and sisters in their demonstration. We are one family of Narokians and so we should shun tribalism and vote in only good leaders who will have affairs of the students at heart and not that of the communities they are from or those of their friends, when Kilong shouted comrades power, he got a reply not from his clansmen but from his fellow comrades irrespective of tribe. So far several contestants have given up and quit, some due to personal reasons and others due to pressure exerted on them at the school level because they couldn’t meet the academic threshold. Beautiful posters of contestants have emerged allover and I wish the candidates with the best plans and manifestos for us to win!!
See you at the ballot box and I leave you with this quote by an American Journalist and columnist, Franklin Pierce Adams(1881-1960) who said;
Elections are won by, men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.!
