On Monday, January 13th 2014, I took my young and still wet-behind-the-ears cousin to register as a student at the University of Nairobi’s main campus. I had been appointed by the clan to be the responsible family member since I was the most recent graduate of the veritable institution (where recent is a relative term). Having arrived from the lush Nanyuki plains the day before with a 20 kg wheeled suitcase, my cousin had no idea what was in store for her.

Early that morning, I drove as close as reasonably possible to the pedestrian gate opposite the Jewish synagogue and pointed, “Go past that gate, you should find the registration desks there.” She looked at me like I was out of my mind, “Aren’t you coming with me?” I gave her a baleful eye, “[insert ladylike expletive here ] NO WAY! You’re an adult now and this is not high school. No one is taken to university by their relatives.” Look, of course there are people who take their relatives to university on the first day. But it’s because THEY DON’T KNOW UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI! My parents certainly didn’t take me to register as the bright eyed, bushy tailed fresher that I was. They knew. They had been victims of wanton riots many a time as my late father’s office was proximate to the university and he dodged a rock or two many times in his professional life. Anyway, back to Cousin. So I dropped her off and high tailed it out of there, with explicit instructions that she was to call me when done with registration so that we could go home and collect her suitcase and then bring it to her hostel. By this time, I was actually quite impressed with the progress that the university had made since the 18 years I had left. Cousin had been given a pack with information about where to register, which hostel she was in, which medical processes she should undertake and the process of getting a pre-paid meal card. Maybe you didn’t read what I said: She-had-a-pack-of-information! There was even information on how students were to go online in order to register for their hostels. What? In 1992 an indifferent registration clerk would point with their lips in that stretched ubiquitous Kenyan way as to where one needed to go to hassle for a room.
Needless to say, Cousin called me at 4 p.m. sounding totally exhausted. I picked her up from what was supposed to be her hostel. She was flushed, flustered and flabbergasted in that order. Having been tossed about like a grenade in an Irish pub the whole day, she had only partially completed her registration. She had schlepped across to the hostels to secure a room as a rumor swept the Great Court that rooms were running out despite the fact that some students had online confirmations of room allocations. Getting to the room in Hall 8, she came to discover that her room was secure. But there were neither beds nor beddings in the dust and grime filled room. She clambered into my car exhausted and could hardly speak.
“The registration process is horrible,” she sobbed, “everyone crowds around the table, pushing and fighting as people try to get attended to and no one wants to follow the queue.” I gave her an empathetic pat on the shoulder. “The watchman is the only one who seems to know where people should go. There are no signs to tell anyone where to go or what to do.” Hmmm, I thought. The more things change the more they stay the same. This sounded like my experience in 1992 when I first joined the university. To cut a long story short, Cousin had left her friends at the Great Court still struggling to register as two of them did not have a hostel. She didn’t know where they were going to sleep as they had come with their luggage and without their relatives. Two of her other friends went off with Nairobi relatives to spend the night. Following a disastrous first day, her registration process took the whole of Tuesday to complete, but the hostel still didn’t have beddings. She ended up getting a bed and mattress on Thursday, a good three days after she first went to register. The University of Nairobi essentially mistreated the new students as they have consistently done over the last twenty years. The students were treated with indignity, had to fend for themselves for the first three days and basically fight just to get recognized as the students in what used to be Kenya’s number one institution of higher learning. A majority of these students had never been to Nairobi before. They were cold, hungry and left to use their animal instincts to get registered.

Watching Cousin’s humiliating entry into the real world of public university, the penny finally dropped on why public university students riot. They have been socialized from the minute they enter the university to think and act like caged animals. From the indignity of shoving and jostling for attention at the registration desks to the missing beddings in the hostels, the university demonstrates that it’s a man-eat-man culture when you step into their not-so-hallowed grounds. A number of lecturers appear in class only if they are so inclined with no consistency check by the university authorities on the quality of education they are imparting. Books in the library are virtually non-existent. Security in the hostels is comedic as the rooms are regularly hired out by the janitors or students themselves to secretaries, clerks and criminal elements looking for proximity to the CBD. It’s a jungle in there and the powder keg that is the students’ psyche does not require much to ignite. It is pointless to keep blaming the students for their rioting tendencies for as long as their hosting institution inducts them like wild animals and does nothing overtly possible to maintain hygienic standards for their living conditions. After all, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

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Twiiter @carolmusyoka