you know you are in Nairobi university when ...

• 
  
• you do not believe in full-stops when your brain has hit a permanent hiatus but insist on keeping on with a sentence like " ok ... you know ... it is like in ... like ok ... as in we can't really ... you know ... i mean ... ok" wishing that somehow, with all the grace of the lord and of your mother, that your brain will jumpstart itself again
  
• you are so broke that you owe yourself money, your pupils have changed into dollar signs and you are having this crazy look when you are staring at your roommate because to you he has turned into a giant grilled chicken wearing snickers
• you are facing any of the following calamities:

you don't have a girlfriend
you have a boyfriend
you have a girlfriend
you don't have a boyfriend

• you have an impressive CV filled with all flamboyant pages and colourful fonts but with little information therein hoping against hope that your prospective employer will be so much awe-struck by your creative design talent that he will be blind to every other setbacks very apparently clear to you
• you can buy a kshs. 20 000 phone but still believe that getting hold of a kshs. 250 phone credit from the tuck-shop is being extravagant
• your meals have the same colour assortment: white and green ... you can scatter a little bit of red once in a while but that is entirely optional and depends on the heaviness of your wallet ... if you are in the same university as I am you will know what am talking about
• you have completely manipulated all the electricity gadgets in your room with wires criss-crossing all over the place like laser beams guarding the Star of Africa ( the largest diamond in the world) that it will not be too soon before you blow up with the rest of your property like a missile in the deserts of Lebanon ... (forgive me, but i was trying to employ some literary talent here)
• you keep claiming you are fluent in French when all you can manage is 'joie de vivre' and "je ne sais quoi' which you keep employing in the most inappropriate places just to show off like " i am going to buy mangoes ... voila! joie de vivre et je ne sais quoi" ... of course your roommate will never know how much of a buffoon your are because lucky for you he does not know francais
• you speak with an American accent but believe 'allude' is a Spanish word
• you pass examinations when you do not read and fail when you try to
• everyone including your mother is beginning to notice that you are sounding less intelligent than you did when you were in high school
• you believe that whoever said that slippers solely belong to the bathroom was in serious need of seeing a psychologist
• you only have one suit and you can easily commit murder if someone spills broth on it
• you suffer from a severe psychosomatic paranoia that makes you desperate to do all the proffesional courses in town ... ACCA, CPA, Free Japanese Lessons at the Japan embassy (you wanted either german or french but the fees at Alliance Francaise and the Goethe Institute was too expensive), CIMA, CISA, CMA, CASA ... and any other possible acronyms starting with the letter C ... please do not ask me what all those initials stand for!
• you are taking Economics and believe that the degree is so dynamic that it is going to land you a lead role in a movie with Halle Berry
• you never go home during holidays, violently occupying the bedspace of a fellow comrade in session, claiming loudly that you are looking for an attachement while all you wish for is the free DSTV channel in campus
• your lips bleed every time you smile because of severe malnutrition
• you do not know with whom you had sex last night
• you have no problem with sober people so long as they act drunk in public
• you make a list titled you know you are in Nairobi university when ...
  

Mr. Writer's wishes

• I wish the sky would have a different colour for each day of the week ... blue is kinda gloomy and saddening ... and in any case, it would be interesting to watch people trying to find clad that matches with the particular sky colour
• wish people did not have to squat to defecate ... it is so demeaning
• wish someone would be a darling and whisk me around the campus ground on a comfy wheel-barrow ... for around two weeks or so
• wish I could fly like a bird and swim and breathe underwater like a fish
• wish to head to the Appalachian mountains and capture a baby bigfoot ... then I will emerge triumphantly out of the pine forest and find photojournalists clicking away endless films of camera; all eager to force my image and that of my new-found pet into your TV screen ... you do not have to mind for I am cute ... don't know about the baby ape though
• wish we could switch from the tedious Gregorian calendar into an Aztec one ... it has much more holidays and goes around in a cycle ... which means you can always go back and correct the mistakes of your past ... and the best part is that you have the option of sacrificing your enemy every lunar month or so ... ha ha ha (diabolical laughter)
• wish I could be Santa Claus's assistant this Christmas, then I could send someone a really nasty gift ... like a king cobra inside a shoe-box
• wish to say something really mean one day that will shock the entire universe and send many to a state of near cardiac arrest
• wish I could master all the other tongues in Kenya apart from my own ... I hear it comes in handy if you are caught in a tight corner during a tribal clash ... come to think of it, I should just update my running skills to a much faster version
• wish I will wake up one day from a beautiful dream only to find out that am actually living under that beautiful dream
• wish that all the dramatic scenes in life ... such as rescuing a baby from the mouth of a lion ... would happen in slow-motion just like they do in the movies ... so that we could have a few more minutes to portray our selfless courage
• wish I attended a more cute highschool ... like Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ... where I could have learnt to be an animagus ( if you do not know what this means, then you are not a Harry Potter fan)
• wish it would snow one day in Kenya and we could all rush out to make a snowmen and ski
• wish I could read people's minds
• wish I could produce a sound pitched voice ... enough to break glass and the ear-drum of a wildly-opinionated loudmouth who is unfortunate enough to become my boss
• wish the tectonic plates of the earth would shift ... so that we could have a change of background scenery ... I want a swan-filled lake ... in any case, I would want Europe to be implanted right in the middle of Congo so that they would know how harsh it is to live in that basin
• wish to escape the human world and go and live with the fairies for a life ... it is sweeter to have a career where all you have to do is to deliver a ring that can make you invisible to a lake of fire and have all these gallant warriors protecting you along the way ( inspired by the Lord of the Rings) ... so if any of you orcs happen to capture a pixie, a brownie or an elf, give me a secret e-mail
• wish I could be a pirate ... with a wicked wicked name like Blackbeard or Red Rackham or Captain Kidd ... with all these undiscoverable treasure hidden in Tortuga and a life condemned to sailing the seven seas for all eternity
• wish I could build a time-machine ... then I could go back in time and confirm if dad was as really hardworking in his younger days as he vigorously claims to be ... after that, I could visit Pharaoh Tutankhamen for a cuppa and ask him to spare me some of the gold he decided to buried with
• wish I was an ice-cream connoiseur then I could work my way through piles and piles of this delicious invention while claiming to judge its flavour ... I will make it my career of course
• wish to take a reindeer sleigh-ride across Antartica ... cross from Cape Town to Cairo and all the way to Timbuktu on a camel ... and sail around the world on an Arabian dhow driven by the monsoon winds
• wish all forests would claim their own and turn the earth into one huge, green rain-forest ... am with Wangari Maathai in this
• wish there were no poor people on earth ... but only people with insufficient funds ... for just like Gabrielle Solis of Desperate Housewives and Dolly Parton in Coat of Many Colours said ... poverty is just a state of mind ... and I wish everyone would have sufficient funds soon enough and live the kind of lifestyle they so much desire
• wish I was as organized as my sister ******** ... she takes neatness to a completely new level
• wish you do not make bizarre conclusions about my state of mind after reading through my wish list
• wish you would tell me all your wishes

you do not till a land by turning it over inside your head

the title is an irish proverb, am never good at giving advice so i will let you dear reader mull over it yourself.....come to think of it the irish have a delightful way of expressing themselves...like this classic...

May the enemies of Ireland never eat bread nor drink whiskey,
but be afflicted with itching without the benefit of scratching

or better still..

Here's to our wives and girlfriends:
May they never meet!

and if i ever met an irish man who could bless me like this...well..

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

this one now is a real comforter...

May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night,
and the road downhill all the way to your door.

inasmuch as they say English is from Britain, the Irish are truly the ones who possess its mastery....i attended a high school headed by an irish master and irish teachers....and from them i learnt interesting facts like...

• there are 30 million irish people in America and only 3 million in Ireland, so if you want to see Ireland you better head to the USA
• The Irish have always hated Britons and thereby encourage each other to procreate so that they can overpopulate Britain and conquer it....my logic was lost somewhere amidst all that Irishness
• it rains constantly ....almost 24 hours..in Ireland...so it is such a relief to be in Kenya
• there are no snakes nor serpents...Saint Patrick..their patron saint chased them away by thumping a stick on top of a hill and they all decided to drown themselves in the sea. ..please try this noble solution if you have snakes in your backyard..just make sure there is a puddle nearby for them to suffocate in
• The is a nasty term known as an irish temper..and irish women have a thing for beating up their husbands if they come home drunk
• there is nothing more miserable than a miserable irish childhood..an irish man wrote that and earned a pulitzer..incidentally, he is american...

all in all, i miss my former irish teachers...bro Ambrose...who emigrated to Papua New Guinea..talk about irish intrepidness...colm o'connell...who mastered the kalenjin language better than me ....and of course Mark Lawler.......who told us to pack our underwears whenever going for a school trip...

and if you love a little pint of history, there was an irish lady in colonial kenya who used to whip railway workers because all the other guys were to shy to do it..thank goodness colonialism is over..