Five Couples You Will Meet in Campus

When you have spent four years in an institution of higher learning, you learn a lot from simple observation. I have seen and heard enough to authoritatively categorize campus couples into five types.

1. The “Newlyweds” 

This couple is so excited about the newfound "love" that they will not hide it. Even though it reaches the public as a rumour first, you will begin to catch them together often. They are likely to be people you've never seen together before. Quickly, their relationship status on Facebook will change.

However, they will still be slightly uncomfortable at the prospect of being seen together, so they will never let you bump into them while they are walking in the company of each other. Immediately they spot you from a distance, the split is instant. The one you do not know will walk on ahead and the partner will engage you in a chit-chat, like nothing just happened, then run on to catch up with the new wifey/hubby. The lady will have an extra load of laundry to do every weekend. In addition, a third party, namely an unlucky roommate, will understand what it means to be in exile, Idi Amin style.

2. The Soap Opera Couple

These two will be the ultimate lovebirds. Either of them did something crazy to get the other to 'ingia box', typically the man. Maybe he stole her away from his roommate. Maybe he even threatened to commit suicide if she rejected him. Whatever the case, they are together right now. Their relationship is the ultimate telenovela.

They have broken up several times. One of them has cheated on the other (or both). Screaming in the hostel corridors is not strange to them. The girl will wail for anyone within a kilometre radius to hear, unashamed. Doors will be banged in the dead of the night; there might even be physical blows. Interestingly enough, the two will be back together in a span of 24 hours.
The pieces will be sewn back in the dark corners of K or J where lights constantly flicker or on the lifeless paths bisecting the campus. And the drama will continue. Who needs to watch a soap opera then? This one is free, no LAN or TV is necessary.
         
3. The Grown-ups

Needless to say, this is the couple that amazes me most. Everyone knows they are a couple right from first year. You will rarely see them together since they operate in such a seamless manner that you may even think they are not a couple. They do not follow each other everywhere like two blind mice.

During the day, they will go about their business separately. They will cosy up at night and enjoy each other’s company. Even when they are in the same class, they will sit seats apart from each other. And it's not that the relationship is a secret.

No, they just don't smother each other. They are also likely to be the conservative kind that believes that their relationship is their business not everyone else's. In fact, they may never put up their relationship status on Facebook. If you want relationship advice, these are the people you want to go to. They have attained self-actualization. The mentor couple is what it is.

4. The Joined-at-the-Hip Duo

These are just the ones! Be it day or night, they will always be holding hands. Public Display of Affection (PDA) is not an issue to them. If they had a chance, they'd probably never let go of each other, lest one of them one collapses from the lack of oxygen the other provides. It is pure drama if the two are classmates. They will sit together in class, do CATs jointly in the spirit of Harambee and even enlist in the same discussion group. Do I need to mention that the two live together?

At some point, a baby will pop up with a bizarre name (which is totally trendy for the couple) and they will officially have earned their three degrees. The baby also makes it a pretty sealed deal. All they need to do after campus is solemnize the union in about five years when they are ready.

5. The Unaware

Oh yes, these are very tight friends. Visit his room, she's there. Look at her status updates on Facebook, his likes and comments are all over. He will see her off if she's going somewhere. He's her electrician, she's his cook. Ask the girl what they are and she will say they are just friends.  The guy may not be too sure. Fortunately or unfortunately, people will start talking.

Within no time, the two are a couple to everyone else but themselves. Most of the time, it's as a result of too many idle minds in campus that have nothing better to do than match people up in their heads and start a story that circulates around campus. Other times, the two are just going through some major denial and will probably invite all of us to a wedding in 2016. 

I am yet to conclusively point out which one of these survives after the four years are over; which one is not born out of the convenience of being in campus. I will get back to you once I am out there.

Disclaimer: Any similarity between the couples mentioned herein and existing ones in Moi University - Main Campus is purely coincidental.  

What’s up with my WhatsApp?

First things first, nothing is up with my WhatsApp. I don’t have WhatsApp. I had it, but I don’t anymore. No, my phone did not fall into water or get stolen. My trusty phone is intact despite all the times it slipped from my tiny grip.

In short, I deleted my WhatsApp. Why? Because I wanted to. In fact, I needed to. A number of factors led me to this decision. I tend to have a sentimental attachment to any form of information delivered on my phone so you can imagine how hard it was to delete all those interesting conversations that had accumulated in my little Samsung Galaxy Pocket.

For one, men had finally found a way to get my number the easy way. No, let me put it this way; I was giving my number away too easily. Maybe it’s because I feel that WhatsApp is like any other social network. Only difference is that it needs you to have your friend’s number. What’s the harm in that? That aside, I have quashed a vulnerability. He has no excuse to ask for my number if it is not to call me. I can simply say I do not have WhatsApp and move on. No more dishing out my number to tweeps like I am another Shiku I don’t know. (By the way, I wonder how a dude can delude himself into imagining that a girl will take him seriously when he makes his intentions known solely via an app. Seriously? Do you think your dad won your mum's heart through some scribbled shorthand?)

Secondly, I would keep falling out with friends that had grown close to me in the past couple of months. I attribute this to talking too frequently on that little app. Frankly, I could 'talk' with someone for an entire day and continue the next day. We would argue at some point and get really mad at each other. Eventually, it really got to me. WhatsApp was making me do things that I was not accustomed to. It makes it so easy to send multimedia to friends across the globe. Somewhere in the middle of that frenzy to send pictures of yourself, your food, your dog and practically anything and everything you own and see, you will find yourself sending something that will make either party mad. I couldn't handle it anymore. Let’s just say I am still adapting to the information age.

Back in the day, 2008 to be precise, it was so hard for me to upload a photo on Facebook, leave alone send a multimedia text to anyone. I remember my first profile picture was Juniper Lee (Google to the rescue!). That is all I could put up because I neither owned a high-end phone with a camera nor did I own a USB cable. I did not even have a picture of myself on the Internet. When I finally put up a photo of myself, it was months down the line and I used my BFF’s phone. Nimetoka mbali!

Now you know why you do not see me on WhatsApp. I took a break. I tend to run away from situations. If I feel I am pissing you off a lot, I will back off. Maybe in that time, I will grow up a little to handle myself in a better way. In the meantime, you will also forgive me for whatever wrong I did. 

WhatsApp (Photo credit: abulhussain)

That’s what’s up with my WhatsApp.

Moi University's 8,079 Rank: Was It Justified?

You are seated at home enjoying a movie or getting warm by the fireplace. Your phone rings. Almost by reflex, you pick it up and hit a button. Ah, it’s your friend from class. He’s remembered me after three months, you think to yourself, must be something important. You sit up and take in the contents of the text. “Sasa, my dear! Nimeona kwa 3rd Eye ati tunafungua next week.”

Pause.

Maybe you are not reading it right. You read it again. Yes, you read right. Your holiday is over. It can’t be. After all, the 3rd Eye is not a credible source of information. Very fast, you call someone else and they tell you the same thing. No, you will not believe anything that is not from a credible source. The next best thing is Google. Google has answers to everything, right?

Very quickly, you open your opera mini browser (or maybe run out of the house to the nearest cyber café) and enter Google. “Moi University opening dates” you type and wait for a few seconds, depending on Safaricom’s mood that day. You hold your breath. The results page appears before your eyes. The first result on the page reads, “Moi University Press Club, The 3rd Eye - Media/News/Publishing...”

This could change in an instant if they wanted it to. 

Seriously, are you kidding me? You want to scream. To make matters worse, the Google result to the university’s official website comes in fourth position, alongside other personal blogs. (Oh yes, this very blog features in the results too.) Mind you, the result is on 2011/2012 academic year opening dates. Looks like you will have to trust the 3rd eye, huh? Well, it has happened to me for the longest time too. I feel you.

Now, do a little experiment. Just for the fun of it, Google “University of Nairobi opening dates”. Voila! The first two results are the university’s official website and all the rest are quite reputable sites like Wikipedia. 

Why the difference? As an information science student who is online half the day, I will offer my two cents on this. I will not go into technical details, lest you get bored. (But just in case you want to learn more, it revolves around the magic acronym SEO, Search Engine Optimization.)

1. The university website is in all manner of ways below par. You would expect that a site of its calibre would give information about students, for students and, to some extent, by students. But instead what does it do? It’s all about staff, staff and more staff. Enter the site and click on the links that look like they may have information on students, all you will see is either empty pages or pages that were updated years ago. A good example is the MUSO page.
2. The university’s social media platforms are as underutilized as it gets. Do you even know it has both Facebook and twitter pages? Search and see for yourself. The problem is, just like the website, the accounts are updated like once a month or so. Ask whoever administrates the pages a question by tweeting or writing them an inbox and you will never get a reply. One of the reasons why major corporations like Safaricom and Kenya Power are thriving in the online world today is because they embraced social media and the efficiency of assisting clients through interactions on the platforms.
3. Students are not involved in any way in putting up content in that website. If they were, we probably would not have a world rank of 8,079 on Webometrics. I will not even mince words. If this trend continues, the rank will keep dropping every year. Oh, and by the way, Webometrics only ranks based on web presence and impact. The rank has nothing to do with operations offline. (Imagine the heights the institution would go if it uploaded the research papers that are published in print!) You can now rest easy, we are not that bad. Ever tried contacting the ICT department? I have and trust me you will never get a reply. So much for having contacts put up on the site.
4. Needless to mention the homepage is filled with links and a slider. No content that will help you at first glance. In the online world, content is king. If you focus on aesthetics of a page and forget about useful content, your efforts are null and void. To top this up, you are treated to a mixture of dead links and promising icons of non-existent student mail (Or maybe I did not get the memo when people were signing up for email addresses).

I will stop there for now, hoping someone is listening. There are so many students who would be glad to help improve this institution but are not given the opportunity. That is why most just want to complete their studies and vamoose. We love this place for what it offers. We complain because we know it could do better. We can help. In the information age, information is everything. And by the way, Moi University is not alone on the dead links, other sites have that too. To err is human.

In the meantime, don’t bother running to Google for the latest news from the official source. You know where you will get it loud and clear. Forgive us when we err, we are learning too.

(Originally published in the 3rd Eye, a Moi University Press Club publication.)

Happy Birthday Evelyn!

She is my BFF; my best friend forever. I am never ashamed to say this despite the fact that you may think it is silly for a grown woman to refer to another as such. We have had our ups and downs. Lots of them, that’s how I know it’s real.

Despite the distance, despite the long silences, despite personal successes and troubles, she will always make me smile. Whether it is over Google Talk, Twitter or Facebook, I will forget that she moved to a faraway town in that minute of typing away on my keyboard to pour out my heart to her. I have claimed that someone stole her away from me many times but it is really not true. (I am sure he will burst into an evil laugh if he ever reads this.)

It started out in class four, I think. I’d always been fascinated by this girl I met when I moved to the school in class three. I gathered up courage and wrote a letter to ask her to be my best friend (Those days you had to have a best friend because teachers would ask you to write a composition about him/her. There was no way I was going to write about a friend and all the while she did not even think of me as hers. I had to make it official!) As fate would have it, she was glad to accept the request. Happy, happy me! Now I had the coolest best friend in the school. 

Yes, I kept this. Kill me later. :)

From there on, we were inseparable. Reciting entire lines from movies during break time (Parent Trap was our favourite), beating each other to the school latrines (lol), writing ‘novels’ titled the ‘Adventurous Duo’ where Carrie and Eve went on awesome adventures, becoming girl guides, beating each other in studies. Hand in hand all the way to class eight.

Urging each other on, we were the perfect example of the proverb iron sharpens iron. We were admitted to the Alliance Girls’ High School together! She landed in 4X, I in 4W. As if that was not enough, she was a member of Bruce House, while I was in Dorcas Luseno. Bummer! I kinda felt that this would be the end of it all. Fortunately, nothing could keep us apart. We joined choir and the rest is history. I owe choir more than just the joy of singing, it kept Evelyn close to me J.

Evelyn was the epitome of focus. She was the math guru in the class of 07. Girls in lower classes looked up to her in a way I envied. I remember the girls in her house loved her so much, they made her Deputy House Captain. This drove her mad for reasons that were closely tied to her goals. She felt this was not it for her. When this girl is determined to do something, you had better move out of the way. Eventually she calmed down and performed her duties perfectly. One of those moments I remember being there for her, which cannot even compare to the moments she has been there for me. 

She has dealt with my numerous stupid tantrums. We could go for music festivals where she would disappear with a boy. I would get so mad for being ‘dumped’ but she never ever went like ‘Carol, grow up!’. She stuck with me (Yes, I was a ‘breezer’, a major one at that). She’d leave me notes on my locker before night preps, she made me work on my studies (unknowingly of course). There's something about having a friend who's better than you, you are always challenged and have no choice but to be better. 

High school was done and it was time for us to roam the earth for two years before JAB came calling. If I began writing about what we did, I will never finish. I have to mention a few though. Evelyn was the reason I joined Facebook. She came and told me about this cool thing she had heard about that I just had to join. She never passed on a chance to pass her awesomeness to me. She cooked for me enough times. I have never told her this, but I have always looked upon her as that big sister I never had. I remember the day she walked me around Kikuyu to fill my HELB form because I could not do it alone. (Seriously, what would I do without you?)

We are coming to the of our university years. These are the years we were completely strewn apart, 332km to be exact. This is why delivering gifts is now harder. This is a half truth, however, since I have received loads of help from her via the awesomeness that is the Internet. My research project kicked off backed by her advice. The beauty of the distance is that, this bright girl made me realize that in this digital age, awesome electronic gifts are timeless.

On my 23^rd birthday, she gave me a beautiful gift, an out-of-the-box gift. She’s a geek, a beautiful geek, so she made me an android app. The app unfolds into a short story about me with pictures and a Lecrae birthday song playing in the background. Like seriously!!!! How in the world did she even find a birthday song by Lecrae! (I did not even know it existed until I heard it in the app. I did not even tell her I did not know. I was completely blown away!) She gave me this geeky gift, I give her my electronic gift in the best way I know how, writing. 

You are probably bent over some code or scrolling through notes for your exams. All the best in that, ace them as usual! As you begin another chapter in your life, may it be your best yet. I think it is so cool that you step out there at the exact time you celebrate your birthday. You will be great, you always have been, you always will be. Happy Birthday! May God bless you beyond your wildest dreams. You deserve so much more than a blog post, you know that, right? One thing I can tell you though, the words in that class four letter came to pass. You have made me "the happiest girl in the whole universe". 

All my love,  +Evelyn Muthoni Mwangi.

You can now kill me.