Hapless Campus dudes who misconstrue binge drinking to be cool

A few moments before Sunday dawn, am woken up by the outside chants and noisy drunkards’ conversation that has now grown closer to my door. A strong whiff of marijuana peers through the aeration space beneath and above the door. Crashes of bottles breaking on the floor are heard followed by a few exchanges, a fight and then a groan of someone puking. They have done it again on my door, these eccentric neighbours!

You see people, there’s nothing as good as having a good neighbour in the college hostel, but so is the reverse true! Back in the hostels, whenever I get down to take a rest, the adjacent Room 124 residents have always been generous enough to invite me to their “smoke-party”. Any moment they are in, their room is thick with bhang smoke and windows tightly closed. Tonnes of Marijuana fumes fill the corridors in less than a minute. They smoke with passion! By virtue of osmosis and diffusion, I too have become a partaker, though involuntary. The effect is a lot worse when they get down to the bottle; tipsy and destructive!

A little infuriated, I open the door and throw a few exchanges with them prompting them to leave the vicinity. Among them is *Kev, a classmate of mine. This guy, I can’t remember the last time we saw him in class. My only guess is that he’ll appear tomorrow for the morning CAT on “Data Structures & Algorithm II”. Well, it takes a great deal of confidence and self-assurance to booze all weekend and assertively sit for a programming test.

And so my guess was right. Monday morning; turns out Kev had been drinking all-night long. He makes his way through the faculty alleyways, confused and tipsy. He spots me, winks and draws closer. As he walks, everyone can tell the guy is staggering. The moment he begins to talk, you immediately wish you had a rocket propulsion engine, and take off at a vertical projectile! His breath is way putrefied than a brewery.

“Brathe niko empty kwa hii course, si nikae na wewe hii CAT tu! Please Man!” Brother, I don’t know anything in this course, let me sit with you during this CAT only! Please man!

Well, I’m not ready to sit beside a drunk fellow and make my life miserable during the CAT. To evade him, I activate a fake call on my phone leaving him there trying his luck with other classmates. By the time the lecturer arrives to administer the test, Kev hasn’t found a philanthropist ready to “share knowledge” in the midst of a test. You don’t help a drunkard in exams! Not that it is just illegal; the guy can create drama in an exam room and make you his co-starring!

After the paper, Kev returns to his usual den, bogs a few bottles before joining his camaraderie to get high on some weed as they wait for an X-rated party scheduled for the night in one of the local joints. And the circle continues.

Now you see, Kev and his cronies are considered the coolest dudes in the realm. They are seen as urbane, and the perfect social fit of the current trends and times. They know where the party is, and they know too well how to party their lives out. The fact that they don’t like books, lectures and class, makes them even cooler. The shaggy hair, bushy beards, slurred speech and alcohol breath is just an icing on the cake. “Hawa ndio wenye kusema!” They are the popular ones.

Oh boy! There’s nothing fancy in you looking eerie like a scene from the 1978 exorcist horror movie; shaggy beards, missing tooth (that you got from last night’s fight), slurred speech, wearing the same trouser you’ve remixed for the 3rd week now, holding a 13 times reused tumbler on the left hand and a cheap bottle of ‘keg’ on your right! Whoever calls you cool, is as naive as you are!

Apparently, some of these binge campus drunkards are hapless from their origins. Your folks back in the village sell up to the last chicken and its eggs just to keep you surviving in college instead you spend it on the cheapest liquor on the planet. And when it’s all finished, you hang around spoilt rich kids thinking it is where you belong. It will only be sad when you exit the institution and find a harsh reality waiting to pay you back for the recklessness you exhibited. Out here no employer advertises a vacancy and says “cool and tipsy” is a requirement!