APATHY reigns high in kenyan campuses!

Disillusioned, confused and unsure about life we all are at a given stage of our lives, especially in the context of campus , our social interactions, debates and general conversations are all reflective of this; many are going through identity crisis, others trying to find just where they fit in this maze called life-it’s perfectly normal. Amidst all this confusion there are traits that creep into our social life, we pick them unconsciously.

Picture a bus full of passengers driving through quite a scenic countryside, people are taking pictures and asking questions, you are just sited there, unconcerned, not moved by anything around you, the driver over speeds and others all around  shout  their complaints and you are just seated like a stupefied little zombie. Well that is how you are going through life, unengaged in the processes that matter the most to you.

Apathy is the worst of social conditions, it breeds ignorance, and it propagates arrogance. It makes you an object of your life’s processes, you are never the subject of decisions that shape your life; you are like a flag flowing with the wind currents. It reigns high in our campuses. The only thing that sparks enthusiasm in majority of the people’s lives here is the regular sex and the habitual alcohol indulgence at the local joints. If you want to engage any kind of group within our campus today, promise them alcohol for the guys while girls throng to where cheap gossip abound.

Well, just two days ago my friend Otiato and some of his colleagues had a “read out” of their recently published anthology of short story: BOTTLED UP TEARS. I considered that quite a feat for a third year sudent, I thought I should invite a student of literature and attend the event. I was shocked by the response “ati read out? We have enough literature books for the semester”, had I not summoned the greatest of self control, I might have ended up saying something sarcastic like ‘fool, life is more than the course outlines they give you’. I walked away dejected and thinking a lot. Who is to blame for all these? The lecturers?  For encouraging many to just consume the notes which they dictate to us like machines? Who is to blame? The parents?  for pointing out dreams for their sons and daughters? How else can one explain this? Why are we not engaged in things falling out of the simple single paged course outlines?

There is this other group, dudes with these really big head phones, I find them on my way to the lectures, when heading to the library or the mess and I wonder is this person really headed for lectures, to the studio or something. I think either there is something not right with the direction in which being “cool” is headed or this is another perfect manifestation of an advanced level of apathy where one locks himself totally in a world where reality doesn’t matter, music all the time and the rest will just fall in place for them.

It’s something I simply can’t fathom! Questioning conventions and societal norms is termed radicalism! Well at this stage of life I tend to think the youth should be on the front line for asking questions and being engaged in what matters to them! But what have we in our campuses today? Complacent crawlers of orthodoxy, they are called well behaved and disciplined students by the varsity and their lecturers. Well who told them that questioning the processes that bind us in the crudest of ways has anything to do with discipline? That’s how they brought these apathetic individuals into being. They simply seem to preach these at every level of education in Kenya “Behave well, don’t ask questions, just take things as they are, finish your degree, and go get a well paying job.”

That s all crap, it does not work that way. Life demands more than that!!