LIFE BY LOUIS: How we lost the chapati battle

Running battles between peaceful demonstrators and the boys in blue uniform is a completely new phenomenon. ILLUSTRATION| IGAH

What you need to know:

  • The only time I remember we had genuine concerns to warrant a peaceful demonstration was when the canteen served us non-compliant chapatis.
  • Apart from learning to date and cook ugali using an electric coil connected directly to the power outlet using naked cables, college life also taught us to be connoisseurs of good food.
  • Do you have feedback on this story? E-mail: [email protected]

Running battles between peaceful demonstrators and the boys in blue uniform is a completely new phenomenon.

In my college days the battles were quick and decisive, and barely lasted half an hour.

The boys in charge of dispersing peaceful demonstrators were always in warm mode ready to activate.

They were brilliant in execution and such vocabulary as ‘daylong running battles with picketers’ did not exist in their dictionaries.

The Sheriff in charge of the dispersing squad did not waste time deploying some bored boys in blue whose day jobs is to guard banks and escort cash in transit.

He had a specialised and dedicated squad that was reputed for knocking your knee caps and ankle joints with precision.

My first encounter with the boys in charge of peaceful conflict resolution with demonstrators happened as soon as I joined an institution of higher learning in the city where I learned all the things that I do not require in this life.

NON-COMPLIANT CHAPATIS

Even up to this date I am not sure what we were picketing about every other week. Not that it mattered.

The only time I remember we had genuine concerns to warrant a peaceful demonstration was when the canteen served us non-compliant chapatis.

Apart from learning to date and cook ugali using an electric coil connected directly to the power outlet using naked cables, college life also taught us to be connoisseurs of good food.

It is no wonder then when one morning that conveniently coincided with the commencement of end of semester exams that we had not collectively prepared for, that we declared that the canteen chapatis were unfit for human consumption.

Among the complaints were that the chapatis were no longer circular in shape as per the relevant international certification standards.

They had become progressively irregular and shapeless. As a result, they had a smaller surface area to volume ratio, making them grow cold very fast after serving. Someone from the engineering class must have wasted precious brain cells working out that ratio.

BORED SERVICE ATTENDANT

The chapatis were also being served manually by a bored service attendant.

This resulted in glaring clerical errors and discrepancies. Sometimes you would buy five chapatis, only to get to your hostel room and find that they were just four. This was a massive irregularity.

Three chapatis were meant for personal consumption, and two were meant for the visiting girlfriend. We treated the sisters very nicely those days.

A discrepancy of one chapati was bound to cause irreconcilable differences with the visiting girlfriend.

We did not have confidence in this manual chapatis tallying process. We demanded that the chef installs an electronic chapatis counter and dispenser.

If we ever doubted that the dispenser had been interfered with, we would then demand that we be allowed full access rights to open the dispenser and do a manual verification of the chapatis.

The last complaint was that we did not have the faith in the chapati makers. We were reading fat books in the main campus located at the edge of the city, and the chapatis were made in one of the constituent campuses in Kabete highlands that specialised in agricultural practices and animal husbandry matters (no relation to the endangered human husband species).

IRREGULARLY AWARDED CONTRACT

It was alleged that the contract to make chapatis in this campus was irregularly awarded.

Indeed the chef from our canteen had been captured on camera hosting the chapati makers from the highlands campus just as the tendering process was going on.

We were therefore not confident about the chapati making process. We demanded that they be made in another of our campuses in Kikuyu that manufactured teachers.

We also demanded that the chapatis maker must personally deliver the chapatis  to our canteen to avoid alterations and manipulations along the way.

After consulting one of the senior food science students, we confirmed that the chapati maker had installed a secret formula in the chapati making process that progressively altered the shape of the chapati using a complicated ingredients algorithm.

Again we did not understand what that meant, but it didn’t matter. He knew what he was saying, and that was all that mattered.  

IRREDUCIBLE MINIMUMS

Arising from these genuine complaints, we had five irreducible minimums that we presented to the catering department.

The chapatis must be circular in shape, with any point along the diameter being equidistant from the centre.

The existing chapatis making tender must be cancelled and the contract must be awarded afresh to the campus that specialised in churning out teachers.

The chief chef and his three assistants in charge of chapatis service must resign from their jobs. We would only recognize electronic dispensing of chapatis.

Our student leader must be allowed full access rights to the electronic chapatis dispenser.  

Because these matters were served under a certificate of urgency, we gave the canteen management from lunchtime to dinner to meet all these demands.

Failure to fully meet these demands would lead to immediate boycott of the canteen services followed by mass action and peaceful demonstrations. We were cognisant of the fact that the timelines were a bit tight, but we were not in the mood for negotiations.

Just as dusk settled in the hostels, we spilled into an adjacent public road. We were aware that the main headmaster of the country was going to pass by that evening.

A news item had revealed that he had been inspecting development projects outside town that day, and he was bound to pass by on his way back to the big white house in the neighbourhood of the arboretum.

We expected to waylay him and present our weighty petitions. He was also known to leave something small to his supporters, and this could be our lucky day.

Unbeknown to us, the chief sherriff had intelligence about our evil intentions. He had sniffers in every corner of the college.

The sheriff those days was a burly officer who actively participated in conflict  resolution and peaceful dispersing of picketers.

Rumour had it that he drove himself incognito and packed three silenced automatic weapons in his shoulder and ankle holsters.

As we sang victory songs about comrades’ power and made the adjacent roads inaccessible to motorists, the sheriff was cooking our medicine at one of his stations located next to our lecture halls.

Unlike the current sheriff who is shy to deploy his boys in full force, the man in charge of the boys in blue those days did not mince his efforts.

As if by some magical spell and unbeknown to us, the boys landed on us from all corners and forced us to retreat back to the comfort of our hostels under persuasion of well measured application of heavy batons on our bone joints.

We lost the battle. We however decided to boycott all products associated with the canteen including chapatis, a watery gruel that we fondly referred to as bursary, a popular menu called 3-1-1 that comprised of ugali and cabbages and all suppliers and partners associated with our canteen.

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