Maseno ‘world’s only university that straddles Equator’

Maseno, one of the country’s biggest public universities, often boasts of being the only such institution in the world since it straddles the Equator.

Located 25 kilometres from Kisumu Town, it also sits on the border of two counties, Kisumu and Vihiga.

But what is the fuss about lying along the Equator?

The fact that the imaginary line that divides the globe into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres cuts across it has always excited students and the institution’s entire fraternity.

Students often joke of the rare “privilege” they have of taking a bite of a mandazi in the Southern Hemisphere, chewing it on the zero degree principal latitude and swallowing it on the Northern side.

DIFFERENT CLIMATES

The imaginary line is said to rise gradually from the southern hemisphere, traversing Maseno on the  Kisumu-Busia Road and dividing the University into College Campus and Siriba Campus, which are about a kilometre apart.

It means the nearly 10,000 students criss-cross the line when daily moving from the lecture halls to the hostels, located on both sides of the university.

“You will notice a temperature difference, for instance, with the Siriba side being colder. And at times it rains on  one side while drizzling on the other,” says Mr Melvin Odhiambo, a student. Siriba Campus is situated on higher ground and is covered by a canopy of trees. Mrs Rosemary Owida, a climatologist at the institution, says it is possible that  the  College Campus is warmer than Siriba because of the  difference in their distance from the Equator line.

This is because the sun is usually overhead at the Equator, so regions along it are usually warm throughout the year, while  temperatures drop as one moves away from it.

“We have not established exactly where the line cuts, but assuming it’s along the Kisumu-Busia road, the effect on the College or Siriba campus depends on their position on the latitude,” Ms Owida says.

She adds that the parts of College Campus and Siriba Campus which are the same distance from the line should, ideally, have similar temperatures. Indeed, institution’s administration, which is just adjacent to the line, is said to be the warmest while White House and Mark Annexe hostels in Siriba are colder since they are almost a kilometre away from the line. “In a layman’s language, it gets colder as you move to the poles,” says the lecturer.

Mrs Owida, however, says that the  difference in temperature  is not the only factor that affects rainfall. Others are altitude and closeness to a water body. She says Siriba might experience more rain because it is on higher ground and not because it is near the Equator.

“One needs to experiment to know the cause of the differences in weather patterns,” she says.