Students burning dorms will rue folly of their actions later

Listen up everyone, being a teenager is hard. I was a barely functional teenager and I can’t tell you how confusing those years were. Okay, I can tell you. In fact, I will tell you in great detail. The only reason   why I got a column was so I could waste precious space in an important national newspaper talking about a period in my life you have no interest in. Wait, what’s that? You have no interest in any period of my life? Good to hear but I’m the one with a weekly order for 800 words so take a seat and read on.

As you can see from the opening paragraph, I evidently suffered attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in high school. Some say it is now more acute than ever. At the height of our adolescence, we all thought school was getting in the way of the important business of living.

In our books, that consisted chiefly of going to parties, writing letters to the girls we would never see after Form Four and generally reluctantly doing anything that might actually teach us something. The central object of our oppression was the school administration, of course, the headquarters of tyranny.

Times haven’t changed much despite the many moons that have gone between me and my final national exam paper. How I have tried to forget that season and the many “monuments” to the folly of youth buried in there. All the poor decisions I have made since secondary school still pale in comparison to the gold medal-worthy ones I made in that four-year period.

SCHOOL OF LIFE

To be honest, nobody really likes high school anyway. There is only one top position so the rest of you have to fight for grades that are not so bad that you’ll be disowned by your family. The interesting outings are not frequent enough and no self-respecting pig would eat most of the food served in dining halls.

Here is the thing, though: you leave high school and discover that life is much more complicated than the insulated utopia that is formal education. Most students at that age have an authority figure that controls their life – a parent, guardian or teacher. Society is still interested in you and is rooting for you to succeed. But society is a lousy communicator and prohibits all the fun things you want to do as a teenager because it has your best interests at heart.

No, you can’t go for the dance 5km away from the institution because some fine girls from your sister school are attending. No, you can’t have entertainment all weekend because the school compound has to be cleaned up and teachers just want to make your life unbearable. And no, you can’t go home early because the Ministry of Education extended the term dates. Then they cut prayer days and all the other ways you could access illegal materials and stolen exams.

So let the boys and girls burn  their schools. Let them torch the very dormitories they live in and the classrooms in which they learn. Let them destroy their dining halls because they’re trying a new no-food diet which is all the rage in an alternate universe. Let them get a taste of juvenile detention and the beauties of the criminal justice system at its best. That story will be a great one to tell when they’re burning maize by the side of the road.

Their hijinks in this season will serve as great cautionary tales some day when they teach their children about choices and their consequences. Let them do as they please because their results in the national exam and life afterwards will be moulded by the effects of this disruption.

Facilities in more than 120 schools countrywide have gone up in flames in the last few weeks. The charred remains of what used to be classrooms, laboratories, libraries, stores, administration blocks and other buildings tell of the arson that swept them. Just like they crushed and burnt, many of the kids behind these pseudo-heroic acts will experience the crushing force of disappointment later in life.

But parents shouldn’t pretend to be completely shocked by their children’s criminal activities, by the way. In several instances around the country, they themselves either burnt or destroyed school property while protesting against the administration.

And they wonder where their offspring got their ideas! An apple does not fall far from the tree, you know. So don’t close the schools, let them burn until the last ember dies out. Send them home only when there is nowhere to learn or to sleep. Then let life take over and teach a class on adult responsibilities and consequences. Only that will burn sobriety into their heads.

*****

PRICE CONTROL

Will President oppose capping of interest rates? 

THE COUNTRY IS WAITING to see if Uhuru Kenyatta will oppose a move to cut interest rates, again. As Finance minister, the president refused to support a motion by Gem MP Jakoyo Midiwo to make loans cheaper, especially for ordinary Kenyans. This third attempt is by Kiambu Town MP Jude Njomo and was passed by the National Assembly with bipartisan support. The banking industry and its regulator, the Central Bank of Kenya, are asking the president not to assent to it.

“This would include inefficiencies in the credit market, credit rationing, promotion of informal lending channels, and undermining the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission,” Governor Dr Patrick Njoroge said in a statement.

The legislator enjoys great public support and even Cord Leader Raila Odinga has added his voice to his argument, supporting the bill. Economics and popular opinion are often at variance and experts question whether regulating fuel prices has really made fuel cheaper like it was supposed to.

In any case, there are many people who disagree with any form of price controls in a liberalised economy. A decision about this is bound to make one side angry, so managing the fallout from it is just as important. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. 

****** 

FUTURE IS HERE

It’s Facebook’s world, we are just living in it 

FACEBOOK NOW HAS 1.7 BILLION people. Actually, it has more than 1.7 billion people. That number only refers to people who visit the social networking site at least once a month, not the total number of accounts. Mark Zuckerberg may have only 74 million fans on the page of the site he created and still runs, but he is the overlord of a large chunk of the world. He is a rock star billionaire, not just in the tech sector, but far beyond it.

In 2016, a company that’s only 12 years old can be valued higher than one like the New York Times, which is 164 years old. A college dropout who built the said company in his parents’ garage can have more influence than almost any other person on the planet. He is the president of a large colony called Facebookistan.

What a time to be alive, and what a statement about the companies of the future!

_____________

FEEDBACK: on Koffi Olomide’s attack on his dancer

I COULD NOT HIDE my joy seeing the old man convicted; it’s about time Kenya showed some guts. I reckon if it wasn’t for our bold move Zambia and the DRC would not have taken action. I was even more impressed by the speed it took to have him kicked out of the country. If this was a PR stunt by our law enforcers and legislators, I gulped every ounce of image they served, which was a stand against violence, especially against women. This was an unfortunate incident but a welcome action that somehow restored hope in our justice system. We might  not convict the big boys riding big shiny cars with fancy suits but we can kick out a Lingala legend and icon when he misbehaves.

I know the naysayers were against the “harsh” action but even the Bible says that sparing the rod spoils the child. Mr Olomide is a spoilt child who needed a big fat rod.

Wendi  Kibaara

***** 

YOU SAY KOFFI OLOMIDE enjoys god-like status and a fanatical following; he earned it, it was not just given to him.You compare Olomide with Papa Wemba, whom you consider better because he honoured an invitation to your show and he is not blemished like the former. Let me tell you, in December  1976, Papa Wemba was accused of having sex with an army general’s daughter; he was arrested and thrown in a Kinshasa jail. Then, in February 2003, he was arrested in Paris and sentenced to three and a half months in jail for human trafficking.You also say Manu Dibango is better than Olomide; I know nothing about him apart from the fact that he is a Cameroonian.

Ask yourself, if Koffi Olomide agreed to grace your show then changed his mind, don’t you think it could have been his Kenyan handlers put off by the pettiness of your show who might have told him to give it a miss and not to bother to apologise.I would advise you to leave this cheap opinion-throwing to those faceless bloggers. Koffi Olomide erred, which is human, but that one mistake cannot undo every good thing the man has achieved.

Adhok Jr

***** 

KOFFI OLOMIDE HAS MILLIONS of fans all over Africa, regardless of his reckless behaviour of late. No one is perfect. Just because he snubbed you doesn’t mean that all of a sudden he is bad and you are the best. It was perhaps fitting that he went to another TV station for an interview; maybe you are the problem.

Victor Ongola