MY VIEW: Away with the evil spirit haunting young women

Good evening, Christine. About to retire to bed? I’m sorry to have interrupted your evening; but there is something I feel I should tell you before you sleep.

By the way, how is campus life? How is your first month in university panning out?

I hope my email hasn’t found you preparing supper inside the room of some male third year student who has made you believe that owning a sub-woofer and a laptop makes him part of the campus bourgeoisie, and who has promised you a lifetime supply of all the course handouts you need.

I hope I have not interrupted the planning of a weekend “plot” with your new friends in campus, a plot that involves visiting one of those town nightclubs where sound travels faster than light, if you know what I mean, and where the financier of the plot is a rich man that one of your new friends knows.

Such are the plots that end in drugging, date rapes, or worse.

Well, I hope your September has been at par with other first years. It has been a month of readjustments for various freshmen who joined universities across Kenya, and I’m happy you were one of them. Keep winning, Christine.

I type this with my fingers a little sweaty. It is as if Kenya is in a season of butchering young women.

I remember you pitying Sharon Otieno, the Rongo University student who received what should be called the unkindest mistreatment of all. I recall the consternation in your face as we discussed her case when her body had just been discovered.

And this past week, Form Four student Elvinah Moracha, aged 17, was murdered in Kisii County in what was believed to be the doing of a vengeful ex-boyfriend. Days earlier, 28-year-old Monica Nyawira had been found dead in a house in Kilimani. Bloodbath season, this.

Christine, I’m writing to you because I know how your dad and mum are struggling to get you a good education. They have sacrificed a lot and I would be gutted to see you being a player in any scandalous liaison that may bring to question their parenting skills.

CAUTION

You see, the stories grabbing headlines at the moment can make any man give up the hope of investing in their daughter’s education.

“What is it for?” a man may ask. “What if I’m struggling to pay fees for a girl who is hopping from one fuel guzzler to another, living life on the fast lane and not bothered about realising what took her to campus?” the father may wonder.

Think about that, Christine. I can’t bring myself to visualising your father standing beside your coffin, biting his lower lip to give you the final respects which the majority of those attending the burial think you don’t deserve.

I shudder to imagine your mother trying to explain how you were a good, innocent girl who must have been misled by somebody. By then, the damage will have been done. Rumours will have spread. Your campus escapades, some of which will shock even the devil himself, will have become a hot gossip topic. Be careful, Christine.

You must have read about the advice that acting vice-chancellor of Egerton University Alexander Kahi gave to new students at the main campus. Women should keep off sugar daddies and men should shun sugar mummies, he said. I support him.

I will add that you should stick to your lane. That older man seeking your affection knows you are looking for him because you are desperate for cash and there is nothing as bad as being in a relationship where one party thinks the other is desperate.

I am about done with my message. You can now go back to your activities, which I hope should be about getting a good night’s sleep before tomorrow’s classes, not how you will dodge this man because the other one wants to see you tomorrow. Love triangles in campus can be pretty bloody, Christine.

Selena Gomez sings that the heart wants what it wants but I reckon you can never be too clever in matters of the heart. And I’m sure you would not like to live with the guilt of being the girl who sparked a fight between two young men that ended in death, or a lengthy prison term. Remember the death of Stephen Wairimu at Moi University in 2016?

I understand, you may be sneering at my email at the moment, if at all you managed to read this far.

You could be wondering why I am being too preachy and pre-emptive, as if I am the one who earned you admission to university, or as if you were not an adult who can make decisions. I will only use the hackneyed line: Choices have consequences.

With love. Your cousin.

[email protected] Elvis Ondieki is a ‘Nation’ reporter. Caroline Njung’e’s column resumes soon.