By Frank Bray
There’s a Swahili proverb that when two bulls fight, it’s the grass that gets hurt. This proverb has played on for a while now between Kenyan lecturers and the government. And students are the grass that’s now hurting.
A number of students stand by the lecturers in their quest for payment and funding as is their right as workers to be compensated for their work. It may be realistic that the government is willing to pay just a portion of their arrears, but it seems to have come to a standoff in which both the government and the lecturers do not wish to budge.
The lecturers’ solid stance might be attributed to their constant experience of being given promises that seem to fail the test of implementation. The government promises, an agreement is reached, but never satisfactorily implemented. This is a recipe for dissatisfaction.
As is, sometimes you can fool people too many times that they learn and get smarter. It is the wish of many that our ideal methods of resolutions to problems worked. That constitutional and diplomatic methods were more fruitful than standoffs. But it seems to most that the current setup uses due process as a way to postpone and delay accountability rather than to bring satisfactory endings to grievances.
Kenyan lecturers feel caught up in the loop of unending discussions and theoretical conclusions that never get to see the light of implementation. This has accumulated enough for long enough to wear people out. They seem to have woken up to some form of reality.
It’s now time to see where the balance lies and whether truly someone cares. As the standoff lasts, students are left stranded in institutions of higher learning, not knowing what to do. Many have resorted to going back home to their guardians.
Some have cited that staying around and suffering hunger is what’s driving their departure. They’ve waited and run out of supplies. That brings us to the fact that if everything goes back to normal, they’ll need new supplies of upkeep since their finances are now spent out of session. It raises a concern of survival should the semester resume.
Another problem that has arisen is the prolonging of students’ time in the already time-consuming assembly line called the 8-4-4 education system. It is said to have churned out literate people, but most of them sufferers. Those it helps are few. The rest have to help themselves. And still, time is being taken out of their lifetime reserves by the current situation. As it stands, there has been no learning in affected universities since semesters began in September until now, towards the end of November. Students really need the “bulls” to look into this collectively and create a reasonable solution.
So, as the two bodies decide, may they acknowledge that graduates and undergraduates are suffering and continue to think about them even afterwards. All in all, however, and whenever the standoff ends, many wish that both parties come to an honest, reasonable, and satisfying agreement. Otherwise, our current generation is at risk of being wasted in all ways possible.
