There’s a young female student at Moi University who appeared on television last week – you need to watch the video to come along with me. Inside an empty lecture hall with learning furniture turned bottoms-up, the neatly weaved dreadlocked young scholar tries to throw her spongy hands over her watery eyes to appear strong for the clan in front of the camera crew, only to discover why hands are still not in the list of medical supplies approved by the Ministry of Health to suppress heavy bleeding.
For nine years now, Lyn Ndegwa – that’s her real name according to the bulletin from Nandi Road – wiped the KCSE board with a clean A of 83 points from Karima Girls.
She was the top girl in Nyandarua County, and could’ve taken up a life-altering scholarship opportunity to any of the Ivy League colleges that are the best in the business, but chose to dignify Kenya’s faltering university sector by ticking the box that led her to the Moi University School of Medicine.
She wishes she never listened to those who discouraged her from wearing the national flag with pride in her heart.
Her love for country is now causing her immense physical pain and emotional distress. She cannot hold it anymore, and she is not alone.
If that news report – of the Moi University first year class of 2016 - doesn’t leave you with a hole in your heart, then you certainly belong to the biological group of obsidian rocks.
“We’re your children, we didn’t want to be here, we deserve better”, Lyn Ndegwa struggles to compose herself as she delivers her closing remarks.
Tears flow freely again when a reminder is made that the First Year Class of 2024 were in Class Six in 2016 and may probably sew up their university education and graduate to the job market while this lot is still waiting on Jesus come back and raise Moi University from the dead.
When a country stands akimbo and watches the generation of emerging professionals get twisted and turned by the fatal consequences of congenital impunity, it is safe to conclude that we’ve given up on our country and left the vultures circling over the carcass to do their worst.
Our founding fathers would be turning in hysteria if they watched that emotional clip. We have failed our young people and that’s why God is not letting us experience nice things.
We might rerun those old clips of jelly-brained politicians propagating ethnic chauvinism at Moi University and reminding them to eat their tomatoes for what it’s worth, but sense that is currently not common would provide a cautionary tale against riding that diversionary horse.
The whirlwind crisis at Moi University is the physical manifestation of public sector rot in its purest form, and is going to be the norm at all government institutions who have made political patronage their lifeblood.
Those young medics are suffering from a pathological disease that is infused into the bloodstream of every Kenyan at birth, and which can only be flushed out of the system by altering the DNA composition of what it means to be a Kenyan.
We have grown up in this country believing that only a fat bank account and a tall relative in government can guarantee you that layer of social security that is every Kenyan’s constitutional right.
We all can’t have deep pockets and it shouldn’t mean much when the critical pillars supporting the country’s economy are ironclad.
By working backwards, we have consistently installed in positions of power those who campaign in poetry but govern in prose, for as long as they speak our mother tongue and drops by our local church to cherry-pick Bible verses that warns those not our side that if God is for us, mounting a resistance group against us would be an exercise in futility.
We live in a country where those who clamour for equitable distribution of public resources, and inclusion of minority groups in mainstream policy, are considered enemies of the government and stepped on at first sight.
We have normalized shouting down at progressive minds who mean well for the greater good, while amplifying the irritation voices of seasoned windbags whose natural habitats should be inside a biogas digester.
You may not give a fig on the deteriorating mental health condition for those young student medics training at Moi University, and you may be convinced that their destiny is not tied with yours hence they should carry their solo crosses up the hill to Golgotha.
But that is the same mindset Mr Rigathi Gachagua had when Azimio protestors wore metal pots on their heads in 2023, until it was his turn at the till last month, and now he’s already transforming his lyrics from 50 Cent to Celine Dion.
Today it might be Moi University students flowing with tears from state neglect and public indifference, tomorrow it will be your retired father-in-law helplessly standing next to his dying exotic breed of dairy cows after waiting for the agricultural extension officer who is on strike for the same reasons as that of the Moi University teaching and non-teaching staff.
If university students are packing up and shutting their minds off ever returning to continue with university education again.
If university lecturers are increasingly resigning from their vocation to pursue alternative income generating activities in the private sector.
If Moi university workers are cutting their losses and severing ties with the institution to prioritize their mental wellbeing over chasing after outstanding arrears that will only lead them to more pain and misery, then you know the country has arrived at that junction in its where a hard reset is the only guaranteed safest exit.
Many a times when the citizenry is overwhelmed by the emotional rollercoaster that comes with living in a ruthless country, a mental health break is always recommended for those badly affected by inconsiderate public policy.
The argument has always been that for one to be useful to the struggle for a better country they must first be of sound mind to carry on. Maybe it’s time the roles were reversed and the government take a mental health break, instead.
By going for soul searching and high altitude meditation, these government functionaries might come to personal encounter with God and return back to the foot of the mountain with humanity in their hearts. They will thank us later when they start seeing clearly.
