My heart has sunk!

I have seen some of my friends post scary, gory photos of a young man at Egerton University, who stabbed his girlfriend before stabbing himself and it has disturbed me the whole day! They are both dead, their dreams, those of their parents and the society are Over.

When I was in campus, I always wanted to have a bliss of a relationship. I would see fellows walking side by side with their enchanting damsels, cleaving at the hips, arms rolled around those hips, a bucket carrying sufurias and veges and eggs in another hand, heading to the kitchenettes to cook. They would share the cooking, the young men would massacre the ugali as their lovely better halves do the stews. Some would permanently label seats in class for their loved ones and woe unto thee if you happened to throw your behinds on those reserved chairs!

Some would vacate their rooms and get ‘married’ to their boyfriends in their stuffed rooms, perhaps a room of four men and the noise emanating from the beds in the miserable hours of the night would really torture the subdued boy child in some of us! In church, some of us would totally look out of place especially when all our friends were enjoying the beauty of being in a relationship while we wondered what demon had bewitched some of us!

Then we would get into relationships, not with full comprehension of what it meant to love, but because we wanted to fit into the community of comrades! I tell you, young man and woman, if I would go back to my First year, I would correct every silly mistake that I ever made in campus on matters of the heart!

Now listen, you are in campus or in an institution of Higher Learning! You probably don’t pay rent, you have to part with sometimes as little as Ksh. 2500 For a whole semester in school which you still demand that it be lowered and you have free access to wet taps of water, free electricity, free bed, free mattress, free Wi-Fi, free cooking coils, name them! The cafeteria and the Mess sells you chapati and ugali and beef stew at an insulting price, 10 Bob at most! You have an overflowing pocket Courtesy of HELB which you throw stones if it delays to hit your accounts. You make fake demands to your parents for ghost trips to downtown Coast! You lie a lot to get money from your Hoi polloi parents. You use this cash to make life for your girlfriend better. You buy her stuff, you attend all the birthday parties in school, you become a hopping night diplomat in all the bashes in school where you befriend the red liquid in an enticing bottle. Then you think you are madly in love!

Then one day, you find your girlfriend flirting (they always do) with another miserable boy child and you have a quarrel and then because you have not trained your eyeballs to know what TRUE LOVE IS, you dash to the rack, pull out the knife and slice through the innocent throat of somebody’s only daughter! Then, for fear and for guilt, you stab yourself to death!

Do you know what it means to love? Do you know that less than 95% of campus romance dies a natural death once people step out of the gates of campus? When the tarmacking starts, when the hunt for a job comes in and you need to pay rent, pay for water, pay for electricity, repay HELB, strive to put two meals on the table for a day, that is when life awakens you up! And then responsibility sets in You suddenly realise that your small sister needs fee to join Form 1 and because you have gone to campus, everybody is turning towards your miserable payslip! KRA is competing for its share and your village is sending numerous invitations for fundraisers. Your mother is bedridden and she needs immediate bail out lest the hospital bill nosedives to unquenched limits. Your dad falls sick and the only saviour is that payslip of yours which is already Ladden with loans. Your church has weddings and you need to contribute but still, you have that GIRL CHILD in the name of your sweetheart who needs your attention!

Young man, that is when you know what real and TRUE LOVE means

… And because the purse is no longer flowing, your lovely campus beauty queen serves you with a hot, dry smashing boot!

Why die because of someone that you would probably never marry? Why kill and offend God because of someone you would never spend a lifetime with? Who told you that campus beauty shall be your wife? Who? You don’t have an iota of what awaits you out here, I wish you knew! Life is tough out here man, it is tough! People only become real out here… It is out here that the real patience of many is stretched beyond limits and those plastic girlfriends and boyfriends of yours just naturally drop off your life with stupid excuses! The ones who told you they shall never betray you even though the heavens fall suddenly find new plastic attention and leave you for greener pastures which are never green after all!

So, relax, study, love God and tell that other person the words of Solomon in Song of Songs 2:8 …”Stir not my love till he pleases”. I know I have served this message with pepper, but forgive me, facts are always Stubborn, very stubborn But always true! If I found out that someone was taking me for granted and had reached a point of betraying me for the sake of another, it is very simple: that person is unstable, unreliable and unfaithful! And you must know that a double-minded person is unstable in all his ways, says James 1:8! For such, simply kneel down, tell God to reveal more dangerous red flags and run for your life before that unstable human being does that when you have made the solemn irreversible decision of Holy matrimony! Your rib is somewhere, seek it on your knees fervently and passionately. Don’t kill the young man, don’t!

By Gilbert Juma, alumni Egerton University. @campus_news

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