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University hostels are meant to house students for the time they will be in campus. Once they complete their studies, they will be required to leave. These hostels have been a burning issue for the students and management themselves.
When getting admission to university, students are warned not to cook in the hostels. The University of Nairobi is known for that. However, students had flouted this law and claimed of preparing and not cooking food.
The issue of cooking is only meant to sustain the students because the foods are expensive. Apart from the eating and cooking dramas that they had with the hostels custodians yelling to stop them, there is more than meets the eye.
While a student, we witnessed strange happenings in the university hostels. The first one was the wooden hostels known as the prefabs. These buildings were made of wood in a rush to create shelter for the increasing number to students who had been admitted on a double intake.
The hostels can accommodate four students, some sleeping on double-decked beds. The trouble comes when one invites a girlfriend. The emotions and feelings of romance are never controlled. It was a common thing to have the students get into pleasure of the flesh in the presence of roommates. They would be “exiled”. The art is however mastered so that when one person arrives with a girlfriend, the others exit the room for obvious reasons.
In another hostel where we stayed in our last years, a man would invite more than two ladies simultaneously. The sounds that emanated from the room suggested some acts of pleasure. Later it was discovered that the ladies were lesbians and the man enjoyed watching these acts. That’s horrible.
University hostels are crime scenes. Drugs, immorality and robbery are some of the discouraging things that students are exposed to in their hostels. It is high time parents guided their children to behave well while in environments that gathers people of all characters and upbringing.
