...Then A Ghost Appeared in Class

If you have read my article below, you must have realized that I recently enrolled for further education in of the local universities. It’s long been coming and I can’t find the best words to describe how proud the pride part of me is feeling. But it’s my hope that the huge investments I’m going to put into this imperative hurdle in life will be worth it in two-and-a-half years.

The first week was quite chaotic with all the registration procedures. I have had to review the units am taking for more than three occasions and am even thinking of doing it once more.

The first lesson was okay, learning a unit called Christian Worldview (apparently inside a Church). The lecturer started as if he was administering Bible doses to a congregation but he soon discovered his teaching vocals. He has a comic side and believes sex is good but only when one qualifies for it, through marriage of course. A Zambian by nationality and having taught in Hawaii, USA and even South Africa, this globetrotting theologian appears to be an interesting character. I’ll make no conclusions yet. But to be his favourite student, I must start a Bible-reading marathon so as we can be at par when he starts quoting some verses in the Bible or giving lectures in thy thou thee worketh kind of language.

So I don’t have much to write about the first week besides also pointing out to the detail that I had little pride to carry home. First because of finally stepping foot in a university class – though they are not any different from the high school ones save for a sense of maturity, and second, some little pride like getting an account on how one of my lecturer’s first days at the University of Nairobi were like in our first meeting.

Enough said of the first week.

The second week saw things change a lot. Am now a little settled, have tried (successfully) to answer some questions, asked some, felt lost in the first lesson of Christian Worldview unit (till I picked a bone with my Pastor on Sunday), have seen a few interesting characters, overheard some chitchat, gotten well with the administration and having the plan to sit and remain infront of everybody even academically.

The class is an eclectic blend of all and sundry. Most of us are the enthusiastic young blood, we have a two in one, a few married men and the female counterparts, and of course the back-benching and infront-sitting ones like me. We even have a communicator who wont differentiate stambede and stampede.

I have loved all the units this far. But for the sake of this article, I would say my favourite lessons have come from these two lady lecturers incharge of Audience Analysis and Dynamics of Culture and of course the gentleman teaching Christian Worldview.

But it was during the Audience Analysis class that I first felt I was in a university. I simply had the best lesson under the tutelage of the soft speaking ma’am who I can only refer to as RN. She’s so much in grasp with her unit and has this way of knowing what one means that she can paraphrase a partially sense-making sentence into a point worth writing as an answer in examinations.

I hardly struggled to get what she meant and was feeling like we were revising until some woman laughed.

Gay Satan! I almost cursed.

Whatever the lecturer must have said, all I had was this rapturous, ghostly muhahahahahaha laugh that made my heart skip a bit. Darkness had already started setting in and my instincts ran wild.

And for that flash of time, under that flash of uniquely eerie, scary and sweet Jesus! rumble, I lost my concentration as my eyes darted the walls of the room to find who this ghost was, or, in the least, which human was the proud owner of this unique, potentially award-wining laughter. When I found a sight, I nodded that she could own this spooky growl. An intimidating, big (not fat) body from the nose right down the throat to the soles of the feet.

Then I gained back my concentration. But as we headed towards the end of this sweet lesson, thoughts on how my nerves would react if I found her in darkness and did or said something funny dangled my head.

Then, coincidentally, it happened. I had remained behind to take some pictures. When my back was turned against the door, someone came from behind and called me. I almost jumped to the ceiling when I turned and found it was the ghostly-laughing character.

My heart raced like that of the thief who stole from me two weeks ago. Then, she started smiling, and my brain started making up the roar factor, my hair raised, adrenaline ran high and my heart tried to extract all the prayers it could find within the not so Biblical brain.

Whether my prayers got answered or I lived true to the promise of not doing or saying anything that might tickle a big laugh, I saw the smile gradually dissipate as she made a request that I pass to her a certain bag under the table.

I fittingly obliged, neither saying nor acting funnily, lest she laugh in the only way she has always known to, but which could have sent me flying over and above the 8th floor without having taken any red bull to lend me wings...

And that’s thesteifmastertake!!