Class 101 for UoN freshers – what you need to know

First year’s registration at UoN

You are excited that you have just joined ‘the’ University of Nairobi. That’s natural. Uni is an exciting period for students. You may make the best or dumbest decisions of your life. It’s like one real-time social experiment that tests your character, friends, career direction and morality.

For your information, we refer each other as ‘comrades’ and solidarity is one of the hallmarks of the student population. Comrades boast that UoN is the only uni with its playground in the city and students sleeping in the CBD. So you can imagine the number of fun activities on offer to students.

I am sure you feel important now that you are in ‘Campo’, but don’t let it get into your head. You are just one in 50,000 comrades at UoN spread over six campuses.

Here is additional stuff you need to know;

■ Main campus, also known as the Capital City or Main, is right in the CBD. The major buildings include Education building, Science building, Gandhi Wing, Administration Block, Jomo Kenyatta Memorial Library and American Wing. Social science and Engineering students attend classes at Main campus. It’s easy to distinguish between the two groups; Eng students are usually found inside the JKML library while Arts students hang around the library, except during exams.

■ Wing B of Main campus has the play grounds, the Central Catering Unit and both Upper and Lower Statehouse road Halls of Residents.

■ Chiromo Campus, also known as the Mortuary Den, has its streets neatly labeled making it easy to find your way around. Bachelor of Science students can be seen enjoying the beautiful lawns in the campus.

■ Commerce and Business students inhabit Lower Kabete campus, also known as Kabete Pesa, is located in the outskirts of Nairobi with beautiful buildings and well land marked.

■ Upper Kabete, also known as Kabete Ng’ombe, has a massive area of land; talk has it that each student owns a hectare of land. It’s in the rural side of Nairobi and therefore one can’t get lost in this village.

■ Parklands, where the law minds are bred, is quite tiny with Sheria Hall occupying nearly the whole campus.

Chiromo Campus

Other comrades add a few pointers to the essential  I asked several students this question and gave nearly same responses as summarized below:

■ “The new trend is ‘Ponyoka na Fresha Pap’. This is where the continuing male students ‘gold rush’ for the newly registered female students for sexual favors while sidelining continuing ladies. However, the continuing female students are not left behind, they tend to go for your HELB loan and when finished with you, they run away,” says Wilson Otiato, a Real Estates student.

■ “Constant ‘Exiles’. This might sound obnoxious, however it’s not. On several occasions your roommates will send you out when they want to enjoy romance with their partners, and life becomes even more difficult when they have several partners,” says Eweilar Lawrence, a student of Economics.

■ “Club 36 is almost a shrine to UoN students. This is some sort of a ‘slum dungeon’ where nearly all students enjoy their meals. For only 60 bob, one can eat plenty of Ugali and dagga. However, a life lesson is that one should never take their girlfriends at such a place because the campus trend has shown that they end up being dumped without notice,”says Mercy Mature, and Engineering student.

■ “The University’s regulations stipulate that students should not cook but most of the time students do cook. However, one should only cook at their own risk. This is because the student purveys do not provide specific menus like omena, kunde, etc.,” says Stanley Ndurah, a student of arts and design.

■ “For a fresh guy who wants to win and perhaps rock with the senior female students, it’s not difficult. Just say that they are third years but they were allocated a room with the newly registered students, and prove it by being able to know the price of a Pizza,” says Griffins Koriyama, who claims he lured up to eight senior ladies when he was in first year.

Are you a senior at UoN? What advice would you give to freshers?