Saturday, 19 April 2014

No mattresses no class!




These were the words in print on most walls of the hostels before tempers of the students in session at the campus were lowered after the long awaited mattresses arrived.
Some students have been missing mattresses for 6 weeks. Some hosted and accommodated by their friends or relatives while others forced to form friendships with people they never thought of only because of the crisis.  But the hot tempered students were cooled down when the first tractor with the mattresses arrived in the campus last week.    It was a hectic moment for one to get a mattress some could even sacrifice a class for a mattress. It was the rule of jungle applied before one gets the precious commodity “mattress” where the strong energetic ones took their part and the others had to give in.
IMG_3012.JPG  
 Students celebrating after they were allocated a mattress.


 So many questions rang on the minds of most of the second years and the common question was, are we sons of fate?’’  Or have we bewitched? The questions were triggered by the fact that the second years have been at home for nine months holiday, some of them forced to quit the jobs that kept them busy during the holyday only to find that the reporting dates are changed, added by the strike just after the reporting date was announced and worsened by the lack of mattresses after the strike.
During the application process via the online procedure one could ought for the well spread bed as depicted on the pictures on the webpage but the expectation were disproven by the great shortage of mattresses mostly caused by the overflowing number of students (first  and second years) in session.


 Kadzo Sylvia.