Wambugus Grove

Outside every campus gate there is always a joint where they play old music. Every campus has such a joint. Ours is called Wambugus Grove. Some nondescript watering hole for weary souls who come to unwind over a tipple, and then they will be on their way. In this bar, male students stop by for nyama choma, or to pretend to be interested in a 300ml bottle of soda, when all they really want was to watch football. Mostly this happens when the school ignores the DSTV bills, and you know boys. To them football is part of their school curriculum. Football is to them what rejection is to a stray dog; a part of their existence. In this tavern, the male students take swings at each other’s team, pride and sometimes, each other’s girlfriends. The faint hearted, the hopelessly hapless, those who can’t take a joke, contemplate suicide over 22 men who do not even know they exist.

Ladies too visit this shebeen, but they are not lured into it because of the football, or soda. Honestly, most of the campus girls cringe at the thought of consuming that meat, given that hygiene is not usually part of the recipe.

They come here for other guilty pleasures; usually embodied in the size of vehicles parked outside it, and the drivers of such automobiles. Most of the time, the driver is an old relic whose shirt cannot adequately contain the girth at their midsection. Which is surprising because these are the same girls who watch Mexican soaps and drool over models with chiselled bodies.

I have been around long enough to know when a campus girl is going out to meet these old relics. You will always tell from the too much make up and too little clothing. High heels and low morals are thrown in the mix to remind you that this is no accident. These girls sit on a stool, cross their legs, allow the hem of their skirts to ride up their thighs, and then wait to be admired.

We campus men have learnt that we are not the ones they hope to attract, so we stay on our lanes and suck on the soda straw for one and a half hours watching football. It is a good thing to know where your place in the life’s grand scheme of things, because  as long as everyone stays on their lanes, there would be no traffic.

On a good day, they girl will order for a drink. She is sure to order something fitting, a drink that says she is a shy girl. One that pictures her to be innocent, when we all know innocence was left in the campus hostels, together with the rest of her dress. Smirnoff Black Ice does the trick.

The script then goes something like this: a man will stagger her way and offer to pay for her drink. She will accept, and they begin to flirt. Sometime later, when the boys are not looking, she will accept his second offer to drive her back to school. Never mind its one block away. She will accept this too, stealthily though, so that we do not see her leaving to spend the night with a guy twice her age.