For a strike – day to be successful, the eve is what always matters. On the outside, it is always like any ordinary night and usually very calm.
Save for the tense atmosphere and very bitter utterances over Social Media platforms, the outside is always calm and pacific.
Inside is where the drama is. It is so dramatic that the planning always makes it appear like the government is getting overrun the next day, Which is actually honourable – considering that this government really needs to be overthrown.
The planning always takes place in every hall of residence over an assembly popularly referred to as “kimeeza.” A strike has more to it than just “wewe” chants.
It starts with prolonged cries by the Culture Ministers who go around banging every door requiring the occupants to either go out to the gathering or risk having their rooms broken into, their breakfast the next morning confiscated or their girlfriends banged. (They actually never execute any threat – not even a second round of door banging.)
The meeting starts with deliberate puns formulated with glorious wordplay and attacking University Administrators. They are put forward lightly as boys laugh them off but by the end, they always achieve their intended mission which is always to provoke the Students so much by putting them between a rock and a hard place.
The result is a resolution that the strike has been endorsed.
The atmosphere is always tense, loud and chaotic, ‘Loudly chaotic’.
The strategies laid down if followed to the book, Police would have surrendered to students ages ago. The Brigades are properly distributed but what particularly caught my eye was the Air force.
Their Commander was a guy I had never seen. His hairline was far and beyond like tree peaks protruding from a mountain side. His forehead was hastily thrown forward leaving a very huge depression below it from which his faint eyes hung. On a closer look at the eyes, I observed clearly distributed red patches which had inauspiciously erased his pupils.
In general, he was a very small young man of about 32 with an overgrown beard and very long unkempt but surprisingly clean fingure nails.
He wasted no time on the platform. In a deep and intentionally very low voice, he said;
“If you need anything to boast your ability tomorrow, I operate just outside Campus. Find me.”
At that moment, I knew the jokery was done and what a smart person needed to do was to prepare his armor for the next day.
