The pioneer university in Kenya, University of Nairobi (UoN) is literally not a bed of roses when it comes to matters hostels, bed and sleep.
Behind the curtains of those beautifully built students' hostels that you see and admire from outside, agony and miserly reigns big time.
As an old adage goes, 'it is only the wearer of the shoe who knows where it pinches', at UoN, it is only the students residing in these hostels who can tell you the beast behind the beauty.
You may not believe that in the 21st century, an institution of higher learning of UoN's calibre, can have small insects like bedbugs being the major cause of this mental and physical agony.
Bedbug menace, UoN students who have spoken to this writer, assert that it is a common phenomenon in the university's hostels but it is more widespread in the male hostels for obvious reasons.
It is an open secret that when men come together under one roof, hygiene goes out through the window.
As such, it is no surprise to spot one or two bedbugs generously strolling undeterred on the walls of some of the male hostels perhaps to get a breath of fresh air, as they wait for night-time to work on their 'unkempt' victims.
"The bedbugs are usually in the mattresses given to us by the administration because we don't carry them from home to campus. The mattresses are the source of the bedbugs because they are their fertile breeding grounds," a third-year UoN student who asked not to be named told this writer on Friday.
Nonetheless, the UoN comrades have learnt better on how to survive these small 'devils' than complain to the administration that will anyway do little or nothing about it. Below are some of the challenging survival tactics that the poor students have adopted, according to those we have spoken to.
1. Fumigating rooms and drenching mattresses in hot water
Some students will stay away from their rooms as soon as they get the mattresses from the administration after fumigating them. But they feel this is not enough and they resort to drenching the mattresses with very hot water before putting them somewhere at the balcony not to be stolen.
"It takes about three weeks before it dries up. For these three weeks, you will be away from the hostels, seeking refuge elsewhere. Throughout this period if you are not in school, you assign somebody to monitor the drying progress of your mattress lest it is stolen," another student confides.
2. Metallic chairs
When a male visits a female hostel, he will more often than not be offered a metallic chair to sit on or he sits on the floor. This is because if he sits on the bed, one female student says, the bedbugs that could be in his clothes may find refuge in your room. The vice-versa applies.
"On a visit to the male hostel, sit on a metallic chair. Don't go near their closet or bed. Upon going back to the female hostel, remove your clothes and soak them in soapy water to get rid of any bedbugs you may have accidentally collected from the source (male hostels)," the female student says.
3. Destruction of mattresses
We understand that when the bedbugs become unbearable, the university administration will not allow the comrades to hit the Nairobi City Centre roads and do the nasty things they are notoriously known for in the name of bedbugs. Instead, it will destroy the mattresses and buy new ones, before another cycle of bedbug menace begins.
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