Dear struggling university students, before you make that haste decision to quit school;
1) Society perceives a university dropout to be a bigger failure than a primary or high school dropout.
2) The likelihood of getting back to school in the future is near zero.
3). The outside is not greener. Society is very harsh to failures. Our society believes that one can only make it in life through education, therefore, to fail at it might be perceived to be the biggest failure in life.
4) Your risk getting rejected by family and society....
Especially by people who believe that they have invested money, time, and resources for you to join university. You will be subjected to constant ridicule, unfair judgment, insults and trolls. You will lose the respect and admiration that you had from society.
5) You will lose friends, obviously, either by withdrawing or them withdrawing. On my side, I withdrew completely.
6) The chances of you getting employed in Kenya gets slimmer the moment you drop out of the university.
I once applied for a job as a high school canteen attendant. After the interview, I was told that I was overqualified for the job. Whereas you are underqualified in the usual job market because you don't have a degree, you will be overqualified for jobs meant for H. sch graduates
6) For every Marc Zuggerberg out there, for every successful collage dropout, their are millions that are languishing in life or stuck in an abssym of abject poverty. Don't be fooled to believe that success follows dropouts, no, it doesn't.
7) You will be used as a bad example during family gatherings. You will be compared to the son and daughter of so and so and asked why can't you be like them? You know how these kinds of questions kill someone's morale.
8) Some families will expect you to start providing or get out to seek employment like a normal graduate. You are an adult. Being a student masks you from some responsibilities. Dropping out at 20 or 21 exposes to the responsibilities of graduates who are 23 or 24.
9) Photos, conversations, or videos of your friends and peers graduating from campus will affect you mentally. They will constantly remind you about you failed in education.
10) People will call you a failure, constantly. In the long run, your brain might internalize this tag
which will mean that you will start considering yourself a failure.
In short, life out of the university as a dropout is harsher than the comrade struggles. It only gets worse for you the moment you walk outside campus with anything else but a degree or diploma.
For every Mark Zuckerberg.

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More from @CSakwah

28 Apr
When I landed back in the village as a dropout, many people tried to figure out or come up with reasons why I had absconded my studies. I used to tell people that I had grown to hate the degree that I was awarded or I was awarded a degree that was not compatible with my brain.
Many people, however, did not buy my reasons. Some said that I had been bewitched by an old witch lady in my village. I had been bewitched beyond redeemable. They said the woman had witchcraft powers whose pedigree would leave the Nigerian witchdoctors envious of her powers.
A month after I went back home, a relative told me that one of my pictures, taken when I was a kid, had been retrieved from the hut of the old witch. They found the photo after the villagers raided her house in suspicion of practicing witchcraft.
Read 29 tweets
26 Apr
This week, 7 years ago, in 2014, I decided to abscond my university studies for good. I made the unprovoked decision to drop out of The University Of Nairobi after intentionally skipping my second year's main exams.

A true-life story thread.
During that semester, I never attended any class apart from chemistry unit laboratory practicals that involved alcohols.
This decision proceeded a semester with a series of dark moments, near-death experiences, depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide attempts.
I joined The University Of Nairobi as a late-teenage provincial boy. As I was transitioning from boyhood into adulthood, I suddenly developed an intense desire of wanting to know my true identity in society.
Read 24 tweets
25 Apr
Story Thread

‘Our agency does not rent out houses to beggars. We are not a charitable organization. I am tired of begging you to pay rent. Hama from our houses kaa umeshindwa kulipa rent!’ My house agent said over the phone.
‘Ata nyumba si zako!’
I thought of saying that. Instead, I said, ‘I am sorry, madam. This month flipped me upside down.’
‘It is almost coming to the end of the second month, Mr. Sakwah,’ she reminded me. ‘Do you think I was employed to beg you to pay your rent? There are so many people who can
afford your rent.’ She was doing what she was supposed to do, but I felt her tone was condescending. At the end of the phone call, she gave me a two-day ultimatum to clear the two months’ rent arrears or risk facing an eviction.
‘I swear, by the end of the two days,
Read 49 tweets
13 Apr
Story Thread

Using chaos to solve chaos in an apartment is so refreshing and satisfying, sometimes. One weekend in 2017, our neighbors decided to suspend the peace that we had enjoyed for the few months that we had been neighbors. I used to live in Kasarani with my cousin.
We lived in a 1-bedroom house. Our immediate neighboring house belonged to a couple. Theirs was a 2-bedroom house. The apartment had studios, one and two bedrooms.
Our neighbor used to live with 2 girls in their earlier twenties. They were students at USIU University.
One girl was the husband’s younger sister and the other one was the wife’s younger sister. When we moved into that apartment, I had a fling with the husband’s sister, Purity. A fling that ended when she saw my girlfriend visiting me two months after moving in.
Read 31 tweets
24 Mar
A THREAD OF MY THREADS.

The thread will feature the stories I have shared before.

1. New Year's Eve with Chebet
2. Karifooo
3. The Luo Babe
4. The mean neighbor
5. The Fights.
6. The Landlord
7. The Curfew Horror
8. COVID Thieves
etc.
Chebet's
STORY THREAD

Kenyans will incite you into chaos while they sit back at home and watch you burn in the mayhem.

Karifo Story Thread

Being the largest shopping mall in Kenya makes the Two Rivers Mall one of the places every Kenyan wants to go shopping.

Read 9 tweets
23 Mar
A year ago, just a few days after the curfew was enforced, I found myself on the road past curfew time. I was walking from Ruaka town. There were no boda bodas. Just as I was about to branch off Limuru road towards my place, I saw a police Landcruiser moving towards me.

Thread
My first thoughts were to run towards my place. I quickly shed off that idea. It was a bad idea. My place was like 500M off the road. I would have been arrested by the time I got to my house. Therefore, I decided to hide in the nearby bush, a small thicket just off the road.
Limuru Road used to have some of those bushes before its expansion. I lay low, motionless. A minute later, the cruiser pulled by the thicket. Had they seen me? I wondered. At that time, those who flouted the COVID rules were being temporarily detained at KMTC and KU for 2 weeks.
Read 11 tweets

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