On the Bus, I Dreamt of a Better Country

5 pm Friday. I am leaving the university heading home 30km away. People, most of whom are students, are heading towards bars and clubs to start their weekend.

Such is the life around my campus. It is during these moments that you dread being single, not having a partner to hold hands with as you walk. It’s easy to feel like an alien when you hold yourself up to an unpopular standard.

Friday here is like a rollercoaster of pleasure. But it doesn’t come on a simple budget. I was surprised to learn just how much costly alcohol was, and how a student could plunder so much money over the weekend on drinks.

On the bus

As I boarded the bus that evening I started thinking of what the priorities of students like me really are. We only live once but that is not a reason to live recklessly as I see some of the youth do today.

Drinking, doing drugs, and engaging in sexual activities to ease off stress or for enjoyment shows what the priorities of some youth in universities really are.

Its easy to sign yourself up to drinking, but getting off its hook is quite a tall order. Its harmful effects outlast the short lived pleasure. However, it’s never too late to stop. Quitting drinking may be an unpleasant journey, but it’s very possible.

I would like to see more youth focused on changing our country. Let’s put behind us what our country has failed to achieve and focus on what we can achieve.

We blame the government for how expensive it can be for an average Kenyan but do we really consider that we should also adjust our priorities towards working for a better country?

Its a norm for youth to care more about enjoying life right now than saving or investing in the time and money they have. We should not let the short-lived pleasures of life blind us from seeing the future.

On the bus, I also contemplate on whether I should relocate to Juja or just keep commuting. Life in Juja is more affordable but temptations here crawl from every corner. It would take me time to adjust.

The commute life often puts me in the same places as the working class, since we travel around the same time. Something about this doesn’t feel right; how these men and women on the bus could be working harder than the person in the Land Cruiser V8 just driving by. I don’t approve of this.

My dream

Our economic system creates the wide gap between different social classes. It is because of some of these barriers put by society that the youth find it hard to succeed.

I dream of a country where resources are equally distributed. Where hard work really pays, where the rich don’t despise the poor but instead help them, where people are not always wanting more for themselves and desiring to look better than others.

Where the youth spend more time investing in the future, and where the government isn’t full of corrupt people who care less for the country and whose mission is to accumulate more wealth.

But that’s a dream I don’t think will come true on this earth.

Its time to alight from the bus, time to stop dreaming.