There are very many benefits of being in school; and taking English classes is one of them as you become very popular for your powerful command in the language. For example, when there is an event, you get to sit at the high table because you have to give a speech or presentation or whatever it is they decide, and then you get to drink a soda. Among every ten students present at the event, only three drink a soda which they bought themselves. So this is something really big. And it gets better: two weeks back, they needed someone to represent University of Rwanda’s College of Science and Technology (COSTECH), formally Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), in Nairobi. As usual, they picked the “English man”. He immediately started on preparations for the day. You don’t become cool by being disorganised. You need to be systematic and for you to be cool, at least to the recognised standards, you should borrow a leaf from this dude here. When the day of his flight arrived, this guy was dressed in a hired suit from Nyamirambo. On arrival at the airport, he found everyone else casually dressed as they were to land at night and start work the day after. He felt out of place but because he is Mr. Cool, he saved face by giving stories about flights he had made to New York and Beijing, among others. Because guys are polite, they didn’t interrupt the tales of how many countries he has been to. Neither did they sneer or jeer when he insisted on how tired he was of planes and how they had now become like “motos” to him. By the time they boarded the plane, people were tired. When time for the plane to takeoff came, his coolness vanished instantly. The guy had never been on a plane. He jumped in his seat when the Captain told people to relax and get ready for takeoff. He then screamed an ancestor’s name and called on the gods of his village to save him when the plane started moving. He apologised to everyone he had wronged when things got bumpier just as the plane left the ground. Everyone in the plane burst into uncontrollable laughter. What happened when they got to Nairobi is not certain, but gossip has it that it took him about two days to recover. And coming back was another story altogether as he tried to convince them to let him go by road! campusinspector@newtimes.co.rw
