THE JOURNEY THAT HAS BEEN.

                                                     

Several years ago, the class of 2020(should be class of 2018) was admitted to MUSOM as freshly-out-of- high school, starry-eyed boys and girls. More than 7 years later, they have all grown up and successfully cleared Medical school. Hongera kwenu madaktari!

Albeit having different origins, we all dreamt of finally becoming doctors and helping alleviate human suffering. We knew the road would be rough and dreary but knowing is one thing and living it up is another. In the words of the late Chinua Achebe, “It costs water and firewood.” You have to pay the price to qualify and we paid it all including taxes.

Ours has been a steep learning curve, from being scared of cadavers, to being scared of ward rounds and currently, to being scared of hospital calls! The beauty of it is that each stage leaves you impregnated with invaluable experience. 

Most memories of us in junior classes have started fading but I know we can still remember our first encounters with the basic sciences: the Biochemistry structures, the Physiology, Immunology and Microbiology essays, the acrid smell of formalin in the Anatomy lab which had become our daily bread in our 1st and 2nd years and the late Professor Rhytko’s Histology ‘cartoons’(Rest easy Prof)

Talking of Histology, which one of you while as a freshman asked his crush,"If I was an endoplasmic reticulum, would you like me smooth or rough?” I just want to know whether it ended in tears, information which is purely for research purposes.

3rd  year came with the courses of Pathology and Pharmacology .The word Pain starts with the letter P and so do these two courses. Coincidence? I think not.

Despite school work rubbing our noses in the dirt, 3rd year had its fair share of fun. Our annual class trip this time involved some serious domestic tourism. If in late 2014 you saw a group of youngins wearing cheap plastic shades and carrying funeral mineral water bottles around Menengai crater in Nakuru and Thompson falls in Nyahururu, then you definitely saw us.

Scientists have unanimously agreed that medical school progressively gets harder from one class to the next. Our 4th year was no different. Everything seemed new and it took the joint effort of our 6th years, the residents and consultants to prevent us from practising broad daylight witchcraft in the wards.

As a class, we felt the full impact of the various industrial actions in the country. The doctors’ and lecturers’ strikes in both our 5th and final years automatically meant that we were staying in school longer than scheduled and subsequently made us one of the oldest undergraduates in the country. One of us used to jokingly say,"tumezeekea hii shule karibu tunapata retinopathy of maturity.”

We had really dark moments in our final year when we lost 2 of our collegues;the late Dr Ivy Wangechi and the late Dr John Thuku.Even though life must go on, we still mourn while wishing that these two brilliant and cheerful souls were still around.We shall forever miss you.

The class was also well represented in extracurricular activities from the local campus and national student leadership positions to entrepreneurship and in various sports and games. Fun fact: the class of 2020 used to be a football powerhouse until old age kicked in and turned our knees arthritic then our juniors started unleashing terror upon us in the pitch to a point that we almost cursed them.

It would be rude, boorish and uncourteous not to recognize our colleagues who were blessed to be parents while in school. Kudos! For the rest, we look forward to soon celebrate your F1 generations.

Tangazo: just ensure that there is enough pilau in your events coz we will eat till we get difficulty in breathing and develop hernias

Our class is the epitome of perseverance, hard work and friendship and it's always a great privilege being a member. You made school fun and I can confidently declare that truly indeed I didn't study medicine in the company of the wrong mammals.

Brethren, life will constantly serve you challenges, sometimes at meningitic doses. Don’t give up. Try to always keep pushing forward like peristalsis. VIVA!

DR MAIMA MUKUNZI.

FEBRUARY, 2020.

MEAL TIME PRAYERS.

Prayers are very crucial.What`s equally crucial is for them to be brief especially if it is before meals.

 When a meal is ready,psychologically we are full of anticipation.Physically,our oral cavities increase their salivary output and our nostrils are at their peak performance picking up the aroma.The only acceptable happy ending for this kind of persecutory build up is a brief prayer and then letting people do justice to the food pronto.

 Lets take a quick look into the anatomy of a standard prayer before a meal.First thank the supreme being you believe in for the constant supply of respiratory substrates. Then conclude by humbly requesting Him to bless the meal so that its metabolism benefits your body(If its junk food,this is the time where you pray for a less severe form of Coronary heart disease or hypertension)

Why in the prayer would you ask the Lord to bless the Kinangop farmers who grew the potatoes we have used for the meal?The fact that we have cooked their potatoes is a sure sign that they got blessed with sales.

Why would one when praying for food decide to thank Jesus for all of the miracles He did in the New Testament?The blind son of Bartimaeus surely deserved getting healed coz he seemed like a nice chap but what the hell has he got to do with the Ugali -Sukuma we are about to eat?

Making lengthy prayers in front of hungry people is like campaigning for an ass whooping.Somebody might just send you to the emergency department of the nearest health facility.Hypoglycemia makes human patience razor thin.

The only exception where one can can pray for long before a meal is when it is well known that the person who prepared the meal is a labbish cook.In every society,there are these people who think they are great cooks while in the real sense they are just food poisoning practitioners.Before eating food cooked by such people,you will surely need to pray about the imminent stomach upset.In fact,in this case pray vehemently until you start foaming at the mouth.

TOOTH BE TOLD.

It's a truth universally acknowledged that white is a nice colour.White is peace. White is purity. White is calmness (except for those all white parties you people attend in clubs, there’s nothing calm about them).

I am not so enthusiastic about white things (ugali doesn't count).Consequently, I have a jaundiced opinion about white clothes; they are the spoilt brats of the clothes fraternity. They get dirty without even trying;simply getting soiled by atmospheric gases.

In my campus life, the only white things in my life have consistently been the classical triad of a Lab coat, books and toilet paper. Two years ago, I decided to add my teeth to this list so I made a visit to the School of Dentistry (SOD).

I had to undergo scaling. It’s a minor procedure which can be done by the senior dental undergraduate students. I had lots of options to choose from from the dental class of finalists that year and after a thorough vetting, I had 3 closely tied candidates.

The 1^st candidate was my neighbour, a very dedicated chap but I didn't like his Afro, so he was out. The next guy; a good friend ,was a well-built bloke and that made me fear that he would pluck out my jaw during the procedure. So he was also out.

The last guy was the perfect candidate; no ridiculous Afro and he was not extremely muscular. Even much better, he was my roommate back in our junior years. I looked for him and made an appointment.

The day of the procedure I went very early to SOD and found my guy ready. 

He was twirling some dental instrument like a cow boy holstering a revolver, just to establish dominance. He was also smiling suspiciously. These two acts got me worried that may be he was using the procedure as an opportunity to settle old scores. You see, back when we were roommates he had lend me some 50 bob and each time he tried to demand for it I got instant deafness(My name is DENIs, how do you expect me to pay a deni?)

I prayed hard that the young dentist didn't inject something lethal into my gums making all my teeth fall off like the flowers of a jacaranda tree.

 Surprisingly, there was no any crying or gnashing of teeth on my part. Most likely my good pal had forgotten all about his 50 bob.

We were told many things in our child hood. Some of the things turned out to be a scam. Taking care of our teeth is not one of them. Whatever you heard about dental hygiene as a child most likely still remains true even as you adult. Try to practice it.

"Always be kind to your dentists, they too have fillings."-John Kibogoyo.