I still remember afande akisema, "Kamneiz, kamneishon, march by numbers..one two, one two..left right, left right...the day the gals came over was the best day of my life ! Tumetoka mbali kweli..

Waaaaaaaah@Mpenzi is a dude!

@Kaigangio, your recollection of that place is amazing..

Does anyone remember "kuchoma boots" to "soften them". Making that bed and arranging everything on top of it (the fork to the left and the knife to the right) was the worst man....Woe unto you if the bed had a single wrinkle on it.

"Lecture days" were the best.. you learnt to sleep with your eyes wide open, considering you only got two hours of sleep every night!That place was pure torture,but it matured a lot of people...Guys were pledging from day one of joining college..macho men!

@Kusadikika, hio ni ukweli kabisa.

@ story teller,

did you ever observe the bones of the meat that we used to eat...those were not cattle bones..could be buffalos and sometimes got an impression that we were eating zebras or donkeys..OMG!!!

@ mwenza,

most of those kadogos were "nongwes"

True dat. You know they were like houseboys for the afandes so they started thinking like mboches.

@Kaigangio...Its NCO not NCIO. NCO stood for Non-Commissioned Officers.

This phenomenum is not a preserve of NYS only. Those who have been to Japan will recall that when you land there, you notice that all ladies look extremely ugly. After around two months, they all look as cute as the cutest gals in kenya. I guess its all as a result of deprivation.

@ mwenza,

i am familiar with NCO, but the slang language was ncio...nobody ever pronounced it N C O...

Ati inua mguu...! Hilarious!

You guys are pre-historic. Respect!

Wow best thread ever i agree and u guys are old big up

I missed all this, really wished I attended.



@gizzard, you actually 'massacred' 3 loaves each 500gms?

@ Mukiha,I posit that YOU are the one who drank the 2 chupas of chilli sauce...

BTW: I still vividly remember how this whole idea started in 1978. Moi was giving his first Jamhuri Day speech as president. In it he mentioned that the government was planning to introduce a "National Service Programme" for second-year university students. The idea being that they would be enlisted into the civil service for a year to do odd-jobs in their field of study and get paid some little pocket money.

That was in the official written speech. When he finished reading; he elaborated a few things in Kiswahili and there he explained the new idea using the example of a student studying an agricultural degree: "Tutatume yeye kusaidia wakulima kwa mwaka mmoja. Halafu tuta pea yeye pesa kidogo ya kununua chakula na nguo. Baada ya mwaka, atarudi shule na kumaliza masomo yake.

"Mtu kama huyo atapata experience ya kazi na atatusaidia kupunguza garama ya mishahara ya serikali..."

Or something to that effect. [Do I need to translate?]. At the time, I thought it was a brilliant idea, until the media reported the story the following day saying "University students to get para-military training"

I wondered whether we were listening to the same speech...

Anyway: the idea was left hanging and no one mentioned it for four years... then came the 1982 Coup attempt. And UoN [the only university at the time; KU was KUC and JKU was under construction as JKCAT] students joined the "Power" brigade led by the Air Force...

When things cooled down; JJ Kamotho announced that it is necessary to discipline students before they joined the university, and therefore, the NYS programme was quickly put together in 1983 [I think]. The first group was there for only one month...

And now I remember why the programme was stopped....

Due to the large number of university students expected in the A-Level + 8-4-4 double intake, Egerton University was allowed to use the Gigil Camp as its Laikipia Campus.

So, the NYS had to move out of the place. There was no other camp to accommodate the pre-university programme students [this time the number was double that of previous years].

Therefore, the idea died a natural death.