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Spare a thought for varsity students

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WHEN children wake up and go to school without eating anything there is a problem.
How can a situation like this arise when so much can be shared?
Each state university can take out a mortgage or mortgages and build blocks of residences for students.
University students pay up to US$600 per semester, but squat in horrendous conditions, sharing a tiny room among three or four of them.
Each one pays up to US$80 for two square metres where they pile their mattresses, books and paraffin stove.
That is their life.
Why would universities not build blocks of residences and the US$80 can be charged to the fees and the students can have boarding facilities.
Sometimes the best students can afford for accommodation is a small kitchen.
They are the last to go to bed and the first to wake up.
How do you relax, sleep or read and write in a kitchen?
How do secondary schools provide accommodation for their students?
The principle is the same, it is boarding for learners.
How do teachers’ colleges, nursing schools, agricultural colleges, public service training schools and training centres afford their students’ accommodation?
What quality of life dictates you wake up in the morning and queue for the toilet and bathroom with the other tenants as well as the landlord’s family who may also have children rushing to go to school and then you squat in the corner of the room you share with two or three other students and eat leftovers, if any, warmed up on a smoking paraffin stove?
Each one is in a corner with a paraffin stove (sometimes), because the landlord does not allow multiple hot plates.
They have an eagle’s eye on the electricity bill, never mind that the students pay for electricity.
The fumes from the paraffin stoves, congestion, each one squatting in his/her little corner with few belongings is not a normal environment.
It is appalling.
How do polytechnics accommodate their students?
Why do universities not do the same?
People should be treated as worthy beings.
Many times students go to school without eating.
The conditions are just not conducive for the pursuit of education.
What stops universities from investing the massive sums they collect from the students every year to provide decent boarding facilities?
It is guaranteed they will recover these from the students anyway because they have to pay for accommodation.
They might as well spend their money on something decent.
No-one can feel normal if he/she has to squat in some dingy corner and wake up as if from a hole and turn up for class.
The country has the means.
Our young do not have to be made to feel unworthy.
To live in squalour does not inspire confidence.
It changes your worldview if you are made to pay US$1 200 a year, yet live like a squatter.
These children are Zimbabwe’s heirs.
Something must be done to improve their lot.
It traumatises the students mentally, psychologically and spiritually to live in such circumstances when they pay so much.
It makes students feel that the university does not care if they live in the gutter as long as they turn up and pay their
US$1 200 a year.
US$1 200 a year contributed by 10 000 students is a lot of money.
It should be possible to invest some of this in boarding facilities for students.
It is not as if state universities do not receive any funds from the state to run these institutions.
And besides, lecturers’ salaries are also paid for by the state.
Students feel too shocked to make it when they live in a room in Senga and Nehosho (Gweru) with huge cracks in the freezing temperatures of winter months.
No amount of blankets can keep them warm.
They can hardly sleep, but have to carry on and give their best at school.
It is a mockery of university education.
Somehow the psyche of poverty is being drilled into our young before they have even begun, drowning their hopes of aiming for the skies.
It is like they are being told: ‘You are born for the backyard, stay there!’
But this is not their destiny, we expect so much from them.
The starting point is to treat them as worthy beings.
Our young people are aware they are not paupers.
They know the Government provides these state universities with some funds. They know their country is not poor and that something is wrong.
They love their country, but everything is stacked against them, tailored to make them disenchanted with their country, about their country — to alienate them from it.
This should not be happening to Zimbabwe’s children.
We are not paupers.
It is not normal to ask these students to concentrate on their studies when they are always fearful that if money does not come from home they might be thrown out of the room they rent; what will they eat, today, tomorrow?
Is it normal to start classes, to start a campus without any idea where the children will live?
Is it correct to start classes with just an admin block to collect the fees?
The classrooms are insufficient, the libraries are not up-to-date, but the administration block has everything.
It is state of the art, but it is not known where the children live or eat, just the administration block?
Are we to believe the Government of Zimbabwe approves the establishment of universities that exclude plans for accommodating the students?
When people do not feel so good for too long, they get demoralised.
They have endured these appalling conditions for years, although it does not mean they accept.
They are deeply hurt nokuti nhaka yavo vanoiziva.
It is a destiny of greatness, the destiny of Zimbabwe.

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