WHAT IS MENTORSHIP?

Hey young person, Why can’t you give back to the society? How now? You can volunteer in a number of activities; like majorly talking to the young ones about life skills and character development. You think I can? Why not? You are in Kenyatta University and we would want our young ones to hear from people like you. When they see and hear from you, knowing that you also grew up in challenges, they will also strive to be where you are.

Oh! That is how I respond. So I am better off…being in a university…not many do get to such places…raising and lowering my head up and down in sarcasm that campus education is only for the few I switch my thoughts to his call. Looking back at the struggles I had to undergo before joining campus- for I have no chicken memory- I would advise none to follow my footsteps. None. I would think of telling the students just in their face…'this system is eating your nerves and processing you to be imbeciles and I dislike it'. There is room for liking hence I do not hate it.

Most mentors- like counselors- expect you to lower a heavy long story of problems and doubts. Some are proffessionals while others semi-motivated street vendors who had nothing else to do. You may cry in the process. After listening, with you having a placebo that at least you shared, they think that their words will help you in one way or another to adjust. At the end of the day, they will have only played with your mind. If you were mainly seeking for sympathy, you will get. But the real issue- the smallness of you mental ability to rise over issues- isn't handled.

What do people tell pupils when they enter the gates, gather the young and ambitious souls in a hall and start pushing hair in the vocals for words? Has it ever occurred to you that during a talk you would rather pause knock your head for being such stupid and just keep quiet forever? Has your inner sense ever said to you that whatever you all blubbing may just be useless to the children…that you were telling them a lie? Do you keep a diary?

Up there at the podium whether in secondary or primary school most of us take the holy faces-people whom we think we should be – or we were and start building a lie on top of another. Those who find it too hard to lie, poor in language skills break to fidgeting or pidgin languages hence attracting the middle graders. The students love those people who casually managed to succeed. Tell them that they should not worry about ABCD because EFGH can be an alternative in life and they will applaud. The applause may be a mocking to the top performers – students who get screwed by the papers by reducing sleeping hours to five. It is very crappy.

When I was in high school, students from Moi University would come in school with heated words bragging about their big courses and how they managed from whatever backgrounds. So? Is going to campus an end? Is campus heaven? In my mind, they were like gods. The girls were too good for my village mind. The men were too clean to be my elder brothers. No village elder ever came into the school and given time to speak. I could have understood better his words than the 'have your strict timetable' kind of motivational words.

Getting out of the forest, one may ask, what should we do? I do not know either! What do you think? Yes we can talk to a person havening in mind that we have more experience than they. What can we tell them? To be good? Then apply the word ‘good’ in all aspects of life? Or to ‘work hard’? Do you know that such words cause a mandazi allergy feeling in my gut? This is the feeling that makes me dislike high school. Having a four-year book marathon paused shortly by one day co-curricular activities made education such a ‘directed’ cruising tool in my flesh. I am not a machine madam.

Learning is enjoyable. It is student- oriented. Education is a second party doing. I am presently having it hard to gamble between doing an assignment and reading my books. I fall to books and when I am tired enough, I chose assignments. I want to be a master of my life in the end.

Because we are in the university does not guarantee us to mislead the children through fabricated and unrealistic theoretical speeches. Some are good orators and having never made it to any higher learning enrolls to pastoral colleges. They are the ones that spread blind hope faith based cognitive diseases. What we should majorly do is to help the children develop the art of creative and critical thinking.  

Having used the words, I am not implying the clichés that have always been around in reference to Socrates and Aristotle. It may take the same approach since ideas do not come from nowhere, but let us expose children to a clear understanding of their environment in a manner that they can look deep into issues in their own way and probe. How now?

Most of us are born followers. This is unfortunate. Some hit the self realization point too late in life- in campus or after the first degree. Elders tend to be wise when this dawns too late in their time. When you start feeling thirst for knowledge, when questions are too many than answers, when you doubt, when you are not moved by material wealth…and others you are into the highway of self advancement. Books, reading materials and informed people will always be there to supplement the uniqueness of mind and character.

Most mentorship programs only work at the period that the so called mentors are in sight. They die soon just like a church service is turned into a gossip environment after the preaching. There is always a non-identified end to the solution in words; no wonder there is survival by natural selection. There is destiny in one’s actions- not necessarily determined by another’s inputs in your life.

I was afraid this morning not to step out in the name of going to a school for the sake of talking to the students about drugs and substance abuse or adolescence and premature sex. Where will you be when two in heat will be closed in a room? Yes they will remember your words but they won’t prevent them from going on. No amount of gothic words relating to how bad drugs can fry dark your liver or how AID’s can dig up your groins will help in making a child change. If the child does, it is through fear- the greatest enemy to advancement. Yes the child should know, but how well should they know?

I would want to think of a way and take a back seat to be advised. Children and young people should be induced to critical thinking sparks. Once their minds are lighted, they will overcome pleasures and risks- things that adults also fail in. I don’t know what mentorship is.

If you asked me what I did with those few heads at that time, this would be my response, ‘We had a great time together.’ Whether someone was touched or not, I know not. The best of the mentorship is in the small things that the children grow up seeing. If they have no people to look at both at home and at school, how do you expect to mentor them? If they have guardians and parents living lives worth credit, why do you need to mentor them? If they are hard nuts to crack, how do you moist them? Just talk to them and let them teach you; for you may not be knowing a thing.

The end result of most mentorship strategies are not rewarding and sustainable. It is like a forced input.