Sometime last year fellow May “Fifteenther” Ibra called me up on a rather slow day while I was in the CBD of my somewhat outlandish and nondescript college town. He had great news: he had made it into the university Celtel Africa Challenge team. Now all that remained was for him and his teammates to go through the in country qualifiers against some 20 odd universities before they could go to the Anglo speaking Africa Inter-university quiz like you don’t know jack game show hosted in its first season by a certain John Sibi Okumu a Kenyan actor (really?), talk show host, game show host and sometime social butterfly.
About 3 weeks later another call came through from Ibra. He and his three team mates had beaten the wide competition and had made it to the next round, the Celtel Africa Challenge. The challenge would be bringing together unis from Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia. The finals were scheduled to be shot at Nairobi's Safari Pak Hotel.
I happened to be in Nairobi visiting Ibra a couple of weeks later when word came through that they were to be picked up from Nairobi to go to the Uni to start practicing. Spontaneity demanded that I join them on them on the trip and spontaneity won. On the trip to the Uni I got to meet the rest of the team. There was; affable and statesman-like Henry, who was the team captain, the beautiful and charming, Christine and the somewhat strongly opinionated Az. Jolly and intelligent fellas all.
On the trip they treated me to a rigorous debate on the crisis and madness that had gripped the country. Christine had brought a camera along and web recorded much of the intriguing debate only for some fool to relieve us of that highly valuable footage but I jump ahead of myself.
I spent a day or two at the University with the team, during which time I met their coaches’ one of them a Bulgarian Literature (yes there are Bulgarians in Kenya), had some really fine food and was viciously attacked by monster safari ants.
A couple of weeks hence as the rest of the country was playing Samurai an giving new meaning to the expression ”On Fire”, Ibra and team mates left for Kampala where the event had been transferred to, due the prevailing insecurity and uncertainty in Kenya.
The rest is very recent history. Ibra and team mates beat opponent after opponent to emerge victors but not without a somewhat tense final.
On their way to the finals Ibra & Co. produced a rather impressive list of Universities that are collectively dumber than the four of them: Kenyatta, Strathmore, Malawi, Zambia and Nkumba.
The society congratulates our resident genius Ibra and his team mates for doing us proud.
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