By James Adika
 Many campus  students don’t want to imagine what happens after  they are done with learning and are off into the murky world of responsibilities and job search.
With term papers completed, final exams graded, and graduation certificate in hand, prospects of a blissful future linger in the cerebral cortex of many. However, with the economy looking more gloomy, many recent graduates find it hard to crack joblessness — the hard and stark reality of faltering livelihoods.

Then there is the proliferation of dimwit universities and colleges (with names belying sharp knives and God knows what else). This has largely contributed to aesthetic degrees. At almost every corner of the city you are bound to meet a graduate. And this is before incorporating those from ‘River Road University’; which serves as a conglomeration of various universities on the surface of the earth and below. Degree hustlers, gone are the days a degree was held in high regards; now it’s just a paper — one that brings back memories of dark nights spent reading with the assistance of a tin lamp. Our universities, especially private institutions, are churning out degrees more than the output of commercial industries producing market products. And this is not doing graduates any favours.

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Peter Ochuodho (third left) with family members during graduation ceremony / James Adika

What remains therefore is Darwin’s postulate ‘survival for the fittest’. All the same, the shift from undergraduate student life to a full-time hustler, a provider for oneself or a satisfier of other responsibilities can be extremely nerve wrecking. For some students, life after college may be the first time they are independent from their parents or caregivers. Moving into the next phase of life can be an intimidating affair. For others, moving on from a community of friends, teachers and mentors created over their college tenure can lead to a feeling of loneliness and sadness. Furthermore, the unpredictable economy and the high rate of unemployment can literally drive graduates to unusual lifestyles just so they can survive, Striptease .

Naomi Anyango is your usual lady when you meet her along the beaches of Lake Victoria. Beneath her veneer of laughter and mundane depiction of life in modest realm, is a woman grappling with questions on what career she should pursue. She graduated three years ago having successfully completed her degree in Business Administration. Currently, she gyrates at a night spot where definition of humanly pleasure is laced with sexual innuendo.

It disturbs her that she only gets to see cash while most of her clothes are off when she ought to be counting the money in an office, well dressed in official attire. “The hurting bit is that no one is willing to understand that you can’t find a job. Like me, I applied all over, and I had to walk long distances without fare,” she reminisces. “The hustle is tough and men also want to take advantage. I found pole dancing better because even if you undress in front of the same men, they can’t stifle you to sleep with them.” Although her education immensely pointed to a world of possibilities, she has so far found the corridors of public life slithery.

If she only could, she would have opted to forgo what she’s doing currently and return to her dream of working at a financial institution.Naomi says when her studies at the university were coming to an end three years ago she envisaged a prosperous future.The time to field returns from the investment that her education had been. But what she met was the cold world of joblessness, stiff competition and atop life’s difficulties, a global financial crisis. In the 1990s, there were few universities but with the advent of parallel programmes money has certainly become the torus of our education system. In the gone days, a lot of prestige was tied to just making the cut to join one.

At the graduation the whole village in sandals, the (in) famous sandak .  or any possible cocoon that fit the description of a shoe walked shoulder high singing melancholic songs that left you with a feeling of nostalgia. You were forced to bask in the inglorious celebrations for it was almost certain somewhere in the chambered blocks of the government, an office full of cobwebs and rusted files was waiting for you — its designated occupant.
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Mr. William Ouma and a friend pose for photo during graduation ceremony/James Adika
But this idyllic prospect today has morphed into endless struggles and unfathomable shame. The brand is failure even after successfully crossing the finish line. Many  graduates, those who understand the lopsided nature of job seeking, draw plans to avert any possible mishaps. They reinforce it to make it watertight. Chaps think of self-employment, whose only hurdles are capital and management skills. And then there are volunteering positions lads get involved with as they buy time to be absorbed into the organization. The period reality dawns on new graduates that life has a lot of responsibilities to be taken care of and nothing is really for free, a mixture of fear, anxiety and trepidation induces in. In the swirling tension many young-lings tend to lose direction.

For William Ouma, a graduate of Sociology who couldn’t take three months of cashless internship, job search is “a thankless job in itself.” Since quitting his internship position with an NGO, he could only resort to savagery; visiting relatives in rounds without them suspecting his jaunty plan. “I fared on well without many jimjams but an aunt foiled my plans,” he rhetorically states. Now, he has resorted to ‘servicing’ a cougar as he survives off her money and other little niceties. Cougar affair This pseudo-symbiosis seem like some sort of bonk business where money and pleasure has equal status. If you ask many young graduates today, they will tell you saving face isn’t a natural phrase if it bars an individual’s survival in torrid circumstances such as what they’ve found themselves trapped by. At least for prostitutes whom society has labeled ‘perverts’ — sex for cash isn’t much out of the usual. Christopher Juma now runs a stationery business within Homa bay Town, which is doing fairly well.

Before he went into the venture, he started working pro bono at a film production house hoping he would be absorbed after a period of time. There was no slot for employment, his determination to deliver the best results notwithstanding. He says: “I worked like I was the only employee; in fact, many staff members delegated work to me, so I hoped for a permanent spot but I realized that to everybody else they were on a joyride at my expense.” A year later, he could not contend with turn his life was taking with not much promise in sight. “I worked without pay and no one seemed to give a shilling. It hurt so much that I wished I hadn’t gone to campus,” he states. “There are individuals in offices that fear a success story happening with you and so they derive pleasure in seeing you stranded and in pain. It sort of gives them satisfaction.” His respite came with the Youth Fund, which he used to open shop. In my quest to find more graduates fidgeting under the austere of graduating into a world of buffoonery and titanic life’s battles, I met Angela Oburu, a sassy lassie who now lives with her boyfriend in Mbita Milimani Estate.
Despite graduating with an Accounting diploma, she couldn’t find employment in a small medium enterprise, which required less arduous expertise and baby-steps qualifications. Young and outgoing, as she went around ransacking for an elusive vacant position in a financial firm, she met Victor Ogweno who was willing to keep her afloat while she sought for ways to flung herself off the jobless corner. Victor ended up ‘courting’ her so that his philanthropic ways wouldn’t be taken for granted. “I accepted his proposal because he takes care of me nicely.
It’s not much to give for someone who has shown interest in helping you out when finding a job seems poky,” she says with a poker face. “I am better than some of my friends who roll through a string of boyfriends looking for sustenance.” Whether it’s staying with a boyfriend, stripping or cohabiting with a cougar, many young graduates are feeling the gravel in the lucid recipe of life gritting against their strategies to live the dream and glitz attached to success as perceived in the court of public opinion.
After all, no one should be really begging if they have a degree to their name. So, as it turns out, if you graduate in a family where you don’t need to graduate, it’s highly possible you have truly graduated. However, if you belong to the other side, thank God the new Constitution has tagged qualifications to certain public jobs. But that’s not to guarantee you anything. Truth is: graduation hoopla is just a welcoming to real life. Celebrate but don’t lose sight of the goal.
Kenyan youth are struggling to secure decent forms of employment largely due to insufficient vocational skills and limited understanding of job market dynamics.
Experts say that a solution to Kenya’s unemployment crises hinges on the overhauling of post-secondary education to make it relevant to an evolving economic landscape.

“Many young people around the world, especially in poor countries, are leaving school without the skills they need to thrive in society and find decent jobs. These education failures are jeopardizing equitable economic growth and social cohesion while denying countries a chance to reap from potential benefits of their growing youth population”, said Homa bay Executive Member of Education and ICT Mr. Naphtali Mata .

He spoke during a forum on youth education and employment at the Tom Mboya University College in Homa bay.The open forum brought on board university students, faculty, and industry to discuss how tertiary education can be transformed to enable Kenyan youths to secure decent jobs.

A critical proportion of Kenyan youth have enrolled in universities and colleges, yet cannot fit in the formal job market due to skills mismatch and irrelevance of their courses.

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