Today was the first day of the students strike. We had heard a little bit about it from some students around campus, but it was not talked a lot about. It did not really hit me that it was actually going to happen or that it was something I should be concerned about until yesterday when we were at church and Pastor Travis asked the congregation of students, who was afraid of tomorrow. At first I thought it was just a general question, like who is afraid of what the future might bring, but then I realized that he was talking about the strike. We then started praying for the campus and it will be peaceful and will not be very long. It was not until we started talking about it and praying about it that I realized that this was the real thing. The strike we had heard about all semester was finally going to happen. I was not sure what to expect because I have never experienced anything like this before. We were not sure that it was even going to happen because last week there was “student strike” that only involved about one hundred students and nothing really happened and classes still continued.
This morning I was able to go to my nine o’clock class that was in a department that was further away for campus so we were still able to have class. When I was walking back from class up towards the main road I ran into the student who were striking marching through campus. I’m not even sure how many students there was who were involved. It was almost like a parade, walking through the streets singing and chanting, it took about ten minutes for all of the students to pass where I was standing. I did not feel unsafe, but I was a little bit uncomfortable. I tried to go to the rest of my classes, but they were not happening. Most teacher and students know what has happened in the past and how fast things can get escalated so they just do not go to classes. I know that the classes were more than likely not going to happen, but there is still the little part of me that thinks that maybe it will happen and I would feel bad missing a class.
After we had all attempted going to class we decided that we needed to get of campus for the afternoon so we went down to the Mwenge, the woodcarvers market. It was nice just to be able to escape from the questions that were running through our minds. Questions like, are classes going to happen tomorrow? If the students actually strike for three days will the university actually shut down? If the university shuts down will I be able to get the credits I need for graduation? How can I afford another semester at Concordia if I can get the classes? There are so many unknowns, but the biggest was what is going to happen tomorrow? No one really has a plan of what is going to happen or if the students are going to strike or if they are going to stop and just go back to class. Around midnight we found out the answer to our question of if the students were going to continue on with the strike tomorrow because a guy came around the outside of all the dorms with a megaphone and made the announcement that they were going to strike at 8am tomorrow and that to go to class betraying your fellow students. These announcements woke both my roommate and myself up, and Monica tells me not to worry because “this is normal.” How is this normal? I feel like I am living in a movie, there is no way that this is my actual life.
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