Juvenile Muggers of Nairobi

They are vicious. Fast and furious. Calculating. Stealthy. And crude. But above all, they are pathetic, horrible excuses of humanity. Somebody calls them their child. Even protects them. Somebody would even cry for them if, and when, they died. Okay, when they are extra-judicially killed.

Yes, them. The juvenile muggers who live on the other side of the State Home. Delinquents.

What kind of a parent raises their kid like that? Telling them to do nothing, not even go to school, but earn a living reaping where they did not sow. Yet cry for them when the fortieth day comes and accuse the police of extrajudicial killings when the police get the menace off the streets.

The day I encountered them I boiled with ire. I could massacre a whole estate in vengeance. If I had the Government Issue gun I should have like any other licensed killer in the republic I would have had a one way ticket to The Hague.

When the police shoot to kill them, streets are cleansed, but the bereft whore around with human rights activists and the Not Good Orangutans (NGOs) and raise hell. When insecurity is on the rise, they bicker. I wonder, what gives?

We can never be equal. Life is harsh, yes, and unfair. People should get used to it, and be content with what they have. One does not have to feed the dozen mouths looking up to him through what others have. Richie riches will always be there. So are the poor. Whether the rich amass their wealth dubiously or not, it is no reason for the lazy, idle, poor jackasses to direct their anger, and violence, towards them. That’s not reason enough for the unlucky masses to go around mugging and stealing from the lucky few, or the struggling ones.

I am not rich. But I want to be. I struggle. My efforts pay albeit slowly but surely. I never cheat or defraud anyone. I am incorruptible in a corrupt world. I am among the few people who don’t believe that where 

there is muck there is brass.

And then it happened. To me. Not that there are those who deserve it. Nay. But I was mugged. By boys who have not yet learnt how to wipe their asses, who have barely grown any hair anywhere else apart from pates of their thick heads. Boys who should be at home doing homework, or babysitting their siblings. It’s such a pathetic shame.

I kicked like an energized dying horse. I screamed my lungs out. I fought. Like a mad man. Like the White Belt martial artist I am. Then I fought like a woman.

Lesson was learnt. I got to know my city, the safest in East Africa, but the filthiest in the world. My ‘I-see-the-good-in-people’ bubble was burst, the illusion of security I thought thrived and the breaches I saw on TV and papers happened in another world was demystified. I have banished myself to an eternal curfew from six o’clock in the evening. I will not walk with valuables, like the laptop I managed to save, and I will polish my martial arts. If the Chinese could build roads for us, why not open dojos in our beloved country?

Those with nothing but their pathetic lives will always blame it on those who have. Injustices will continue. Corruption will be rifer. Economic crimes are here to stay. The valley between the rich and the poor will deepen, and both will continue to blame each other for their woes.

However, good can prevail. Our streets can be secure, safer, and no one’s kid will have to be killed, judicially or extra-judicially. Only if parents went back home to their kids and taught them values.