I was born and raised up in a village area. After the death of my father, my uncle took me out of the village area and promised my mother he was going to help her pay my school fees. He took me out of the village area to the city. Things went well for about 2 years, but after that they started mistreating me. Sometimes they made me stay home from school to take care of their younger children. If I told them I wanted to go to school they would hit me. It progressed to where I was their house help – with all house jobs and jobs with children being mine. My aunt then lied that I had taken 1000 shillings from her purse (about $15.00). They locked me in the house and beat me for 3 hours. They then threw me out of the house and I ran for my life.
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I was forced to join other kids that lived in the streets while tracing my way back home. I expected to have help – to find my way home, but didn’t. I ended up living on the streets.
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Food was a major challenge. The first introduction was how to cope with food problem. We camped at the dumping sites. The competition for food was high since we were not the only scavengers. There were dogs, ravens and marabou storks – as well as many others. So, these meant whoever found the bone first got the meal.
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The garbage piles gave us what we needed – from metal to use to cook- to plastic – even drugs. We could tell the area that had fresh garbage because there would be lots of ravens.
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Another issue we faced was pain. The only solution for pain, stress, and homesickness used to be drugs. The first drug I was introduced to was glue (bounding glue). We would collect plastics and scrap metal from the garbage pile and exchange that for glue. We would camp out and stay at the garbage piles waiting for more garbage to arrive. We always had sacks with us to collect things from the dump.
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The more I stayed there, the more drugs I was introduced to. Marijuana and the like were introduced first. The more expensive drugs were out of reach for us, until we began to be used as peddlers to transport them from one place to another. We would hide them in our sacks full of plastics. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone to know what we were carrying. The owner of the drugs would follow us to where we were taking it – we would just be the ones carrying it. They were scared of the police. I began to transport guns and bullets as well. Many times we were not allowed to see what we were really transporting.
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Death was common. Street kids may meet death from a mob or police. We were considered as dirt. Most of the time we could be ambushed with the police. They would beat us and leave us bleeding. I have seen many die, and many others become disabled from being beaten by the police. They would arrest us sometimes claiming they were keeping the city clean. Spending months at a time in jail was common – sometimes in the police station, other times in prison.
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When we would get sick, there would be no help, no medication.
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After 2 years of living on the streets in these conditions, I decided to quit living the dirty life – and joined a group of muggers. I start becoming involved in mugging, pick pocketing and robbery with violence. Things progressed to threatening people with knives to get valuables, drugging people’s drinks in pubs, and breaking in to their houses. We were now getting a lot of money, but we were spending it drinking and going to nightclubs and bribing policemen and prostitutes.
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As life continued, I was arrested again and put in prison for 6 months. When I got out, I found that my gang had advanced. They had advanced to using guns. They began to train me on how to use them and clean them. While I was still learning, a robbery of a gas station was planned. I was left behind on this, and heard the next day that 2 had been killed and 3 were in custody. At this point, I had to decide if I wanted to leave this life or die.
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I decided to start a small business. It was then that I decided to quit all that I used to do. By conducting small business, I could still get money to drink and enjoy all sorts of life. It was through that business that I came to know my wife. She introduced me to church and encouraged me to change my life. I decided to accept Jesus Christ and surrender all. It was through my wife that I came to know God. I can say the death of my 2 gang members which had occurred changed me too. Because I was supposed to be among the group, I think God used it to show me how much he wanted to use me and how much he wanted me.
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