Thugs On The Loose

Snatched

Erick’s phone gets stolen in Nairobi CBD at around 6:00 pm when he is coming from work. It happens quickly, as he squeezes through the throngs of people around the Kenya National Archives, his trousers suddenly feel lighter. His instinct is to feel his right pocket to confirm what he already knows, but before he can crane his neck to see who did the deed and shout, “Amenibia simu!” the music that was playing on his earbuds stops, and the thief is gone.

“Hiyo imeenda,” he hears a voice mummering, killing his spirit.

He removes his earbuds and puts them in their case. They feel incomplete, like a shirt without a collar. He slips them back in his left pocket and feels his back pocket to confirm that his money is still there. He uses it to get a boda-boda to his apartment in Ruaka, an upgrade from the Matatus he was used to after getting a promotion at work, from Data Analyst to Senior Data Analyst—A fancy title that means he crunches the numbers, so the company he works for can make informed decisions.

Erick arrives at the gate. He is lost in thought to notice the guard waving at him. After paying the boda-boda guy, he proceeds to the lifts, which take him to his two-bedroom apartment on the 7th floor. Another upgrade from the bedsitter he was living in. Erick sits on his couch and mourns his KES 100,000 Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. He remembers that in there are his bank, M-Pesa, NSE wallet details, and life as he knows it, and he stirs, as if he has just gotten a boost of energy. He walks to his desk, opens his laptop, and notifies his bank, NSE agent, and Safaricom that he has been robbed, then spends the better part of his evening changing passwords to all his accounts.

He logs into his Samsung Find account to see if he can trace his phone, or at least block and erase his details, but it is unreachable. The last time it was on, it was around Githurai. He refreshes the page over and over again to the same information, until he finally succumbs to his fatigue and falls asleep.

The next day, Erick calls in sick because he is feeling sick, sick to his stomach that he lives in a country where someone can steal something another person has worked hard for and get away with it. He imagines the thief selling his phone for KES 20,000 and feels like throwing up in his mouth.

He would want to sit in his house and sulk all day, but the day ahead of him is long, and the errands he needs to run are even longer. His first stop is Central Police Station. A bored police officer listens to his story and writes in her book. An old, tattered book on its last pages, as if it’s weighed down by all the morbid stories in it. He is given an OB number and a police officer’s contact, whom he is supposed to get in touch with. Even as he takes these things, he knows they are a formality and nothing will be done; if something were being done, thieves would not roam freely in this country.

“Hawa ukitaka wakushughulikie lazima uwapatie kitu kidogo,” a slender guy in dreadlocks tells him after he leaves the help desk. After conversations, Erick gets to know that he is there because he sold his bicycle, and the buyer has refused to finish paying for it. “Ukitaka simu yako ipatikane, tafuta CID,” the guy gives him a CID contact before they part ways. He will probably never use it, he thinks. He has heard enough eerie stories about the CID, and the last thing he wants is to be in league with them.

Erick is back at the Samsung shop. He downgrades to the Samsung Galaxy A55 for KES 50,000. He was planning to use that money at the dentist, but his teeth will have to wait. He will continue enduring the pain that frequently stings his jaws for another month. After the Samsung shop, it’s the Safaricom shop, where he gets another SIM card with his original number, then it’s the bank, and the NSE agent offices where his accounts are reactivated and his life is back to normal, as if the nightmare had never happened. Erick doesn’t know that it is about to begin.

Back for More

Erick would have paid them no mind if one of the two men following him hadn’t said. “Ndiyo huyo,” after he passed them, when he was coming from the shops in Ruaka in the evening. He had stopped to buy fruits, and after they had passed him, the tall one, with a physique like a bamboo stick, had looked back, and he had confirmed that they were really after him.

The short one, built like a wide tree-trunk, looked familiar, and Erick wondered where he had seen him, and then, it hit him that it was Instagram. He had recently become one of his followers, and he was frequently seeing him and other peculiar accounts watching his stories.

He had been bold while on the road, but immediately he gets to his house, fear grips him. What a violation of privacy. And then it’s disgust. How dare they steal from him and come back for more? That night, he doesn’t sleep a wink. He makes all his social media accounts private, then he takes a screenshot of the wide, tree-trunk-looking man before blocking him.

He looks him up on the web to no avail, as his phone rings with an unknown number. He picks it up, but no one speaks. He searches it on Truecaller and M-Pesa, and no name comes up. He shivers. If they are trying to scare him, they are succeeding. 

His fear hits near levels as he is going to work the next morning on his usual mode of transport. Uber Boda. He looks back out of instinct, and he sees them trailing him on another boda-boda. It is hard to miss them; in their goon, riff-raff demeanor, they stick out like a sore thumb. They are beside him, then they pass him so that he sees the boda-boda’s number plate, and then they are beside him again. Erick tells his boda-boda guy to take a left when the goons begin speeding forward, and he loses them.

At work, Erick’s mind is frazzled. He can’t focus. During lunch break, he finds himself calling the police officer whose number he was given at the Central Police Station’s help desk.

“Ati, your phone was stolen?”

“Ati the people who stole your phone are following you?”

“Ati, you know them from social media?”

“Kijana, inaonekana you have already done the investigation, and you don’t need me.”

The person on the other end says with a dismissive tone before hanging up. Every man for himself and God for us all, Erick thinks.

He starts seeing the goons everywhere. At the gate of the apartment he lives in, at his job, the supermarket queue. Everywhere. Calls from unknown numbers increase. He stops picking them and starts blocking them altogether. “Why me?” he asks himself often. He realizes how precious an unknown life is: Being able to walk freely without looking over your shoulders. Not having to pre-plan the route you will use. Not being on high alert and suspicious of every stranger you come across is truly a gift.

What do they want from him? He ponders. Do they want to rob him again? Do they want to know his neighbors and colleagues so they can rob them, too? Do they want to kidnap him? These thoughts overwhelm Erick, and he finds himself dialing the CID number that he was given by the guy with dreadlocks.

Finally Free?

“My friend, hii ni Nairobi. Money will solve all your problems,” the CID officer on the other end says before hanging up.

Erick was sceptical making the call; it could be a well-oiled scam by the dreadlock guy, but the booming voice on the other end, and the location of the meeting being a police station, reassured him enough to move forward.

He finds himself in a small room at Muthangari Police Station, seated across two tall, dark CID officers. One of them is wearing a blue shirt with grey trousers, and the other, a red one with black trousers. They have an air of invincibility about them. As if, like Neo in the Matrix, they could dodge bullets or even stop them.

“Rafiki, unasema majambazi stole your phone, and now they are following you?” Red Shirt says, and Erick nods. “The problem with your case is that we can’t do anything until a crime is committed, and by then it might be too late. Fanya hivi, tupatie ngiri kumi, IMEI ya hiyo simu waliiba, na number plate ya hiyo boda-boda inakufuata, tukimaliza kazi, utatupatia ngiri zingine kumi, si hapo sawa?”

That is a small price to pay for Erick, and he quickly sends them the money. “Maisha ya hao wawili inataka kubadilika kabisa,” Blue Shirt says matter-of-factly as Erick leaves with haste. Police stations are not the place he wants to spend more time than he needs to.

He gets a call from Red Shirt on the third day after visiting the police station. He tells him they have located his Samsung phone in Githurai, and he WhatsApps him pictures of the goons for his confirmation. After confirming it’s them, Erick wonders what their fate will be. A part of him hopes they get a slap on the wrist, and another part hopes they get exactly what is coming to them.

Erick continues living his life. It has been over two weeks, and nobody has followed him, and he feels as if he is living the dream. Everything holds meaning to him now, even something as routine as taking a glass of water; there was a time he was not so sure he would make it to the end of the day, let alone two weeks.

On the third week, on a weekend, while he is on the couch watching a movie, his WhatsApp buzzes with a new message from an unknown number. Not this again, he thinks. He opens the message to find a photo titled “Boda-Boda Accident.” The short one, built like a wide tree-trunk, is in a wheelchair, in a vegetative state, and the tall-bamboo-stick one is in crutches, with a stump where his right leg used to be.

After his shock wanes, Erick calls Red Shirt to inquire what happened. Red Shirt tells him he has no idea what he is talking about, but it would be good if he paid the remaining balance. He asks about his phone, and Red Shirt tells him the thugs sold it for parts. He finds that hard to believe because he looks at his Samsung Find account from time to time, and recently, he has been seeing it around Muthanagri. His bigger problem is solved, and he doesn’t want to be in the CID’s bad books, so he sends the KES 10,000, happy that his nightmare is finally behind him.

Three months pass. Erick has stopped using Uber Boda and upgraded to a Toyota Mark X. His teeth are in new braces, and the pain that was erupting from his jaws is a thing of the past. He is singing along to Lingala, a staple music genre of his childhood. As he does, he sees a Probox with two peculiar-looking men—from his rearview mirror, taking the same left he has taken and then a right. He finds himself stepping on the accelerator, and he doesn’t know how he ends up in Central Police Station. “Mkubwa ni njia nimepotea sina maneno,” he tells the officer at the gate while backing up and beginning to drive towards his work. If he could pay the CID to do his bidding, what’s stopping the goons, or those affiliated with them, from doing the same? He wonders.

*

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