Some men escape death. Others simply learn how to make a living beside it.
Joshua was supposed to die that evening. Four of his friends had already been shot. The policeman standing over him was preparing to make him the fifth. Then the gun jammed.
Now, you would imagine that a man who had just escaped death would reconsider his career choices. Joshua did. Eventually, he entered politics. Which, depending on how you look at it, was either an extraordinary transformation or a rather interesting career progression. Because Joshua was about to discover something fascinating about power in Kenya.
Sometimes the difference between a criminal and a respectable man isn’t what he does. It’s who employs him. And the young man who once lay trembling in the mud would one day dream of becoming an Honourable Member.
The Fifth Bullet
They were lying face down in the mud. Five young men, barely out of their teenage years, their faces pressed into the filthy ground of a backstreet in Huruma. Behind them stood a man holding a Browning Hi-Power 9mm pistol. His name was Mr. HitBaba.
It was not the name his mother had given him. I imagine no mother holds her newborn son, looks lovingly into his eyes and announces, “This one will grow up to become a professional killer.” But life has a peculiar way of introducing us to occupations that never appeared in our childhood compositions.
Mr. HitBaba was a policeman. A highly feared one. He was believed to have been responsible for the deaths of more than a hundred young men in the ghettos of Kiamaiko and Huruma. In those neighborhoods, his name carried the sort of authority that made conversations end abruptly. The pistol was cocked.
A shot rang out. The sound was almost ordinary in that part of Nairobi. People had become accustomed to gunfire in much the same way residents of other neighborhoods had become accustomed to barking dogs and impatient motorists. It was approaching evening.
A crowd had begun gathering nearby, but everything happened quickly. The five young men had been dragged into the backstreet and ordered to lie face down. Another shot. Then another. Then a fourth.
Four young men lay dying within seconds of one another. There were no trials. No lawyers. No opportunity to explain themselves. Mr. HitBaba approached the fifth. His name was Joshua.
He was trembling so violently that he could barely control his body. Sweat ran down his face and mixed with the mud beneath him. His mind had already travelled somewhere his body had not yet reached. He was waiting to die. The policeman raised his pistol. Pulled the trigger.
Nothing. He tried again. The gun malfunctioned.
“Shit! This always happens!” the policeman shouted. I have often wondered what irritated him more. The malfunctioning weapon or the inconvenience of having his evening interrupted. Because, apparently, Mr. HitBaba was late for a date. Four young men were dying at his feet, and somewhere in Nairobi, a woman was waiting for a man who had promised to take her out.
Life is full of extraordinary contradictions. He looked at Joshua. Then at the other police officers. Then back at Joshua.
“You lucky bastard. Go and be an example to the others.” He kicked him in the backside and ordered him to get up. Joshua could barely stand. His legs had apparently not received the information that he was still alive.
The police officers dragged the bloodied bodies of the other young men into the backs of open Land Rovers. By now, the crowd had grown. Nobody rushed forward to mourn. These boys had terrorised the community for weeks. They had robbed, beaten and killed people who were simply trying to survive.
One of their victims had been a middle-aged man who supported several people through his small business. When he refused to surrender his day’s earnings, they shot him repeatedly. Another man had offered no resistance. Unfortunately, he also had no money. They slashed him several times and left him to die. His wounds proved fatal. The community was exhausted.
People who had once demanded justice had begun celebrating executions. And perhaps that was the most disturbing thing about that evening. The crowd had stopped distinguishing between justice and revenge. Nobody asked what would happen to the fifth boy.
Nobody wanted to know why he had been spared. He was still a member of a feared gang. Even without a weapon, he represented something people preferred not to confront. Joshua walked away. He had expected prison. Perhaps another policeman would produce a functioning pistol and finish the assignment.
Instead, he had been given something he had never expected. Tomorrow. He disappeared into the darkness. And somewhere behind him, four families were about to receive news that would change their lives forever.
The Business of Sacrificial Lambs
Joshua reappeared outside a familiar door. He knocked. Someone opened. Inside, men were discussing the unfortunate events of the evening.
“We have lost a whole crew,” one said. Another nodded. “We need to create a new one. Quickly.” There was a brief silence.
“But we must choose carefully. We need sacrificial lambs.” It was an interesting way of describing recruitment. In most organizations, new employees are welcomed, introduced to their colleagues and shown where to find the toilets.
In Joshua’s organization, the induction programme occasionally included being selected to die. The older gang members had developed a system that helped them survive dangerous operations. For every high-stakes burglary or robbery, one or two younger members would be positioned to take the fall if things went wrong. The young men did not know this.
They believed they had been selected because they were brave, promising or trusted. The older men knew better. They had survived enough operations to understand that enthusiasm was a useful substitute for experience, particularly when the consequences would be borne by someone else. The younger recruits were eager to impress.
They dressed extravagantly when money came in. They boasted about their exploits. They threatened people unnecessarily and behaved as though the law had been written for everybody except themselves. The older members encouraged this confidence. Sometimes they even rewarded it. A young man who believed he was indispensable was less likely to notice that he was expendable.
When an operation went wrong, the inexperienced boys would often be the ones left exposed. The older men disappeared. The younger ones discovered, usually too late, the difference between belonging to a group and being valued by it. Cold steel was frequently the final price.
Joshua had watched this happen repeatedly. He had also survived long enough to recognize the pattern. But recognizing a dangerous system and leaving it are two entirely different things. The next operation was already being planned.
A businessman was known to keep considerable amounts of money in his shop. He also had good connections with the police. That made him both an attractive target and a dangerous one. Two young recruits were selected. They were excited.
The older men were satisfied. The boys believed they were being offered an opportunity. The men selecting them understood that they were being offered as insurance. The robbery was scheduled for the following night.
Then word arrived. Mr. HitBaba was looking for Joshua.
When the Hunter Became Afraid
The story circulating through the neighborhood was extraordinary. Mr. HitBaba had apparently experienced a dream. In that dream, he had been warned that unless he found Joshua and killed him, many more people would die. I found this particularly fascinating.
Here was a man believed to have killed close to a hundred young men, suddenly troubled by the possibility of further deaths. One wonders whether the dream had introduced him to the concept of consequences. Or perhaps, like many of us, he was less concerned about death itself than about death occurring outside his control. Whatever the truth, the message was clear.
Joshua was wanted. An older thug who had abandoned the streets and opened a bar sought him out. “You will die if he finds you.” There was no humor in his voice.
Joshua understood. He packed his belongings and left Nairobi. No farewell party. No dramatic announcement. No elaborate explanation to his colleagues. He simply travelled to Nyandarua.
His family was large, with relatives spread across different towns in Kenya. His grandparents, uncles and aunts lived in a world far removed from Nairobi’s criminal networks. When he arrived, nobody seemed particularly interested in where he had been. He was a young man who had refused to go to school and was approaching his eighteenth birthday. There was work to be done on the farm.
And on a farm, a young man with two functioning hands was a welcome addition, regardless of the mysteries surrounding his recent employment. Joshua settled into the routine. He worked. He ate.
He slept. And for the first time in a long while, he did not have to calculate whether the person approaching him intended to kill him. Then the news arrived. The entire crew that had gone ahead with the robbery had been killed.
Every one of them. A replacement had been found for Joshua, and the operation had proceeded. Had he stayed, he might have been among the dead. His departure had saved his life for the second time. The first time, a pistol had malfunctioned.
The second, a warning had reached him. Joshua believed a voice was protecting him. A quiet voice that told him when to move, when to stay away and when something was wrong. He would come to trust it deeply.
Whether it was instinct, experience, coincidence or something beyond his understanding, Joshua had learned to listen. Meanwhile, the deaths of his former colleagues barely registered beyond the neighborhood. Nairobi had other horrors demanding attention. The Mungiki, a clandestine group that had established control over several communities, was battling rival gangs for territory and influence.
Violence had become so common that individual deaths were reduced to passing conversations. Joshua’s friends became another footnote. And life continued.
A Better Class of Criminal
Weeks turned into months. Joshua worked on the farm. Then someone called. There was work in Nairobi. A politician needed young men to help him establish dominance in his constituency.
Joshua’s name had appeared on a list of suitable candidates. It was, in a strange way, a promotion. He had previously been a criminal operating outside the protection of powerful people. Now he was being invited into a system where intimidation came with a wage, connections and occasional police cooperation.
The assignment was straightforward. Any person who threatened the Member of Parliament’s political ambitions would be discouraged. Discouragement, in this particular arrangement, was a flexible word. It could mean interrupting a meeting.
Threatening supporters. Beating an opponent. Or making it sufficiently unpleasant for a rival candidate to continue campaigning. The objective was not persuasion. It was fear.
Joshua accepted. The money was not always as much as he had earned through robbery, but it was consistent. And there was another advantage. He could now interact with police officers without immediately worrying about being arrested.
The same institution that had once hunted him was sometimes helping coordinate his movements. Joshua found this astonishing. He began to understand that power could alter the meaning of behavior without changing the behavior itself. A young man threatening someone on his own was a thug.
A young man threatening someone on behalf of an influential politician was part of a political operation. The victim experienced the same fear. Only the explanation changed. Joshua learned quickly.
He discovered that some politicians exercised extraordinary influence over officials who were supposed to serve the public. He watched police officers who had once intimidated young men become unusually respectful in the presence of political power. He also noticed that nobody openly discussed these contradictions. People understood the arrangements.
They simply behaved as though they did not. Then something unexpected happened. Mr. HitBaba was arrested. The feared policeman had reportedly killed a young man from a prominent family.
This time, the victim’s family had influence. They demanded justice. And the man who had walked through neighborhoods as though he personally owned the right to decide who lived and died found himself in custody. Joshua did not know what to feel.
He was happy. He was angry. He was resentful. So many of his friends had died at the hands of this man.
Yet he could not escape one uncomfortable observation. For years, poor families had buried their sons without meaningful consequences for the man accused of killing them. Now a family with influence had demanded accountability, and the machinery of justice had moved. Joshua understood something about power that no classroom had taught him.
The law might be written for everyone. Its protection did not always reach everyone equally.
The Man Who Prayed on Sunday
Joshua remained in political work for years. His employer was a prominent politician with deep connections to the underworld. Joshua considered him the devil reincarnate. Not because he looked particularly frightening. Quite the opposite.
The man was charming. He smiled warmly, embraced middle-aged women, greeted children and spoke passionately about the suffering of ordinary citizens. He could stand before a crowd and make people feel that their struggles kept him awake at night. Then he would turn a corner and discuss how to destroy someone who had challenged him.
Joshua watched this transformation repeatedly. In public, the politician was generous. In private, he could be ruthless. He had mastered the art of keeping his two identities separate.
His supporters knew the man who attended church, contributed to fundraisers and distributed money to struggling families. His operatives knew the man who could order violence without visibly disturbing his appetite. Even the goons feared him. Joshua had met dangerous men before.
He had met men who killed for money, men who killed for reputation and men who killed because they enjoyed the authority it gave them. But this politician was different. He understood how to make other people do terrible things while remaining publicly admired. Sunday was particularly fascinating.
The politician would arrive at church, sometimes accompanied by an impressive entourage. He would speak about God. He would praise honesty, integrity and service. He would make generous donations. The congregation would applaud.
Joshua occasionally wondered whether heaven maintained separate attendance registers for public declarations and private conduct. Because by Monday, the same man might be bribing a government official, arranging a questionable deal or discussing how to silence a political opponent. And he did it without appearing troubled by the contradiction. He seemed genuinely comfortable in both worlds.
The politician understood something else. People loved receiving money. A few thousand shillings distributed at the right moment could produce extraordinary affection. A crowd would cheer.
People would sing his praises. Some would declare that no leader had ever loved them as much. Joshua watched these scenes with growing curiosity. The money being distributed was often insignificant compared with what the politician stood to gain through public contracts and questionable projects.
He could give away thousands and position himself to gain millions. The recipients remembered the gift. They rarely saw the transaction behind it. And when the politician returned during the next campaign, people remembered the man who had helped them when they needed money.
Not necessarily the man whose decisions might have contributed to the conditions that made them desperate. Joshua found the arrangement brilliant. Disturbing, certainly. But brilliant.
A Job Description for Fear
Over time, Joshua became more valuable. He was no longer simply a young man sent to intimidate people. He had experience. He understood the neighborhoods, the gangs, the police and the political networks. He knew which people could be trusted and which ones would sell information for the price of lunch.
Eventually, he joined the team responsible for managing the politician’s movements within the constituency. As the MP developed ambitions to become governor, the operations expanded across the county. Joshua helped coordinate young men who could be deployed wherever they were needed. Sometimes police officers assisted with the arrangements.
The work had structure. There were instructions, expectations and payments. In another organization, someone might have called it operations management. Joshua had effectively acquired years of experience in logistics, personnel coordination and stakeholder management.
The unfortunate detail was that some of the stakeholders were being threatened. He knew the rules. Do what you are told. Do not embarrass the politician.
Do not become more important than the people protecting you. And above all, understand that protection is conditional. A man who stepped too far outside the arrangement could disappear. Joshua had seen enough to know that loyalty was not necessarily reciprocated.
The politician needed him. But needing someone and caring about them were not the same thing. Joshua had learned that lesson years earlier, when older gang members recruited young men they intended to sacrifice. The setting had changed.
The clothes were better. The vehicles were more expensive. The language was more respectable. But the underlying arrangement felt strangely familiar.
The Grandfather of the Streets
By his late thirties, Joshua was considered an old man in the criminal world. A grandfather. Not because he had acquired grandchildren, but because surviving that long was itself an extraordinary achievement. Many of the boys he had grown up with were dead. Others were in prison.
Some had disappeared. Joshua had a young family now. He needed stability. He wanted to provide for his children and create a life that did not depend entirely on the unpredictable fortunes of politicians and gangs.
He began working as a Bolt motorcycle rider. He carried passengers through Nairobi, navigating traffic, potholes and the peculiar confidence of motorists who believed indicators were optional decorations. On some days, he was simply a hardworking man trying to earn enough to feed his family. On others, a call would come.
His political contacts needed him. A team required coordination. Young men had to be assembled. An operation needed support.
Joshua would respond. He also maintained connections with several gangs and occasionally ran one himself. But the streets had changed. The younger boys operated differently.
They were more cautious in some ways, less predictable in others. Joshua no longer understood every instinct driving them. And he was old enough to know that unfamiliarity could get a man killed. Politics offered a safer haven.
There were powerful people to protect him, opportunities to earn and relationships that could be converted into money. He watched politicians benefit from large projects while ordinary citizens continued struggling. He watched crowds cheer leaders who privately regarded those same crowds as instruments of political survival. He watched people exchange long-term interests for immediate relief.
And he watched himself become increasingly comfortable inside the arrangement. This was perhaps the most remarkable part of Joshua’s journey. He had survived being a disposable young thug. He had learned how older criminals manipulated younger ones.
He had witnessed police violence. He had discovered how political protection worked. And now he was participating in systems remarkably similar to those that had once threatened his own life. He did not see himself as the same frightened boy lying in the mud.
He saw himself as a survivor. A man who had learned how the world worked. And perhaps he had. But understanding a system does not necessarily mean we have escaped its influence.
Sometimes it simply means we have become better at operating within it.
The Next Honorable Member
Joshua had another ambition. He wanted to become a Member of the County Assembly. An MCA. He had spent years watching politicians operate. He knew how crowds were mobilized, how influence was purchased, how loyalty was rewarded and how opponents were weakened.
He understood the language of the streets and the language of political power. He had connections. He had experience. He had survived.
Why shouldn’t he seek office himself? It was a reasonable question. After all, he had watched men with questionable histories become respected leaders. He had seen individuals who were ruthless in private receive standing ovations in public.
He had watched people forgive almost anything when the person responsible had enough money, influence or charm. Joshua had learned that a reputation could be reconstructed. Sometimes all it required was a new title. He imagined himself representing his community.
Perhaps he would help young people avoid the life he had lived. Perhaps he would create opportunities. Perhaps he would become the kind of leader he had once wished existed. Or perhaps he would reproduce the same arrangements that had made his survival possible.
I do not know. Neither, I suspect, did Joshua. What I found fascinating was the confidence with which he discussed his future. Here was a man who had once lain face down in the mud waiting for a bullet.
He had escaped death, fled his enemies, survived gang warfare and spent years working for powerful men whose generosity was often inseparable from their self-interest. And now he wanted to lead. Not merely survive. Lead.
He spoke about his ambitions with the assurance of someone who believed he had earned the right to something better. Perhaps he had. But I kept thinking about the five boys in that backstreet. Four had died.
One had survived. The surviving boy had been told to go and become an example to others. And strangely, he had. He had become an example of how human beings adapt to the systems around them.
How easily fear can become obedience. How belonging can be purchased with the illusion of importance. How loyalty can be manufactured by making people dependent. How generosity can conceal calculation.
And how a person who has suffered under a system can eventually learn to benefit from it. Joshua was not an innocent man. Neither was he simply a monster. He was a man who had made choices, sometimes terrible ones, in pursuit of survival, money, belonging and significance.
The people who recruited him had their interests. The police officers had theirs. The politician had his. The crowds had theirs.
Even Joshua, who had once been offered as a sacrifice, eventually learned to arrange others’ sacrifices. Each person could explain their behavior. Each could construct a reason that made their choices appear necessary. And perhaps that is one of the most uncomfortable things about human nature.
We rarely experience ourselves as villains in our own stories. We explain our actions through our needs, our fears, our loyalties and our circumstances. We call our compromises survival. Our manipulation, strategy.
Our greed, ambition. Our intimidation, protection. And our pursuit of power, service. Joshua still rides his motorcycle through Nairobi.
He still answers certain calls. He still has a family to support and political ambitions to pursue. He is no longer the boy who trembled beneath a policeman’s pistol. He has become a man who understands power.
But I wonder whether he has ever asked himself a question more important than how to acquire it. What kind of man will I become when I finally have the power to do to others what was once done to me? Because the most consequential moment in Joshua’s life may not have been the evening when the gun malfunctioned. It may still be ahead of him.
The moment when he must decide whether the life he survived is the life he intends to reproduce. After all, we all aspire to become better. The difficulty is deciding what better means. And who must pay the price for us to get there.
Talk. Clarify. Grow. Transform.
If this message stirred something in you, don’t let it fade.
1. Join my LinkedIn Habit Coaching Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/habits-with-coach-edwin-7399067976420966400/
2. Join my Habit WhatsApp Community at https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbAmKkOBvvsWOuBx5g3L
3. Join The Clarity Room at https://chat.whatsapp.com/HzoEAcKBM4lDHtzDnl6IL8
4. Ready to level up your life? Join my 12-Month Personal Transformation Program and let’s intentionally build the next version of you — with clarity, discipline, and momentum. Call or WhatsApp me directly at +254 724 328059, and let’s begin.
Comments
Post a Comment