When you are born in the ghetto, where crime, violence, and prostitution are the order of the day, you tend to grow up quickly and make decisions about your future early. When you don’t make a conscious decision at an early age, you will get sucked into the vortex of crime.
I recently lost a friend to crime. A young man so full of life and a promising future. Like me, he made a decision early in life to be different and to do better for himself. We went to the same primary school, but I had the luxury of having both parents, unlike him, who was an orphan. He made the best out of his circumstance, he worked his best. He was an honest and exemplary man, and it was easy to use his life as a good example of what a young boy can become if he wanted to do better in life.
This guy went missing a few days ago, and there were mobilization efforts put in place to try and find him. It is not normal for a grown man to go missing unless he has been injured in some way, and we were praying that he will be found in one peace. Unfortunately, he was found some days later, dead. On the day that he went missing, he had left his house early for his usual morning run. It is believed that he was getting robbed, and he resisted, so he was killed and his body hidden.
You may ask, didn’t anyone see the crime being committed? Chances are, someone did witness the crime, but they could never tell. You may ask again, why would the witness not say anything? There is this culture in the ghetto whereby, snitches get the actual stitches or permanent silence. Depending on whoever is committing the crime you witnessed, you can either demand a fee for your silence or be silent for free. Either way, if you snitch, they will know it was you and they will silence you forever. They always know who the snitches are because they are in close friendships with the local police, and they always ensure the police receive their cut at the end of every heist.
A few years back we lost a friend to mob justice. According to my sources, the heist they were to pull on a certain M-Pesa lady was carefully planned and perfect. Some weeks before the heist, this buddy of mine had decided to stop living in the world of crime. He had declared to everyone that he was turning his life around, and he was even looking at colleges he could apply to. The problem was that, while he was in the gang, he had risen in ranks. He knew too much about the going ins of the gang activities. Even if the local police were in tune with the gang and they were being paid off well, the gang could not risk a reformed member, going about free with all the secrets and information. So they approached him with a plan of his last and send off package in form of the M-Pesa heist. It was obviously a setup. The mob raided this guy in such an unholy manner that he did not even make it to the hospital.
It is easy for anyone who comes from the wrong side of the tracks because the odds are already against them. One can be lucky if they got the correct people in their lives to emulate, but if a kid from the ghetto has a weak mind, they will be pulled into crime so easily. Getting into crime always starts easy, with simple heists with no violence or consequence, but when you go in too deep, getting out is a hustle.
This is for the remembrance of the souls we lost in crime. For the victims of crime, so long brothers and sisters. Society failed you because we refused to snitch and you were taken from us in a violent manner. For those, we lost to mob justice and police brutality, I don’t have words for you. But maybe we should do better as a society, for the children that will grow to become criminals. We should set a good example for them and show them that a person is more than the ghetto they grew up in. Children must be shown that dreams can be actualized if we work on ourselves and distance ourselves from the easy gains of crime.
