Day 39

It all happened so fast after that first burst of automatic gunfire.

I had already dived behind some foul smelling garbage cans.

Out of the corner of my eyes I had seen the automatic weapon pointed upwards in the split second that perfect -English had dived at his colleague, thus saving my life. The next moment I had been behind the foulest smelling garbage I had ever come close to and the automatic fire from the gun had filled the entire alley.

There was a brief respite and I could hear them argue in some local language that I couldn’t quite catch. And then all hell broke lose.

There was some fierce exchange of fire as another gang with automatic weapons seemed to arrive on the scene.

Perfect-English and company ran towards where I was hiding for cover. One of them didn’t make it and I heard him cry out as he went down under heavy fire from the new arrivals.

Perfect-English and his colleague got within a meter of where I was before they too went down in a hail of bullets.

I could not believe that all this was happening in the middle of a city in Africa that was not at war. It was much easier to believe that a Viagra lawyer was tellling the truth.

The ruthless gang continued to spray bullets on the lifeless bodies of the three boys for almost two full minutes. What kind of blood-hungry gang was this, I wondered?

But it was the fact that they had virtually emptied almost all their bullets on the three boys that probably saved my life once again. I stood up and raised my hands in surrender when the gun fire stopped only for one of the men to raise his gun and aim at me.

“Don’t shoot, please,” I screamed at the top of my voice with my hands still raised high in the air.

He pulled the trigger only to realize that he was out of bullets. He rolled away and quickly reached for his pockets.

It was then that the man who appeared to be the gang leader barked out a command.

“Hold your fire. This is a mzungu!”

I kept my hands high in the air and my eyes tightly closed, expecting bullets to cut through me at any time.

The heavily armed gang approached me cautiously. When they reached where I was they quickly frisked me.

“He’s not armed,” the man who had frisked me told the leader.

“We are police officers, please identify yourself.”

I looked at the short stout African in a leather jacket who had said those words and I honestly thought he was joking. He was obviously the leader of this gang that claimed they were police officers. If I had been tauight this in any reputable online college courses I would not have believed it for 100 years.

I looked again at the man who had frisked me. He had some bushy moustache and a bandana that was actually the flag of the United States. Not the sort of regular guy that you'd meet at the local employment agency.

These “police officers” looked much more like thugs than the three boys they had just sprayed bullets into.

The leader seemed to read my thoughts and produced a tiny identification card that alsmot looked like an auto insurance slip.

“We are plain clothes police officers, you probably call them under cover policemen in your country,” he said.

I was to later learn that this African capital of Nairobi had a serious problem of armed robberies mostly committed by jobless youngsters who had easy access to guns caused by wars and political unrest in neighboring countries.

The ill-prepared policemen patrolled around the city heavily armed and simply pumped bullets into anybody they came across committing a crime or firing a gun like they had found poor Perfect-English and company doing.

“You will have to accompany us to the police station and write a statement to explain yourself,” I was informed.