If you had met me five years ago, you would have crossed the street rather than walk past me.
I was one of those young men from Kayole that everyone feared. We roamed the streets in a gang, snatching phones, harassing shopkeepers, even terrorizing matatu passengers.

We thought we were smart, brave, untouchable.
In truth, we were lost boys trying to look tough.

I grew up in a broken home. My father left early, my mother struggled to feed us. I dropped out of school in Form 2 and fell in with the wrong crowd. The streets of Kayole offered me a kind of family, a dangerous one.

At first it was petty theft, then full-blown robberies. We carried knives, sometimes even guns. We believed crime was the only way to survive.
I remember the fear in people’s eyes when they saw us coming. At the time, I wore that fear like a badge of honor.

But at night, when the streets grew quiet and the adrenaline faded, I lay awake wondering if I would live to see 30. I had lost friends to mob justice, to police bullets, and to rival gangs. I knew my mother cried for me every night, but I couldn’t stop. The streets had a hold on me.

My turning point came one night when we cornered a boda boda rider near the junction. Something about the way he begged us, his shaking voice, his tears, hit me like a brick. I saw myself in his eyes another man just trying to survive.

I let him go. My gang didn’t like it, but that night I walked home shaken. I realized I didn’t want to die in the streets or end up in prison. I wanted out. Read more.