I snuff into the plastic tin. The whiff reminds me of the drudgery of this life. This street life: cold and harsh. Under this bridge again, this stifling cold. The cars overhead bring me back to Donholm. I stare at my big toe, sore after knocking out its nail as I ran away from the police yesterday. The other four are still inside the mud smeared boot although the stitches on this pair will let go any minute as the hem is fast rotting away. My grey leathery skin is cracked and has not seen water or oil for a while now and these lice in my pants are not making the situation any better. The stench emanating from Karanja next to me is appalling. I’ve warned him against going into the garbage pit. I can somehow understand, he’s a newbie unlike us who the street can attest of our decade relationship combing the bins and holes of anything and everything that can either be eaten, sold or both.
My thick rugged palms have felt different places: people’s faces, their necks, their bags, their ‘secured’ pockets, window panes, car locks and today that bank. Just this once and this misery that others called life will be history. The more that I thought about it the more I went ahead with the idea. I had nothing to lose. I didn’t have a dream to live for.
It had been agreed that at three O’clock when the bank closes for business, we were to be strategically placed around the vicinity of the bank. This is because at this time, a blue van always came for cash to be transported to the Central Bank through the back door of the building. 2.56pm and the gun in my palm was itching to be put to use or was it that money was coming my way? I had a few minutes to find out. I peeped and saw everyone had taken their positions, Jay the lead guy was walking towards the bank as if to do some last minute banking but swerved and walk to the alley leading to the back door. As if on cue, Ninja appeared in his smart grey jeans, well pressed shirt and bent to tie his shoe lace as planned. In no time, he followed Jay in the alley. Of us all Jay and Ninja were the ‘clean’ guys who passed for business fellows but beneath this façade they were street Urchins alright and when provoked rubbed this point in a not so friendly way.
In this mission, I was to point my rifle (how I got it is a story for another day) to the officers head. In a few second I joined Ninja and Jay at the back and they were halfway with the task as there were fewer guards at that time. I pulled my mask over my head to hide my identity but the tight boots somehow gave me a funny limp. I pushed the sweaty policeman to the floor and tied his rather tiny hands on his back as I hit him with the butt of the gun to frighten him. I was not afraid of pulling the trigger if I had to.
I saw the money in the brown sacks and for a moment, I was euphoric. This is it! Misery and I are no longer bed fellows. This street life, the dirty bridge, the lice, the cold and the cunning City Council Askaris will be my past life. Oh, how I would wish to see my mother’s face right now and prove her wrong. Wrong that I would actually ‘make it’ in life and that her curses were vain.
“Bang!”
“BANG!”
My reverie was jerked and back to reality. Ninjas head was half open with a jelly like substance slipping out. Unknown to me in the confusion I had shot at the banker, Jays hand and to Ninjas foot. Blood spattered everywhere and a crowd was now forming with armed policemen rushing to the scene…I panicked and dropped the gun and it went of firing at those present. A bullet went through one of the sacks with coins sending them flying all over.
I saw my escape route but it was too late for me to run. A sharp pain cut across my ribs and yet another on my thigh, my ankle and another on my cheekbone. I maintained balance but felt like an ants legs supporting the body of an elephant. It was all too fuzzy and felt as if it was raining only that this time it rained red.
I woke up to the smell of spirit and some funny chemicals chocked the air. My eyes were heavy, throat dry and limp. The white ceiling and the metal rods with hanging tubes confused me. Where was I? I tried to speak but my tongue was heavy and my ears had a buzzing sound. I lifted my right hand but it was cuffed to the bed.
A middle aged woman dressed in blue came to my room and looked at me, at a calendar then rushed out. In a moment, a built man with a black cap walked in accompanied with two other young lads, a bespectacled man in a white coat, the woman walked in. Their lips moved but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. This got the built man frustrated and he moved closer to me and slowly articulated something about my legs and gesticulated something about my other hand.
I could not quite understand what he was saying but then the audience present kept looking at the lower side of the bed, towards my feet. I lifted my head in time as the woman in blue lifted the white starched bed covers.
I couldn’t feel my legs let alone seeing them!
I had massive bandages wound up at both knees with the rest of my feet missing! My legs had been amputated. I sought answers in the faces that stared at me in pity and as I turned to my left, I saw my wrist less arm! Oh my God…what has happened to me? I groaned, shouted and heaved in disbelief. Hot tears forced themselves down my rigid cheeks. I choked in pain, distress and agony .My right ear was damaged and lost its hearing and my stomach twitched in pain.
They all stared and spoke at once. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I slowly slipped off and darkness covered me. I hope to sleep through this night mare and wake up under the bridge, under Donholm Bridge. How I missed the cold, the jumping on top of garbage lorries for a ride…how I missed it all…
I was startled by my mother’s voice on that fateful day that a bus ran her over along Jogoo road.
“You good for nothing boy, useless braggart, silly pile of flesh” she bellowed and belched emitting the fumes from the cheap liquor she had consumed at the dingy den called “Tufurahi pamoja”. The once shiny silver silk dress hanged precariously on her bony shoulders as the oversized green pumps swayed in the opposite direction as she walked. A former street child herself said, my birth was giving back to the Streets what it had given her.
I woke up from the coma three days ago and I sit on this stiff bed that has held my amputated body for over 90 days, I keep having flash backs of that day behind the bank, my mother’s frail body in the casket at the cemetery and my lost wasted life. I had everything to lose and nothing to gain. The court sentence was just icing on the cake in comparison to the turn my life had taken. A good for nothing 21 year old, whom even death, would not want to reap, not just yet.
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