In the crosshairs of terror: A first-hand experience as told by Musyoka Ngui

In the crosshairs of terror: A first-hand experience as told by Musyoka Ngui

December 2011.Being new in college was a bittersweet experience. We were the pilot batch of double intake. The pilot project was on the runway and about to take off.

We flocked the new college eager to learn anyway. But it was crowded and muddy. Resilient, we did not give up when we learnt at the eleventh hour that the resident hostels were full and the nearby non-resident hostels were fully booked. The only place we could get hostels was eight kilometers away. It was a hustle. Kibugua was far from Chuka. The college bus subsidized our transport by dropping and picking us each day of the weekday. It charged only KES. 30 as opposed to the matatu price of KES.100.

And so during the weekends we were idle. We ate, read and slept. We could roam the village, admire fertile fields under crops and occasionally visit comrades.

Being a journalist student, I had a natural knack for reading. I engrossed myself in newspapers: filled crossword puzzles read features and occasionally wrote simple stories to benchmark against practicing media writers. In my usual reading I stumbled upon an advert about the youth in the Daily Nation’s Zuqka pullout. It called for the young people to submit essays for consideration by an international NGO. It also dangled the carrot of award money for the finalists. The overall winner was to get KES. 120 000 while first and second runners ups to pocket KES. 100,000 and 500,000 respectively.

This being Kenya I was careful not to take the ad as gospel truth. I thought it was a gimmick or scam. Of the five questions posed I chose the one dealing with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). I researched, wrote, drafted, compiled and delivered my submissions by hand. I was going to my alma mater and dropped at Nairobi’s Parklands where the head offices of Amkeni Wakenya are located in Mayfair Suite building. The receptionist gladly showed me the box full of brown envelops and I dropped mine and forgot. To say I stood a chance to be considered let alone to win was an nth possibility given I did not know anybody.

I made my submissions on January 11 2012-a Wednesday. I was upbeat and confident that I had reached thus far.

The first quarter of 2012 found me eager to try my hands on something charitable. I wanted to volunteer just for experience. When an international NGO called German Agro Action (GAA) and an Italian one CESVI recruited me to assist them in researching about mother and child nutrition health in our district I kept myself busy. We travelled to far flung villages by Land Rovers measuring the babies’ heights and weights as well as dispensing them nutrition tablets and some pasty concoctions in sachets.

When we were through with the research we gave out our findings to the Project Coordinator. In return the two organizations tipped us with KES. 8000 for lending them our time. The little cash would come in handy during the dry semester of May- August.

I received an unusual email from the Youth Agenda, Amkeni Wakenya and the UNDP. You know that they were informing me that they had shortlisted candidates for consideration following their participation in the international essay writing competition. I was not getting the drift until I remembered it has been six months since I submitted my essay. But I wondered why they wanted my ID and passport photo. They claimed they wanted to create a profile to ascertain they were dealing with an authentic person and not a robot. I was reluctant since there was no guarantee that I was not being duped. I did not want to appear gullible. I called my parents and friends who congratulated me. However, I warned them that it was too early to celebrate and it was important to keep my options open for anything.

In the meantime I did what I do best: studying for my degree. I kept tabs on the Lady Luck email. I crossed my fingers that all was well and it was not kidnapers fattening me for slaughter at a remote human trafficking center.  

The semester was not exactly hard. In fact, it was brief and sealed the diminutive tag of being a fresher. I wanted to be done with the first year like now if not yesterday.

We lived in the future. Not because we had promises to live up to. We just did not have any information to make sound decisions. It was uncertainty.  I booked a hostel near the main campus just in case we were to return for the September –December academic half year. It was not to be. When the university kept silent about the whole issue of reporting back we played along. We accepted a second long holiday and focused on making lemonade from the lemon. We did not complain. We understood.

When I finished high school I had made certain contacts in the village community school I taught Kiswahili, Biology and Business Studies.

I called the principal but she regretted she did not have the vacancy and in any case she had replaced me. To flog a dead horse, she warned me that she was in a “high profile” meeting and common sense should tell me that I should call later. I hanged the phone and heaved a heavy sigh of resigned relief.

What about my alma mater? Did they have anything for their son? Help came from an unlikely source. There was this young teacher who taught us Chemistry and Physics and was “saved”. We hated him with passion for “selling” us to the deputy whenever we sneaked from the school to go and buy maandazi.

He told me that he had a contact at a sister school and he could link me up. It was a no strings attached deal that left me ashamed for thinking he did not mean well for us during our stint at the boys’ school. I thanked him profusely.

Not only did I find a vacancy but also found a spot for my pet subject: English and Literature. The principal trusted me to steer the forth formers to the KCSE as I was better placed since I was fresh from high school and the set books were the same. I was glad to help the young girls analyze various works of fiction. I demystified to them the plots, characters, characterization and the highlighted themes. This gave the principal enough time to deal with monos that were lagging behind in syllabus coverage. When the results came out the girls did not disappoint.

On October 26, 2012 I reported to work early since I was on duty. It was on a Friday. The teacher on duty must ensure that students take breakfast early, attend morning classes, clean the compound and assemble for the parade on schedule. I did all that religiously. There was no hitch. Things ran like clockwork. I had an 8 o’clock class that was a double. 80 minutes is not something you go freestyle without prior preparation. I gave the candidates plenty of revision questions and set at the back to watch them tackle. We later revised the questions. I left homework as usual and walked to the staffroom.

No sooner had I entered than Ms. Kalani told me I had some calls to return and perhaps some SMSs to write. The calls were from a fixed number. The landline was persistent but on hitting the 13^th dial it gave up. I had this intuition that it was an urgent matter. To compound the worry, I had not checked my email for a whole one month.

Lucky, I had enough airtime to return the calls. When my colleagues realized I was nervous they consoled me and advised me to take breakfast first.  One served me tea and the other maandazis. I helped myself.

I rang the number. The other end was hesitant.  The dialing was taking longer than usual. I held on. It was a gent on the other end. He was soft-spoken. “I am here at Panari Hotel with the other finalists and I can’t see you. Are you held up in a jam or what?” I was lost. I enquired where he works. He said it was Amkeni Wakenya. He urged me to hurry up and catch up with the other participants at the awards gala that evening at Sarova Stanley.

I explained my predicament to the Deputy Principal. She was categorical that it was not yet end month even though it was only four days shy. However, the kind mother she was she gave me KES. 1500 for the transport to Nairobi. She also granted me permission plus a two day off. What more could one ask? It was dream come true. The weekend was beckoning. I could not resist.

I hurriedly rushed to my rented apartments and stuffed clothes for the trip even without having a vehicle in sight. From Kyuso to Mwingi is dusty and potholed. Corrugations on the earthen floor are like ribs. They shatter the windows of the vehicles and shake the loose seats. Woe unto a traveler who sleeps in such a rough terrain. They are rudely awakened by a smash on a metallic frame on the rusted wall of the vehicle. The buses are crammed, overloaded and lack breathing space. Being only at 10am all the buses had madly rushed to Mwingi and would come back starting 1pm. It was a transport system that requires one to wake up early to catch the bus and if they are not lucky they postpone the journey.

No way was I to call of my trip. I hired a bodaboda and rode to the main road. I reached the tarmacked Mwingi-Garissa road at 1pm. The sun was scorching and I was hungry too. When the bus pulled up at the Tawfiq Supermarket I grabbed a bottle of water and gulped. I bought biscuits and yoghurt and returned to the bus.

The driver had a short temper. He was impatient and a sizeable number of passengers were left at Mwingi. One could not help but notice the high number of new entrants who replaced those who had disembarked.

Just before we reached the bridge near Kanginga Academy the driver stopped. Some more people were ushered on board. Allegedly, they had a sack and some briefcases.

The touts ensured that everybody paid up within the first leg of the journey. The vehicle cruised like a bullet. It was christened Zafex. There were many Somalis, Kambas, Chinese expats as well as Ethiopians and Somalia Somalis. There were children too. I cannot quantity the number of loads on the corridor of the bus but they were many enough to cause a stampede if anything happened.

I sat near the driver, two rows of seat away. It did not take long before we arrived at Matuu. There was a long yellow spiky road block mounted by the officers. On either side of the road they stood brandishing guns and pistols. The conductors alight. After talking to the traffic police, they differed irreconcilably.  We were under arrest. We were ordered to disembark. All adults alight save for the elderly and children. The queues were long and searches thorough. Others suggestive and utterly inappropriate. We were head counted and found to be in excess.

The police suspected that the remnants in the bus were hiding something. Despite the pleas by the crew to have the marginalized inside the bus, the boots prevailed upon them and everybody was out. We were ordered to produce our national IDs and passports. Men and women were on different lines. Curiously, there was not even one lady officer to frisk the women. All of us were dusted by mean policemen. Suspects started coming out of the woodwork. Some immigrants lacked IDs while others bore expired passports. Still forged documents were netted. We had a case to answer. The police were not convinced that we were clean. “Into the bus”, was the order and we complied like machines.

We were driven express to Matuu Police Station. There, we found more police officers in different uniform and with rifles of different firepower. Other police officers were plain clothed. Time was ticking towards 3pm.

This time round we were ordered to alight with our luggage and stand in line with the luggage for inspection. I called my parents and recounted them my fate that had engulfed me. My mother was particularly worried and every ten minutes she would call me and ask whether I was safe.

I called Amkeni Wakenya. They got tired of me and did not pick my call. I texted their landline only to learn the hard way that SMSs do not travel by Telkom masts. Lastly I called my cousin in Nairobi and furnished him with the details of my email so that he may update me and in case I do not make it he represent me. Unsurprisingly, the police had no issue with the Kambas and other ethnic Bantus and Nilotes but were particularly critical with the Cushites. Entrenched stereotypes were blinding them to turn a blind eye on some communities and target others in the fight of the war on terror.

Our luggage took longer than usual. The sun was descending to the horizon faster. I gathered courage and stood up to the OCPD. I informed him that I had a gala to attend that fateful Friday night and it was important that I attend in person. He would hear none of it. He threatened to shoot me and told me off that I should go back to the bus and stay with my fellow terror suspects. He said we will be taken to court on Monday. That meant we were to spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday in police custody, a euphemism for police cells.

The horror of horrors emerged when a small box was left in the boot unclaimed. The police asked for the owner but everybody shied away from identifying with it. The Pandora box flew open. Wah! Homemade explosives! Everybody was shocked. The bus was en route Eastleigh . Question is who was the target and why.

I saw two police officers fire at a target on close range. I later learnt they were rehearsing how they will shoot us if we acted out of orders. We lined up again for another exercise. We did not know which.

By this time the bomb experts had arrived from Thika and Nairobi. The military was sniffing. The media took us photos and also shot the bus. Finally the dark night swallowed us like a large whale. I was alone. As we were on the queue I saw someone who dressed like he was educated. He had official wear and shining black shoes. I greeted him. He told me he was a teacher from Dadaab Refugee Camp and he was going to Nairobi. I told him I was a student teacher at Kyuso Girls’ Secondary School. We exchanged educated jokes to release the tension of the sad situation we were riveted in.

The security agents wanted to detonate the bomb but thought otherwise. Maybe they thought they would kill the evidence they had against us suspects. They nicely sealed the deadly box and put it away. All this time we were standing. Children cried of pangs of hunger while others vomited. The elderly were wasted and laid on the ground. We were told to remove our simcards from the handset, put a sticker on either and surrender our gadgets to the gluttonous officers “to assist in investigations”. Our phones were confiscated just like that without a question. That turned out to be the last time I set my eyes on my phone.

We were led into a building which was high and closed. We walked past the police offices up to the back. There was high perimeter wall which was fenced by razor -sharp wires ready to electrocute any breakaway.

We started to record statements immediately. Women were given the first priority. The Somalis spoke Somali Kambas Kamba and foreigners watched as Kenyans divided along ethnic lines. Only police communicated to us in broken Swahili. I enquired from one Ethiopian family whether they understood Swahili. They gave an emphatic no. We talked in English. It was a family of four: a mother, a daughter, another daughter, and a son. They were black as South Sudanese- something I admired in this Africa were plastic surgery and skin corrosion with cyanide, mercury and other heavy metals have taken a life of their own. We became great friends with the boy. He told me they came to Kenya when they were young fleeing war, lived in Dadaab for some time and now they were going to Nairobi. He was worried that his alien passport was to expire in three years and he was not ready to go back to Ethiopia. He wanted to stay in Kenya.

At this time, the interrogation was heated. We could eavesdrop police detectives shouting at the suspects, suspects denying vehemently and utter noise ensuing the juggle way.

The hygiene was deteriorating. We shared toilets Christians and Muslims, children and adults, Kenyans and foreigners. I got an up-close and personal preview of how Muslims observed strict sanitary hygiene by bathing their bowels every time they had a long call of nature. Mothers helped children right before everyone. Children continued to cry for food. Some were suckled by their mothers. Others were tucked under hijabs and slept hungry.

I prayed with eyes open. I said “Why God? Why Me? Why Now?” I did not get an answer but believed God was doing something. His ways are mysterious and beyond human understanding.

Muslims washed feet and bowed to pray for all of us.

At around 4am it was my turn to face the detectives. They were three officers. I did an oral interview first. The lead questioner was friendly and keen. He asked me to recount my ordeal up to now. I brought him up to speed faster than faiba. He asked me about the major loading, departure and movement of the passengers. I was not helping him. He gave me a paper to summarize what I had said. I littered the foolscap with ink. He read through and stamped. He even had a chit chat with me. I was shaking. He wanted to know why I could not keep still. My teeth were gnashing. I told him it was the weather.

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”

“Do you know the owner of the abandoned luggage?”

“No afande!”

“What do you do?”

“I am a journalism student on holiday teaching at a local community school.”

“Good.”

“Thanks.”

“Call the next suspect.”

“Ok. Thank you.”

Saturday daybreak. The police allowed vendors to come and sell newspapers, snacks and tea. I bought a Daily Nation. It ran a story about our bus. It even broke the news about the suspects alleged to be the masterminds of the grenade. I did not know that yet I was mingling with them for the last 18 hours.

The police were far from being done with us. We were to be taken passport photos and imprint our fingerprints. It was a tedious process of decoding the DNA of the terrorist criminals. The non Kenyan Somalis were separated from us by way of looking at their immunization on the left elbow. Most refugees, it was alleged, were not immunized for TB and such it was a walk in the park to spot them. My good Ethiopian friend was taken away from me.

Later I learned that the driver and the touts were charged in court for allowing their vehicle to carry weapons. I do not know the fate of the suspects the police zeroed in on but I saw some being taken back to Mwingi, allegedly beaten up and allegedly forced to accept they were the chemical engineers of the grenade. I lost track of the case ever since.

At 11am the grenade was detonated by the military. It shook the earth and deafened ears. The bus was still in the custody of the police. The owners were there too.

I admired the immense brotherhood of the Somali families and leaders. Somali imams and sheikhs visited the affected passengers all the way from Garissa and Nairobi. They brought foodstuffs, water and money. They helped everybody. They distributed cakes to us and made sure that no one was not chewing. They wore white caps engraved mosques. Others donned white kanzus and brown ones. They drove expensive fuel guzzlers- the kind that Uhuru recalled from Cabinet Ministers because they were high maintenance liabilities.

Finally we were released at around 6pm Saturday. The core suspects were left to rot there. While at the station I saw strange things: chicken thieves, wizards, violent robbers, charmers and those who swore they were innocent souls. All of them had an untold story.

The police declined to give back our phones until after two weeks. Those interested were to pick their gadgets form Zafex Company offices at Eastleigh. I gave up mine. Fellow victims and survivors boarded back the same Zafex after being freed but I took an entirely different path. I walked with my two numb feet to Matuu town and begged an MPESA operator to assist me with his phone so that I at least call home. I had the numbers on my fingertips.

That evening I went to Nairobi by matatu and found my cousin had represented me well and in fact I was number one in my category and the first overall. I was amazed. I was so happy. I pocketed KES. 120,000 because of the power of my pen. The pen had thrashed the gun. Indeed the pen is mightier than the gun. I invested the money wisely and do not regret never attending the star-studded awards gala at Sarova Stanley Hotel where Eric Omondi talked passionately and comically about Musyoka Ngui he only saw on a Magic Wall beaming with grace.

Thank you God for preserving us, thanks Amkeni Wakenya, Youth Agenda and UNDP for believing in the Kenyan youth and investing in them.

I have hung the commemorative plaque in my bedroom to remind me of my triumph, my encounter with the State security agents fighting the Al-Shabaab. The laptop I am typing away with is a fruit of the sad chapter I would want to forget. The second year fees I paid for myself and that immortalized the effort of my willingness to remember and never take the peace we enjoy for granted lest we learn the lessons the hard way-through experience, that ruthless teacher.

The writer is a 3^rd year student of Bachelors of Arts Degree in Communication and Media at Chuka University. He also blogs at musyokangui.blogspot.com