Gangs II by Ross Kemp

Author:Ross Kemp [Kemp, Ross]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141889740
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-11-15T06:00:00+00:00

5. Kenya

Picture the scene. It’s a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. In a small hut made from corrugated zinc a mother is surrounded by four children. She is not in the rudest health, and nor are her kids. They are all hungry. Their surroundings are poor and none too clean. The grinding poverty they have to endure would turn the stomach of all but the most hardened. But still the children are boisterous, as children will be.

It’s getting late. The kids are becoming more fractious. The mother wants to quieten them down, to make them go to sleep. In another part of the world she might whisper words into their little ears about the bogeyman or some other fiction invented to strike a little harmless fear into the minds of naughty children. But Africa holds enough terrors without having to worry about imaginary ones. Death and disease are commonplace. The children have seen it all. It’s a daily part of their life.

And so the mother resorts to the one threat that she knows will make their tiny hearts skip a beat; she invokes the one name that strikes fear into huge swathes of the Kenyan population, be they children or grown-ups. ‘Be good,’ she tells them, her voice serious. ‘Be good, or the Mungiki man will come and get you…’

This is no made-up scenario. From the slums of Nairobi to the tourist beaches of Mombasa, Kenyan children are urged to behave using that very threat. And being got by the Mungiki, I was told before I arrived in Nairobi, is not something you want to happen. They have a nasty little reputation for cutting off people’s heads, arms and other parts of their anatomy. All in all, they make the Sandman sound like a pussycat.

The Mungiki, I was sure, would not take too kindly to being called a gang. They believe they have a higher calling than that. A divine calling, and a political mission. And yet the stories I had heard about them were grisly to say the least. Stories of protection rackets, extortion and extremely violent murder – the stock-in-trade of gangs around the world. Stories of a gang that strikes fear into the heart of the Kenyan population and that the government will go to almost any lengths to stamp out.

Before I flew to Kenya, I had no idea how close we would be able to get to the Mungiki; from the stories I had heard, I wasn’t sure how close I wanted to get. What I didn’t expect, however, was that we would arrive in this stricken country at one of the most turbulent times the gang had ever faced; I didn’t expect to be admitted into the heart of a secretive sect, to be shown things that no camera had ever been allowed to film; and I didn’t expect people I was there to investigate to end up dead before it was time for us to go home.

But Africa is like that. Violent. Volatile. Unpredictable.

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