By Lilian Aluanga-Delvaux

NAIROBI, KENYA: Most boys his age would be dreaming about girls, parties, college and fun stuff to do over their weekends. And if they came from a remote village in Northern Kenya, like he did, they may have fantasies about seeing the world.

But 17-year-old Ekiru* only dreams of one thing: Returning to family and friends in the village where he spent his childhood herding cattle.

There is no chance of that, though, until he is an adult and completes a three-year committal for killing a friend two years ago.

Ekiru was only 15 when he was committed to the Wamumu Rehabilitation School in Kirinyaga County. He had no prior brushes with the law and says his crime was a tragic accident.

“I feel bad about what happened, but it wasn’t my fault even though everybody blamed me for it and said I should be punished,” he says.

Ekiru’s account of events begins with one evening when he was returning home with a group of friends after a long day in the grazing fields. Among the items Ekiru carried was an AK-47 rifle, but he offers little information on how he got it or whether he knew how to use the gun. However, he says having such a weapon is not strange for boys his age in that part of the country.

“There is always the chance of running into cattle rustlers so we must be ready to defend ourselves,” he says.

His voice falls into a whisper, his shoulders hunch forward and his left eye shows traces of a tear as he continues his story.

Darkness was fast setting in as the group headed home. At some point, one of his friends asked to check out his rifle. Unknown to Ekiru, the safety lever was off. As he reached for the gun it went off and killed his friend.

Security expert Captain (Rtd) Simiyu Werunga says it is possible for such a rifle to  discharge accidentally and such cases have been reported among the uniformed forces. He says: “When the safety lever is off, any disturbance to the gun makes it easy for the weapon to discharge. If it were pointing at someone, then they would become a casualty.”

When it became obvious that efforts to save the wounded boy were fruitless, the other herders turned on Ekiru and accused him of murder.

Within hours he was bundled off to the nearest police station where his pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears. Subsequent efforts between his family and the deceased’s to settle the matter out of court resolved that the accused pay 200 cows as compensation.

Punched him

“My mother was willing to pay because she believed me when I told her what happened was an accident,” Ekiru says. But he claims a ‘person of great influence’ he thinks was related to the victim opposed compensation and insisted he faces the full force of the law.

“I was later taken to court. I think I was supposed to have a lawyer represent me but I never saw him,” says Ekiru. “I did not understand much of what was being said there except that I would be taken to a far off place where I would stay for three years. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me.”

Perhaps because of the circumstances of the killing, Ekiru was spared life imprisonment at one of the country’s three borstals –Shimo la Tewa (Kilifi County), Shikutsa (Kakamega) and Kamiti Youth Corrective Training Centre (Kiambu). He was sent to Wamumu, the best known of two-dozen-or-so youth detention centres used to house non-violent juvenile offenders. Known as “rehabilitation centres” or “remand homes”, and run by the Children Services Department, they handle about 4,000 youth offenders a year.  Francis*, also aged 17, has a different story. He has been at Wamumu since 2010 and has less than six months to complete his term. His story begins with frequent taunts from a village bully, also a teenager.

“I asked him several times to stop picking on me,” he says. “He would make fun of me all the time and I hated it. We got into a fight one day. I punched him in the head and a few hours later he died.

His family said I must also die or be locked up for the rest of my life.”

Every year, hundreds of children are committed to rehabilitation centres for offences ranging from murder (sometimes reduced to the lesser charge of manslaughter), robbery and even defilement of other minors. According to a worker at Wamumu, the detention is as much for their protection as it is punishment for the crime. In most cases, children accused of crimes like murder are considered safer at such centres than in their homes.

“Families against whom a serious crime (like murder) is committed are often bitter and seek revenge,” he says. “In some cases, they have sought to kill the offender. Taking the child away from that environment for some time helps cool tempers.”

But even he admits that at some point the child offenders will have to return home where the greater challenge of reintegration into an often-hostile community must be confronted.

While Ekiru and Francis deny culpability in the offences that saw them sent to rehabilitation centres (previously known as approved schools) others like Steven*, 14, openly confesses to an early life in crime, nurtured in a sprawling settlement that is notorious for such activity in Nairobi’s Eastlands area.

“I stole and even carried guns for criminals to earn some money,” he says. “But I have stopped all that now.”

All names have been changed to protect the children’s identities.