Morgue stay that reformed gangster

By Michael Oriedo

Journeying back into his youth, Kennedy Chingi prays that time erases the sad happenings that characterised his early life.

Chingi counts himself fortunate as he recounts numerous occasions he cheated death while living on the wrong side of the law.

One time during a robbery incident, he says a mob beat him unconscious and he was taken to the City Mortuary where he spent hours with the dead before a morgue attendant discovered he was alive.

"It is a distressing past that I wish I could reverse," says 36-year-old Chingi. "However, I am grateful that I was able to overcome that life."

Easy money

His life in crime began in 1986 when he was a Form One student at Gendia Secondary School in Nyanza Province.

"We were then living in Nairobi’s Huruma Estate. My parents had relocated to the area after my father had been dismissed from the army following the 1982 coup attempt," he recalls. "With friends, we started engaging in petty crime like snatching bags from women."

Having tasted the thrills of easy money, Chingi says he became deeply engrossed in crime. "Sometimes I would sneak away from school and return home so that I can join some of my friends who attended schools in the locality," he says.

However, the fun he derived from crime was cut short in 1988 when police arrested him for stealing.

"I was arraigned in a juvenile court. The magistrate ordered that I stay for two years at Kabete Children’s Home," he narrates.

After completing the period, Chingi says he did not return to his parents’ home. "I joined friends at Ziwani and Majengo area and reverted to crime. We began mugging, pick pocketing and snatching people’s luggage," he recalls.

The gang he belonged to, he says, became very notorious that people started to hunt them down.

"Residents marked us. Some of my accomplices were killed. I migrated back to Huruma," he says.

In Huruma, he constituted another gang and returned to crime. However, this time, he graduated from petty crime.

Death sentence

One day, a security guard tipped them that his employer, a trader, had a huge sum of money that he was going to deposit at a bank.

"The guard told us that the trader had Sh25,000. With my five accomplices, we laid an ambush,’’ he recalls.

Unknown to them, the merchant had informed the police. When they waylaid him, Chingi says police opened fire and shot them. "I was later arraigned at Makadara Law Courts for robbery with violence and sentenced to death," he recalls.

He was incarcerated at Kamiti Maximum Prison in 1991 under the tag 269/91. While in jail, Chingi says fellow inmates helped him to successfully appeal against the death sentence.

"There are very good ‘lawyers’ in prisons," he quips. "Every day, we would study court cases and advice each other. An inmate realised my case was defective. Out of negligence, an officer had recorded in the Occurrence Book that they had arrested me the day when I was released from Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) and not on the day of the crime. These were 23 days later. Also, I had been taken to prison at the age of 17," he says.

On that strength, he won the appeal seven years later and was acquitted on February 5, 1998. However, the sentence did not deter him from crime. He returned to mugging and housebreaking.

In 2004, he got wind that a building contractor had withdrawn Sh200,000 to pay workers.

Luckily, police arrived in time to save them. His accomplices were taken to hospital while his ‘body’ was dumped at the City Mortuary because the officers believed he was dead.

"I was assigned the tag 1261/04. I stayed at the mortuary for hours before an attendant discovered I was still breathing. Mortuary authorities took me to KNH where I stayed for three weeks," he says.

Great temptation

It is while at the hospital that he resolved to change his ways. "To date, I do not believe my brief stay at the morgue was accidental. Someone wanted me to learn a lesson," he says.

When he left the hospital, he relocated to Mathare Slums where he joined One Love, an ex-criminal group engaging in garbage collection in the area.

"We were about 20. We would collect garbage from residents and get money for our upkeep," he says. "However, the temptation of reverting to crime was very high since the money we got was little."

Later, Reality-Tested Youth Group (RYP), an organisation that runs a project aimed at saving youths in the area from life in crime, bought for them uniforms, gloves and gumboots and trained them on how to work resourcefully.

Francis Irungu, RYP’s co-ordinator says Chingi is a reformed man. "We have incorporated his group in our programmes and made him to co-ordinate our environment projects. He is in charge of our store. We also assign him responsibilities to pay other people whenever we engage them in environmental clean up," he says.

Chingi observes that poverty is not the main reason why youths in slums engage in crime. "Many involve in crime because they want to live ‘luxurious’ lives they cannot afford," he says.

In his criminal life, he says he has learnt that crime does not pay. "You get money but because it is not genuine, you squander it on luxurious things. With time, you become enslaved to crime. I am happy that I now live a free life," he concludes.