‘We took up song and dance to help fight crime, drug abuse’

David Ndegwa. (Photo: Wilberforce Okwiri/Standard)

David Ndegwa was in bed when he heard sirens outside his house after midnight. He could hear voices and heavy footsteps walking towards his house. He heard a loud rap followed by an order to open the door.

“I immediately knew it was the police. The way they knocked on the door, it couldn’t be anyone else,” he says. Ndegwa, 20, was intoxicated. He had spent most of the day smoking marijuana and consuming illicit brew – a habit he had picked up after joining a gang in Ruaraka slum, Nairobi. His life had been a calculated hide and seek game with the police, and now they were at his door.