They left a gun in my car! Chilling confessions of Taxi drivers

 The confessions are chilling Photo: Courtesy

In the dead of the night, Nairobi lays deep in slumber, as calm and quiet engulf the vacant city streets, evidence that it chooses to turn a blind eye to the creatures of the night that have just come out to play.

On the flipside of town, Ken Kamau, a taxi driver, is having a hard time trying to explain to the men in blue how he is in possession of an unlicensed gun.

He is tongue-tied and just can’t get the right words to explain how three men he had just dropped off at Juja town from Kileleshwa, had left behind a weapon that could see him put behind bars for a very long time.

To the police, all this sounds like a movie script but as Kamau confesses, for a taxi driver each day comes with its intrigues such being robbed, drunk married women demanding that you to prove your manliness and some clients opting to pay in kind.

Using the cab as a getaway car

The last thing any cab driver would imagine is driving thugs to or from a heist. It’s bad for business as much as it is bad business.

Kamau was recently embroiled in gun drama after three of his clients left a gun behind that he suspects had been used to commit a robbery.

“I recently picked up three guys at Kileleshwa and took them to Juja town. Throughout the ride, the three men kept bragging of how much money they made in one night and I could even hear them argue of how they would split the Sh170,000.

I think they got carried away and must have forgotten the gun,” says the cabbie. He confesses that he only chose to report the case to the police after he started getting threating calls demanding that he returns the gun or end up dead.

Converting the taxi into a lodging

Kamau says this is arguably the most common occurrence at night, so much so that he chooses to turn a blind eye. “Just last weekend, a couple paid me to drive them from Westlands to town but before we could even get there I could hear moans and groans coming from the back seat.

Looking from the rear view mirror, I could see the two embroiled in a passionate war of the flesh, oblivious of whether I was in the car.

This is no longer new to me and I usually just charge them extra,” says Kamau adding that some of his colleagues offer to be on the lookout as clients engage in their steamy pleasures and will charge them Sh2,000.

Cabbies colluding with clients to drug and rob other clients

“It is not once or twice that I have made a cool Sh10, 000 from one of my regular clients in South B. She is a very beautiful girl that is admired by many and she uses her beauty to seduce the high and mighty in the city.

Whenever she calls, I know I am about to get rich,” says an elated Kamau.

He tells of how his cab is used to drop the girl at the meeting point and later come pick her up. By this time, the lady he refers to as Halima has already drugged the ‘Funga’ and they pretend to be taking the guy home.

That story usually ends with the guy waking up in a lodging with nothing but his boxers and a hang down ‘loud’ enough to kill an elephant.

Married women opting to pay in kind

At the stroke of midnight, it’s like the devil awakens and drunk married women want you to ‘prove you are man enough’.

Kamau says that a number of his night clients are married women who like his services because they are ‘thorough’. He says that they usually insist on paying once they get home because they need the ‘cabby’s’ assistance in one way or another. “I once took a lady who was in her mid-forties home and on getting to her court in Highrise, she invited me in for a drink as she got money from her bedroom.

Moments later, she came out in her birthday suit and demanded that ‘I finish the job’ so that she could pay me handsomely for services rendered. All this while, I kept wondering, “What if the man of the house comes in?”

Cab being used as a conduit for clandestine affairs

“Dunia ina mambo!” (Wonders never cease) asserts Lewis better known as ‘Njoro’ as he gives away details of how he picks up a businessman’s wife and drops her to her other house at Kiambu road, which she has secretly rented out for her young campus student.

He says that he does the pick-ups at least thrice a month and mostly it’s usually the husband who pays for the cab charges. “I am here to make money so I can’t really tell on the wife because she also pays me to keep quiet and wait on her as she goes about her business.

 In a month I can make Sh30, 000,” emphasises the cabbie as a smile plasters itself on his face.

Cab being converted into a changing room

“I pick up young girls in their mid-twenties from Wednesdays to Fridays and most of them live with their relatives so they have to sneak out.

This means that I have to bring them back home before dawn. There is one who is notorious for getting stark naked while changing at the back of my car which can be very tempting at times”

He says that he once got into a confrontation with the brother of one of the girls who lives in Donholm after he was seen dropping her home after a night out.

“He probably thought I was her sponsor and almost beat me up. The girl would leave her buibui in the car and put on a skimpy outfit on her way to the club,” confesses Njoro.

Clients blacking out before paying

Drivers have a hard time trying to wake up clients that are too drunk to even know where they are going.

Njoro says that he is at times forced to take them to lodgings where he books them a room and checks up on them the following morning. “I don’t understand how you get that wasted and entrust your life to a total stranger yet you are in possession of all your valuables including of jewellery, cash and ATM cards,” says Njoro.