How two young men escaped death

The two young brothers – aged approximately eight and 10 years old – would have been dead by now. Their deaths would have been blamed on a road accident. But, if truth be told, their deaths would have been caused by Covid-19, albeit indirectly.

One evening this week, minutes before the curfew commenced, after I finished browsing at my local cyber café, I took the route going the opposite direction from my house. This is unlike me; I like being home tens of minutes before the set time for the curfew. But, for some strange reason, not this day.

The roundabout at Donholm/Greenspan Road in Nairobi is a death trap. When I take my daughter to school in the morning, I have to make sure she has safely crossed the road before I head back home. At this death trap, no vehicles – private, school buses or PSVs – take the roundabout.  Motorcycle taxis – who are a law unto themselves – also treat the roundabout as if it doesn’t exist.

Last evening, as the minutes ticked to the curfew, I went and stood at this very spot where I bid my daughter goodbye on school mornings. But this time, I was watching Kenyans peculiar habit of trying to beat the curfew.

Just then, a saloon car – which, of course, did not go round the roundabout – was involved in an accident with a motorcycle taxi. The boda boda shattered the left light of the saloon.

The boda boda rider was in the right, but he fled the scene of the accident.

Nothing happens just for the sake of it. A couple of minutes later, I knew why I was at this place at this prohibited time: it was because of the two little brothers. I love my joints. I cannot risk being out, and risk being clubbed almost to disability by power-drunk cops who never see a civilian’s joint that they don’t want to rearrange. But here I was.

I noticed the two little brothers, who wore identical jumpers, just as they dashed from the roundabout, and onto the side of the road where I was. We were separated by a huge trench, which is always clogged during the rainy season and gives my daughter a hard time crossing it. 

The two little brothers were hand-in-hand, as they dashed across the road. The curfew was approaching. I think this made them anxious. As they dashed across, a car almost hit them.

After they crossed, I overheard from a conversation that the two brothers had been sent to get a parcel from a young man who was standing on the side of the road.

The man gave the boys a parcel. But not before berating them. “You should rush home because the curfew is almost starting and if the cops find you out, you’ll be in trouble,” he said.  

Just what children need to hate. Police officers.

Even before the two boys could cross the busy road, the man jumped into a matatu that had stopped to pick up passengers at that same spot, which was going to Kayole.

When the grownup ran to avoid getting into trouble with the law and left the two children at the mercy of mad Nairobi drivers, I knew why I was really there. To intercede for those two beautiful souls.

I prayed for those two little boys like they were my own. I prayed that no harm would come to them. I prayed that their families would be spared grief.

This time round, when they dashed across the road, they didn’t hold hands. Maybe – just maybe – that saved them. But they nearly became another statistic of deaths caused, indirectly, by Covid-19.

An Embassava matatu, which had snubbed the roundabout, missed the younger kid by a whisker. He was the last to dash. Instincts got the better of him, and he followed his brother, without looking where he was going … or what was coming.

When this pandemic is over, the number of deaths it will have caused, indirectly, will be substantial. So help us God.