Chief Kombo felt betrayed by Simon. Even after Zuena spoke to him on Simon’s behalf, he remained angry at Simon who he felt had abandoned his daughter days after they had tied the knot. Deep in his heart he wanted to take action that would ensure Simon and others like him did not engage in extremist activities. But he was also in a dilemma because Simon was not just any other person; he was his son-in-law.
Betrayed by Ayub Mwangi
Simon felt lost. The dimly lit room added to his confusion.
A glance at the small crumpled-up bed that he had lain on for the last one week made his back ache. Bile climbed up his throat as the stench that emanated from the bucket half full with his own mess wafted through the room. His life was equally a mountain of mess and he was not sure what would become of him. He heard heavy footsteps outside the room. When he peeped through the pigeon hole window, he could make out images of people who looked like policemen. Had his day of freedom come or this would be his end?
He had agreed to being holed up in this squalid room after his Zuena insisted that the best way to get out of his situation was to involve the police. It had taken hours of persuasion to convince Simon to take up the government’s offer, a government which he was vehemently opposed to, a government that neither represented his interests nor those of many others like him.
“What recourse do I have? Either way I’m screwed,” he thought before biting the bullet.
Simon swore to himself that he would not have taken the offer if Zuena, the adorable love of his life and the mother of his unborn child, had not been involved.
This was his seventh day in hiding since he fled from a training camp in Kajiado in the outskirts of Nairobi. How he gathered the courage to bolt out of the camp remained a mystery to him. “Whatever happens, happens. I would rather die and be buried by my mother rather than die in the battlefield and be eaten by vultures,” Simon had told himself as he hatched an elaborate plan to extricate himself from friends he had trusted with his life but had betrayed him. The desire to take care of his aging mother and Zuena’s pregnancy had pushed him towards taking a decision that the trainers had warned would result in death by a single bullet into the head.
Luhyas from western Kenya, Simon’s parents had migrated to the coastal region when his father was employed as a farm hand at the collapsed Ramisi Sugar Factory, later moving to Tiwi village, to work in the nearby quarries and it was there, twenty-four years ago, in the sleepy Tiwi village on the border between Kwale and Mombasa County, that Simon Wafula had been born. Simon attended Tiwi primary school where his love for football blossomed at an early age. He had also followed in the footsteps of his older brother, Liberty who was a talented footballer. By the time he was leaving primary school, Simon had already become a notable player who was awarded a soccer scholarship by Mombasa Baptist Secondary School.
Simon’s ambition was to one day play for one of the leading clubs in the European top leagues and he was certain that it would happen one day. The gates to play in Europe seemed to be swinging open when he finished high school and was enlisted to play for SimbaFC, the premier club and talk of the town in Kisauni. The team’s footballing prowess had seen it maul all the other clubs in the county and beyond. Word on the street was that the team would soon join the first division of the national league if it continued playing like it did. Much of the credit was given to Simon, whose offensive skills had seen him score more than twenty goals within the few months that he had joined the club.
“You are a natural. Your skills match any professional footballer and I would like to see you advance them,” Coaches praised Simon. The club’s coach was known by only one name—Coaches. He even went further to discreetly reward Simon for his football skills and they soon became the best of friends. Simon was elated. Not only did the money come in handy ensuring that he could now buy medicine for his aging and ailing mother, it also meant that there was someone who had noticed his talent and was even willing to go the extra mile to make sure he succeeded. They soon became the best of friends.
One thing bothered Simon though. No one really knew where Coaches had come from. He lived alone in a big house that would have fitted any big family and he also seemed to have a fountain of funds that never ran dry. Simon was also bothered that Coaches did not engage in any other occupation except coaching. Simba FC, a local estate club, did not have a corporate sponsor or the kind of resources that could justify the opulence Coaches lived in.
“I am passionate about the lives of local youth and I just use my connections locally and abroad to raise funds for Simba FC,” Coaches would curtly explain whenever asked about his source of funding.
“You can come learn more in my house,” Coaches told Simon. Despite the nagging question that kept lingering in Simon’s head, he felt beholden to Coaches and decided to throw caution to the wind. He began to join a group of three other footballers to watch European matches at Coaches’s house. After matches, the group would enter into lengthy and sometimes heated discussions about unemployment, discrimination and marginalization of non-indigenous people; issues which seemed to expand Simon’s understanding of what was happening around him. He became angry that in spite of people taking to the ballot every five years, politicians did not seem to care. One evening, he erupted. “If I had a weapon, I would kill all the Members of Parliament!”
Unknown to him, this pleased Coaches. The older man was inwardly delighted that the seeds of discontentment that he had planted in Simon and the other boys had started to germinate. He soon doubled the pocket money he gave them, and promised the boys a trip to Nairobi where, he said, they would be turned into better footballers and even earn more for their work. This was exciting to Simon, but he had a problem. His girlfriend was pregnant.
“What do we do?” Zuena asked Simon one Tuesday evening when they were alone together.
“If my father learns about this, he will kick me out.” At this point, she was three months pregnant. Her father was Chief Kombo, the chief of Tiwi.
“Give me time to figure out a solution.”
“I don’t think I want to keep the pregnancy.”
“Zuena, I am ready to marry you.”
The 22 year old had been Simon’s girlfriend for the last one year. His biggest supporter, she never missed any of his matches. Simon felt that his success wasn’t just from his talent alone but due to Zuena. Zuena was the fuel that powered his engine, and having her in the crowd always gave him the drive to play harder. She was an ardent football fan and they had met during a party that was thrown to celebrate Simba FC’s success. When his eyes set on Zuena, he briefly felt his head spin. Her perfect round face, accentuated by tiny dimples and large round eyes, made blood flow in all parts of his body. Talking and laughing revealed milky white teeth gapped teeth capable of stopping the whole world. Her presence lingered in the air long after she had left a room. Imagining having her by his side made his heart race. Simon could feel the accompanying throb under his trousers and he knew that he had become Zuena’s captive. He set out on a mission to win her. “I must score this goal, “ He told himself.
At first, she refused to see him.
“What would a daughter of a chief have to do with the son of a quarry worker?”
“I may have nothing to offer you, but one thing that I am sure of is that I love you, Zuena.”
“My father will not approve of our affair.”
“Give me time and I will convince him that I am the best thing for you.”
Soon, Zuena was accompanying Simon to watch football matches and engage in discussions at Coaches’ house. Even though she was the daughter of a government chief—the people who, according to Coaches, had milked the government cow dry—Zuena seemed to have a grasp of the issues facing local people. She was livid at the fact that local youth suffered many forms of injustices. Like the boys, she was also bitter that the coastal region had suffered from historical injustices regarding land and employment, and had never been fully embraced by the national government.
“You see, now that they have moved the port from Mombasa to Naivasha, what are the people of Mombasa who depend on the port for a living supposed to do?” She added that this seemed like a well-orchestrated plan to kill the economy of Mombasa.
Simon was surprised and shaken by Zuena’s boldness. Being the daughter of a chief, he had expected her to support the government which had given her father a job, a vehicle and round-the-clock security. She should also have been bitter after her father survived an attempt on his life by a group of suspected criminals who accused him of siding with the enemy. Seeing Zuena strongly defend her positions, Simon fell in love with her even more.
That night, they made love for the first time.
“I love you, baby,” Simon whispered to Zuena’s ear. “I will do anything; anything to make sure you are mine for life.” He wiped a bead of sweat off his brow.
“I love you too,” Zuena panted.
From that day onwards, life made sense to Simon. He not only acquired a new lease of life, he developed a new gait that made him spring with confidence. Whenever he scored he would always run to the corner where Zuena, his source of assurance and promise, was. He would join his thumbs and index fingers together to make a heart sign. He would then blow kisses to Zuena. “I did it for you baby!”
Simon was most delighted that his mother had started reaping the fruits of his labour. He was on a mission to be of value unlike his older brother, who although a talented football player had turned to drugs and was now a teja, a drug addict. Simon was determined to turn his mother’s life around as a way of appreciating her for the sacrifices she had made to bring up four children—Simon, his brother Liberty, and his two sisters, Doris and Kitty. Elizabeth Naliaka, who was now in her late forties, had been widowed young. Twenty years ago, her husband, Joram Ifeza, had died from tuberculosis shortly after developing chest complications. The doctors said that it was exacerbated by the dust from the quarries where he worked, breaking rocks. From then on, Elizabeth Naliaka had taken on the mantle of bringing up her children with a fervour and vigour never seen before. Being the father and mother of her children, she had worked tooth and nail to ensure that her children had a decent education and did not work the quarries like their father had. With things not turning out well for Liberty, she had laid all her hopes in Simon.
“I pray for you every day,” a frail looking Naliaka whose aging was now being accelerated by her failing health condition told Simon one Sunday morning.
So when Simon told his mother that he was going away to Nairobi for a few months so that he could learn and earn, she was not opposed to the idea. Simon was however bothered by his mother’s health condition and when he expressed the reservations, Coaches gave him the assurance that he would be home soon to continue taking care of her.
“In the meantime, you can take this to her,” Coaches handed him a wad of notes totaling Kshs 50,000. “Tell her you will be sending more while in training.”
On the other hand, Simon got into a heated argument with Zuena.
“I will be going to Nairobi for further training.”
“I also wanted to let you know that I have missed my periods. I think I am pregnant.”
“What?”
“Yes. And I do not intend to keep the pregnancy.”
“Please….”
“No.”
“Listen to me… I am ready to do anything for you. Whatever you ask I will do.”
Zuena eventually agreed that Simon could move to Nairobi but only after meeting a few conditions. First they had to make their affair public and then, he had to meet her parents and marry her. Left with no choice and too determined not to lose Zuena, Simon agreed to even convert to Zuena’s religion. The wedding was performed one Saturday morning, a day after Simon denounced his original religion and took up Abdulmalik as his middle name.
Two weeks after the wedding, Simon and two other soccer players left for Nairobi together with Coaches. They arrived in Nairobi at dusk and were picked up at the bus station by a taxi and then taken to a high-walled training camp in the outskirts of the city. Simon, who had only traveled to Nairobi once before, had only heard stories of a popular white highland city under the sun now popular for criminals, extorting policemen and rising mountains of garbage. He did not know what estate that they were taken to. All he knew was that the razor-wire walls seemed too dangerous to scale.
The following day, Coaches was nowhere to be found.
“Where is Coaches?” Simon asked Abubakar, one of the trainees he had traveled with from Mombasa.
“I don’t know. Maybe he overslept and we will meet him later.”
On arrival, their mobile phones had been taken away from them so they couldn’t call him or anyone else for that matter.
But as things would turn out, Coaches was a no-show. He had simply delivered his cargo and disappeared. The training started in earnest. The financial tap that Coaches had promised would continue flowing immediately ran dry. The new trainers were determined to transform him. At first the team of ten young men drawn from different counties in the country was taken through rigorous physical exercises. This was easily acceptable to Simon who needed to have good body physique in order to become a better footballer. However, he missed the easy camaraderie and friendship that Coaches had shown him. The training also tended to drift towards new lessons that Simon thought had nothing to do with soccer.
In the evenings, the team would watch movies and documentaries on war-ravaged nations such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. They would later discuss why these nations were at war. According to the trainers, injustice in the world was to blame. This injustice also needed to be addressed.
“We need to rise for the Somali people and for the sake of religion. We cannot allow this to continue happening while we watch innocent women and children die.” They preached. Simon readily agreed. However, he had a few reservations. His pessimism was validated when the team was introduced to rigorous military style training — combat, attacks, intelligence gathering and elimination of the enemy. Whenever he and the other trainees asked about the relevance of these skills to soccer, they were told that they could always be applied in the field. Sometimes, their questions would be answered through brutal beatings or incarceration in the training camp’s cells.
Slowly, Simon became cold, withdrawn, and angry. He felt ready to avenge; to lay down his life for the sake of justice to the deprived people of Somalia. After about three months in the camp, the team would now be taken to different areas of the city just to understand premium targets that would inflict the highest number of casualties on the ‘enemy’.
One evening, during the fourth month of his training, as Simon lay in bed half awake, reflecting on the days happening, he heard a child crying.
“Did you hear that child?” He asked Abubakar.
“What child?”
“The one who is crying,”
“There is no child who is crying; it is all in your head,” Abubakar told Simon.
“Maybe,” Simon told himself, but he could no longer get himself to sleep.
“Maybe it is my child with Zuena who is calling me back home,” he told himself. He also remembered that he had not seen his mother for the last four months and the desire to see Zuena and his mother provoked a fire in him whose flames he could not extinguish. Something dawned on Simon that he had been duped. It also became clear to him that he had let his wife and mother down as he blindly pursued personal ambitions. He realized that he was involved in a radicalization programme and that Coaches, his most trusted friend and mentor, had prepared him like a sheep for the slaughterhouse. He resolved to get out. It was now clear to him that the programme’s intentions had nothing to do with making him into a pro footballer. He had to run away but just how he would do it remained a riddle.
The compound was guarded round the clock by human and security cameras and the trainers had also made it clear that any attempt to disappear could be met with instant death. Simon decided to buy into the trust of the trainers who even allowed him to lead other teams to and go and do recce on several Government buildings where they would execute their plans if need be. Simon had led them to believe that he was interested in ending the ‘injustice’ at the National Assembly. “Because this is where all bad men and women congregate for the unjust governance of men.” He told them.
One Friday afternoon and three weeks after Simon hatched his escape plan, he vanished after an assignment meant to test how easily he could penetrate Parliament. He took a taxi to Mlolongo in the outskirts of the city from where he was lucky to travel to Mombasa in a private vehicle. He did not want to risk using public transport. In the vehicle, he kept listening to the sounds in his head; the cry of a child and the voice of his mother kept beckoning him home. He got to Mombasa late in the night and headed straight to mother’s house where he found her preparing to retire to bed.
“Welcome home my son. Where have you been? Have you been well?” Her questions were mixed with sobs of joy.
“I will explain to you, Mum,” he said before requesting for a glass of water which he downed in one gulp.
“Give me some more.”
As soon as he finished drinking the second glass, he asked after Zuena.
“She is due for delivery in a few weeks, you will see her tomorrow.”
“I cannot see her. I don’t want to leave this house as there are some bad people who are after my life.”
“Then, I will ask her to come see you tomorrow.”
“But please,” he begged her. “Don’t let anyone else know that I am here.”
When a heavily pregnant Zuena came to see Simon the following morning, they locked in an embrace that seemed to last to eternity and their tears seemed to merge. It was hard to know who was crying more than the other. Simon was happy to be back and Zuena was happy that her child would now have a father.
Zuena filled Simon in on what happened during his absence. He learned that when they travelled to Nairobi, Coaches did not return to Mombasa. He was killed by police as he was crossing the border from Kenya to Somalia. According to press reports, Coaches was a radical extremist who was using the soccer team to recruit pawns for terrorist attacks. Simba FC also died after police started investigations about recruitment activities in the club.
“Days after you had left, I was arrested and put in the police cells as police sought to know your whereabouts. I told them that you had travelled to Nairobi to hone your football skills.”
“So what do we do now? I am afraid that both the police and the extremists are looking for me.”
“I don’t know. Maybe we can involve my father”
“No way. He is a government officer. He will have me jailed. In any case he survived an attack by extremists and might want to make me a lesson to others.”
“I think that he understands your situation better and he might want to help instead.”
Chief Kombo felt betrayed by Simon. Even after Zuena spoke to him on Simon’s behalf, he remained angry at Simon who he felt had abandoned his daughter days after they had tied the knot. Deep in his heart he wanted to take action that would ensure Simon and others like him did not engage in extremist activities. But he was also in a dilemma because Simon was not just any other person; he was his son-in-law. Chief Kombo was also torn between observing the law and pursuing suspected criminal elements like Simon who had made an attempt on his life. Luckily though, the government was also changing its approach towards dealing with such and had resorted to equipping communities to develop their own solutions which would reduce inclinations towards joining criminal groups. Chief Kombo then resolved that Simon should be evacuated from his current hideout and put in a government-sanctioned safe house.
As for Simon, based on his experiences in the last six months during which his basic freedoms had been snatched from him, Simon was ready to live — for Zuena, their unborn baby and his aging mother.
Afterword
The story of “Simon” is a real account of a youth in Mombasa, Kenya who was recruited and radicalized as he tried to pursue his passion for football. A number of young people in Kenya have been radicalized in a similar way. Innocently pursuing their passions, they fall into the hands of recruiters posing as friendly allies who are determined to help them improve their lives. I believe that by telling the story, many youth who are likely to fall into the trap of radicalization as they pursue their passions can be informed of the pitfalls and therefore pursue the same with their eyes wide open.
- Betrayed || Ayub Mwangi - February 12, 2022
Beautifully narrated.
Thank you Martin for the kind remarks
The sad story of so many youth unwittingly lured into crime by devils with sugar-coated tongue taking advantage of economic hardship.
It is the sad reality of radicalisation. Sadly, it has the capacity to engross even the most endowed members of the community