HIV/Aids is a disease well known all over the world, but not to my friend. Najma was her name; it was about 2years ago when we became good friend. She was that kind of person whom didn’t like to be told what or what-not to do.

Early this year, I discovered that my beloved friend was infected with the HIV virus & yet she was still in school.

She refused to take her medication, I triad my best to advise her but she ignored my advise. She was an alcoholic, did drugs & earned her money by prostitution. Trust me if you saw her, my dear reader you will never ever engage your self in any of those activities.

She was in deep pain these past few months. Finely she has laid to rest. My Najma died on the 15th of 11-2008. After the burial we all went back to her house. Her sister went to clean Najma’s room when she found a shocking letter.

Written with a red pen was the word, MEDUSA. Medusa root of all that is evil I thought to my self. The letter had more than 38 names & phone numbers of men she infected!

You can believe haw shocked we all were. We dint know what to do, haw to start or end the situation. Luckily her big brother told as to go to the nearest VCT & so we did, the VCT people call the police, so that they can help in the search of the young boys.

Am still following on the case, up to date we have only found 16 of them & they were all infected with the HIV virus.

Am asking the government of not only Kenya but all over the World, to unite & stop the spread of HIV/Aids.

To my fellow readers, please do not be afraid of getting tested.
And if you are infected don’t loose hope for there are medicines,
Do not be afraid to tell others because your past can help them.
Don’t spread it but stop it! YES YOU CAN

In the streets of Nairobi the heat beat of Kenya someone was loosing a life, a life that is cherish by all that leaves.

A young yet innocent girl was about to deliver her very fist child in this planet Earth. It was on 2-11-08, I was going to the shop on my way there I saw a group of people looking at something & at the very moment I was hearing a lot of scrims. Filled with curiosity I ran to see what was going on.

I swear by God that I will never wish to see what I saw for as long as I shall leave. A young girl was delivering a child on the road & it was raining very much.

Can u imagine no one was helping her, the people whom where there were just looking at her.

Out of a blue came this old woman whom every one disliked, all of the people in mathare (the ghetto) called her a witch.

She came & she helped the poor young girl, she took her in her house & after some time we heard a cry of a young baby, miraculously the mother & her child where both fine.

To my fellow readers, please do judge a parson by looking at
His or her, heart and deeds.

It was about 2days ago when I bumped to one guy whose name was Ali. He was begging for money in the City center of Nairobi Kenya, truthfully I could not stop looking at him, eventually he noticed and came straight to me & asked me if I could buy him lunch I told him that I dint have money he looked at me & laughed.

Do you think that I have always been like this? He asked
Me.

With nothing to say I just look at him. After some seconds he stated by saying, my name is Ali. To me it was so shocking for I dint think that he could speak English.

He told me that it wasn’t his wish to be in the streets but it was his destiny.

I have finished my studies & I got a C-, I was doing my last paper I will never forget when I got a phone call stetting that my mum had had an accident & that she was in Hospital.

When I got there two-days had already past, I went to the room were my mum was, I was in deep shock when I found it empty my mum was no more.

In this world I was left alone far my father died before I was born. Three weeks past & I bared my mum; my aunt took me in, only days past when she started saying that I could have died along with my mum, she stopped giving me food yet I had to work on her shamba (garden), if I dint her husband & her will beat the hell out of me.

I decided to run away & go to Nairobi. When I reached Nairobi thinks warrant so easy for me I had no place to sleep so I slept on the streets I started begging no one gave me anything so I was forced to eat from the trashcans of hotels & if they found you only God knows.

I started sniffing glue it truly dose help me. How I asked.

It helps me eat rotten food & mostly at night because we scavengers (chokora) sleep in the streets with nothing to caver us & we sleep on newspapers, by sniffing glue I don’t fell cold.

In order to survive I often beg, carry luggage’s or clean business premises & vehicles. He told me.

Shockingly 100% of the youths on the streets of Nairobi Kenya abuse drugs. They mostly sniff glue, petrol or smoke bang (the slang name for marijuana) are their escape from poverty, homelessness, violence & abuse on the streets.

I once had a great friend whose name was Stephanie. We were there for each other in the ups & downs of life.

We were a group of six. We used to call ourselves the Six Chicks. Our group was mostly about schoolwork rather than the outside world. We did not go clubbing nor did any of us do drugs.

It was mid-May of 2008 when I discovered all that was not to be discovered. As usual we had a meeting each & every Sunday to discuss our grades & social life. On a faithful Sunday I decided to go to the meeting spot earlier than usual. When I got there what I saw was unpleasing to the naked eye. Stephanie & some of our group members were engaging in activities that where not so pleasing.

The music was so loud that none of them heard the door opening. Stephanie was smoking Bhang (marijuana) while the others were chewing Ghat (miraa). I also saw several bottles of whisky on the table. Dancing & laughing, like witches they were.

When they noticed that I was there, my Lord God they all were flabbergasted in deep shock! For their rituals were discovered.

They pleaded & begged me not to tell & somehow I agreed. Addicted to whatever they were doing, quitting was not on their minds. My conscience kept on telling me to become an outcast but neglecting my own friends was not on my mind.

Two to three months later & how I wished I had talked. My dear friend was overtaken by drugs and got pregnant. She didn’t know who the father was.

“17, still in school & pregnant. Not in my diary,” she said.

“Please stop talking in parables. What are you saying exactly?” I asked.

“I am going to abort! I am not ready for this.”

No, no, was all we could say.

“I am still going to do it,” she said. “Are any of you working? I don’t think so. I am still a student, I can’t provide even for myself & I pray to God never to be a vagrant.”

Unfortunately, not even two weeks later my mother got a phone call saying that Stephanie was in the hospital. She took an overdose of medicine trying to kill her unborn child. God was on her side for she & her child both survived. My dear Lord God why didn’t I just talk? Killing myself softly I didn’t know what to do, other than die! For myself I know what drugs can do to the human body, but do they know?

Does the world at large know? Since this happened, I have been learning more about drugs night & day. Ironically I have come to realize that 60% of humans on this Earth are the youth while 50-58% of them abuse drugs (including alcohol). 17% have H.I.V/AIDS, while 41% are criminals or street boys. It was so painful when I realized that only 2% of our fellow youth are in control of their lives.

I am pleading to the government of not only Kenya but all over the world to take control, for we are losing not only the leaders of tomorrow but also the future of the next generation. Given this chance I will like to congratulate Nacadaa & other groups out there willing to help those whom are affected.

To my fellow readers:

If I may ask, actually do we do drugs or do drugs do us?
Do we abuse it or does it abuse us?

 

It was at around midday when I left home. School was closed & I had a lot of time to go & visit my friends so I decided to go to one of my close friend’s house – Emily.

 

As I got there I found Emily & her workmate getting ready for work, they own their own hotel in Eastleigh Nairobi Kenya. It is located at 1^st avenue in the middle of Sixth & Seventh Street. She asked if I wanted to go & spend the day with her & so I agreed to go. It was a very busy day & the sun was very hot.

 

The day had finally came to a close. It was at around 7:30pm when my dear Emily told me & her partner Ruth to close the windows & so we did we went out & she locked the door .

 

On our way home Emily saw three young men talking, one of them said,

 

“They have to pay for what they have done.”

 

Looking closely, what Emily saw was shocking – one of the three men had a gun! Shocked & confused Emily told us to walk as quickly as possible. She didn’t inform us of what was going on.

 

We even didn’t go far when we heard a lot of noises, my Lord we were in the middle of the bad guys & the police exchanging fire.

 

We all started running in our own directions. After some seconds everyone was confused & Emily and Ruth were nowhere to be seen. One of the young men was shot dead. Staring at the body I saw Emily and we found ourselves asking each other where Ruth was.

 

Screams & more screams were all we heard.

 

“She has been shot! Can any one help us?!” a man’s voice was saying.

 

Filled with curiosity me & Emily ran to see who it was. It was Ruth. She had gotten shot on her right leg thanks to God she was still breathing.

 

What Emily saw was unbearable for her & so she fainted. All I can say is thanks to God & the hearts of good people for we managed to get the both of them to the hospital.

 

Luckily the bullet wasn’t in her leg, so the Doctor said that the wound will get stitched & she will be fine. At that very moment Emily hat finally regained consciousness.

 

We all started praying for if it wasn’t for God, who knows what could have happened. Ruth is still recovering from her wounds for it only happened a week ago, it was on the first Saturday of August 2008

It was on 23 December, the year was 2007, the election had started a week ago and things were not so pleasing.

There were several groups in our area, some of the members of those groups collected money from shops saying it was for security reasons while some beat drugged people while others stripped any woman who were wearing trousers and left them completely nude.

It was on a Sunday, I could never forget. Most of the shops were closed yet it was only 2:30pm. Our house was like five steps from the road so we could see and hear almost everything that was happening.

All of a sudden, we started hearing a lot of noise. There was a vacant room in our plot so we all ran to that room to see what was happening. It was just ordinary people going home from church.

They were singing and praising the name of their Lord God, they were almost in the middle of the road when some of the members of the forbidden group appeared in front of them. They started running, but by bad luck there was an old man in the middle of them.

The old man could not run as fast as the rest of them, so they caught him and started beating him up as if he were an animal. They were chopping him up with pangas and slashas.

I even witnessed the young men licking the old man’s blood from their knives. After some minutes they stopped. The old man was not moving and they left because they thought that he was dead.

After they had left, the old man started moving. By the grace of God he managed to get up. He stood and started walking, apparently he was not seeing very well because blood was flowing from his scalp to his face.

He didn’t take even 10 steps from where he was when other groups appeared behind him. They savagely attacked him, in a blink of an eye the old man was on the ground. He took a quick look at them he noticed one of them.

“My child don’t you recognize me? I am your neighbor, what have I done to deserve all this?”

“Shut up you old fool. At the moment I am me and you are you. I don’t know you, you don’t know me, ok?”

At that very second, they spotted us and one of them came towards our plot. There were many big rocks so he lifted a very big rock and left.

He went straight back to the old man and then he started saying things that didn’t make sense to me. “No no” was all I heard him say.

The young man lifted his hands as high as possible and then the unbelievable thing happened, the young man dropped the rock on the old man’s head.

Boom was all I heard. “He’s dead” one of them said. Just another sacrifice to their God I said to myself. They started talking to each other for a while and then they all looked at us at The old man’s body stayed there for more than 11 hours then the police came the same time and took the old man’s body. I couldn’t sleep for several days nor could I go out of our plot.

They came towards us and by then we knew that our turn had come. The funny thing is that they didn’t do anything to us, they just came with there pangas and passed them threw the window that we were seeing from and then they left.

For the past five years, my friends Jane & Simon have been the only true people whom I had shared a lot with in our day-to-day life as well as in school. I was living with my sister in Mathare and my mum & dad were no where to be seen so we had to survive with the little that we had.

My sister had a good friend, her name was Aisha . After a few months into their friendship, God blessed Aisha with a good, yet rich, husband. She left Mathare & started a new life in Kahawa West and my sister sent me to school.

To me life was so much better before. In my new school no one wanted to talk to me because of my background. It was so painful to be in a class were no one liked you.

After some days Jane & Simon started talking to me. Apparently they too were in a difficult situation like me. They were living with their aunt because their father died not so long ago & their mother went abroad for work, yet they didn’t see even a penny of that money.

They have been like brothers & sisters to me. But what transpired on September the eleventh, the day the World Trade Center in the United States was hit by the Al Qaeda terrorists network, shattered our friendship & also hurt me so much.

I can still remember the day as if all this occurred just yesterday, the memories are still very fresh in my mind.

I was just about to go to Mosque to attend my prayers, when suddenly the prayers were interrupted by the wailing of sirens & the Imam had to announce the saddest news of the attack which had just occurred in the United States.

It was so shocking and unbelievable.

When I was about to go home I saw Jane & Simon coming towards me. Just as I was about to tell them what I had heard, they started calling me a traitor & saying how I deserved to die! My own friends turned against me because I am a Muslim.

I could not believe my ears, such a black day it was not only for me but for the whole world.

To my fellow readers, please don’t judge any one by there skin color, tribe or religion.