Tanzanian Bilal Patel narrates at the Nation Centre on Sunday how he was mugged and robbed by a Kenyan friend who invited him to Nairobi. Photo/PAUL WAWERU.
Bilal Laxman Patel, a 22-year-old Tanzanian national, will forever remember his four-day sojourn in Kenya. He left his supervisory job at an auto garage in Dar es Salaam to come to Nairobi for prospects of a better paying job and to learn computing.
But his hopes were dashed two hours after he landed in Nairobi when his contact allegedly robbed him of USD 2000 (Sh150,000), Sh23,000 cash, his passport (number AB061711), two high-end mobile phones—a blackberry and a Nokia N71- and told him to get lost.
His loss is recorded in the occurrence book at Nairobi’s Parklands Police Station where he reported the incident. He was issued with a police abstract to allow him safe passage back to Dar es Salaam
His story, is akin to that told by Kenyans in Saudi Arabia, whose hopes for greener pastures are dashed the moment they land in the oil-rich country.
Bilal says he has been in contact with one Mwangi, his ‘friend’ whom they have worked together at the FM Abri Transporters garage in Tabata, Dar.
Mwangi was a mechanic. For two years, Bilal says, they were “close” and based on Mwangi’s expertise, he itched to cross the border to Kenya to learn the craft in panel beating and body spraying.
At the beginning of February, Mwangi called him via a cellphone number 0732900722 and asked him to be in Kenya by February 25, “because that job was ready.” (When the Nation tried to call the number, it had been switched off.)
Bilal packed his bag, took his savings and embarked on the long journey through Arusha, Namanga and finally to Nairobi. The dollars, Mwangi had told him, were to cater for a work permit while the Sh23,000 was for his upkeep and college fees for computer studies.
He visualized working as a garage supervisor until four o’clock and then going for computer studies until eight at night.
“Mwangi assured me that I could stay at his place while I worked, so I had no reason to doubt him,” he said.
“Tanzanians who study in Kenya or Uganda come back (to Dar) and make a lot of money… I knew that with my experience and after computer studies in Kenya, I’d be in the top league in Tanzania.”
He arrived in Nairobi on Wednesday at about 2pm. Mwangi picked him up from the city. He can’t remember the exact location.
The two ‘friends’ then left the city centre in a matatu and alighted at a place that he was later told was Kangemi. As they walked into the slums, two more people who Bilal didn’t know joined Mwangi. The three then mugged him and disappeared into the vast slums.
Bilal didn’t know where he was and couldn’t pinpoint the exact spot where he had been mugged as he sought help from passers-by. He thus wandered in the slums and ended up at the Army Barracks opposite the ABC Place junction.
He says, the army officers, after listening to his story, asked him to go to a police station. It is after asking around that he ended up at Parklands where his details were taken.
Bilal explained his predicament to some Kenyans of Indian origin in Parklands and he was given Sh500 “to go back to Tanzania.”However, he left the police station and went to buy an inhaler for his asthma at a pharmacy in Parklands. When he showed up at Nation Centre on Saturday afternoon, he had Sh140 left. Apparently, he insisted, he had been begging in the streets of Nairobi to get money to buy food and raise the bus fare.
But in a city as big as Nairobi with hundreds of con men, few had time for his naïve long-winding tales about being conned in a Kenyan slum. This happens everyday in Nairobi. He was just naive to trust someone he didn’t know, many thought.
In a jungle
“I feel like I am in a jungle. No one wants to listen to me, and those who do just tell me to take a walk,” said Bilal in that musical fluent Kiswahili spoken by Tanzanians.
“I just want Sh950 to go to Arusha. I’ve lost my appetite and my patience. I just want to go to Tanzania, I am sure people there will understand me and not doubt me as you (Kenyans) in Nairobi have done” he said.
The famous Taarab song “Utalijua Jiji” (loosely translated to if you aren’t street smart, “the city will teach you”) came to mind as this writer listened to his story, but Bilal says he had learnt his lesson and won’t like his predicament to happen to any other person.
“I am sure that once I go back to Dar, I’ll go on with my job. My employer is a good man,” he says.
Bilal says he was kicked out of his home when he abandoned his Hindu religion for Christianity. His father, he says, is a rich man with a chain of furniture workshops in Tanga. So what next?
Once in Arusha, he plans to take the abstract drafted by the Kenyan police to the Immigration offices to have a new passport. Then, he’ll start digging for Mwangi’s records. Does he hope to revenge?
“No. All I know is that he has conned me and I want justice done,” Bilal said.
Calls to the Tanzanian embassy over the weekend went unanswered.
From: Daily Nation (Kenya)
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