I Should`nt be Here ; The Closest i ever came to Dying.

Me and my boy JG had just moved into this new apartment less than 2 months earlier and we were lucky to have got it seeing all the racism and xenophobia that we had to endure in this City never mind find a Landlord that was willing to let us live in their property.
Yes,it was hard being black or even foreign in this country. Most of the citizens in this country had never seen a black person in real life and mixed with all the negative press coming from Black America in the early days of Gangster Rap and the usual “Help Africa” crusade, i could not blame them.
JG was a student just like me but in a different uni to me. He is the kind of friend you wish to meet and he is a likable guy. JG was from “Eastlando” (Donholm ama Buru) and he had attended Jamuhuri High School which i guess is why he was so streetwise.
Our friendship grew really quickly because we were agemates and shared alot in common and that is how we had decided to get a flat together soon after we had met. (Its not like there was many other black people anyway.)
We were young and restless and apart from going to College, i soon got JG a job in the restaurant where i worked washing dishes most nights.We would also spend most of our hard earned cash clubbing and “chasing white tail” on the weekends and as much as there was Racism in this country,the girls didnt seem to have anything against us black men in the least and i remember me and JG getting Barred from many clubs because the white guys would tell the Bouncers to keep us out in a bid to protecting their curious white girlfriends who couldnt help themselves when they saw black guys in the club. Shit!,i remember one girl literally asking her boyfriend whether he would let her kiss me.! And the fucker said yes and i spent most of the night snogging this white chick while the boyfriend watched on!,…
Most of them would approach you,grab your cock and start snogging you without a word spoken and they would offer to take you to their place the same night for sex just like that!
Me and JG lived the life!

One winter Friday morning me and JG realise we have no school and we have just got paid, we hit the town and start a drinking marathon at around 10 AM which is when the pubs would open. JG is a bastard for money and it was like he had an itch everytime he had money; he couldnt sit still until it was all gone so on this morning i make sure that we deposit the rent before we set out to the pub. We have a "pub crawl"all day moving from one pub to the other until we find ourselves in our favorite Club at around 11 PM. By this time i am so wasted but JG (who never seems to get drunk) insists that he is not going home "alone" so i tag along hoping that he gets a "one night stand" because i dont want to leave him.
While in the club,i loose sight of JG and i assume that he has “pulled” and left for home with some girl. I am in no situation to “pull” so i start making my way home hoping to find JG there.
As i walk through the snow i quickly realise that i have lost my jacket and i just hope that JG will have the heating on by the time i get home because i am freezing.
I walk into the flat and the house is colder than it is outside because its not been heated all day and it is now approaching 2AM.
Oh,by the way; Where in the fuck is JG?..
I quickly assume that the girl she “pulled” must have insisted that they go back to her place instead.
I also dont want to get the heating going for the whole flat while i could easily use a smaller heater to warm up my room only. This is the worst decision i am about to make in my life. Now this heaters are electric and they are meant to be put on for a very small amount of time seeing that they literally radiate direct heat and are thus very "dangerous" if left un-attended. Danger and Drunk dont belong in the same sentence in a thought process so i guess you know by now where my story is going. I also have all my hygiene personal effects in my room seeing that it is a shared flat and they include perfumes,deodrants, etc all which are "Highly Flammable" For some reason i decide not to change until i am ready to go to bed after warming up the room.- This will be my saving glory as you will soon discover! I lie on the bed and the next thing i know there is an itch on my left arm which gets really painful when i try to scratch. I open my eyes in pain but i cant see anything! I also realise that i cannot breath and its like i am being choked by something i cant see....... I suppose my survival instincts kick in and i realise what is going on!.... I am in a room filled with the thick smoke from a burning carpet. Yes,my room is on fire! I want to step out of the room but i realise that most of the floor is just not there and the fire is really coming towards me as i retreat to the top of the bed. Dont forget that i also live on the 2nd floor and that my bedroom window is not an option since it would be suicide. I also am running out of breath and i need to get myself out of the bathroom window because it was nearest to an emergency flight of stairs.
The only problem is that i cant see 2 inches ahead due to the smoke and the floor beneath me is being eaten away by the fire so i dont know where or not to lay my foot. I cant allow myself to die in here so i gather the courage to go for the bedroom door and head towards the bathroom as well as my instincts could guide me.
Lucky for me the fire seems to be concentrated in my bedroom so when by God`s Grace i open the bedroom door,i am able to see and breathe and quickly make my way to the bathroom window.
God works in mysterious ways and as soon as i get to the bathroom window i am met by two members of the Fire Brigade who are working from an elevated ladder on top of their lorry trying to break into the house. They whisk me down on the “lift” thing and all this time in my disorientated state i am telling them that JG is in the other room so as soon as they have me on the ground and into the ambulance,they go up to start looking for JG! (Kumbe jinga inamangana far away ata haina habari)
I lost EVERYTHING that day and so did JG and my neighbours juu the whole block burnt to the ground.
Luckily i still had my clothes on from the night before (save for a burnt shirt sleeve).
Kama singechomeka mkono which is what woke me up, i would have died on my own that day.
Me and JG also were Front-page news on the local paper as the two Kenyan immigrants who survived a fire.
I still feel bad because the media blamed the Landlord for not having fire alarms and smoke detectors. If only they knew how kind he had been to let his house to a pair of “Wreckless Niggers!”
We turned down all efforts by some lawyers to sue him.

What is the closest shave you people have had with death?

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Summarize

An old TV set almost made me past tense, I got home drunk and there was a black out so I placed a candle on top of it,next thing am waking up with black smoke in the whole room at 3AM, luckily it was not very extensive and I managed to put it out with a basin of water from the bath room. But I had to throw away the TV and to think I was holding onto it since it was the first TV I bought ningeuza tu. The thing that saved me was a burning blanket that gave me a scar on my leg

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How many scars do you have, you also have the one you got from that scorned woman

I have four, one on the face,one on the chest from a bike accident when I was young, two in the leg

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Pole joh!

Fuck. Hope huja ctrl +c/ v. Ooh. Me closer i ever been, i slept and dreamt falling in a hole with no end.

hehehe :smiley: kwanini bro am sure most guyz that were active when young have more scars

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Cooking while drunk, falling asleep, getting woken up by neighbours after they detect something burning inside my house, waking up to find the room full of smoke, rushing out and neighbours rushing in to put out the fire. In summary I survived, problem is I did it three times till it dawned on me I had been lucky so far to cheat death and decided I had enough. Never again tried cooking while drunk.

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I malizad gas the whole night, the cooker’s flame could go off but you had to go all down on the knob to cut the supply.While drunk I didn’t, am in the kitchen and its smelling like a horse or pig had been firting. Good luck, by the time I realized I had not lit a cigarette.

9 lives of @Ka-Buda

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I have been swept by a river for kitu 100m. I survived with a broken arm and several strokes from mum.

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Man you are good writer/narrator. you remind me of the days reading Kenyan books. kina ‘Across the Bridge’ ‘Son of Woman’ etc. Simple flowing kizungu and Swahili. Kudos Kabuda keep them coming…

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Hiyo sio pombe ulikuwa umekunywa, sema tu ukweli

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I am not sure which one was closer to death between the matatu accident that left me with 4-stitches kwani lip, or being robbed at gunpoint last year or being ganged up on by some mob armed with njoras and rungus on suspicion of being part of a group that ruined their party.

I wonder y eabl n the government haven’t come up with a warning 4 that…been through that too

Dave kicked in the door and I took point. Ilikua a long and dark corridor. Kulikua na two doors to the left, one on the right. Na kengine at opposite end. Tulichungulia the rooms on the left and saw just kagondoro, mikeka na jericans. Ile kujaribu door on the right ndo nika notice kajamaa kamepiga squat and his back the door at the end of the corridor. My rifle was halfway pointing to the ground as I had tried kufungua mlango. Sauti ya chopper (AK-47) on the receiving end sio kitu nitaisahau milele. Jamaa behind me returned fired first na tukafollow suit na kumlisha mbegu. Muarabu kalala next to his Kalashnikov na rpk. After another search we found a wounded towel head in the room on the right. If that rpk was manned… Sijui. Got lucky only flesh wounds. A fellow devil dog succumbed to his wounds in Germany. RIP big country

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Sniper say warrr . …you are lucky then

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Lucky indeed. Finished the tour and eventually nikamada service term and returned home alive with a fully functional body. Hayo tu

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Hehehe, real danger that one.