On the night of September 8, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations alerted the public, through its Twitter handle, that a most wanted criminal from Mombasa known as Bliza Bliza had been apprehended in Eastleigh. The DCI also shared a poster of seven other most wanted criminals who had not been apprehended.
The eight are all from Mombasa and all under 25. Like most Mombasa residents I was relieved that a notorious criminal has been caught. But as I looked at those pictures of the eight boys, I started wondering how my society had come to produce the most dangerous criminals in the country.
As a born resident of Mombasa, I have had the misfortune of watching the once free town burn down to a pile of rubble incinerated by drugs and gangs. With the numbers of gangs increasing exponentially in the last five years. Most of these gang members are boys who grow up in the same hood and all aged 13-25 years.
Rampant gang violence has taken Mombasa hostage and robbed it of its carefree ways. Residents live in constant fear of being attacked as well as of the sporadic inter-gang fights. The resulting outcome is almost always death.
In my daily commutes, I pass through the volatile area of Kisauni, where the entire road is dotted with jobless young men who huddle aimlessly in spots known as maskani. At 5pm as you return to Kisauni from town, you see a great number of students lined by the road waiting for matatus to return home after a long day at school. With a quick scan of the crowd one can tell that there are more girls who go to school than boys. As I watch them, I can’t help but wonder, “who will marry all these girls?”
With a heavy heart, I have come to the realisation that there is a crisis looming that most people do not see. The gang and drug pandemic in Mombasa has not only robbed the youth of its…well, youth; but it will also cause a great imbalance in the number of men and women in the future. There are few outcomes for gang members, the more imminent ones being death and imprisonment. It is very rare – though not unheard of – for drug users and gang members to be reformed.
We have forgotten to dream about the future because we are so preoccupied with the present insecurity. But when I imagine the future, I see a crisis of well-educated girls who have a shortage of good men to marry.
As it is, there has definitely been a shift in family dynamics in the coastal area. Women are becoming more educated, often carrying more familial responsibilities and they are also getting married later in life. The chances of a highly educated woman from the coastal area marrying a coastal man of her stature are slim.
As it stands, most people from my generation, including myself, have married foreigners or non-resident Kenyans. If we, the millennial generation, find it hard to find suitable spouses from our community, yet our generation was not as heavily affected by drugs and gang violence; then, who will marry girls of the next generation if we keep burying the boys?
