How a stranger faked pregnancy to save me from death by mob - reformed gangster Philip 'Calif' Kiburi confesses

Like most of Nairobi’s informal settlement dwellers, his life was a constant struggle with poverty, drug abuse and crime.

“The exposure to vices was immense, we witnessed early marriages, all kinds of drug abuse and alcohol, and all these had been normalized.  I encountered all that, and it influenced me. My elder brother abused alcohol till the day it killed him,” he recalled on Citizen TV's Shajara Na Lulu Hassan show.

“I used to admire my friends in crime. They lived a lavish lifestyle, and I wanted what they had, remember they were all in high school. One day I decided to follow my friends, I felt like I belonged, they did not mock or call me stupid like they did in school,” he said.

They bumped into a stranger and attacked him, and that’s how he was thrown into the criminal world. 

“My friends robbed him as I watched baffled and confused,” recounts Kiburi.

He went on: “We met another person and they robbed him. They attacked like five people that night and because I wasn’t attacking them, they asked me to carry all the stolen goods.  I was in Class Seven. I did not know what was going on and no one took the time to explain,” he said.

Being way much younger than the rest of friends in crime, he got protected from bullies. He eventually became hardened and robbing people became a daily endeavour. With little protection from their criminal group, his life became that of dodging bullets from the police.

He recalls how angry local people would often take the law into their own hands and beat them. Once caught in the act, some of his friends lost their lives.

“There were good and bad days, dodging bullets became the norm. We lost friends because of the phone and that really hurt. I have survived mob justice twice. For us, it was robbery with violence and we knew the situation was either my life or yours,” he said.

“It was very painful and scary, they beat me until I started losing consciousness, but I could hear them planning on how they could quickly get kerosene and set me ablaze and I knew I wasn’t going to come out alive. Suddenly, a woman started screaming that I am her husband and that she was pregnant with me and that’s how I was saved,” he said.

That woman saved his life, she really fought them and they listened. 

“She took me to her place and took care of me for a week. I do not remember her taking me to the hospital and when I asked her why she fought for my life she informed me that her little brother was a criminal and he was killed,” he said. 

He went back to his old ways, this time, attacking people in their houses until the day he was brought home roughly beaten by a mob.

“I was bleeding profusely and I could hear my mother ask if I was dead and that’s how my mother found out that I was a thief. They made plans to go to Qatar to work as a casual labourer. I ran away from my employer and started selling girls to Arabs,” Kiburi adds. 

He was later arrested and deported and having survived multiple shootouts with police and mob attacks, he decided to reform and quit his criminal life.