What do you do if a stranger holds a knife to your neck and demands that you hand over your valuables. There are so many robberies in Windhoek, it’s no surprise that I had my own baptism by fire last week.
After ironically writing a story on another Windhoek robbery, I had just left work. I was tired and wanted to go home and have a shower, eat dinner, and snuggle under the sheets. This was my favorite part of the day.
But Thursday 18th August became the day I felt my ‘awakening’.
I got in a taxi. A tate was sitting beside the driver in the passenger’s seat. I was sandwiched between two women at my back.
Nothing was suspicious. It looked like a safe taxi. I scrolled through my smartphone and put on my headphones, while the car sat at the traffic light.
We dropped off one of them at the corner near Immanuel Schifidi Secondary School. Then we followed up with the tate who was sitting in front of us somewhere nearby. I thought I would be back in a few minutes.
The meme sitting next to me in the taxi looked as tired as I did after a long day. She looked in her 30s, wearing work clothes. She was taking care of her own business, while me took care of mine.
The driver tried to avoid traffic by taking a shortcut through a quiet street in an effort to avoid it.
A man in his 20s hailing the taxi. It was difficult to miss the scars on this man’s face.
We stopped, but I didn’t pay much attention as I scrolled through my smartphone. He got into the front seat and asked the driver for his friend’s assistance. They were apparently heading in the same direction. The scarlet-faced man was dressed in blue shorts, a black jersey and pointed a knife at the driver. I stopped.
“Give me all the money you have,” he demanded. The driver refused to give up and took his neck.
The woman next to me whispered: “I think we should run, or else he is going to come after us next.” That was the first time I heard her speak, she had not uttered a single word during the entire journey. While the driver wrestled the now apparent robber with his car, I concealed my phone and other valuables underneath my clothes and left everything I thought was easily replaced in my bag. The woman running next to me screamed for help. I couldn’t move one muscle. I was paralysed by fear. I just sat there.
I saw some men just standing there, watching the quiet street.
Were they robbery friends?
I was afraid to flee in case they attacked, so the taxi drove off.
The driver gripped the neck of the robber so tightly that he was unable move.
Finally, out fear, he managed to make a pathetic apology. “Leave me…leave me… I am sorry… I just wanted money to buy some bread for my family,” he stammered, gasping for air.
The driver eventually let him go before the man was able to grab some money and run away.
The clearly traumatized driver took a moment for his thoughts to process what had just happened. “I am so unlucky, but he is very lucky I left my gun at home today,” he said. He claims that it was his second robbery today.
The meme who made a running for it hopped back in his car. It all happened so quickly.
“I am sure if you had not won the fight, he was going to grab all that we had, and if we fought back, he could even have killed us,” she said.
We continued our return journey, and eventually reached our destination safely.
However, things could have gone very differently… We might never have returned home. I thought about how awful it would be to never see my family. I have learned to be alert and not use my earphones when using public transport. Now, I find that my favorite part of the day, apart from getting home and seeing my family is at the end of the day, is getting home.
* Puyeipawa Nakashole is a reporter at Namibia.
Source: namibian
