Super Heroes Of Our Time

If you’ve never dodged an angry buffalo while stealing guavas from a sanctuary with slippers on your hands to avoid electric shock—did you even have a childhood? Ours was wild, dusty, hilarious, and stitched together with wire wheels, river water, and the roar of makeshift engines.

Growing up in Kabete was nothing short of a dreamland—if your dream involved adrenaline, mud, mischief, and monsters on four legs.

Every July was sacred because of the Safari Rally. While the rest of Nairobi buzzed with excitement, we Kabete kids woke up before the sun, tiptoeing past sleepy parents to catch a glimpse of history in motion. Kapenguria Road, the dusty artery connecting Lower Kabete Road and Naivasha Road, transformed into a rally runway. We knew every bend, every shortcut, every hiding bush that offered a perfect view.

“Ala! That one is Shekhar Mehta! I swear I saw his number plate!” one of us would yell, as the first car zoomed past in a storm of dust and legend. Catching that first roar wasn’t just luck—it was status. Your name would echo in evening play recaps.

But we weren’t content being mere spectators—we became racers too. Using wire, discarded tyres, and fierce ambition, we built our own rally cars. The wheels were round wire hoops wrapped tightly in strips of rubber cut from old tubes. It took hours, sometimes days, to perfect a single car. Each had a pit crew—friends ready to rewire a broken axle mid-race, armed with pliers and loyalty.

Our rally had rules. Checkpoints were landmarks: the staff gate, the broken mango tree, the rusting wheelbarrow near the borehole. Any shortcut or misroute earned you point deductions. And silence? That was blasphemy. You had to roar all the way—“Waaaaaaah… Waaaaaaaah… Krrrrrrr!”—from ignition to finish.

We took it seriously. We even renamed ourselves after rally legends: Shekhar Mehta, Joginder Singh, Michèle Mouton. You were nobody if your wire car didn’t have a legendary nameplate.

When the races paused, the river took over. We learned to swim the old-fashioned way—by being thrown in. You kicked, flailed, and hoped you didn’t drink too much of it before learning to float. Fishing was a gamble: sometimes you’d catch something; other times, you just caught scolding for staying out too long.

Then there was football—another sacred ritual. At first, our balls were humble: rolled-up polythene, wound tight with manila rope. They bounced erratically, but they obeyed. They belonged to everyone. But one day, during a heated political campaign, a local candidate donated a real leather football. It was like holding the World Cup in our palms. That ball was never to touch bad ground. It was reserved for the older boys—those who’d earned the right to play on real leather. The rest of us watched with reverence, clutching our polythene dreams.

Beyond our playing grounds stood the mysterious sanctuary—our accidental zoo. Behind that fence were antelopes, gazelles, wildebeest, and buffalo. Lots of buffalo. They weren’t just animals; they were mythic beasts with red eyes, heaving breaths, and, in some cases, moss growing on their horns.

Yet, to us, they were just big cows.

“Ni kama ng’ombe tu, acha woga!” one brave soul would whisper as we pressed our fingers through the electrified fence, trying to touch them. The shocks were real, but the stories were better.

Near the sanctuary’s edge stood two guava trees. But those were stripped clean the moment the fruit blushed. However, deep inside the sanctuary—behind the electric fence—stood three guava trees bursting with fruit. Birds ate their fill while we stared longingly.

So, we planned.

Wearing slippers on our hands to muffle electric shocks, we scaled the fence and snuck in. The first raid was flawless. We came back with bulging shirts and pockets—giggling, sticky-fingered, and victorious. The thrill was addictive. We turned it into a seasonal mission. Every guava season, we crossed enemy lines for treasure.

Of course, danger was part of the game. Sometimes the buffalo would charge. We’d scatter—some leaping the fence in panic, others freezing mid-tree. But nothing prepared us for the day the beasts broke free.

A tree collapsed, smashing part of the fence. Two rogue buffalo escaped into the nearby cattle paddock. What followed was chaos: twenty-six cows were gored. Two were literally trampled to pulp. It took six bullets to the skull to bring one buffalo down. The AP officers stood shaking afterward. So did we.

From that day on, walking near the sanctuary gave us chills. The magic fence had lost its charm.

Years passed, and the wild gave way to structure. Where buffalo once roamed and kids once raided guava trees now stands the Wangari Maathai Institute—a place of intellect and conservation, sprouting from soil once fertilized by wild memories.

But those Kabete days? They live on.

They taught us to build with our hands, dream without limits, and face buffaloes—literal and metaphorical—without flinching. We chased joy with polythene balls and raced glory with rubber-wheeled wire cars. And in every roar, every splash, every stolen fruit, we learned who we were.

We weren’t just kids. We were Super Heroes of our time.