The Kenyan ex-con, illegal guns and the fear of police

As Kenya struggles with rising violent crime, BBC Africa Eye follows one former criminal as he tries to persuade men to turn in their illegal firearms, one gun at a time.

“The worst thing I ever did was to kill. I killed a man,” the young man says after agreeing to be filmed on condition of anonymity.

“I did not feel anything, because I was high on drugs. I felt like I had killed a fly.”

Samuel, which is not his real name, is in Kisumu on the edge of Lake Victoria in the west of Kenya, to meet King Kafu, a former convict who now helps people get away from crime.

He is visibly nervous. He has an AK47 in a hidden location that he now wants to hand in to the police.

Asked why, he says: “A day will come when my family won’t have anything to eat. They will get hurt eventually.

“If I go and mess around, and then get shot, no-one will be there to take care of my family. So I decided, from my heart, let me return this thing.”

Figures from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics show violent robberies increased by almost 20% last year.

Illegal firearms are smuggled into the country through its porous borders, making Kenya’s civilian possession of weapons unrivalled in East Africa, according to the Institute of Security Studies.

The latest figures from the Small Arms Survey, which tracks global weapons trends, suggest there are some 750,000 firearms in civilian hands in Kenya. That is more than the army and police combined.

Kafu acts as a middleman between people who want to hand in their guns and the police.