It is the holiday season, we all have to be extra vigilant.

The Star reporter Lewis Nyakundi was caught up in a harrowing car jacking ordeal.

Here is his story...

"In the past, I had only encountered guns in police patrols, demonstration and in movies but on Saturday evening it was different.

The normal two hours drive from Nakuru to Nairobi that day turned to a rough, nightmare 8 hours road trip across through the city in the hands of kidnappers.

It all began at around 7pm soon after the sun sunk in the nearby mountains and darkness was beginning to take charge.

My cousin, in the driver’s seat, and I had hit highways and byways from Nakuru headed to Nairobi before taking a stop at the thick cypress Kinare forest to pee a habit I picked back in high school.

However this time Krampus, the evil Santa, had an early Christmas surprise in store and it was not a good surprise, soon after I had finished my agenda in the forest two men called out seeking help for there car which had mechanical problem.

“Hey, do you guys have a spanner?” one of them said.

Before I answered the two were a step away from where I stood, and it was at this point that one of them pulled up his shirt to reveal a pistol.

Shocked and baffled my legs started to tremble like a leaf with my eyes wide opened not knowing what to do or say and did what I see in movies. Raised my hands up to signify that I surrender.

“You need to cooperate with us and everything will be okay, walk towards your car and act like everything is normal,” I wonder how everything was supposed to be normal at this point. However I obeyed every word they said.

We approached the roadside where my cousin had parked his car and one of them went to the driver’s door asked him to leave the car and ordered us to enter the car they had put hazard indicating it had a mechanical problem and took every possession we had in our pockets.

The car which had a driver inside, who before getting to the bush was on the bonnet acting like he was fixing something. He drove off and at this point my heart was heavily pounding, sweat slowly accumulating on my armpits, nose tip and palm of my hands not knowing what they would to us.

The car we were driving in, was taken by one of the kidnappers from the forest who was closely ahead of us to a certain point where we did not see it again.

“Lewis, Where do you come from?” the kidnapper who sat next to me asked having noted my name from our Identification Cards they had taken earlier on.

“GilGil,” I answered.

He kept asking questions and I honestly answered hoping my honesty will at least spare my life.

Then another long silence followed, at this point we had left the main highway and were using feeder roads carefully cutting through as we approached the Nairobi.

“Are you a Catholic?” he broke the silence again I presume the question was attracted by the cross I wore around my neck

“Yes I am,” I answered. This was a lie. I was quite accustomed to lying; found it, indeed indispensable for overcoming friction.

“I used to be an altar boy when I was a young boy,” he said prompting me to ask him how he got to crime but remembered I was the one answering questions.

We got to Eastleigh area in Nairobi at around midnight, Having said I was a college student and having no debit card, My cousin remained the center of focus and was forced to give his ATM pin number before asking me to go and withdraw Sh20000.

The obedient me though shaken like a leaf did just as I was told and came back to the car that was barely away from the ATM’s verandah.

We then transversed through Mathare, Ruaraka, Kasarani, Githurai before getting to Kahawa where we made another stop.

During this time he engaged me and once in a while he looked at me smiling his pale lips parted over his tobacco stained teeth.

The thugs now ordered my cousin transfer the remaining amount of money to his M-pesa account before taking his phone.

It some minutes short to 3am in the morning when we got to Roysambu where we were ordered to leave the vehicle, go and not look back.

How we got home is a story of a good Samaritan who was selling coffee to the ‘nocturnals’.

Our car was later recovered in Umoja One estate where the kidnappers dumped it.

Police in Ongata Rongai, alongside other police units have since launched investigation on the matter but are yet to get anything substantive leading to the perpetrator of the crime."

-The Star