Someone called her by name from the side of the road.
Wanja Mwaura was walking to a market in Lower Kabete, Kenya. When she looked at the man who had stopped her, she didn’t recognize him. It took her a few seconds to realize that the gaunt face belonged to Patrick “Hinga” Wanjiru, her schoolmate since 1992. In those days, he had been a good student and a talented footballer. Now he had been living on the streets for more than a decade, caught in the grip of drugs, while his mother could barely feed him and neighbors pointed him out as they passed.
Wanja is a nurse. She knew exactly what most people do in that moment: quicken their pace and pretend they don’t see anything. However, she stopped and stayed to talk with him. That simple gesture was the beginning of everything. She began collecting money from people she knew to pay for his treatment and, with the community’s support, Hinga entered rehab. The change was so dramatic that the before-and-after photos looked like two different people: he regained his weight and was once again able to hold a fluent conversation.
But the story didn’t have a movie ending. Hinga relapsed some time later, and Wanja continued asking people not to judge him harshly. He died in March 2019 from stomach complications. But between the street and that farewell, there were years when someone saw him for what he had always been: a person worth saving.