The homeless speak- Rajah the murderer on the run

Meet Rajah, yes rajah the spice am not sure where he exactly got his name from but he jokingly said “ I spice things up, that’s why they call me Rajah.”

As am trying my best to get him to open up to me, his focus is all over the place but I don’t blame him but irritated at by whatever substance he is on. Rajah grew up like most kids in the township(at gogo’s house), when he was 12 he had already lost both his parents to HIV. He was than raised by his fierce grandparents and by the age 16 he again lost both grandparents. 

Rajah lived all his life under his grandparents’ house before and after losing his mother and grandparents. He told me things took a quick turn and was left with his cousins who apparently had little to no sympathy for him. Most of the time they hid food from him, and he would have to make a plan on what to eat.

We can all guess that the “plans” he mostly went for were not holy and led him to being a criminal which made things far worse because he than needed a coping mechanism to be able to commit criminal activities. Got to the point the community got fed up and starting threatening to burn his grandparents house. Due to this his cousins found a perfect reason to completely cut him off.

Rajah talked about one particular night that he would never forget. It’s Saturday afternoon and he is headed home as soon as he arrived all the doors were locked so he tried knocking but no one bothered to open. As he is knocking and calling out for his cousins he can clearly hear movement inside the house and he can see the keys on the inside part of the locker.

He told me how he sat there for hours, helplessly waiting but what happens next kick his boots off. Rajah’s cousin shows up on the window and ask him to leave for good because he has brought shame and danger to their grandparents house. Without anything but the shirt on his back Rajah makes his way to a friends house which is more of a dope house. 

He gets there and it’s a party as usual , without hesitation he starts drinking and taking a lot of drugs. Rajah tells me his last clear memory was him in a conversation with his friends about a guy who took his friend’s girlfriend, next thing there was a dead body and he was on the run and that’s how he ended up here.

Rajah believes his friends denied any involvement and placed a blame on him. Even though he doesn’t know what exactly happened he is certain about two thing, it wasn’t his girlfriend and he wouldn’t kill over a girl. Rajah believes him and his friends got high and pumped each other to go confront the guy (who usually spent sometime with them) about stealing Rajah’s friend girlfriend.

According to him, even though they were all involved in beating up the guy on behalf of his friend he believes his friend was the one who probably killed him. He told me how sometimes he gets nightmares and flashbacks of the event and can’t forget how that guy begged and begged for forgiveness before dying.

I don’t think Rajah has any plans to change his life, cause when I asked if there’s anything I can do for him he looked at me and laughed leaving with a phrase “ you’re too hopeful.”