Thanks to a trigger-happy thug, George Obel has lived with the discomfort of a bullet in his body for almost two years now, and doctors say there is nothing they can do to save him the agony.

For the last 23 months, George Ogweno Obel has lived with a bullet lodged just a few inches from his spinal cord.
He recalls the evening of Wednesday, May 5, 2009 with a tinge of remorse, for the events of that fateful day drastically changed his life for the worse.
“The day had started well for me. But, in the afternoon, I started feeling low, so I decided to close my cyber-shop in Eastleigh, Nairobi early,” he explains.
But just before he closed shop, Obel and his three clients fell victims to gangsters who robbed them and, as they left, shot him in the lower back, leaving him with a bullet lodged just next to his spinal cord.
Luckily, he survived, and now he lives with the agonising reality that a bullet lies buried in a major vein inside him, and that if it moves just a few inches into the spine, it might lead to paralysis or even death.
Obel, 26, was a huge fan of the outdoors and spent his weekends playing football, taking hikes out of town and washing down the fun with a bottle of his favourite swallow.
Even more importantly, he was preparing to propose to his long-time girlfriend when the thugs darkened the entrance to his little shop and ordered all inside to lie down.
“One of them then pulled a pistol and walked straight to the counter and ordered me to surrender my mobile phone. His two colleagues were already unsecuring computers from the desks.
“The armed man then asked me to unlock the two computers that I used as servers. As I was doing this, something snapped inside him and he shot me at the back.”
He fell down, bleeding profusely. As the world caved on him, he raised his head to see the three-man gang walk away with his lifetime investment.
He then alerted his clients that the gang had left and called for help. Fortunately, one of the clients still had his mobile phone with him, and they used this to inform his relatives.
“The client happened to be a member of my church, and he alerted my mother as the others mobilised for transport. That is how I ended up at Kenyatta National Hospital,” he explains.
But the traffic was heavy and he was bleeding profusely. By the time he arrived at the hospital, he had lost so much blood that he fainted on admission to the casualty department.
“Such was the damage that I regained consciousness the following morning. I was responding well to treatment and, on the third day, I was discharged, the bullet still lodged in my body because doctors said the operation to remove it would be ‘too risky’.”
But, even though Obel was now out of danger, he still needed to pay regular visits to hospital, and these demanded a lot of money. The one private medical consultant who understood his condition demanded Sh1,500 per visit.
“I visited him only once, and even then I could not afford to buy the antibiotic prescription. So I decided to just stay at home and let nature take its course,” he says.
What nature has done to him is that his body has started rejecting the foreign object in his body, especially on cold mornings.
The condition has been made worse by the fact that he does not take the prescribed medicine because he cannot afford it... and neither does he eat as well as advised by doctors.
“What I do when the pain becomes unbearable, especially on cold days, is to purchase some pretty strong painkillers that shoo away the discomfort. At times I can feel the bullet pressing sharply against my back, then my left leg goes numb.”
Before the sad incident that completely changed the course of his life, Obel was on the first lane to success. Having trained for a certificate course in computer science, the young man knew the future held glad tidings for him.