COACH ALEX: THE ENIGMA - KISS OF DEATH

Tuesday the 21st of July 2020, 07: 39a.m as I drive to work I get a call from Coach Alex. I am in a bit of a rush to get to work so I promise myself that I will call him back. But the timeline of this call is rather out of character with Coach Alex! Anyway I promise myself to call him back later; I forgot to call back.

Wednesday 22nd July 2020, 10: 47a.m Coach calls me again; am right in the middle of a meeting so I promise myself to call him back. Meeting ends, and I walk to my car to drive away. I call back coach Alex; time check 1:12p.m. The first words from Coach Alex send chills down my spine Silence followed on the line; I garner strength and I ask

Alex, like any young man rents a small apartment somewhere close to church. Aside from his boxing coach work he is our Security manager at the Church premise. Alex narrates to me how on Monday 20th July 2020 he felt phased and had a terrible headache after training the last team. Alex asks Shafiq, one of the young men in our Technical team to help him hold fort as he took a rest at his apartment. He got into his apartment, locked the door behind him, fell flat on his bed and was soon fast asleep.

Suddenly, after what seemed like a long time sleeping off this headache and fatigue, Alex wakes up in the dead of the night, only to realize that he has two uninvited visitors in his room; he pretends that he is still sleeping. The one man is stand right over his head with a huge hammer in hand, and the other is fidgeting with his TV set to get it off the wall mounting. It dawns on Alex that he is under attack! At that moment he realizes that he is totally vulnerable, and his head is exposed. So, in a sloppy sleepy motion, still pretending to be oblivious to his surroundings, he lifts his hand and covers his head and neck, a move his assailants clearly thought was one of a man still in dream land. Alex was simply making his first tactical move. He waits; and just as the guy standing over him turns to motion the fidgetor to move faster, Alex makes his move, grabs the hammer guy in a death grip with one hand! Alex begins to punch with his other hand very hard into the hammer guys ribs who now screams in pain; just then the struggle begins.

What Alex had not spotted was a third guy in the room, standing just behind his head at the bed stead with a machete! "Swish!! the first swing came in and hit his hand. Alex says he never felt any pain, but it felt like someone had hit him with a stick. Definately he now realised he had another assailant behind him. He swiftly turns with the hammer guy still tightly under grip, just in time for the second machette blow to hit the hammer guy right on the collar bone, slicing him open at that point. Another swift swing comes again, and Alex pushes the hammer guy again now towards the machette assailant just in time for the third blow to hit hammer guy across the face. Now at this point hammer guy is wailing at the top of his voice. Alex makes his move into the space of machete assailant and hits him with swift combinations of right and left hooks and finally an upper cut with his right that sends the machete guy tumbling down. This time the machette guy too is screaming for help

Alex is now going after machete guy, who is swiftly getting up from the floor and making for the door way. No.3 did not wait for any further instructions; he drops the TV set and makes swiftly for the door and out into the night closely followed by machete guy, hammer guy and then Alex hot on their heels into the dark of the night.

About a half kilometre away, and many unheeded threats to kill him, the assailants decide to drop their sack load of stolen goodies in order to increase their swift escape. Alex picks up the sack and walks back to his house. The entire neighbors had watched the entire 2 minutes fracas through their windows fearing for the worst to happen to Alex. He walks in with the sack, spreads out a huge loot of electronic goods; that night the buglers cum murderers had been busy in a number of homes. It is then that Alex realized he had sustained two deep cuts; one on his left hand, and another on his calf! He had lost a lot of blood and was now getting dizzy. Time on the clock was 3a.m!

The neighbors picked up a boda boda and rushed him to Mulago, and there was no service there! They rushed to another private facility where he was handled after handing over Two hundred Thousand Uganda shillings!

Alex is alive, and well, and back to his coaching. I met him on Sunday and we had a long talk about this event. He is in good spirits but he says what happened and the valiance was nothing short of a "Samson experience"! 

Coach Alex is happy to be alive today and continues in his service to improve lives of young men in the community. He told me some of his neighbors now think he is a ghost! They simply cannot believe what they saw; one sleepy young man fighting off four armed assailants and thereafter chase after them alone, recovering what was lost!

....to be continued