Maina wa Kinyatti

Kenya: A Prison Notebook

First published by:
Vita Books
P.O. Box 2908
London N17 6YY U.K.

and:   
Mau Mau Research Center
P.O. Box 190048
South Richmond Hill Station Jamaica,
New York 11435 U.S.A.
(718) 291-6365

Order your copy today!

(c) Copyright: Maina wa Kinyatti, 1996.
ISBN 1-869886-08-9

Maina wa Kinyatti after his arrest in 1982
Nation Newspapers Ltd., Nairobi, Kenya.

Maina wa Kinyatti is one of Kenya's progressive historians.

In June 1982, he was arrested by the Kenyan authoritarian regime, charged with possession of seditious literature and imprisoned.

He suffered for six-and-a-half years in the hands of his brutal captors. He was repeatedly held in solitary confinement and was constantly insulted and beaten. He was tortured by vermin, untreated diseases, hunger end loneliness.

But he remained defiant, his courage and spirit unbroken.

Kenya: A Prison Notebook

Contents

Preface                                                      i
1. Arrest and Interrogation                        1
2. Nairobi Remand Prison                       13
3. Kamiti Maximum Security Prison         49
4. Naivasha Maximum Security Prison   213
5. Prison Aftermaths                              233
6. Songs of our People                          257

Appendixes                                           269
A. Prison Language                               269
B. Acronyms                                         281
C. Glossary of Gikuyu
      and Kiswahili Words                       283
D. Glossary of Historical Events
       and Persons                                    285

Other books by Maina are:

Thunder from the Mountains (1980)

Kenya Freedom Struggle (1987)

Mau Mau: A Revolution Betrayed (1992)

A Season of Blood: Poems from Kenya Prisons (1995)

I want you to know that I will never compromise my political beliefs or betray the Motherland. I will remain defiant throughout this tortuous journey. Dictator Moi and his hangmen will never count me among the broken Kenyans.

There is nothing so sweet, so beautiful, so precious as freedom and liberty.

Kenya: A Prison Notebook
Online Excerpts

"SEDITIOUS" LITERATURE

art by Virurngoima 1990

Fifteen long years of Kenyatta's undemocratic rule left neo-colonial Kenya impoverished, depoliticized and disunited. He made way for Moi to misrule us. A rule oftalk, talk, talk and do the opposite. The nauseating demagogy which Moi and the traitorous clique around him employ to mask their unpopular rule has failed to hide the all-around suffering of the Kenyans. One notices the intensified pauperization of the Kenyan people, as evidenced in ever rising unemployment, sky-high inflation, famine and starvation, wage freezes, forced cash contributions (under the pretext of Harambee), to the already wealthy ones.

 

To read more click here: "SEDITIOUS" LITERATURE

PREFACE

art by Virurngoima 1990

The conditions that prisoners in Kenya endure are extremely barbaric. Every morning at 5 a.m., male prisoners are ordered out of the cells stark naked for internal body searches. The guards search their mouths and armpits, ears and nostrils. They pull, twist and squeeze their genitals. They order the prisoners to face the walls with their legs spread apart to examine their anuses for concealed weapons, money and other contraband. They use sharp sticks to probe the prisoners' rectums. In a sense, the.guards are more interested in prisoners' buttocks than in the search. They make sexual remarks: "Look at this one, his buttocks are two mountains, it is difficult to mount him... and look at this one, his arsehole is shaped like a woman's cunt... This one has a soft arse like his mother... " This monstrous drama is repeated every morning. It is a humiliating and degrading experience.

To read more click here: PREFACE

ARREST AND INTERROGATION

art by Virurngoima 1990

On Thursday, June 2, 1982, six armed plainclothes policemen knocked on the door of my residence at Kenyatta University campus, Nairobi, and demanded to search the house. In defiance, my wife told them that they could not search the house without a warrant. They pushed her out of the way and walked in. I was not in the house.

The search lasted four hours. Everything in the house was turned upside down. They told my wife that they were looking for seditious publications. They found none. Instead they confiscated a personal typewriter, 29 files of my research work on the Mau Mau Movement, 23 books including works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Castro, Che Guevera, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and my own book, Thunder from the Mountains. When they were leaving, they told my wife that I was wanted by the police and should report to the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

To read more click here: ARREST AND INTERROGATION

NAIROBI REMAND PRISON

I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can t get enough of the trees -
they're so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can't smell the medlcines -
carnations must be blooming nearby.

It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

- Nazlm Hikrnet, Turkish poet.
Translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konak

I was in cell number nine. It was a small room - 8 feet long, 6 feet wide, 12 feet high with a small barred window near the ceiling. The electric light was on. The floor was dirty and damp. No bed, no mattress, no regular toilet, no shower, no soap no towel, no running water. The toilet was a bucket caked with human excrement. Lice and bedbugs were crawling everywhere. Hundreds of mosquitoes were on the ceiling. The walls were covered with political statements, names of people, dates and obscenities. Some of the statements were scratched by Mau Mau prisoners of war:

"We are Mau Mau Freedom Fighters; we shall never retreat or surrender. . . This is our country."

Wiyathi! Wiyathi!
Wiyathi bururi wa Kirinyaga.
Kenya ni bururi wa andu airu.

Freedom! Freedom!
Freedom in country of Kirinyaga
Kenya is black people's country.

To read more click here: NAIROBI REMAND PRISON