PREFACE

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.

After the body searches, the prisoners, still naked, are ordered to squat in the hallway holding their ears with their fingers while the guards search the cells. When the search of their cells is completed, the guards begin beating, kicking and insulting the prisoners. They order them, naked and holding their ears, to jump around like frogs while they kick their bare buttocks with combat boots and beat them with clubs and sticks. This bestial performance is called the "frog dance." After the "frog dance," prisoners are fed a cold, lumpy porridge breakfast and are driven like mules to work. The beatings and psychological assaults continue until prisoners are locked up in their cells for the night at 5 p.m. Food is used as a means of torture; it is always half cooked and invariably inadequate. There is cold, sugarless porridge, full of sand, worms, dead flies and cockroaches for breakfast; mealie maize with salted hot water with three or four leaves of "thutkuma" floating in it for lunch; and supper is weevil-infested beans full of stones and stinking mealie maize. Fruits, sugar and fat are completely excluded from the diet. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, prisoners are supposed to eat meat. Instead, they are served watery, bitter soup with bones. The meat is eaten by the prison staff and their families. Hunger and starvation cause mental ailments to many prisoners and force others, particularly the young inmates, to barter their rectums for food.

The kitchen is dirty and infested with flies, cockroaches, mice and rats. The prisoners who cook and serve the food in old utensils are also dirty. Apart from that, spoons and forks are not provided. Prisoners eat their meals with their hands and most of the time the prison authorities shut off the water supply.

The prison uniform was designed by the British colonial occupiers. Men wear shirts with sleeves and a pair of shorts, both made of cotton. Women wear a dress made of the same cotton material. This is the prisoner's garb year round, regardless of weather. Prisoners are strictly forbidden to have underwear or shoes. According to the Prison Act, upon admittance to a prison, each prisoner is entitled to a new uniform. A prisoner would be extremely lucky to find one in good shape. Most of the prisoners wear tatters, infested with vermin and smelling of shit. It is not unusual to see prisoners walking naked.

Although each prisoner is entitled to two new blankets, a mattress, a towel, a pair of sandals, a toothbrush and toothpaste, Prisoners would have to be out of their minds to even imagine having these basic necessities made available by the Prison Department. Such supplies are stolen in broad daylight by the prison staff.

Since there are no beds or mattresses, prisoners must sleep on the dirty, cold cement floors. The lucky ones can wrap themselves in old blankets that smell of urine and shit and are filled with lice and bedbugs. Toilets Give no doors and they do not flush. Many overflow with maggots, dead flies and cockroaches. The bathrooms are communal and little more than open sewers. Toilet paper and soap are provided when the prison authorities choose to do so. If a prisoner demands these essential items, he is reminded that he left his human dignity outside the prison gate, when he put on a prison uniform and exchanged his name for a number.

The Kenyan Prison Act, Section 99, entitles a prisoner to be visited once a month by family, relatives and friends. However, that law is rarely adhered to. When allowed, a prisoner is given a five to seven minutes to talk with visitors through a wire mesh window. Prior to the visit, the visitors are psychologically harassed and intimidated and on many occasions, insulted and turned away without plausible explanation. Conjugal visits are not allowed.

Kenyan prisoners are denied medical care. As a result, many die from untreated diseases. John Mungai Waruiru prisoner number 126/87 died on May 5, 1988 after coughing constantly for more than twelve months. He was never examined by a doctor. Many times when he tried to see the Kamiti medic, he was dismissed as a malingerer: "Guard, this prisoner is bothering me," the medic would say. "He is not sick. Take him back to his cell and teach him a lesson. Let him know that this is a prison, it is not his mama's backyard." The same happened to Titus Adungosi (the former student leader of the University of Nairobi) who died on December 29, 1988 from imternal bleeding.

Similarly, this author was suffering from Pterygium, duodenal ulcer, high blood pressure, constant diarrhea and chest pains and a deteriorating dental condition. His many requests to be taken to hospital for treatment were met with hostility and sarcasm. It was the international community, particularly Amnesty International, the Committee for the Release of Political in Kenya and P.E.N. International, which put pressure on the Kenyan authorities to provide the author with proper medical care.

Conditions in the women's prisons are always as brutal and dehumanizing as they are in the men's prisons and are often worse. Women prisoners are forced to provide slave labor on the coffee, maize and tea plantations owned by the prison department and government officials including the president, where they are beaten and constantly raped by the male prison staff. In Eldoret and Nakuru prisons more than 79 women were raped in June 1988 alone! Most of the victims became pregnant. By conservative estimates, 75 percent of women prisoners in Kenya are raped before they complete their jail terms. Rape is an officially sanctioned part of the physical and psychological torture that women are subjected to in Kenyan prisons. Therefore, it does not provoke an official response when it is reported. In addition, women prisoners are not provided with sanitary articles during their menstruation periods; they are forced to use pieces of cloth or dry grass. To deny them these essential items is an evil and inhuman form of punishment. Expectant mothers are not exempt from the minimal diet and senseless brutality. They are forced to squat in the sun and endure savage beatings. During the body searches, sharp sticks are thrust into their vaginas and anuses to detect contraband.

Women with children below five years of age are imprisoned with their children. In addition to the psychological and physical terror of prison life, these children are underfed. their clothes are full of vermin and like their captive mothers, they are denied medical care and suffer from avitaminosis. In fact, most of them die from malnutrition and contagious diseases before their mothers complete their prison sentences. Those who survive are mentally maimed for life.

It should be noted that because of the economic and political repression, there are currently more women incarcerated in Kenyan jails and prisons than at any time in our country's history.

This diary is an expression of the neocolonial brutality experienced by Kenyan prisoners. It is also a testimony to courage and fortitude.

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