You can tell more about a country
from the inmates in its jails, than those in its universities - Prof Irwin
Edman in Philosopher’s Holiday.
Half of the male inmates have sexual
partners in Kenyan prisons, a former jailbird reveals.
John Ngare was sentenced to death by
Embu Magistrate’s Court for robbery with violence in 2012, but got released two
years later after the Court of Appeal set him free.
Ngare, now saved, had been a crook
since he was seven, and was thrown behind bars seven times.
The Form Two dropout has seen
plenty, including witnessing firsthand, how prisoners bid for new inmates with
the highest bidder turning the ‘newbie’ into a wife.
“There is a prisoner in charge of
allocating sleeping quarters to new inmates. So, when you come in as
first-timer in prison and still in the holding area, the prisoners in charge,
we call them ‘Overall,’ will be bribed with amounts ranging from Sh300 to
Sh500. Whoever pays the highest amount will have the new prisoner assigned to
his cell. The preference is usually young, ‘yellow-yellow,’ plump men who are
in prison for the first time. “When you get to the cell, which is usually full,
your ‘husband’ will let you share his mattress, food and cigarettes. But come
night, you will have to pay back.”
Ngare says homosexuality is
widespread in prison and the moneyed can have up to six or seven ‘wives’
“In prison, money is everything. If
you have money, you can buy the best food. As others feed on beans and ugali,
and you can be feasting on chicken and chapatis. Many new inmates not used to
prison food will initially not take it. They will readily take up the offer for
more palatable meals offered by influential prisoners, only to end up as
‘wives’ for more favours,” says Ngare.
He estimates that in all the prisons
he has been in, almost half the population are in homosexual relationships.
“When I was in Kamiti, I saw men who
were selling themselves to fellow prisoners. They had different price ranges.
Some offered themselves for as little as two sticks of cigarettes, while the
pricey ones would charge about Sh500 for their services,” Ngare revealed.
Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
he of the Crime and Punishment novel fame, noted that “the degree of
civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
The Nairobian came face to face with
the fate of male inmates when it sought to speak to a reformed jailbird at one
of the country’s maximum security prisons in mid 2014. However, just minutes
into the interview, a middle-aged man stormed out from one of the prison blocks
and straight to where we were conducting the interview.
He was wailing and shouting:
“Tafadhali nisaidieni, hawa watu wamenikula...!”
He continued: “I just want to be
heard and helped, these people will kill me,” he pleaded as one of the prison
warders whisked him away, claiming he’s a mad man.
According to the reformed
prisoner-turned-pastor, it’s the corrupt prison warders who “nurture the
despicable vices.”
He adds that, “They have let rich
inmates to turn fellow men into women and often turn a deaf ear to our cries.
That inmate is not mad; whatever he is saying is the truth. These are rape
cells and certain blocks are well known and marked to harbour immorality.”
The reality is that ‘penal
sex’ or ‘reformatory’ sex is one of the vices that jailbirds pick or adapt
while in incarceration. A spot check in Kenya’s main jails reveals how most
have become dens of homosexual. Sexual violence is rife in these institutions.
“Since I joined the service in
the 1980s, I found homosexuals in the prison service and the number keeps
surging. Our hands are tied on this issue. I do not have a plan and I am not
aware of any from the commissioner,” an officer in charge of a Nairobi prison
told us. A number of judicial and prison officers declined to speak to us
fearing victimisation.
Our reformed jailbird adds
that new inmates become the target of sexual molestation based on their age,
looks and sexual orientation.
“If you are out there committing
crime then you better be tough and harden up before your arrest, because the
weaker you look, the more vulnerable you will be and we cannot save you,” said
a warder at Naivasha Maximum Prison.
A former Mathare United
footballer serving a death sentence described homosexuality as a baptism by
fire that almost every first-time inmate has to endure.
“You will be in serious trouble
in Kenyan prisons if you have ‘feminine’ characteristics. Woe unto you if you
walk around looking like a woman. You will be turned into a sex object and
sometimes even forced to have sex with more than four men in one night. They
even have a way of twisting your manhood render you useless as a man. It is
like castration.”
A long-serving probation
officer blamed the vice on corruption within the prisons service, noting that
the key perpetrators are ‘rich inmates’ who have the ability to influence key decisions
within prison blocks.
“The condemned have no hope of
ever being with a woman, so they have made up their minds on sexuality. They
operate just like husbands and wives where the hubby is expected to provide for
the wife. It is considered a win-win situation in which the ‘wife’ must offer
sexual favours,” said our source.
One of the inmates said that
he gave up on being straight after back-to-back transfers to two facilities
failed to save him from the rapists.
“The sad truth is that once you have
crossed over, there is no coming back. With time, you get used to it and start
enjoying the protection and favours. After all, there are very slim chances
that you might actually see the outside of the prison walls. Transfers are only
a temporary reprieve. Sooner or later, things become as they were before you
were moved,” said a confessed homosexual.
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