“Amazing grace… that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind but now I see,” goes the first stanza of the famous hymnal. It sums up the attitude of some inmates at Lang’ata Women’s prison.
Just when fate had them condemned guilty in nasty criminal exposures, in prison, they found a hospitable embrace, enabling them to rediscover themselves.
True to the old adage, ‘If life throws lemon your way, make a lemonade with it,’ life in prison has turned unexpectedly, thankfully, in a good way.
For Jane Muthoni, while news headlines condemned her as vile but the prison has brought out the better in her.
The former Icaciri Girls Secondary School principal made headlines in 2016 when she got arrested for allegedly disappearing and killing her husband Solomon Mwangi, another school principal.
She was remanded at Lang’ata Women Prison immediately as investigation and her eventual trial run through.
The macabre incident got her convicted in 2021 and sentenced to 30 years. She maintains her claim of innocence.
The Star met her at the corrective institution to detail her rehabilitation journey.
SMILING AGAIN
Though the past six years have seen her fall from grace of being a senior teacher, life in prison “is life away from home,” the 48 years old mother of four said.
“I’m much better here than I was outside there. I’m deep in my faith, I have forged a closely knit relationship with my children, I have grown intellectually and in other areas,” she said, her face beaming with joy.
The prison has partnered with religious outfits, non-governmental entities and state players that run various rehabilitative work for the inmates.
The former teacher has taken advantage of the opportunities to train to be a paralegal.
“I’m now a paralegal and I’m part of people who help fellow inmates who cannot afford lawyers with their cases,” she said.
“In fact, I’m very proud of having used by paralegal skills through paper work to help a robbery with violence convict to get acquitted, and he is back to his family. These are things I would not have done if I remained in my former life,” Muthoni said.
Besides the paralegal work, she is one of the teachers at the institution, helping the secondary school classes to prepared for the national exams.
Muthoni says that contrary to her imagination of the prison before she crossed the law, the authorities have been friendly, are family minded and are deliberate in letting inmates connect with their loved one, and retain relationship with their families back home.
In fact, Anne Sieta, who is charge of welfare at the facility told the Star that the prison has a fully fledged welfare arrangement to not only enable sustained relationship between the convicts and their loved ones, but also invest in pursuing reconciliation with the aggrieved parties at conflict with the offenders.
They involve religious players, counsellors and close relatives who may have a listening ear to be interlocutor in bridging the divides.
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SPECIAL VISITS
On the day of our visit to the prison, Muthoni’s four children-who are all adults-visited her.
The authorities allow special visits where inmates are allowed to have their family members, say children, visit and have a prolonged special time with them.
Elder daughter graduated from university while Muthoni was in prison and is now working. Her twin children are also in university.
“They tell me all the time that they are very proud of me. Being in prison has not stopped me from being a good mother to them. I’m also very proud of them.”
The reconciliation grace has not worked in her yet. She said she was fixed in the case and that despite the court having the two men whom she believed to have killed her husband self-incriminate, it still convicted her.
Also, she added, her in-laws mistreated her children, trying in vain to incite them against her, attempted to dispossess her and emptying the account she run with her husband.
It is an eerily similar tale for Jane Nambuye. Like Muthoni, she is committed to jail for murdering her husband.
Recalling the fateful day, Nambuye, who is also a trained teacher, was back home from a religious gathering to a battering husband.
The husband had descended on her with blows and kicks just as she came home and in the heat of the moment, Nambuye got reach of a kitchen knife and drove it fatally on her husband. He died on the spot. She regrets it to this day, she said.
When the judge lowered the gavel and convicted her, she thought it marked and end to her life, as she knew it. Except that it was not.
She said that at the prison, she’s discovered herself, recommitted to her faith, thanks to the active faith-based entities partnering with the prison authorities.
She’s also trained as paralegal and have also remained at active teacher in the facility’s schools.
“It is not as I thought it would be. I have remained a teacher, a profession I thought I would never be in again. I’m a strong Adventist now and I better understand the sanctity of life,” she said.
The authorities have also enabled a strong connection with her children, who love and respect her.
But one area of Nambuye’s life is not yet alright. With the help of prison authorities, she has sought to reconcile with her husband’s family in vain.
“They have yet to forgive me even though I have tried multiple times to reach out to them. But I understand them, and I give them time. We keep trying,” she said.
MISSING FREEDOM
For Lilian Nyatumba, the grace within the four corners of the prison has made it homely but not quite free.
Of all things she had before incarceration, it is freedom she misses.
She got arrested on a drug trafficking charge in 2018 after she got caught with kgs of cocaine.
Nyatumba says at the time, she had a first-born boy living with her parents in Gem, Siaya county.
She was also heavily pregnant with her second born daughter.
Her husband, who is from Ivory Coast and was working in Canada with the UN, was roundly disappointed in her. Life around her came crushing, she said.
But her first encounter in the prison changed her perspective.
Reeling from backlash from the conviction, the prison authorities afforded her grace and homely support, she said.
When I was due to deliver, they took me to the hospital and watched over me with so much care until I gave birth to my daughter, she said.
And when she was back, the authorities put her on a rest for six months, allowing her to exclusively breastfeed her girl, all the while exempting her from the routinely chores at the prison.
“They also ensured my child and I got a very balanced diet. It is just amazing the kind of support I have received here,” she said, her eyes welling up.
Sieta, the senior sergeant in charge of welfare, said her docket forms the backbone of the facility and that they invest in compassion so that the inmates don’t feel condemned further.
“Prison is no longer for punishment, but rehabilitation. These people [inmates] have already been condemned as guilty. That alone is weighing down enough. Ours is to rehabilitate them,” she said.
She said their first interaction with inmates is not orient them and accord them psychosocial support to help them accept their new life reality and make better off it.
Only 10 per cent of new inmates accept their new status. She said.
Majority refuses to acclimatize, retain bitterness and maintain blaming those they think made them to be incarcerated, hence must be helped.
“But our advice always is, once you are in prison, the faster you accept and seek rehabilitation the better.”
Inside the prison, she said, they have trainings in salon, bakery, tailoring, weaving and kneading skills. The inmates get trained for six months and then graduate.
She said her office is responsible for replenishing the basic supply to the inmates, administer counselling and look after their welfare.
For those with children below one year, they are allowed to be with them.
LEARNING AS DISTRACTION
Gladys Tisa is a superintendent of prisons and the overall in-charge of education at the facility. She says learning remains the main activity that keeps the inmates going, with some serving longer sentences taking courses that run for long.
Her role is to enable the inmates complete their studies, including preparing, registering and present the candidates for national examination.
“Learning is one way of keeping them engaged to make them busy so that they don’t be idle and stressed up or start engaging in evil activities.”
She says that the institution’s program is curated to handle each inmate depending on their literacy level.
“Most of them who are illiterate just want to know how to count, write their names and read the Bible.”
She says the training programs are tailored to help the inmates find a landing slate when they eventual earn their freedom back.
Apart from the elementary learning, they teach them fundamentals of computing, Music, Bachelors of Law and empower them on relationship building, Tisa said.
The graduate teacher said that the partnerships between the prisons authority and well-wishers have paid off as a sponsor has already come forward to put up a music academy at the institution.
Some of the shortcomings she grapples with in her department include shortage of teachers, limiting infrastructure, few teaching consumables like books, pens, chalks among others.
Contact hours is also a challenge for the inmate learners, disadvantaging them compared to those in fulltime schools.
Benjamin Chirchir, the superintendent of prisons heading security department at the institution said his job is to ensure safety of the inmates and also to bar them from escaping incarceration.
He said he’s made sure that the routine body search of the inmates are friendly and not intrusive and that they are done by women officers.
Justice Defenders is major partner with prison authorities in the rehabilitation journey.
Morris Kaberia, a legal officer at the organization said their legal training of the inmates has helped empower them to know their rights, the law and give them a landing plane when released from incarceration.
But Demas Kiprono, a human rights lawyer, still believe much need to be done to accord inmates dignity, no matter their crime.
This story was produced by the Star Publications in partnership with WAN-IFRA Women in News Social Impact Reporting Initiative