Life outside jail: No place to call sweet home for freed convicts

Former prisoner Ali Hassan inside his uncle’s butchery at Kiamaiko in Nairobi, where he now works. [Courtesy]

The courts have in the recent past saved almost 1,000 murder and armed robbery convicts from the hangman, but it is no easy walk to freedom, as the convicts have found out.

In the court of public opinion and even among some close relatives, the freed convicts are condemned and not welcome, their acquisition of useful industrial skills notwithstanding.

We followed some of the convicts to different parts of the country after their release from prison. Most talk of nightmarish experience outside prison walls as they try to piece their lives together.

The last time Rolex Odhiambo Okeyo experienced the breeze from Lake Victoria was 11 years ago, at the back of a police truck as he was being spirited away from Konyango Majili village.

His three motherless daughters were in tears. The rest of the family were baying for his blood. The in-laws were scandalised and inconsolable. Outside his house were dried blood stains.

Blood from his 32-year-old wife who now lay lifeless in a nearby mortuary in Kendu Bay. The source of all this was allegations of adultery, which triggered a bitter row. A scuffle that ended in his wife’s death, and him at the back of a police truck.

“I killed my wife after a quarrel. I was bitter with her sister who had a habit of sleeping around. On the fateful day in July 2008, I started beating her because of that, and then she blurted that my wife also had a secret lover and had been moving out, as she wondered why I was punishing her. That enraged me and I administered the fatal blow that ended my wife’s life,” Odhiambo confesses.

In March, he returned home, hoping the gravity of his crime would have ebbed over the more than 10 years he was in jail. The death sentence handed by the High Court when he was found guilty of his wife’s murder was later reduced to life. But as fate would have it, his case was brought before court again and his sentence reduced to the duration he had been in custody.

At least, his brothers would forgive him and let him reconstruct his tattered life, he thought. He was wrong. Most of his family land had been sold and when he asked about it, his brothers allegedly became hostile and started threatening him with dire consequences.

“It is true that some of his brothers had sold part of the land. Rolex too had disposed part of his land while he was in prison. The family is now squabbling over a tiny piece of land by the shores of the lake,” says Tobias Aduda, the local chief. The chief said he was aware that Odhiambo had been in prison for 12 years for murder and had been experiencing problems with his 14 brothers.

There were heated exchanges between the brothers, forcing them to seek a reconciliation meeting with the chief. But later the ‘prodigal’ brother had to seek police protection. 

“I reported the matter at Kendu Bay Police Station. This was after three of my brothers threatened to either kill me or have me returned to prison,” Odhiambo said.

Seven months after walking out of prison, peace has eluded him and reconciliation with his family is still a mirage.

There is a new criminal case pending determination pitting him against his three bothers.

The situation is no different about 500km away in Githembe village, Murang’a County, where Justin Muna Karanja is trying to put his life back together after spending 14 years in prison. Muna, who is now 31 years old, was away looking for a national identity card, two weeks after he was freed from Kamiti Prison, after his sentence was quashed by Justice John Mativo. His mother Grace Muthoni, 57, says he is lucky to be out of prison.

Looking sickly

“When he walked into my compound, I could not recognise him. He was too thin and looked aged. He left home when he was just 17. Now he is an old man who looks sickly,” says Muthoni.

Muna was charged and convicted alongside his father Josephat Karanja and younger brother John Mwangi, who was only aged 13 at the time of their arrest.

Another brother, Anthony Gathu, fled as the family was being rounded up for a series of robberies, and went into hiding in Nairobi.

“I was later called and informed that he had been lynched and killed by a mob in the city. Sometimes I do not know what to do. All my sons and husband are in jail. Death has dogged this family and I wonder how Muna, who looks weak, will cope,” says the mother. She hopes that once Muna secures his national ID card, he will be allowed to collect his certificates from Nyeri’s King’ong’o Maximum Security Prison so that he can start looking for gainful employment.

“He told me that he learnt many trades in prisons and I hope he will get a job. As for my youngest son Mwangi, I hope that he too will be released,” she said. In Nairobi’s Kariobangi estate, Millicent Omusula thinks fate has played dirty tricks on her first born, Daniel Mugale. Mugale was only 18 years old in 2014 when he was arrested and charged with murder. Apparently, the youngster had a pending case of robbery with violence.

“He was supposed to have come back last week when Mativo ruled that he could be freed in connection with the murder charges. However, he could not come home because he still has to serve a 10-year jail term for robbery with violence,” said Omusula.

In Kiamaiko, the famous source of Nairobi’s goat meat, 22-year-old Ali Hassan has swapped his prison uniform with a butcher’s apron, ready to open a new chapter in his life.