Politics of work and punishment in jail

By Judith Akinyi

Most women enjoy cooking, but not in prison. While questions have been asked whether we eat to live or live to eat, the fact remains that in both situations food is necessary.

I came to learn that one can survive on any food as long as it is not poisonous. In fact, when there is no variety to select from, one gets used to whatever is available.

In zingatialand though, very few women want to be assigned cooking duties. It is believed that cooking and shamba work are the toughest duties in prison. Zingatia sisters would feign illness so that they are not assigned either of the two duties. However, the zingatia kazi sisters in uniform were just too smart for these kind of tricks.

Storytelling sessions

Through the years they have learned that while still in court or while travelling to prison in the bus, inmates share a lot of stories and one of them is alerting the new comers on what not to say and what to say in order to avoid being given hard duties.

In the kitchen, a lot of activities take place. There are several boilers that are used for preparing the same diet year in, year out. There is the boiling of hot water almost throughout because of cooking ugali or rice, porridge, beans or sukumawiki. On a few occasions, some sisters threaten others with hot water. Such threats in zingatialand are never taken for granted. The sisters in uniform are only too wise and never wait for such to happen. Within no time, the culprit smile their way down to the other cells because they have won especially if they were just issuing the threat in order to avoid being in the kitchen.

However, a few get used to cooking ugali and really enjoy the work. This is because on a few occasions they get to hide cooking oil, which they later use to fry their foods when the kitchen boss leaves.

Enterprising inmates

They also manage to steal a few pieces of meat, which they can do some business with. There is loaf and some other goodies at the tuckshop, which the cook can get from a few loaded sisters in exchange of additional pieces of meat. The trade always thrives but woe unto the cook if discovered by the warders. The next dreaded place is the shamba. In order to evade this place, others have occasionally created scenes and threatened to slash people with the jembe or panga. This is done to make warders think that one is dangerous hence their duty cards are are taken to "special watch" — a cell where inmates serving long sentences, and those who are mentally deranged live.

Here they escape from the hard work and are later assigned other duties after satisfying they are mentally stable.

The writer is an ex-prisoner.