Picking up the pieces after long stint in prison

Jacob Shikuku tilling family sugarcane farm, he is usually busy in the farm after release from prison to make ends meet.

Before June 1, 2014 Jacob Shikuku was just like any other inmate going through the motions of prison life, looking forward to nothing. Then a miracle happened; after 21 years of uncertainty about getting freedom or justice, Shikuku, 54, was declared a free citizen. He had been pardoned by the President.

Dazed but grateful, he retraced his steps to the place he had called home two decades ago. As he approached, he was engulfed by fear; would his family accept him? What about the villagers and society in general? But he had nowhere else to go, so home he headed.
We met him outside his brother Morris Sifuna’s house in Shikulu Village in Malava, Kakamega County. He was sporting a grey shirt and matching trousers with blue sandals.
He ushered us into the house with a warm grin that lit up his dark complexion and just before we took our seats, we noticed that Sifuna and Shikuku were standing up. We also stood.
“Okay, let’s pray,” Sifuna said  and proceeded to say a lengthy prayer thanking God for uniting the family with their ‘lost’ brother.
Shikuku was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1993 for what he terms a framed case against him by a girlfriend in a Bungoma court.

“I couldn’t believe it at first as the magistrate read my charges and then the conviction, I thought it was a joke given that I had never been arrested before. Before I began my sentence, I talked to my younger brother Morris and asked him to take care of my four children, aged between eight months and seven,” Shikuku looks pensive, rubbing his hands together, before letting them rest on his clean shaven head for a few minutes.

He served time in four prisons; Kodiaga, Kamiti, Naivasha, Nakuru and Kibos.

Two times he tried to quash the sentence against him. But his appeals were in vain.

So he ‘settled’ down to prison life. He trained as a tailor and attained a Grade Two certificate. Before his pardon, he was working towards attaining Grade One.

Fortunately for him, relatives visited him in prison and kept him updated about his family. His brother Sifuna had adopted his children, for which he was grateful. But bad news also followed him; dampening his already bad situation in prison.

“I received news that my last born child died of an ailment a few days after running away from home in 1997. I also heard that my wife married another man and had children with him. These I strongly feel would not have happened were I free,” he said, pausing for a moment before picking up his thoughts again. “I thank the Lord I am out for the latter part of my life. I never knew I would be free. What happened is now in the past. I have to move on.” His ‘moving on’ began the moment his release was announced. 

Disbelief

“I was called from my place of work - the prison tailor’s workshop, and informed that my application for freedom had been successful. It was like a dream come true, unbelievable. The prisons’ administration gave me Sh300 for bus fare to Malava.”

The fare was enough to take him from Kibos to his rural home.

“That day I walked round and round Kisumu in disbelief, joy and a rare feeling of self-esteem, something I had lost while in prison. The town had grown to a city, it dawned on me that it was evening yet I had been released in the morning.”

In his excitement as a free person, he had forgotten to eat. When he was near home, he felt the pangs of hunger and bought roasted maize. It tasted heavenly.

His village, Shikulu had also drastically changed. Two decades away from civilisation is like being in another world; an underworld.

His three children; Jackline, Knight and Haron were all grown up - Jackline is married, Knight is in Form Four and Haron in Form Three. The two students study in Nairobi under the care of his brothers who are educating them. He met them during the August holidays.

His peers had done well for themselves. The good thing, he says, is that they all welcomed him.
“Some thought I had been hanged in prison. They have made endless trips in disbelief joking that I was not their old buddy,” says a smiling Shikuku.

His mother Fridah Nekesa, 74, is still short of words. She thanks God for her son’s return.
Since the release from prison is a miracle, according to Shikuku, then more miracles are coming his way. He plans on buying a sewing machine to supplement the family income and take care of his parents and “our children”.

Sifuna’s wife, Sarah, raised Shikuku’s children. She says she took them in as her own. The couple is hosting Shikuku in their three bed-roomed, semi-permanent house.

Now Shikuku does a little farming on the family farm where he has planted sugarcane and sweet potatoes, which he sells in the market to cater for his personal effects.

Probation Officer Gregory Masingila who is helping him gel with his new environment says Shikuku is responding well. “He often tells me that when he finds a sewing machine he will establish a business and have a go at providing for his family, even building a house,” says Masingila.

Shikuku advises ex-convicts to respect society and have a positive attitude.