In the Endless Sameness of Prison, Writing Kept Me Human

By  Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

It is past midnight, December 12, 1978. Unable to face the prickly bristles of three see–through blankets on a mattress whose sisal stuffing has folded into numerous lumps hard as stones, I am at the desk, under the full electric glare of a 100–watt naked bulb, scribbling words on toilet paper. I can hear the bootsteps of the night guard, going up and down the passageway between the two rows of cells, which face each other.

Mine is cell 16 in a prison block enclosing 18 other political prisoners. Here I have no name. I am just a number in a file: K6,77. A tiny iron frame against one wall serves as a bed. A tiny board against another wall serves as a desk. These fill up the minute cell.

One end of the passageway is a cul–de–sac of two latrines, a washroom with only one sink and a shower room for four. These are all open: no doors. At the other end, next to my cell, the passageway opens into a tiny exercise yard whose major features are one aluminum rubbish bin and a decrepit tenniquoit–cum–volleyball net hanging from two iron poles.

There is a door of iron bars at this opening—between the exercise yard and the block of cells—and it is always shut and locked at night. The block of cells and the yard are enclosed by four double stone walls so high that they completely cut off the skyline of trees and buildings, which might otherwise give us a glimpse of the world of active life.

This is Kamĩtĩ Maximum Security Prison, one of the largest in Africa. It is situated near three towns—Rũirũ, Kĩambu, and Nairobi—and literally next door to Kenyatta University College, but we could as easily be on Mars. We are completely quarantined from everything and everybody, including convicted prisoners in all the other blocks, except for a highly drilled select squad of prison guards and their commanding officers.

Maximum security: the idea used to fill me with terror whenever I met it in fiction, Dickens mostly, and I have always associated it with England and Englishmen; it conjured up images of hordes of dangerous killers à la Magwitch of Great Expectations, always ready to escape through thick forests and marshes, to unleash yet more havoc and terror on an otherwise stable, peaceful, and God–fearing community of property owners that sees itself as the whole society. It also conjures images of Robben Island political prisoners, Mandela among them, breaking rocks for no purpose other than breaking them. A year as an inmate in Kamĩtĩ has taught me what should have been obvious: that the prison system is a repressive weapon in the hands of a ruling minority to ensure maximum security for its class dictatorship over the rest of the population, and it is not a monopoly exclusive to England and South Africa. ...[mehr] https://lithub.com/in-the-endless-sameness-of-prison-writing-kept-me-human/