MY PRISON STORY: Haruna Betrays Closest Friend over Rich New Inmate

By Markson Omagor

We then walked back to our ward to find R.P ward ready with tea. After tea, I went back to my new work station armed with the Labour Allocation Ticket. I did not find the prison warder present, he had moved out. I presented the Ticket to R.P printing, an elderly man in early 50s who had been incarcerated by the same anti-corruption court.

He told me I was one of the luckiest persons to be given 12months after being found guilty of two offences.  They joked that I was simply their on a tour. I stayed for nearly 30minutes before retracing back to Ward C8.

Lunch consisted of the brown posho and a catalogue of green mukene (silver fish) and groundnut paste. Ochan and I went back to welfare office to complete my call. I called a friend called George who expressed shock and sympathy that I had been imprisoned. He promised me financial assistance the week next.

That evening, we spent our time playing matatu which the Ochan’s won (It was syndicate game where two faced off with the other two in a game where you had to read what your colleague could be having). For the first time I slept on interrupted till about 5:00am when a warning urinating dream got me out of bed into the toilets.

But while I was going about my business, I overheard a seemingly hot but hushed exchange between two Muslim neighboring friends. I did not pick the gist of the matter till early “Pollen” when after the count, one of the Moslems, Haruna hurriedly went after the R.P Lock Up, also a Muslim and accused his colleague of damaging the R.P’s name. That the R.P sells sugar, a crime that is gravely punished in prison. That R.P got incensed was no surprise and when he therefore decided to act against the accused, none of us was surprised.

Neither was the ward surprised that Haruna had turned on his colleague, Radio. A week before, Radio was the provider for a helpless Huruna but where after, one elderly Moslem convict was brought to our Ward actually under the influence of Radio, things changed. This old man turned out to be a man of means. He had daughters who were married to wealthy husbands. Two days after his introduction to the ward, space to keep usables brought for him became very small. A combination of the Ganda instinct and Islamic materialism could no longer be kept under the carpet.  Huruna now had to out-favour “Radio” in order to gain access to the goodies abound to Mzee, the New Moslem.

Amidst that confusion, we were ordered to report for Labour. My department does not work on weekends so we simply reported for the sake of it or so we thought. However, after the initial pulling out of core parties for work, carpentry, metal work and printing were left behind. We were later told to ‘fall in’ to be counted again. This is when we realized there was a special assignment for all of us. We tried to walk away back to BOMA but were stopped. We then used eye contact communication and got a waiver from R.P labour who ordered us back to BOMA.

This time round, our chef, Odong was ready with tea (milk tea). As we were enjoying this very special breakfast, R.P C Block came in with a list of ward mates on transfer to other Wards. First on the list was the New Mzee Muslim, then Haruna more over to different Wards. Talk of a hunter who lets off one bird in the hand in preference to ten in the tree. Our Radio was variously pleaded for and was retained. The other culprit was an inmate who attacked a cleaner who fetched and served us food in the ward about 4 days back. He was also sent packing. Of course they were taken to other wards but the problem is they had to start from the corridors.