President William Ruto doesn’t know one thing about the death penalty in Kenya, and I can help him with that. I was in Kamiti prison when the last hanging of Kenyans sentenced to death was done. It was a mess for me because I got involved in the whole hanging business.
When they hang prisoners at Kamiti Maximum Prison, the entire prison system there, including Kamiti Medium Prison, where I was, is shut down one day before the hanging and two days after. The prison chiefs establish a group of prisoners called the Special Gang whose job is to bury the bodies of the hanged prisoners.
The big issue is that the place where Kenyan Kamiti prisoners are buried is a state secret and has to be kept that way. So, the Special Gang in Kamiti Medium for the burial is taken to the place where the bodies are being buried, and the graves to bury those bodies are already done, and their job is to put the bodies in the graves.
My nightmare with the last hanging at Kamiti prison in 1987 was that I was the prisoner in charge of cleaning the clothes of the prison warders from both Kamiti Medium and Kamiti Maximum. My job was to make sure all the clothes for the prison guards were cleaned and ironed, and you know how crazy those people are about walking in an ironed-out uniform.
The way the hanging was carried out at Kamiti was to get those prisoners on death row hanged on a rope up some second floors up.
After the person is hanged, their body is dropped to the floor, and there are prison guards down there with killing rungus so that any hanged prisoner who dares fall down there still alive would be crushed to death in minutes.
That is where I got in trouble in Kamiti as the cleaner of the clothes of guards. After the last hanging, I was handed prison guard clothes and as usual, I was giving them out to my team of prisoners the clothes and the soap to do the cleaning.
Then my fellow prisoners told me not to give them any clothes from the prison guards who were killing the prisoners after they fell down half dead. They told me they did not want to touch the blood of their fellow prisoners who were killed.
I told them if we mess up and refuse to clean the clothes, we were going to get beaten up real hard. We agreed they would take the clothes, put soap on that and iron later. It was the only way out.
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