On a cold Nairobi afternoon, Dorotia Bester is a long way from home. For close to a year, she has been serving time in a Kenyan prison on drug trafficking charges, which she continues to fight. Once in a while, she drifts off into her own world and thinks of life in her native South Africa.
“The first few months were tough. First I couldn’t understand the local language and this created some tension between me and my fellow inmates,” Dorotia says. “Here we have nothing but time. If you do not fill it up with something constructive, the hours become your worst enemy.”
The Kenyan prison system was built as a punitive institution. It traces its origins to the colonial programmes that were designed to pacify the recalcitrant natives opposed to colonialism and, later on, agitators for independence.
“Until very recently, the system inflicted some of the harshest punishments and was almost never concerned with any concrete rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders,” says Asman Kamama, MP and former chair of Kenya’s parliament committee on security. “But slowly this is changing.”
Since 2010, the country’s prison services have been on a charm offensive, introducing programmes for humane containment and social rehabilitation of offenders. One of them, the Peace within Prisons Project, is currently being implemented by Irene Auma: she teaches yoga to inmates.
It is in her programme that Dorotia finds escape from the numbing, never-ending repetition of chores and routines behind the high walls of Nairobi’s Langata women’s prison. Twice a week, the inmates wait with childlike eagerness for Irene and her team of instructors to walk through the iron gates and into a room measuring some 12ft by 12ft for a yoga session.
“This is our version of freedom. We stretch, pose, dance and try to find a balance to our lives,” Ruth Kamande says. She is one of the most eager of Irene’s students: she hasn’t missed a class since January this year when the project started.
“What else would I be doing? I want to be so good that eventually, when I leave the prison gates, I will have a new and exciting skill to share with my family and friends,” she says.
According to prison authorities, inmates often face stigma when released and seldom reintegrate into society. “The perception out there is that those who come through our gates will never have anything useful to offer the community,” says Susan Marita, who is in charge of the yoga project at the prison. “They are looked at as criminals and individuals of little value. We hope that with the extra skills they learn, they can show people that they can contribute to the greater good.
“Yoga will help them deal with the extra pressure they will get from society once they are released. It will help them focus and deal with the negative energy that will come their way. But before that, it also helps then become model inmates.”
Marita also says that almost 80% of former prisoners face some kind of stigma once released. As a result, a large percentage are tempted back into a life of crime. “They need to be equipped with skills, both physical and psychological to deal with the shock waiting for them,” she says.
The class begins with a brief reading from Irene. “What do you understand by these words?” she asks, now transformed from a bubbly friend to a serious instructor. A group of 25 students sit crosslegged in a circle on the cold tiled floors. All are barefoot and in tights and T-shirts, their dull, unflattering, grey- and white-striped prison gowns and bright plastic sandals discarded in one corner.
“We have to learn to listen to our bodies. For example, if I feel tired I should rest. And if I feel stressed I should deal with the issues causing me stress,” one of them says.
After the reading, a light warm-up session follows, just long enough for the inmates to break into a light sweat. Then they get into yoga proper. Downward-facing dog, peacock pose, numerous sit-ups, child’s pose, standing asana,eagle pose. Repeat.
The mood is light and jokes are cracked. Even Marita, the officer in charge of the programme, joins in. For the next one-and-a-half hours, the room becomes one. The walls around their lives seem to be crumbling with each pose.
“This is what I intended this programme to achieve,” whispers Irene at the side of the room. “Make each of these women and girls in here feel human. Feel like they belong. Know that there are people out there who think about them and, of course, give them something that will help kill time.”
The class is in crocodile pose. Irene demands complete silence from the participants once class starts. Every so often, though, the silence is broken by a reminder that even the time the women use for yoga isn’t truly theirs. Random head counts are conducted by the hour. At such times, they abandon their yoga positions and quickly organise themselves into two parallel lines with their faces looking down. Two wardens, not part of the class, slowly count them. As the sound of their hard-soled boots fades in the corridors, the class attempts to find their freedom once more.
Kenya has 108 prisons – 18 cater for women and 87 for men. Only three are set aside for juveniles. According to the Kenya prisons service, the current inmate population is about 55,800, against capacity for 18,600. There are a total of 18,400 members of staff, 4,812 of them female officers.
Irene hopes that in a year’s time, she will have trained enough inmates and prison warders to take over the programme. “Some of the people here are serving life sentences. Why not equip them with lifelong skills?” she says.
Meanwhile, Dorotia doesn’t know yet when she will return home to South Africa. She is between appeals. “At least I know that next Monday, I will have an hour and a half to be myself. To relax and just be free,” she says.
To date, 60 women have participated in the sessions and Irene and her team teach in three other prisons. Irene says, the Peace within Prison project continues to help prisoners accept their situation and find inner peace.
For Ruth, the yoga class has greatly boosted her self confidence: “I feel special. Someone thinks that I am worthy of their time and energy,” she says.
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