Whatever you were doing on April 20th of last year, it can’t beat what David Kosholo was doing. He was being pushed into a dimly lit police cell at Kilifi Police Station. He and his accomplice, Ongeri, had been apprehended for attempting to steal books from their university; Pwani University.
He would end up in two prisons for eight months.
I interviewed him virtually and then later asked him to break down his time in prison in blocks of months. The account below are largely his words, polished slightly by yours truly.
APRIL 2024
The cell has ten lost souls. As I enter the cell, a young shadowy lad with no shirt steps in front of me and ransacks my pockets roughly. He finds nothing of value because I have hidden two cigarettes in the back pocket of my bomber jacket. Later, when I have settled in, I take out the cigarettes and see the faces in the cell light up. I had consciously practiced Law number 35 of The 48 Laws Of Power, which is ‘The art of timing’. I was not a book thief for nothing. With this act, I became one of the gang, worthy of contributing to future discussions, and any questions I asked were answered well. We all smoke these two cigarettes. Monday morning, we face the Hon. Magistrate, Ivy Wasike. My prison ID card states my offense as stealing, Crime number E311/2024. My admission number is KIL/260/2024/OR. Possession of stolen goods; read books. I’m standing before a magistrate because I stole books. There is something wrong with that, I think. I plead not guilty. We are to be taken to prison until our bail or bond is posted. The next morning, we move to Kilifi GK Prison. My new home. Kilifi G.K.
Prison is made up of four blocks; A, B, C, and D. I’m in Mixed Block A; a mixture of prisoners and remands. There are ten cells and two communal cells. The ten cells have five prisoners each; the population of the communal cells depends on the traffic from court. My cell is labelled B2. It has a toilet inside. It’s meant to host a maximum of 15 inmates, but on a bad day, there will be 40 remands. Prison isn’t a hotel. We have a routine; wake up at 6:30 am. A morning census is conducted, which involves maintaining a squatting position called ‘kukaba’. At 7 am, we queue for breakfast, which is maize meal porridge. Afterwards, we are allowed a few hours of washing, showering, and loitering within the confines of the block, where sunbathing is not possible for obvious reasons.
Lunch is served between 10 am and 11 am. It’s a cuisine that consists of a slim piece of undercooked ugali nicknamed ‘sambamba’ and mkunde leaves afloat in a lake of soup. We use circular containers made of aluminum, which are either of the scale B variety (for remands) or Mururus (for prisoners). The food is palatable to the extent that we do not starve. It is an acquired taste. Tomatoes and onions are unheard of, and salt is as rare as it was during its discovery in 6000 BC. Supper is between 3 pm and 4 pm: ugali and boiled beans, which may or may not be fully cooked. This type of menu is unchanging and inflexible like the Ten Commandments. At night, we sleep like slices of bread. We call it Upanga. The light overhead is never switched off at night. The heat is unbearable. Later, after months in prison, I will have dreams of eating an orange with its peel and seeds. Census is done eight times a day. The wardens walk about barking orders, occasionally beating an offending prisoner.
I make friends and acquaintances. In my cell, there is Ogachi, who is accused of stealing 275K from New Life Prayer Centre, yes, the one headed by pastor Ezekiel Odero. There is Kazungu from Mtondia, whose case is defilement. There is the house prefect Chogo, also accused of defilement. There is my mat mate (I sleep on a ragged mat on the floor; the lucky ones have worn-out mattresses and lice-infested blankets) called Bahati from Chumani area, a 56-year-old man with whom we talk about life till late at night. His case is rather vague, but it involves land issues, specifically about trees. And there is Bazigda, the crème-de-la-crème of them all, who relentlessly regales us with tales of his heydays as a robber and a terrorist.
The acquaintances are prisoners like Badhru (Assault), Kennedy Tinga AKA Jesus, (robbery). He is a noisy fellow who howls and barks around the corridors. There is pastor Fanuel, an ivory trafficker, who later on became one of my spiritual guides given his extensive knowledge of the Bible. Also, there is Michael AKA Maasai (defilement), Baraka AKA water pump, accused of stealing water pumps from a community borehole. Chigunda is in for rape. Oscar for defilement, and Elvis, defilement. Defilement cases are rampant in this prison, and I wonder why. Everybody I tell I’m in for stealing books is puzzled.
In our cell, extra clothes hang on the wall. Our toothbrushes are placed in ingenious contraptions made of toothpaste boxes that are cut in half and stuck on the wall using soap or porridge, which acts as an adhesive. There is no artwork in the cell (profane graffiti on the walls does not count as art). I occasionally pluck red hibiscuses from the prison compound and stick them on the walls. Sadly, they wilt very fast due to the heat inside the cell.
The sun rises from the east, and on lucky days, I get to see it in all its glory. The sunsets always evade me because at 4 pm, we are locked in our cells, and at 9 pm, we are ordered to sleep. Any noise past this time is punishable by kicks and blows. During the day, through the cell grills, I enjoy watching the birds that fly overhead; they consist of crows, egrets, ravens, sparrows, and the occasional cranes. I watch the clouds drift nonchalantly across the gay skies to their infinite destination. I listen to the sounds around: prisoners’ shouts and incessant murmurs, workshop drills and tools’ cacophonies, prison radios (each block is fixed with a radio), birds chirping, and chessboard taps. And most often than not, Bazigda howls. He is the prisoner who proudly flaunts 7 bullet wounds, burn scars, and has survived concurrent beatings by the police. I try to avoid him. At 5:30 am, I sit quietly as the muezzin’s call echoes in the distance.
MAY 2024
The 23rd of May is a rainy day. I’ve been here for a month now. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. The image I had—largely borrowed from John Kiriamiti’s My Life in Prison—has faded into something far less dramatic, yet far more personal. Life here, while uncomfortable, is not the chaos I feared. It’s on this day that I am handcuffed and bundled into a police cruiser and moved to Shimo La Tewa Prison. This transfer was recommended by Magistrate Ivy Wasike. She ordered that I receive three months of psychiatric counselling and rehabilitation because, apparently, my psychiatrist wrote a report to the effect that I was not fit to plead my case in court until I complete the dosage prescribed. I’ve had great challenges with my mental health before. I have self-harmed before. Maybe a little history of my life. I was born in Nanyuki but grew up in Meru. My mom died. I moved with my dad to Mariakani, where he lived with my stepmom. That arrangement sucked. A lot. Dad works for KDF. Unable to continue with that arrangement, I moved to Kilifi, to Roka Maweni village, where life became so tough I slipped into depression and hopelessness. I tried suicide. I turned to substances: alcohol, weed, and cigarettes. One Faith Riunga, CEO of SAM Elimu, offered to support my university education. In September 2017, I was officially a student, but then Covid happened in 2020, and I was banished alone in Roka, selling water, writing articles for Opera News, and relying on Madeleine, my girlfriend at the time, who grew pumpkins and okras for food in the backyard garden. The university closed, and my world began to shrink. Despite the struggle, I was determined to keep going. When Uni resumed, I failed some units; retakes were delayed, and I found myself in Kilifi town, riding a bodaboda in a desperate attempt to survive, scraping together just enough for rent and food. I eventually ended up in my dad’s house, hat in hand. I scraped by. It was hard. Bleakness caught up with me in 2022. I slipped into a very dark hole until my aunt came and rescued me. She took me to Kilifi District Hospital, where I was diagnosed with drug-induced psychosis, Schizophrenia. I moved to Chonyi to live with my grandmother, who took me in like a child and nursed me back to health. In 2023, I returned to Kilifi, registered for retakes with SAM Elimu’s support, but the psychiatric medications made everything harder—dazing me, dulling my sharpness, making me question my every thought. But I needed to graduate. I moved in with Mark, my pal in Kilifi. He was my philosophical twin—a kindred spirit, a fellow seeker of knowledge. We spent our days dissecting Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, discussing ancient Greece, Egypt, and the profound mysteries of life. We became obsessed with the idea of becoming renaissance men—dabbling in history, philosophy, literature, art, and metaphysics. We named-dropped Socrates and Leonardo Da Vinci in casual conversation like they were old friends. I became so consumed with it that I started planning to create a personal library, a homage to the great libraries of old—Ashurbanipal’s in Nineveh, the Library of Alexandria, lost treasures of the ancient world. This is how we began to “borrow” books from the school library to start my collection, justifying my theft with the twisted logic that even the ancient libraries had been plundered.
And that’s how I end up at the formidable Shimo La Tewa, being booked at noon. My new address: Block C, Cell 8—a modest studio with roommates, no privacy, and a décor theme best described as “industrial suffering.” But Shimo is not without its perks. The prison economy here makes Wall Street look like a lemonade stand—everything from weed to Weetabix is up for grabs, if you can stomach the markup. I learned quickly that a 1000-bob note can fetch 1500 via Mpesa, and a bowl is more valuable than friendship. Thankfully, I now own one—a multipurpose aluminum chalice that moonlights as a cup, plate, and basin. I bathe naked in the open under the African sun (it’s called solar therapy).
I make a necklace out of a 1973 one-shilling coin I found, and discovered that bedbugs are not a metaphor. Most fascinating, however, are the inmates themselves: some make spam calls all day long, others bask like lizards, and the rest quietly run a barter economy where soap buys beans and bodies buy silence. I’ve found God again, shared His word with a man busted for bhang, and decided to spread love and wisdom the best way I know how: with a pen, a prayer, and the occasional plate of contraband beans. I stumbled into a surprising theological TED Talk led by none other than the controversial Pastor Paul Mackenzie himself—yes, that Mackenzie of the Shakahola notoriety. He now resides just a few cells down in the VIP psychiatric wing, G block, which ironically offers the best amenities in prison: less crowding, more food (hence my current constipation), and direct access to the library. While his sermon is peppered with charisma, drama, and occasional theological somersaults, I feel both amused and spiritually intrigued—though I’ll be seasoning his scripture interpretations with a healthy pinch of skepticism. Shimo la Tewa’s C Block is a surreal theater of madness, where I share a room with 18 lunatics, including a compulsive masturbator, a one-eyed prophet of chaos, and a kleptomaniac defiler named Sunday. My cell feels like a rejected casting call for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and yet, amid the lice, bedbugs, and borrowed theology, I find myself trading economic theories with an octogenarian and stargazing through toilet grates. Even as the body itches and the mind wavers, I remain Kosholo—fatter, yes, but still on fire with curiosity, clinging to sanity with a pen and a prayer. During the month, I finally breach the gates of Shimo la Tewa’s mythical prison library—a dusty attic of forgotten knowledge where German novels taunt and curriculum textbooks fossilize—but to me, it’s paradise. I score a horror anthology (because nothing says “Christmas spirit” like decapitations). I read and read like a maniac. I read everything. Now dubbed “Professor” for the crime of loving books a little too much, I’ve embraced my prison life as early retirement: eat, sleep, read, repeat. Between Pastor Mackenzie’s curated bunker and my corner of literary escape, I’ve found a strange peace in captivity—proof that sometimes freedom smells like old paper and bad lighting.
JUNE
On Madaraka Day, as the nation celebrates freedom, I sat in C Block, serenaded by bedbugs and existential dread, reflecting on how I’d become a bookworm behind bars. My niece, Hanifah Makena, would soon turn four, bearing my late mother’s last name—a bittersweet reminder of the life outside that moved on without me.
On June 5th, I took a field trip—correction, a shackled shuttle ride—to Port Reitz Mental Hospital, where the state aimed to officially diagnose me with schizophrenia. Port Reitz looked like an unsettling blend of a hospital and a container yard, but I felt more at home back in the chaotic embrace of C Block, where at least the pain had personality. The return trip was a surreal safari in a rusty Land Cruiser, complete with six guards, a blinking Mzungu prisoner, and Mary of the haunted eyes (Shimo La Tewa women’s prison). I spent June oscillating physically and mentally between trips to Port Reitz.
JULY
The damn drugs! I spent my days in a haze of psychiatric pills prescribed at Port Reitz Hospital. Between two Deprex tablets and an Artane, I floated somewhere between sanity and sedation, surrounded by my fellow night-dwellers: Chai, endlessly pacing with his demons; Kajimbi, a walking water leak; Mohamed, gesticulating at invisible rivals; and Mwangaro, a man so irritable even silence offended him.
Meanwhile, I talked to myself—but only when I was testing big English words like “cynosure” and “raucous” for fun, not because I was crazy, but because I’m a linguist. I’d read 62 pages of my book, craving nothing more than a quiet corner to read undisturbed. Books were my escape, portals to different worlds where I lost myself so completely, reality started to feel like genuine fiction. I hoarded words like treasure and saw people as novels—messy, brilliant, and flawed. But understanding them? That was the painful part of the story.
AUGUST
I was handcuffed and loaded onto a police cruiser, headed to Kilifi for my hearing. The court was empty when we arrived. I returned to Shimo La Tewa dejected and spent two weeks not writing or reading anything. By then, I was a seasoned inmate with a carefree attitude and access to phones in prison, allowing me to call friends on the outside who sent me some MPESA cash for milk and bread, soap and tissues, and the occasional meat (5 pieces at 100 bob). I had made friends and established rapport with seasoned crooks. My beard had grown so big; I looked the part. I looked like them.
SEPTEMBER
I was gifted free slippers by Mohammed, a 27-year-old prisoner jailed for 25 years for defilement. His sister had brought him new ones. I inherited a puffed-up mattress from a prisoner who had served his time and been released. I was supposed to stay in Shimo La Tewa for three months, from May 24th to at least mid-August, but here I was, still hanging out with lunatics and men labeled dangerous by society (and the court).
OCTOBER
I was finally transferred back to Kilifi G.K. Prison. I was back in a prison that looked like a village in comparison to Shimo. I felt the way Nairobians feel when they return to their rural homes. I regaled the guys I had left in Kilifi with tales from Shimo La Tewa: the land of Milk (200 Ksh per 500ml) and Money. I told them about the phones and televisions, the drugs, and the library. I was the messenger. I even advised the guys serving long sentences that they should ask to be transferred to Shimo La Tewa; it was a haven for crooks, a “thugz mansion,” as 2Pac would say.
NOVEMBER
My dad visited me for the first time. He brought soap, coconut oil, an exercise book and a pen (for my journals), and a roll of tissue paper. He told me he had spoken to my school about withdrawing my case but was waiting for feedback. Our meeting was formal. He was the first and only relative to visit me since this saga started many months ago. The other friend to visit me would be Kent. My dad told me to learn from my mistakes and focus on what I wanted in life.
Not long after, a friend and fellow beneficiary of SAM Elimu (an NGO for sponsoring needy and bright students), Omar Hassan, visited me and organized the way forward regarding my release. He said he had called Faith Riunga (Director of SAM Elimu), who should be able to pull strings. I liked the feel of the sun on my face. His visit was like rain in a desert. He had brought soap, toothpaste, and coconut oil—small yet precious currency in prison.
Meanwhile, in Kilifi G.K. Prison, time crawled, and my thoughts wandered beyond bars. I had a strange faith that I’d be free on the 18th, but until then, I remained locked in my rebellious beard and wild hair, a self-declared Nazarene, waiting for whatever fate—whether release or further condemnation—God deemed fit.
On November 18th, 2024, I stood in the courtroom as the judge announced my acquittal, with freedom no longer a mere dream but a legal reality. My lifeline had come in the form of a recommendation letter from SAM Elimu Director Faith Riunga, who vouched for my troubled but redeemable soul. The judge, merciful yet firm, set my release for November 20th, with a hefty dose of continued education and psychiatric care as my freedom’s price.
I’d learned valuable lessons: crime’s currency is cursed, education unlocks doors, and freedom is more than food and shelter. Life’s jagged path isn’t easy, but just when you’re about to quit, the turn toward better days often appears.
On November 21st, 2024, I was released from prison.
Later, I drank my first juice in nearly a year, smoked a cigarette like a man fulfilling a dream, and celebrated with meat, vodka, and a high that erased all memory of the low. The next day, I headed to Care-Tech Rehab in Kiambu for ninety days of reflection and reinvention.
APRIL 2025
I’m in Kilifi now. I was readmitted back to Pwani University; I’m studying Education. I have been to teaching practice – taught in a few high schools – and I intend to finish my education. When I graduate next year I’ll be expected to be a teacher. Maybe one day I will also have my own library. I want to write, creative writing is my passion. I am also a teacher by profession.
***What’s the hardest thing you have gone through recently? Ping me on [email protected] Or register for my writing masterclass HERE
Discover more from Bikozulu
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.