Imprisonment
can be a traumatising affair. It is especially so if you are convicted and
sentenced to death row and compelled to witness the hanging of fellow convicts
as the clock tick tocks and your hour of reckoning draws nigh. This is what
Benjamin Garth Bundeh discovers when the police pick him up and hold him for
the suspected murder of an old white businessman, Mr Nigel Fawssett. Fawssett
happens to have been Bundeh’s business associate before his demise as narrated
in Bundeh’s text.
Birds of Kamiti
is the memoir of Bundeh in which the writer adopts a persona to remember the
events connected with his arrest and subsequent conviction for the murder of
Fawsset. The writer uses the memoir genre to help him memorialise the dark
events connected with his years in death row. Although his experience is one
that can be described as unspeakable and one which the writer would rather
forget, he has to relive the trauma – to remember the painful details; hence, he
has to confess (publicly through the writing of his story) what happened to him
so that he can begin his traumatic healing.
This
text highlights the pain that those who are convicted for crimes that they have
not committed go through. It seeks to demonstrate that police can and sometimes
do connive to adduce trumped up charges against suspects and have them
incarcerated for crimes they have not committed. This is the fate that befalls
Bundeh. It is a narrative that emblematises failed judicial processes in Kenya
and Africa at large. Indeed, Bundeh’s story is reminiscent of political
detentions and torture of the infamous Nyayo Torture Chambers linked to the
leadership of the former President of Kenya – Moi.
Bundeh’s
memoir thus seeks to reconstruct the events of the persona’s life before and
after his conviction. Narrated in retrospect, the story highlights the
persona’s struggle to repudiate the police evidence against him when he lodges
an appeal in the hope that justice can be meted out to him. While serving his
time in death row, the persona encounters the debilitating effects of capital
punishment and the terror it unleashes on the human soul. The horrendous events
that unfold at Kamiti are despicable and they attest to the animalistic
tendencies that human beings are reduced to when subjected to dehumanising
conditions.
He
becomes a witness to the massacre of convicts through the hanging of specifically
those that had been convicted for the attempted coup d’état of 1982 in Kenya.
It is a harrowing period that the persona and other inmates have to endure as
one by one the convicts are picked up by the hangman. The hanging of their
fellow inmates traumatises them and leaves them with indelible psychological
wounds that demand therapy to heal. Indeed, bearing witness to the death cries
of fellow inmates is not anyone’s wish! The imagination that a living soul you
have been sharing space with is no more is almost unfathomable. Thus, the
psychological exertions of death row end up painfully bruising the human psyche
of prisoners thereby drawing the reader’s empathy for those that are
unfortunate to endure or later succumb to such experiences.
Police
injustice and violence is vivified through their handling of the prisoners.
First, they torture the protagonist and force him to sign blank papers which
they later fill up with falsified evidence which they then use against him in
court. Second, their arrogance is evidenced in the way they threaten Bundeh and
how they handle the prisoners during body searches for contraband. Hence, they
come across as dehumanised and the reader is persuaded to distance
himself/herself from their callous behaviour. Such methods of coercion are not
uncommon in Kenyan cells. One wishes that the judiciary would treat evidence
collection methods with a tinge of suspicion!
Besides,
the justice system is cast as corrupt and open to manipulation. The fact that
the judge, in Bundeh’s case, fails to interrogate the assumed signed confession
of the suspect is a good pointer to the unprofessional manner in which the Kenyan
courts are at times run. At least the reader is convinced to empathise with the
persona and his predicament when the judge sentences him to death because he
appears genuine in his rhetoric. This is made possible through the
juxtaposition of his confession vis-à-vis that of the police which is adduced
in court. Thus, the reader rejects the police evidence as it is more of an
admission than a confession because it is extracted from the persona through
torture as opposed to wilful disclosure.
Bundeh’s
breakthrough happens when he conducts his appeal and gets acquitted for the
murder of Fawssett. He regains a sense of self-worth although he harbours
bitterness towards the government for unfair imprisonment. This pain and
bitterness is a major hindrance to his emotional and psychological healing and
recovery. However, he finds a sense of closure about the death of some of his
colleagues through the assurance that the birds of Kamiti keep vigil over their
graves. His testimony is symbolic of the victims of unjust legal systems whose
stories are cast into oblivion through capital punishment and subsequent death.
