Pain of mentally ill prisoners

By Judith Akinyi

Recently I was watching television without paying much attention until I saw the forlorn faces of some brothers and sisters who looked absolutely unaware of what was happening around them.

The sad faces showed people who were living here on earth but seemed totally absorbed with happenings in a world of their own. Their pitiful faces reflected a life of confusion and loneliness.

As the presenter spoke, I paid more attention my eyes now glued to the screen. This is the day I learnt the difference between a mentally deranged person and a mentally ill person. What a pity that nature should have these things this way. A fully grown person collecting and eating dirt as they laugh. I was left imagining the kind of pain their parents go through. I wondered what we could do to help them. These faces disturbed me for quite some time.

Running games

There is a common saying in my community that every market has a mentally ill person.

Zingatialand is no exception. These unfortunate sisters too find their way to this land.

There is one particular sister who came with this problem. Some behave quite normally until there is an onset of the illness. In her case, hell broke loose when she held the entire prison at ransom. Out of the blues, she started chasing people around and hurling the hard metallic prison food container (mururu) towards everyone.

She kept us on our toes and everyone ran for dear life. What is interesting is that no one dared stop her, not even the zingatia kazi sisters who were taken by surprise.

They ran in different directions but remembered the only gadget that could save us all. Whistles were blown and with this came reinforcement. By now the young lady had managed to scatter everyone within sight. Other inmates ducked into the wards (cells) and blocked the door so that the sick lady could not get access.

When there was no one on sight she strolled all over the compound like a conqueror. Some other inmates found this fun and were bold enough to risk threatening her so that they could run around the compound with her. Their joy of the game was short lived as at the blow of one whistle in zingatialand, you can rest assured that within seconds there would be reinforcement and the wardresses were able to overpower the lady. Now handcuffed and helpless, she fought and bit the handcuffs until she was thrown into a cell of her own. The following day would be a day when all around the prison could identify her because a yellow line would run across her uniform. This is the mark to alert all that a person is suffering from mental illness or is mentally deranged.

—The writer is an ex-prisoner