How Did You?

At Mikuyu Prison
(For Jack Mapanje and all those who were detained at Mikuyu Prison during the Kamuzu Era)


My gulp of air became faint and broke haltingly
As the black furious walls stared at me
With the entire empty space around me.
I tried to squeeze myself against the gloomy corner
So I could sense how you felt when you were there
In a cell with lofty windows at Mikuyu Prison
Where you were packed down without a pending trial.

My eyes felt fragile and heavy
For the thirty minutes I spent in the shadowy room
Where you spent years on end.
I made an effort to stare at the sunbeams escaping in through
a solitary crack in the dark wall.
In me there was total distress.
But how did you survive in that cell exclusive of cracks,
Where you were hustled without ceremony?

It was a throbbing journey towards a throbbing discovery.
As I set off, my legs were reluctant
To take me to the grubby Mikuyu Prison
Where I only wanted to have a feel of what you felt.
As I gazed at the towering walls with barbed wires;
At the scrawny cells with diminutive windows,
I vividly pictured how you must have felt in that place.
It must have been real hell.

I sat in the mocking dark cell alone
Without locked doors; without warders torturing me;
Without fresh human excreta.
Yet I could feel anguish in my soul
I could sniff hatred congealing in my spirit
I could feel frosty brisk tears pricking my eyes
I could smell a stench of fresh human excreta in the purified air
I could experience my entrails boil.
If I felt such with all my freedom,
How did you feel with the sharp sensors?

How did you survive on those retching meals,
When nsima was in liquid form
And beans had been poured in an assembly of weevils?
You must have longed for the milk of human kindness.
But it was only life, life in a prison cell
And life everywhere that taught you life
And without ropes you skipped
Because ropes were of no necessity to you
For the skipping was only with hope.