Their names were almost lost in the sands of time – Shifra Wametumi and Helen Macharia. Like hundreds of thousands of other Kenyan women, the two sisters endured immeasurable sacrifice by way of torture, indignity, disassociation, disfigurement and for many – death for their role in the quest for uhuru. Committed to the cause of land and freedom the two were agents in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army popularly known as Mau Mau. In this role, they were responsible for organizing food, supplies and medicine and most importantly intelligence briefs along the lines. Shifra was a prominent member of the Africa independent churches and schools’ movement, an initiative that was formed by enlightened Africans who were adamant that Christianity not be used as a tool of oppression. Through her network, Shifra was able to connect with many Mau Mau as the majority of the church adherents were both awakened and pro-freedom.
The bold activities of the sisters did not go unnoticed and two years into the Emergency at Kahuro in Fort Hall district (modern day Murang’a county) they were ripped from their families and sent into detention to the Kajiado camp. Both were mothers who had to leave their young children behind when the sweep came. Helen in fact made a last-minute decision when already on the lorry to pass her suckling infant to her husband who was standing beside. It was a wise decision for while over a tenth of women detainees had or bore children in the camps only a handful survived.
Life in Detention
The lorry took them to their first port of call in the infamous Pipeline – the network of detention camps that processed suspects of insurgent behaviour in a quest to either convict, rehabilitate or slaughter. As blacks – known as the most hardcore of Mau Mau adherents, the sisters were assigned a single metal bracelet that would ensure they could easily be singled out and bore the brunt of the worst labour. The second “branding” was the inhumanity of a number – henceforth they were known simply as 98 and 99. Like all other detainees they were assigned a metal cup strung up on waist and two blankets – their sum total of their new worldly possessions, both key to surviving life in detention. The cup was used for all meals and liquids – porridge, watery bean mix or water, while the blankets were the beddings they huddled under together for five long years.
Life in detention was the definition of inhumane – the intent was to break down the loyalty of the detainees to the cause of freedom; so hard labour carrying heavy loads of murram to build roads or digging trenches by hand was the order of each and every day for the women. If one was lucky, they would be assigned to managing the waste from toilet buckets into compost – which while foul, would not mean the backbreaking work that cost many their limbs or their lives. The two sisters endured the worst of the system and after a year in the sweltering heat and dust of Kajiado they were relocated as the first inmates of the all-women compound in the Athi River camp. From there they were subsequently moved to Kamiti which was designated as the camp for the most notorious “offenders” male or female, convict or detainee the camp housed all stages of people in the Pipeline. Thousands lived, worked and toiled from Kamiti which also served as an overflow for Embakasi prison. It was at Kamiti where they encountered a new type of hell in the persona of women’s officer in charge “Kathoni” Mary Warren-Gash known as the Eagle. Brought up in Kenya and fluent in Kikuyu, the Eagle’s special torment was using her knowledge of customs and culture to force women into especially demeaning or culturally inappropriate acts as well as her zeal for traveling across the reserves to the family’s of detainees where she would coerce them into writing letters to the female detainees urging them to confess. For the sisters, this was worse than the beatings they had to endure, the carting of corpses into mass graves or the hardship of watching their fellow inmates’ children be threatened to make the women fall into line.
Commitment to the Cause
Their background in education was a tool the sisters used to their advantage once in Kamiti. Never giving up hope, along with other inmates such as Shifra Gakaara and Lucy Mugwe, they tirelessly wrote letters, which were smuggled out, outlining the torturous conditions under which women were being held in Kamiti. The lack of basic washing facilities that had caused the women to endure scarred and scabby lives with matted hair and constant boils, the rampant typhoid and TB due to the unhygienic conditions, the sexual and physical violence meted out daily and the lack of sufficient food for the imprisoned children made up the bulk of these missives. British MP Barbara Castle was one of the chief recipients of these letters. A backbencher in UK Parliament in the 1950s she learnt about the atrocities being committed in the camps and visited Kenya in 1954 to learn first-hand what was happening. What she saw shocked her and she subsequently joined the Movement for Colonial Freedom where she and others advocated for the independence of Britain’s colonies in the UK. Letters from Kamiti and other locations in the Pipeline ensured that the truth could never be covered up even if it was denied within government circles.
Days loomed long in the camps but the resilience of the sisters carried them through the five years of detention. Despite violence, disconnection to their families, the constant humiliation and backbreaking labour the sisters held strong, refusing to be “rehabilitated” because they believed in the cause for which they were fighting. Instead, they rebelled through letters, through song, through staying alive, and thankfully finally made their way back to their families and the remnants of the homes they had left behind. On 12th of December 1963 Shifra Wametumi and Helen Njeri Macharia wept as they finally witnessed that for which they had fought and sacrificed – freedom.