“When my mum was imprisoned, my whole life changed”: growing up after a mother’s incarceration in Kenya

Image Description: A woman stands on one side of the image with faint prison bars behind her, while a young girl stands on the other side in a quiet home setting. A thin red thread connects them, but it is broken in the middle, with each person holding a loose end.

 

Before spending two years in Lang’ata Women’s Prison, Jane Kioo, a mother of three, sold newspapers door to door in Nairobi to make ends meet. One day, a friend she trusted asked her to help withdraw money from a bank. Upon reaching the counter, she was apprehended for fraud and remanded at Lang’ata Women’s Prison in 2012. 

“I felt lost and overwhelmed. I never imagined one choice could turn my life upside down,” Kioo says. She hadn’t asked any questions when her friend requested the favour.  “My friends came to visit me and promised to pay my cash bail, but they disappeared, and I was left waiting.” 

She was remanded from 2012 to 2014 without sentencing, until the magistrate, tired of the endless delays, sentenced her to six years’ imprisonment or a fine of 200,000 shillings.

“I had no one,” Kioo says. No one in her family had visited, and the friend who introduced her to the illegal bank transaction that led to her arrest had abandoned her. “I carried them in my heart like enemies.” 

In Kenya, delays like Kioo’s are unfortunately common. The legal system allows for pre-trial detention in remand facilities while investigations or court proceedings are ongoing, often for months or even years. Coupled with overcrowded prisons, inmates are often faced with limited access to basic services, extended periods in shared cells, and a lack of individualised support for vulnerable prisoners.

Kioo’s entry into prison was deeply traumatic. She arrived at Lang’ata Prison, which houses more inmates than it was designed for, around 6 p.m., when everyone was already asleep, causing confusion about where to place her. 

“They didn’t know what to do with me,” she remembers. “The first thing they told me was, ‘Remove all your clothes.’ They said they wanted to see my inner parts. I was so scared, I’ll never forget it.”

For Kioo,  prison took away more than her freedom; it stripped her of her ability to trust.

“I trusted people too much, and that’s what led me there. Today, I don’t trust anyone easily.” 

That inability to trust shows up not only in former inmates but also in those they leave behind. For Jacobet Mwende, who was a child when her mother, Kioo,  was imprisoned, connection became a risk and vulnerability, something to avoid. 

One day, her mother was there, making meals, giving hugs, grounding the home, and the next, silence swallowed her. There was no warning and no goodbye. No one told Mwende where she had gone; her siblings stayed quiet, and the adults in her life avoided her questions. 

“I don’t even remember when she left,” she says. “It feels like she was gone most of my life. I only visited her once, and I cried the entire time.” 

The youngest of four, by the time she learned the truth that her mother had been imprisoned, too much had already been broken. The sense of safety, the trust and the certainty that home would always be home were gone. 

“When my mum was imprisoned, my whole life changed,” Mwende says. “We didn’t just lose her, we lost our place in the world.” 

The prison’s one-visit-per-month rule and the cost of transport meant Mwende could visit her mother only once during Kioo’s two years on remand. Mwende isn’t bitter, but there’s a tiredness in the way she speaks—the kind that doesn’t come from work or lack of sleep, but from carrying burdens a child should never have to carry. 

“I stopped crying, I stopped letting people in,” she says. “People think I’m cold, but they don’t understand when someone you love leaves without warning, like my mum did, you learn not to get too close because deep down, you’re always scared they’ll leave too.” 

It is this trust that Clean Start Africa, born from the lived experience of its founder, Teresa Njoroge, seeks to help rebuild by providing a lifeline to female inmates.

“The experiences I had within the criminal justice system, from arrest, through prosecution and into incarceration, informed my approach to empowering other women during their transitions from incarceration to freedom,” Njoroge says. 

In Kenya, when a woman goes to prison, an unforgiving justice system means her story doesn’t pause; it falls apart. A daughter is left behind with questions no one wants to answer. A mother comes home to children she barely recognises. A woman who once ran a business becomes just a number. The damage doesn’t make headlines; it happens quietly, but it changes everything. 

“They called me names. They didn’t see me as someone worthy.” Kioo says of her experience after leaving prison. She discovered Clean Start Africa while in prison, and enrolled in Ufunuo, a mindset-shift and trauma-healing initiative run by formerly incarcerated women and volunteer experts.

Clean Start Africa, through partnerships with the Kenya Prisons Service and the Probation & Aftercare Department, provides empowerment and investment journeys to women and young people in correctional facilities, as well as support after their release to help them rebuild their lives.

In prison, staff identify and enrol those who show interest in rehabilitation and reintegration programmes. Participants then undertake the 12-week Ufunuo programme, National Positive Parenting Training, Hannah’s Gift programme, and skills training in areas of interest. Upon graduation and eventual release, women join nationwide chapters and life groups, where they continue to receive healing support and guidance for income-generating activities.

It was through this programme, during one of Clean Start Africa’s partnership visits, that Kioo, seven months into her sentence, met a Catholic priest from Hong Kong who offered to pay her fine. 

“I told him I had a fine of 200,000 and no one to pay it, so he promised to help me,” she says. “That’s how I finally got out.” 

But Ufunuo, which means “unveil” in Swahili, was more than just an escape from prison for Kioo; it became a safe space she had long been searching for. 

“I found people I could finally talk to, and I came to understand myself and begin healing.” 

For Mwende, rebuilding an emotional connection with her mother proved even harder than she expected. 

“It feels weird. I know I love my mum,” she says. “But there’s a way we don’t click, and I ask myself, would I even want that connection? Not really, because what if she goes again? I feel like I gave up. I’ve grown up alone. I can’t even relate to people emotionally.” 

A few months ago, Clean Start Africa offered her therapy. 

At first, she turned it down. “I said no because I didn’t know how I’d be without the pain,” she explains. However, through Clean Start Africa’s partnership with Linton’s Beauty Academy, Mwende found something of her own, a skill, a certificate and a path forward. 

Her mother, now free, is also part of the Clean Start Africa community, and for the first time in years, they’re beginning to rebuild what was lost. 

“This certificate from Clean Start Africa and Linton’s means everything to me,” she says. “It’s the only qualification I have. And it gave me a reason to believe I could do something with my life.” 

She’s now a hairstylist, and while the work isn’t always stable, she’s building a small business offering beauty services and selling beauty products, investing every little shilling back into herself. 

 

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Edited/Reviewed by Samuel Banjoko, Caleb Okereke, Awom Kenneth and Uzoma Ihejirika.

Illustrated by: Rex Opara