President Uhuru Kenyatta's mother Mama Ngina has for years represented a life of opulence and power in the country but very few people know what she endured to get to the top.
According to the freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi's widow Mukami Kimathi's autobiography Mukami Kimathi: Mau Mau Freedom Fighter, published in 2017, Mama Ngina served some time at Kamiti in 1957 over her relationship with the founding President Jomo Kenyatta.
While at the prison, according to Mukami who served time in the same prison, Mama Ngina was tasked with babysitting prisoners' children where she was tasked with cleaning and feeding them.
"Ngina Kenyatta was assigned to take care of all the children of the prisoners working in the gangs. She had more than 50 children under her care. My son was one of them.
"I would come from the farms or the quarries and find Ngina with a child strapped to her back, another one in front while rocking two more with her hands," narrated Mukami.
She further revealed that the situations in the cell were deplorable and that they were mistreated by their handlers.
The women were jailed in the special section of Kamiti since they were deemed dangerous to roam freely owing to their affiliations to the then freedom fighters.
The officers reportedly derived pleasure in inflicting them pain in an effort to break them down so that they could reveal their husband's plans.
At the time Mama Ngina was serving time at Kamiti prison, Jomo was also languishing in prison.
"Every half hour a warder would peep through the peephole called Judas to make sure that Ngina and I had not escaped," she further narrated.
While in prison, the women also endured bad food which was laced with sand. At some point, they were denied food for several days and had to survive on soil and water.
