When Peter Juma Wandika spoke to young people today, his voice carries the weight of ten lost years.
Now a respected village elder in Tumbeni area, Chemuche Ward, Malava Sub-County, Wandika is not proud of his past but he refuses to hide from it. Instead, he uses it as a warning to others about how “small mistakes” can quietly spiral into life-changing consequences.
“I lost ten years of my life because I did not value my freedom, that is what I want young people to understand before it is too late.”
Wandika spent a decade behind bars, years he describes as the most painful chapter of his life. Prison, he says, strips a person of everything they take for granted movement, choice, dignity, and connection to loved ones.
“In prison there is no freedom, You cannot move when you want, speak when you want or live the way you do outside. Every day I regretted those ten years.”
His imprisonment stemmed from drug abuse cigarettes and chang’aa which clouded his judgment and eventually led him to commit an offence that resulted in a ten-year sentence for defiling a minor. Even his own family, he says, struggled to comprehend the rule of punishment.
What followed was a brutal journey through Kenya’s prison system. Wandika was transferred repeatedly from one prison to another, an experience he describes as deeply traumatic.
“I was moved almost throughout my sentence, each transfer felt like starting life all over again.”
As he passed through prisons across the country, Wandika witnessed overcrowded cells and met inmates whose stories stayed with him some innocent, others guilty of mistakes that could have been avoided. Constant transfers, he adds, disconnect prisoners from their families and force them to repeatedly adapt to harsh new environments.
Wandika found a turning point at Naivasha Prison, he made a decision that changed his life. Illiterate at the time being prisoners having dropped out of school before completing Standard Eight he enrolled in theology and carpentry classes. Two years later, he earned a diploma.
“For the first time, I felt like my life could still mean something,” he says.
Later, at Kitale Prison, his discipline and willingness to work earned him selection as a prison trustee. Working on the prison farm and guiding fellow inmates, Wandika was given responsibilities that came with trust and dignity.
“Being a trustee changed how I saw myself, I had responsibility, respect a. nd a chance to lead others.”
Before prison, Wandika believed incarceration was only for hardened criminals. Living inside the system shattered that belief. By the time he was released, Wandika was no longer the man who had entered prison ten years earlier. The lessons he learned transformed him and slowly, his community began to see it too. Against the odds, he was accepted, forgiven and eventually appointed a village elder.
Today, he helps resolve disputes before they escalate into criminal cases, drawing directly from his own painful experience.
“Not all prisoners are bad people, many are victims of circumstances and poor choices.”
He urges society to accept former inmates, reminding the public that imprisonment is not the end of a person’s humanity.
Wandika is now calling on the government to expand education and counselling programs, improve family communication for inmates and support reintegration through financial assistance and community sensitization. He also wants churches, barazas and local administrators to involve reformed former inmates in public education and mediation efforts.
“My community gave me a second chance,” that is why I want to help others do the same.”
With plans underway to form an association of returning citizens to the society to support former inmates of all ages, Wandika’s story stands as a powerful reminder: freedom is fragile, mistakes have consequences but change is possible.
And for the youth, his message is simple and urgent learn from my pain, before it becomes your own.