RAILA ODINGA ON HIS DETENTION AND HIS LATE MOTHER

RAILA: "I dint want to die like a dog in there"

During his long detention, as the government sent him from one prison to another, his elderly mother was ailing and his continued incarceration only made her illness worse. Raila was moved from prison to prison. One was in the middle of a game preserve, where an escapee would have no hope against the predators of the savannah. In another he spent weeks on end in solitary confinement. His mother died in 1984, and his guards didn't tell him until two months later. He went on a hunger strike to protest his incarceration, and at night he yelled, to let his fellow prisoners know he was still alive. "I intended for everyone to hear," he says. "I didn't want to die like a dog in there."