Giving prisoners hope after jail

Dembe Mahala walks free next month, ending a nine-year jail term at Chichiri Prison in Blantyre.

To him, the sentence has been truly hard labour. However, he looks ahead with a smile, saying it was a worthwhile opportunity to reflect on his life and hone acceptable skills.

“I will walk out of these walls better than I came,” says Mahala, who was convicted of stealing K50 000 at Kapichi in Thyolo.

At the congested prison, he is one of hundreds of inmates being trained in pottery.

He says the future is his to shape—like clay in a potter’s hand.

Give him a photograph and he will fashion a stunning lookalike in no time. The mini-statues are not the only monuments that speak well of his talent.

During the visit, he was shaping a ceramic flower bowl—and finished ceramic jars, charcoal burners, mortars and pestles lied all over the place.

But he is not only making artefacts.

He is making a life, he says.

“With talent and skill, there is no excuse for me to continue stealing,” he says.

The potter did not finish his secondary education. He was introduced to farming at the age of six and it became his mainstay when he married.

Before he was jailed, Mahala was contented hopping from one field to another, doing piece works to source money and food for his family. The pressure to feed his family, which comprises three children, was already growing out of hand when he was caught stealing.

Mahala detests breaking into a house in his neighbourhood with intent to steal, an episode that reduced him to a jailbird.

“I broke into tears when I thought about my family. How were they going to survive without me? Would my wife wait for me to return? Would life be the same when I finally walk free,” he vents his fears.

Mahala cannot remember the last day he saw his wife and children.

“They stopped visiting me in 2012. I don’t think we are still together. It hurts. But there is life after imprisonment,” he says cheerfully.

In his reasoning, “people can desert you, but skills will remain with you forever.”

He is not the only skilled inmate though.

Prison warder Roderick Masina, who heads reformatory services at Chichiri, says there are eight people undergoing the training.

According to Masina, these are just some of the beneficiaries of the prison service’s skills development project founded to prepare inmates for a better life beyond the high walls with barbed wire.

“In the past, prisons were strictly for punishing offenders. With time, we realised that it is possible to reform the convicts and give them necessary skills as they prepare to face life after serving their sentences,” he says.

In their mind, prison authorities visualise empowered ex-prisoners not returning to the congested cells.

“We ensure that every inmate undergoing training graduates with enough skills for a better life. We want to wean them from crime,” says Malawi Prison Service (MPS) spokesperson Smart Maliro.

Pottery aside, the prisoners are being trained in vegetable farming, mat-making, beekeeping, poultry rearing, carpentry, traditional dances, tailoring and bricklaying.

In an interview, some of the trainees said vocational training is the best thing they have experienced since they moved in.

At Mwanza Prison, Aubrey Nkhwani, 33, cannot wait to complete his three-year sentence and go out to make money.

The father-of-three, who was convicted of rustling and selling his aunt’s cow, envisages cashing in on high demand for mats in Mwanza when he walks free in 2018.

“There are few people who make mats. I’ve seen people queuing for this. That’s money,” he says.

The downside is that the inmates do not go home with requisite tools to put them on a first footing to become standalone entrepreneurs.

Maliro says the current arrangement does not include a start-up tool-kit for the trainees in prison.

The prison service has no mechanisms to track down the trainees’ progress.

There is no information on whether the skills development initiative is bearing fruits.

However, officials are happy that most beneficiaries do not return to prison after gaining the skills.

“We believe they are no longer stealing, but utilising the skills for survival,” Maliro says.

Officers in charge of Domasi, Mpyupyu and Mwanza prisons as well as Bvumbwe Reformatory Centre confirmed the information gap.

However, one of the ex-prisoners is working at Majete Wildlife Reserve where African Parks Limited is working with the locals in beekeeping to save animals and vegetation.

The former inmate trains the locals in bee-keeping and how to harvest honey, an initiative credited with lessening community pressure on nature.

Last year, the Prison Policy Initiative carried out an inquiry into a fragile connection between poverty and prison. It affirmed the need to protect inmates from falling into the same poverty trap after their sentence.

The inmates are likely to suffer post-incarceration poverty as having a criminal record makes it harder to find work and access many basic social programmes.

This is why skills matter, Maliro says.

He explains: “It is not easy to be accepted back in the community. With the skills, they have something to do. It helps them get settled and accepted.” n