Patrick Kamau, speaking during an interview shared online, opened up about the harsh realities he faced while serving a five-year sentence that ended in 2024.
Raised by a struggling single mother, Kamau said poverty shaped his early life and ultimately led him down a path that landed him behind bars.
With no school fees after Class Eight, he turned to illegal fishing at Lake Naivasha in a desperate attempt to survive.
Inside Kamiti, survival took on a different meaning altogether. Kamau recalled meeting a fellow inmate who worked in the prison kitchen and initially appeared kind and helpful.
Regular meals and small favours made prison life feel slightly more bearable. But the generosity, he later learned, came with strings attached.
According to Kamau, the inmate eventually demanded “payment” — not in money, but in submission.
What followed, he said, was an informal prison “marriage,” complete with a ring and a mock ceremony held on a day when rice was served.
Kamau narrated the experience with nervous laughter, but his words revealed the quiet trauma beneath the humour.
Faced with the prospect of years of hunger and isolation, he said he felt trapped. “I left it in God’s hands,” he explained, noting that refusing could have made his prison life unbearable.
The story struck a chord online. TikTok users flooded comment sections with messages of compassion, calling the experience exploitative and painful.
Many pointed to Kamau’s background, age and visible emotional scars as signs of a system that failed him long before prison walls closed in.
Beyond the shock, Kamau’s story has reopened conversations about life in Kenyan prisons, power dynamics among inmates, and how poverty can follow people even into incarceration.
For many viewers, it was not just a viral clip, but a reminder of the hidden human cost behind prison statistics.
