Orange Democratic Movement party leader Raila Odinga termed his wife Ida as a strong woman and a pillar in his life.
During the Azimio la kina mama conference that was held at Catholic University on Thursday, Odinga praised his wife for saving his life while he was in prison.
While serving a jail term at Manyani prison, the former prime minister fell sick and was prescribed wrong medication.
“The time when I was sick in prison and they had given me some wrong medicines so I was feeling very bad. I was feeling a lot of pain in my head and I was being detained in Manyani.
Raila said that he kept telling the officers that he was sick but they said that he was pretending, forcing him to protest.
“So I decided to go on hunger strike, the security officers came to read the riot act to me that if I didn’t want to eat they were going to force feed me through my nose,” he said.
“I told him you can go to hell, I have already been reduced to an animal-like life here so I am not going to take this lying down,” he added.
Odinga had been confined in solitary alone in the block and at night he would shout aloud so that the other prisoners could hear him.
“They came back and found that my whole hand was swelling,” he said.
The officers then transferred him from Manyani to Kamiti. That is where he was able to find a tissue and wrote a note to Ida .
“I gave it to a friendly askari who agreed to smuggle it to Ida. So Ida went and talked to a doctor and then the doctor prescribed some medicine. She went and bought and gave that askari who smuggled the medicine back to me in the cells,” Odinga went on.
Raila who was in a very bad condition was unable to read the prescription of the medicine and just placed the note under his blanket.
One day as a search was being conducted, the prison officers found the note and questioned him where he had gotten it from because letters prisoners would receive letters that had stamps.
“They started investigating and that’s now when they went for Ida. They took the note to a writing expert who found out that these were Ida’s writings,” he said.
According to Odinga, the officers went and picked up Ida, locked her and tortured her, questioning how she managed to send him the letter.
Raila narrated incidents when Ida sacrificed her ambitions to support his political career. At one point, she was sacked as a teacher because she had talked to Odinga when he had been locked up at the Naivasha GK Prison.
RELATED STORY:Raila Odinga Explains Why His Daughters Are Named Winnie and Rosemary
Â
Â
Â
Â
