Years back in the remote of Tingare Yuaya, Siaya County, today’s Pastor Umira son of Keya had his final brush with death as a deadly criminal.
On this fateful day, Umira and his gang visited the sleepy, remote village for their usual business which was visiting a witchdoctor for protection oblivious that their goose was cooked. Police laid an ambush for them.
Umira never thought that he would ever be arrested since he had sought protection from a witchdoctor, Mzee Mayamba. For years, they stole and never got near a policeman leave alone being arrested.
However, his proverbial 40th day saw Umiya and his eight colleagues dodge bullets as the only option they had.
That day, he treated his clients, and assured them of safety. But no sooner had they left, than the police ambushed them. Police shot seven of the gang members killing them on the spot.
Umiya’s life was spared but a bullet struck his left arm leaving him with profuse bleeding that nearly killed him. He was quickly rushed to hospital while unconscious and when he woke up, he had lost him whole arm to the bullet.
As if this was not enough, police were in standby waiting for him to recover and whisk him to court on seven counts of crime among them theft and robbery with violence.
Weeks later, he was a pale shadow of himself standing on the dock fighting seen counts of crime. He was remanded at the Kodiaga Maximum Prison and later to Kamiti Maximum Prison where he stayed for 10 years.
“These were the dark days of Nyayo. These years of yore, prison wardens did not want to understand that people go to prison as a punishment. They don’t go there to seek punishment. There was a lot of brutality,” he narrated to Victor Ochieng, a literal scholar in one of his interviews.
While in Kamiti, he got saved by a hair’s breadth after a cholera outbreak wiped out many loves behind bars. This is when God spoke to him on his new calling.
“It looked like a trance. But it was so clear that he had to call the wardens. When he explained to them. They told him that it could only be explained by the prison pastor. When morning came. He went and got prayed for. The pastor read for him the words of John the Revelator enshrined in Revelation 3:20.”
Soon after, he felt his spirit awakening and won six out if the seven counts he was facing. The seventh one got him a death penalty sentence but God came through for him.
He was granted Presidential pardon and walked out of Kamiti a new man but with a scar that will always remind him of his dark days as a criminal.
When he retuned to his native home in Gem, it was a shocker as people believed that he died ten years ago. A ritual was even conducted to keep his evil spirit away but to their surprise, Umirah was still alive.
Today, he is a man of the collar and serves at Christian Outreach Ministries — Anyiko Church.
He is happily married to the woman who waited for him for 10 years as he languished in Kamiti.