From 1952-1960, it is estimated that over 100 detention camps were constructed across Kenya by the British-colonial administration to detain and ‘rehabilitate’ suspected insurgent fighters during the Mau Mau Emergency. Some still stand and have been widely re-used as prisons, hospitals, and schools. In this process of transformation, confinement cells have been repurposed as classrooms and storage rooms, guards’ quarters as offices, and trenches as banana plantations. This talk with Hannah McLean, SGSAH PhD Candidate, will explore the material remnants of the camps that still survive, the memories that are held by former detainees, and the nature (and future) of their re-use and memorialisation in Kenya.
