At the stroke of midnight on 12 December 1963, the Union Jack was lowered and the black, red and green flag of Kenya rose for the first time over Uhuru Park in Nairobi. Jomo Kenyatta, who ten years earlier had been in prison on a remote northern frontier, was now Prime Minister. The crowd that night was enormous and electric. People wept. People danced. People who had been called natives, Africans, savages by the colonial system were now citizens of a free nation. Uhuru. Freedom. It was a word that had cost decades of suffering and thousands of lives.