The Prison

On Saturday morning I went to help out at the local prison. Cenk had made friends with one of the guards who’d told him we could come along and help a Christian mission who were arriving with medicine and food for inmates at the infirmary. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take my camera inside the prison so I’ll do my best to describe what was a truly eye opening experience.

Some 100 prisoners sat outside, cross-legged on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, not making a sound. Most had nothing on their feet and all were wearing plain white T-shirts and white shorts which had been crudely cut and sewn together from material resembling that of a lab coat.

All the prisoners we were meeting were receiving aid because they were very ill. It was quite upsetting to see how weak some of them were; people in the advanced stages of AIDS, some suffering from TB, others close to death from Malaria. In a UK prison I’m sure most of them would have been released on compassionate grounds long ago.

We were led into the area where the 100 prisoners were sitting silently on the floor and taken to a bench directly facing them. Looking them all in the face was quite unnerving at first, they were all giving the bench their undivided attention. With us on the bench was a preacher who was leading the Christian mission, two ladies who’d arrived with the preacher, presumably members of his congregation and two prison guards.

Proceedings began by one of the prisoners leading the others in song, the whole thing was in Chichewa but the occasional hallehula confirmed that it was Christian in nature. Next the preacher read the parable of a blind man begging on the road to Jericho that Jesus cured, the preacher told the prisoners to ask Jesus to help them in a similar way, fixing the root of their problems and stopping them from returning to prison. The service concluded with a poem written by one of the prisoners and then it was time for food.

I was amazed to see that despite being practically starved not one prisoners started to eat before all were served and the preacher had said grace, it almost felt cruel to me that we’d made them wait for so long. When they were finally allowed to eat the meal was over in just a couple minutes . Not a single grain of rice was left on anyone’s plate.

During the service one prisoner had been rushed through the gates into the infirmary carried by his arms and legs. I’d thought at first he might have already been dead but it later transpired he was one of two epileptic twins who’d been fitting. After chatting to one of the guards a little more it turned out that the reason they were both in prison was because the police could not decide which one of them had actually committed the alleged crime. This is of course shocking but in fact some prisoners have been here on remand without a trial for years!

Once the meal was finished Cenk, Nyack and I dispensed the bars of soap we had bought with us. The prisoners were incredibly grateful and mercifully we’d bought enough for everyone there.

To end on a positive note, the guards at the prison all seemed very good people and there was no hint of brutality that I could detect. In fact, despite being a maximum security prison I was surprised how few of the guards carried guns or truncheons. There seemed to be a great deal of respect for the guards from the prisoners and the guards we spoke to genuinely felt sorry for the poor conditions the prisoners had to face.