Life in cell 105 was absolutely fantastic! I suffered from dementia, chronic insomnia, melancholic depression and a string of other mental disorders I couldn’t quite put a finger on.

The cell mates too were doing just fine. The Cameroonian was falling apart so fast, we expected her to die on us any minute. I wished I could trade illnesses with her. She kept us awake every night groaning and wincing in agony. Every organ in her body was on fire. Name the disease, she had it. There were times she’d be camped on the toilet sit nursing away her diarrhoea and struggling with coughing fits at the same time. Imagine coughing uncontrollably and shittin’ passing out your bowels simultaneously.

Most of the time she lay in bed stark naked save for a teeshirt, spread-eagled, just to get some breeze in  to ease the burning sensations of a vaginal infection. I was to discover two months later she’d been diagnosed with HIV. I felt so sorry for her. She looked gross, unkempt, lethargic and her body was crawling with sores. The guards hated her and the nurses were tired of her. Prisoners diagnosed with grave illnesses were driven to the prison hospitals twice a week, but her pleas were often rejected by the authorities because they somehow got it into their heads that she was faking the whole thing.

Many a time, she was just yelled at for no apparent reason. We longed for mornings the curly-haired guard would be on duty. It was like being handed a get-out-of-jail-free-card. She made life worth living.

Two weeks into my sentence, I got my first visitor. I was thrilled. Someone from the embassy had finally decided to pay a visit after major damage had been done.

The conversation went thus: (I remember every word like it was yesterday)

Criminal: “Good morning sir”(showing respect according to African tradition by curtseying)

Embassy rep: “yes, you’re JaneDoe. How are you?”

Criminal: (of course prick I am. ) “fine thank you sir”

Embassy rep: “So listen, your mother called the embassy yesterday. She said I should just tell you to tell me the whole truth about what happened because if you lie to us, God will punish you”

knowing my mother would never pass such a message across even if she had a gun to her head, I replied:

Criminal: “Sir, everything is just like I told the police. I didn’t know That Guy was sending the”…(he cuts me off, yelling:

Embassy rep: “Don’t lie! You better not lie! Tell me the truth!

Now I’m weeping helplessly… who is this oh so stupid prick fool ? I mean what was I expecting? I know my people, I know my country.

I should’ve known better than to think an atom of help would come from them.

So I made a mental note to contact amnesty international-at least they’d be nicer.

But with nothing to lose, I subject myself to answering the rest of his idiot questions.

Embassy rep: “So, give me the name and address of this boy and you better not lie!”

I gave him the full names, addresses, phone numbers of That Guy, his brothers, his brother’s barber, his mother and her tailor, two cousins, his neighbour and her grandmother, his friends and friends of his friends… just in case he decided to skip town.

15 minutes later, the interrogation was over. I gathered my mother was due in Warsaw the following day. My poor mother. I had brought the ultimate shame on my family and she would never recover from the heartbreak. In the midst of all my problems, I couldn’t bear to think of the shitstorm my father was cooking up. I pictured him hurling insults and i-told-you-so’s at his poor wife who would just sit there weeping and muttering things to God.

No words of affection or encouragement, no cheering up, nothing. All I got was a ‘take care of yourself’ and he crawled back to the rock from whenst he cameth.

Back in my cell, I sat pondering how I would explain to my mother, what a vibrator, two durex lubricants and a pair of fluffy handcuffs were doing in a shoe-box under my bed.

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