In the midst of battling with my numerous mental issues, I’d become stricken with the biblical curse of “the woman with the issue of blood”. In other words, my menstrual period wouldn’t stop. I had my period everyday up till the minute I left detention, and this would later go on for a whole year. Doctors, Gynecologists, Endocrinologists, Shrinks,Faith healers, Witch doctors, would later diagnose this affliction as stress-induced. My monthly period wouldn’t stop because I was stressed out of my damned mind.

I would later beg God to strike me with syphilis, leprosy, blindness, anything to make the bleeding go away. Only he answered my prayers 16 months later.

 

 

 

The first time I noticed the bleeding, I requested an appointment with the prison doctor. The short scarecrow of a man wore a permanent frown on his face and resembled a bespectacled goat. We got the Australian to interpret my sorrows, but he simply brushed me off by prescribing a couple of ibuprofens. Terrific. Pain killers for abnormal vaginal bleeding.

 

Two days later when I appeared at his chambers again, he grudgingly put my name down on the list of other inmates waiting to see the gynecologist who visited every other week.

 

Two agonizing weeks later, the gynecologist prescribed two pink pills which the nurses would administer daily at breakfast and dinner.

 

Three days later, I cried back to the doctor who by this time was exasperated and yelled something in polish which no doubt sounded like “what does this fucking African want again?”! As I made out the words kurwa Afrykanski. (You pick up swear words pretty fast in a foreign country prison.)

 

This time, he ordered me to pull down my knickers so he could see the bleeding himself. By now, I was already immune to any form of human debasement so I simply did as told and revealed a half-soaked sanitary towel. He still wasn’t convinced. Again, I was escorted back to my cell with two ibuprofens.

 

I was rapidly running out of sanitary towels but the curly-haired guard, being sympathetic to my plight, made sure I got as many towels as I needed.

 

It wasn’t long before I cried back to the doctor. It’d been a whole month already and the bleeding still hadn’t ceased.

 

One morning after breakfast, the lesbian and I were playing cards when a monster cramp racked my insides sending me crashing to the floor, writhing in excruciating pain. My shorts were drenched in blood.

The doctor was off duty that morning, so a nurse forced two sleeping pills down my throat, and the next morning, the Australian was brought in to inform me that I was to be shipped off to a ‘maximum security’ prison which housed according to them, the best prison doctors, and was some 400kilomtres away from the one I was already holed up at. This did not sit well with me. I should never have gone to that doctor. I could’ve just lay in bed and waited for death to come.

 

She did her best to convince me it wasn’t as bad as it sounded and that I’d be properly taken care of there.

By a stroke of good luck, the curly-haired guard was on duty that morning, and (I honestly hope to God whatever I write here shall not be used against her in a court of law), let me stay in the Australian’s cell for a whole hour, sipping coffee and just having a swell time. That one hour was by far the best I had in my entire five month detention and I will always cherish it.

 

We talked about everything from the tea in china, to the war in Iraq, to whether or not crocs are a fashion faux pas.

I gathered she’d been in that hell-hole for 13 months along with her Palestinian boyfriend(seriously how do people from all over the world end up in Polish prisons??) who was detained in a prison hospital in Warsaw.

She didn’t tell me her crime and I didn’t ask, but it had to be something serious if investigations were still underway for 13months.

Her poor mother had moved all the way from Australia to take up work in Poland just to be closer to her.

When our one hour was up, she, along with her other inmates, gave me a truck-load of goodies- jogurt, coffee, tea, shaving sticks-(the instrument with which I would later slash my wrists), hand lotion, lip balm, chocolate, soap and three packs of cigarettes. I wasn’t a smoker, but she insisted I guard it with my life and trade with it as it was the only currency that would help me survive where I was going. My joy knew no bounds. I cried and thanked them and cried. Then I cried and thanked the curly-haired guard.

 

Morning came. At 5.am, the guard handed me a loaf of bread, cheese and a bottle of water. I was marched to storage to collect and sign for my earthly possessions. I felt a bit elated when I grabbed the disc man my roommate had brought to the station. I’d listen to some music and relax at the back seat of the patrol car. Then I remembered the idiot didn’t bring any Cd’s along that day and worse, dear God, worse, I realized I’d be cramped in a van along with 5 terminally ill prisoners.

 

First off, it was perhaps someone’s great-grand-mother- she was well over 80. A lean and dried up wheelchair-ridden very old woman with shriveled skin. Her head hung lifeless on her side as saliva driveled from her mouth. I still keep asking myself why a woman that old and disabled would be in detention. I mean, if she was serving a life-sentence, I’d understand. But detention??

 

The next one was unmistakably a cancer sufferer. Her head, brow and lids were completely devoid of hair. She looked pale and wan. This might sound cliched, but she did have a cigarette wedged in between her fingers.

 

Another one – this one placed herself right next to me, her body was covered in huge sores that bore semblance to some dreaded Egyptian plague.

 

The other two looked normal, save for one that was suffering from an obsessive compulsive disorder,I’m not sure – probably just a tick. Her head had a mind of it’s own- it wouldn’t stop twitching.

 

These were the lovely ladies I’d spend the next five hours with.

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