It had to be a bad dream. Petrified, not from the premeditated assault on me, but from the sight of the guard. I was expecting the malnourished one, but this guard was a splitting image of the Disney Princess Fiona, only uglier. She was enormous, creepy and hideous. A pale-skinned ogre with a mouthful of missing teeth in uniform.

Even through the revolting sight of the never-once-shaven legs, the multi-coloured varicose veins spiralling up them were not inconspicuous. I wondered what she looked like down south.

The Irony: She had the voice of a doped out Minnie mouse . Something was not right in her larynx. My first reaction was to hold my breath and stab myself with my fingernails in order to suppress the convulsions of impending laughter, but the pounding in my arm from where I’d landed elbow-first did the magic.

The more she kept squeaking about what had happened, the deeper I dug my nails into my palms. I was relieved when she produced her intercom to radio help.

The day before:

I was perched on the window sill, taking in every inch of the sweating adult male mowing the lawn. It was so obvious a day’s job had stretched well into four.

I’m not sure if he’d bribed a guard to let him keep mowing the already mowed lawn, but he cut that grass under my window for days on end. Every other minute, he’d stop and we’d exchange wide grins. For the first time, I was so happy to be a detainee on the ground floor. We couldn’t talk though, being surrounded by cameras, and every time a guard walked by I had to jump off the window sill.

Baldie had run out of cigarettes the day before, outrightly demanding a pack she promised to return when her daughter visited the following week.

The Australian’s voice echoed through my head: “guard them well so you can trade for something you need. It’s your only survival kit”

How she knew I had smokes was evident they’d been through my belongings while I was at the doctor’s because they never once came out of their hiding place in my bag.

Being stripped of my self-confidence from the day I got arrested, I just couldn’t bring myself to ask her what she’d give me in return for a pack, and even worse, how to ask in her own language, without coming across as arrogant.

The menacing stare on the thug’s face didn’t leave me room to think about it. I went for my bag, emptying all the contents, and to my chagrin, there was only a box left- an empty box, out of three boxes the Australian had gone out of her way to bestow me. Whoever nicked them had been kind enough to leave two sticks.

I was very livid and very hurt. My heart sunk when I noticed a chocolate bar I’d been saving for bad news from the courts was gone too.

I’m not sure if they were for or against me, but they begun yelling things I couldn’t decipher. The alcoholic limped over to our corner to put in her two cents. It was mayhem. Heaven knows why and what they’d been on about. Clearly, I was the one robbed, and it was none other than the two fools ranting and raving. I knew for a fact the hunchback and druggie wouldn’t dare come that close, and the alcoholic was always content with emptying all the ashtrays to make her own smokes with paper and whatever two or three tobacco leaves were left in the stubs.

On the brink of tears, more for the chocolate bar than anything else, I screamed “OK just shut the f*** up! I know it was you”! pointing my finger at no-one in particular.

Big mistake. I never in a million years thought they’d make that out. People tend to understand or even speak a foreign language when the need arises.

I didn’t see it coming. In a flash, the thug lunged at me, going for my throat. If the bald one hadn’t grabbed her from behind, I believe she would have snapped my neck in several places.

Immediate instincts told me to flee that corner and seek asylum in the next. The druggie and hunched back received me with open arms. The druggie had even been kind enough to go back and retrieve my beddings and belongings. She came back almost empty handed. My beddings and handbag were intact, but she’d forgotten to take the box containing my toiletries and other essentials.

That night, I slept with my eyes open.

The following morning after the roll call, I stumbled back to my bunk as I was still groggy from lack of sleep. I’d been dreaming of the handsome lawn-mower and how he’d started a prison riot, executed every guard and officer Al Qaeda style, broken down the cell door to rescue me and gallop away on a white steed all the way to Siberia were nobody would ever find us.

Just as he was helping me up the horse, I felt someone yank the dust-laden blankets off me, sending me into a sneezing frenzy, and dragging by my flimsy night shirt onto the cold floor.

Before landing, I’d grabbed the nearest thing within my reach to support my fall- it was the leg of a small table wedged in between the hunched back’s bunk and mine. This sent the table and all its contents crashing to the floor with me.

The sound of dangling keys outside the cell door, which implied a guard was barging in, sent the inmates scurrying back to their respective corners like rodents being set ablaze by a blow-torch.

That was when the ogre came in.

As I slowly came to, I looked around, noting the hunched back and druggie were nowhere in sight. Perhaps they’d gone for a walk, or gone to see the doctor, or gone upstairs for a shower, I don’t know why they decided to leave me unattended, exposing me to imminent assault by the thug.

A few seconds later, two other guards had come in, demanding answers as to what had happened. I was marched out of the cell and placed in an empty one.

After what seemed like hours, a lady dressed in plain clothes came in to see me.

The moment she opened her mouth to utter some words in the English language, I burst into tears. She gave me all the time I needed to calm down before she started her questioning, all the while smiling and telling me everything would be fine if I just told her what happened.

Now you really don’t need to watch Oz or Escape from Alcatraz in order to grasp the ten prison commandments, the first one being ‘THOU SHALT NOT SNITCH.

I knew better than to give up the thug. Through uncontrolled heavy sobs, I begged her to place me in another cell. She did her best to get me talking, even going as far as bribing me with an English novel and a few extra letter stamps if I ratted out the offender. Now the novel I could really do with- anything to keep me away from that window sill lusting after the lawn mower and creaming my knickers. The stamps, she could shove. They were of no use to me.

(Now I have to digress):

I don’t know about other foreign countries, but let me tell you about letter writing in Polish prisons.

It goes without saying: “When you’re in Poland, speak as the Poles speak”. if you do not have a good command of the Polish language, then you’re as good as fucked screwed.

All letters going in and out of correctional facilities are sent directly to the prosecutor’s office for censoring before delivery.

Normally, this takes a two or three week period. If you’re unlucky enough to be English, Spanish, German, you can be sure your letter will be delivered in three months.

The Prosecutor has to get a translator, maybe even a proof reader, to translate the letter into Polish langauge, then pass it on for delivery. I particularly feel sorry for prsioners from countries like say, Pakistan, Venezuela, Israel,North Korea- their letters never get delivered, because I doubt the Prosecutor would go through all that trouble to hunt for a Hebrew translator.

Letters and decisions from court on the other hand, are delivered within hours, at most the next day- in Polish language of course. They actually do go through the trouble of translating it, but the translation could take months.

So for instance, if you’ve received a decision from court saying you could appeal your case within seven days, you certainly couldn’t know, only after the translated copy  has been delivered months later, after which it would already be too late to appeal.

There was always an option of getting a Polish inmate to help compose a letter to speed up the censoring process, but HOW?

A few days after I was arrested in May, I wrote three letters; One to the Nigerian Embassy, another to my boss at work, and the last one to my roommates. I received the replies in September.

(Back on track:)

So I simply told her I was only having problems with the inmates because of the language barrier, and everything was just swell. She didn’t believe me, but she kept her own end of the bargain and went to fetch the novel.

I was so excited. Finally, something to keep my brain from going dead.

The ‘novel’ turned out to be an English King James Version of the New Testament Gideon’s Bible with translations into Polish and German.

I was crushed, literally. The Bible- the greatest sedative known to man, the scientifically proven cure for Insomnia.

I remember muttering under my breath “Terrific! Why don’t you just give me a lobotomy instead?”

Bible tucked under my arm, I was escorted back to my cell where the inmates were going about their business like nothing had happened. Before the Ogred guard left, she squeaked some kind of warning to them to behave accordingly or else…

I spent the rest of the day in a trance.

The next day brought a visitor.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.