From the outside you do not notice it. It is a building with a plan, similar to those of government, with the Malagasy flag hanging on entry. We go there on Sunday. Tantely and Lova, two small guest house, they visit their mothers. The sister is Tantely them locked up, with the mother who is in and out between the other pregnant: steal, enter, escape, falls in love every time a different man, then returns to surrender, because after a roof, in certain circumstances, it can not hurt. For each flight, the pain grows and accumulates. It will still for a long time. When we arrive, the scene is different from how you would imagine. Tantely not running the meeting, did not throw her arms around his neck. That girl smiled before, now is against it. Agrees to visit him in his arms but it is as dumb. The watch with detachment. The other child, Lova, is also not so diplomatic: when he sees her, his mother, bursting into sobs in despair. Like it or not, they will remain there until tonight.
Ambositra The prison houses about 300 men and 20 women. The prosecution is the most common theft, but for men there are murderers and rapists, for the series "a little of everything '." Some detainees are awaiting trial, others have already been convicted, but you go to understand how the law in a country as corrupt as this and for someone who can not afford even a lawyer office.
After visiting the women's section, look, sitting in the sun, before moving on to the men. Who imagined barriers and barbed wire, of course he was wrong. The doors are made of wooden boards, one written in chalk with the O-shaped little heart invokes the Lord's help, China and the lock is the key there was a guard from the air absolutely corruptible. "The people at the end mica is locked them all the time" - says Giovanna - "Look, if the guards take them well at home, make them work as slaves, and mica give him a plate of rice, but! " The guards, meanwhile, are there. There's a charming, female, who seems to have just bought the new uniform, it is so beautiful, clean and ironed. At boot you can almost see yourself there. There are two other, eye drunk, lazy weigh the options to win the game of dominoes. Another, however, pulling faces and polished the barrel of a whole lot of guns, which appear to be recovered through sale of the Museum of the Risorgimento: like the rest of the weapons supplied to the army of Madagascar are all different from each other and the first bullet was shot at least twenty years ago. The picture is completed by a prisoner who, sitting in the hall, is using a sort of corkscrew to do a foot massage, it seems against hypertension, a family came to visit.
On Sunday, in prison, is a special day: the wretched state rations, which provides 50 grams of dry cassava per person per day, in a single meal that everyone cooking for themselves, add rice and meat, a gift of the Sisters of charity. Good thing there are the religious holidays! Unfortunately, by that big bag of rice came from outside, the guard pulls out a tiny amount, clearly not enough for everyone. The rest disappears into the warehouse. The guard turns the key in the lock and if the pockets, like everything else.
We enter the men's section. An open space the size of a football field, surrounded by buildings which are the dormitories. Let's take a look: they are completely bare. Hard to say how many are sleeping. Mats and blankets are folded and stacked in the corners. There is the acrid smell of closed and crowding.
In the open space, the first impression is to watch a replay of the life that's out there, less noise and women. If in European prisons individuality dissolves in uniform, in this prison, each retains its own style. So met the young rapper and also a farmer. Who was the poor out, it is also inside. Parlotti people in small group, are sold here and there small piles of peanuts, some people play checkers with the stones, Who is cooked boiled cassava. There is no air of desperation, rather than pending review. Moreover, the Malagasy know better than to wait for anything else.
John greets many people and everyone stops to exchange a few words. It is the image of the outside world, the news coming, maybe even a hope of intercession, freedom ... who knows. From her we learn that two young boys who until a few days before they went to record in his studio, are in for marijuana. " But think about you! They told me that unless you do some barrel rolls out the artist in you! But now, in here, what he'll have to pull out, among 'sti bandits? " Attack button with a guy who says he is the imam of the second Ambositra. He arrived in town 18 months ago, after 8 and ended up in prison, even as his work of conversion began to bear fruit. The charge: rape and torture a child. But to him that the sentence imposed on him is nothing but a backwards jihad, a holy war against the spread of the Islamic faith. They wanted a scapegoat and they found him, but the Union Muslim Malagasy able to pull it off, Inshallah!. I was almost convinced of his release, when Joan, who has known the victim, the decision to deny "It's just a pedophile, a liar." Here is how to put the truth in balance on the edge of the doubt! Here's how you create, another truth, reduced to a convincing way to tell a lie!
ring a bell. It is time for mass. The priest has not arrived, but prayer is held, however, in a small chapel. Many present. In life outside, putting stuff is mainly of women. But here everything is different. God I no longer need to scroll the look on their faces: what evidence could reveal the crime they committed? That history tell their eyes? They are the victims? The company's miscarriages of justice, poverty? Or murderers? Of the weakest, the poorest? Looking at his face, it is difficult to distinguish innocence from guilt. The physical proximity of these men makes you seem incredibly remote possibility the crimes. It is always easier to condemn the protagonist of a story in the paper that your neighbor's bench. For him, of which feel the breath and see his eyes, it seems almost led to find an excuse. A naive thought that the gates of his past. A charge paid to the story that satisfies the individual's guilt. The song that closes the
put me back to reality. The layman who has officiated asks Joan to introduce us and the assembly of the visit thanks with applause. I realize the extraordinary, which may have accounted for our visit.
On the way home, the purpose of this prison seems to exhaust itself in the separation of people within the people outside. The march from the healthy. No attempt to re-educate, to rectify, to reform. Just a pause between a crime and another. But we also know that beyond our impressions, life in there must be much harder than it seemed to us today, that it was still Sunday.
0 comments:
Post a Comment