Visiting hours at the jail start at 1:00 p.m. and I arrived there at about 1:30 to find a very long line-up of women waiting to get in. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a line-up, but I was. I wasn’t sure if I had to register first or not, so I initially walked past the line and went right up to the door. There, I saw one heavyset woman sitting at a desk and making long and laborious entries in a paper ledger. It was clear that this was the holdup. She had to write down the name, address, age, and birth date of every visitor plus the name of the inmate they were visiting and then have the visitor sign it. It took her a long time to complete each entry and I didn’t see the lineup moving very fast. My brain immediately started looking for ways to make this process faster and more efficient. The obvious way was to have two people processing visitors. This would cut the waiting time in half. And it wasn’t like there was a shortage of available personnel. Beyond this heavyset woman were many men and women – all guards and employees of the jail – and none of them seemed to have anything to do other than lounge around and relax. I found out later that one of the men and one of the women were there to search visitors. That didn’t take long, though. It certainly took far less time than it did for the woman to fill out the ledger, so they just sat there most of the time waiting for the next visitor to be processed.

I asked if I needed to check in somewhere first or if I needed to just wait in line. They told me that I just had to wait in line. The way my question and their answers came out, it sounded like I was looking for preferential treatment – as if I was trying to skip to the head of the line. I felt weird about that since that wasn’t my intention at all. I was just trying to make sure that I understood the system. The situation became even funnier when the heavyset woman later come out to the line and asked me if I was a senior citizen. If I was, I could jump to the head of the line. “A senior citizen?” I thought to myself. “Do I look that old?”

Making my way to the back of the line wasn’t easy. The line went from the doorway to a narrow sidewalk beside the road. This narrow sidewalk presented something of a roadblock as there were large trucks on the road, motorcycles half-parked on the sidewalk, and lampposts driven right into the sidewalk itself. The result was that the line-up of women and children and their bundles filled the entire sidewalk and made it extremely difficult for anyone to make it past. The whole time I stood in this line, I was bumped and jostled and pushed around by people trying to make it down the sidewalk. The problem could easily be fixed by moving the crazily parked motorcycles or simply setting up an official lineup somewhere else so that the sidewalk wasn’t blocked. But it was clear that this would never happen. I imagine the same problem existed every single day during visiting hours for the past twenty years.

On this same note, I was puzzled right from the first time I walked down this street to see that there was a deep puddle of muddy water filling the entire street right outside the jail. The street was essentially flooded and all traffic had to slow to a crawl to get through the little lake there and pedestrians had to carefully make their way down the sidewalk out of the water. The sidewalk only extends along one side of the jail. On the far side, there is no sidewalk, so people have to somehow get across a portion of this flooded area and make it to pavement. Large rocks had been placed in the water for this purpose and people hop from rock to rock trying to keep their feet dry and out of that dirty water.

It puzzled me that there would be a flooded area right there all the time. It wasn’t after rainstorms or anything like that. The water always sat there. One day, I looked around carefully, and I discovered the source of this water. There was a slow but non-stop trickle of water coming down the hill on the far side of the jail. I walked along the street following this trickle until I located its source. It started at a pipe that came out of a building near the top of the hill. It’s some kind of drainage pipe, but I haven’t a clue what it can be draining from. I probably don’t want to know. It’s likely toxic or otherwise unpleasant. Whatever this water’s source, it flows 24 hours a day and makes its way down to the low point in the road outside the jail and forms this artificial lake. There is no drainage there, and the water just sits. Like the blocked sidewalk, the flooded road has almost certainly been like that for twenty years. Stuff like that drives me crazy even if it has nothing to do with me. I sit here in my hotel at night thinking about that trickle of water and that flooding and wondering how it can be fixed. I’m sure there is an easy fix if someone would just look into it.

The lineup moved very slowly and I had plenty of time to look at the other visitors. They were all women, which made sense. This was the entrance to the men’s side of the jail and the inmates were likely the husbands of all these women. I noted how young the women were and I found out once inside the jail that this matched the inmates – all young men. Most of the women carried bags filled with food and other supplies. Some of the women had young children with them. These children were allowed to go inside the jail with their mothers. One young girl, however, appeared to be misbehaving. Her mother decided to punish her by not letting her go inside the jail to visit her father. To my surprise, she put this young girl (perhaps five years old) up against the wall of the jail and told her to face the wall with her hands against it. Then the mother left her there while she went inside for the visit. The poor girl kept her face to the jail’s outer wall and started to sob as if her heart would break. It surprised me that a young girl like that would be left alone like that. It’s even more surprising when you consider this was taking place outside a jail bursting with 668 inmates.

It was finally my turn to have my details written down in the register. I brought my passport with me, and the woman took down all the information from my passport, which I then had to leave with a guard. During my time in the line-up, I read all the long and complicated signs that were on the walls. These detailed all the steps for visiting prisoners as well as the steps for processing inmates and releasting them. I noted with interest that there was one column in these charts for the “Fees” that had to be paid at each step. For every stingle step of every process there was the same notation that no fee had to be paid for anything. There wasn’t a single step that required a charge or a fee. And this begs the question of why mention it in the first place? The obvious answer is that this was an attempt to combat corruption and any attempt by the prison guards or administrators to extort money from the inmates.

The signs also listed the things that you couldn’t bring into the jail. In the end, I hadn’t put together a care package because I didn’t know what could be brought into the jail nor what this prisoner might need. It was a good thing I had changed my mind because almost all the items I had considered putting in my care package were banned. These included toothpaste, fruit juice, and ballpoint pens. I was initially surprised to see fruit juice on the list, but then it occurred to me that this juice could probably be fermented and used to make a type of alcoholic drink.

Once I was registered, I was passed along the line to a security guard to be frisked and searched. I had brought along my own pen and I had to leave this behind. There was also some concern about my hotel room key (which was attached to a long thick piece of plastic). I mentally kicked myself for having that in my pocket. I should have known better than to take that to a prison. I was surprised when they let me keep it and take it inside.

After the search, I was allowed to go forward. A young man in civilian clothes swung open a metal door and I walked into the prison’s open courtyard. There was nothing like a visiting room such as you see in movies about prisons in the U.S. And there was no guard escorting me. Nor was there any attempt to direct me to the cell of this mysterious American prisoner. (I couldn’t even tell the woman at the front which inmate I was visiting because I didn’t know his name.) I was simply allowed to walk into the prison and join the general prison population. I forgot to mention that another guard had stamped the inside of my right wrist with a large stamp to indicate that I was a visitor and not an inmate. I would need that stamp in order to get out again.

When I first entered the prison, I stepped right onto a full basketball court. It was a nice court, too, with a good surface, nicely painted lines and even netting on the basketball hoops. I never see actual netting on basketball hoops here. But this prison had netting on their hoops. There was no basketall game going on at the time. Instead, there was a group of musicians on the court with a keyboard and microphones leading a group of about twenty prisoners in a round of Christian hymns. A couple hundred prisoners lounged around the outside of the basketball court listening to the hymns and chatting amongst themselves. Almost all the eyes in the prison swung to me when I walked through the door. They certainly rarely saw a foreigner in the prison and I was something new and interesting to look at. To my surprise, there was no sense of danger or threat. There was absolutely no tension in the air at all beyond the mild discomfort that comes from being in a new situation and having hundreds of pairs of eyes trained on you.

I had no idea where to go to find this American. I would just have to walk around until I spotted him. I had been told that he was a white guy, so he certainly would be easy to spot. After I’d made it across the basketball court and into the area where the prison cells were, people started to call out questions and answers about me. Someone knew that I was there to visit the American prisoner and calls went out about where this guy was. Very quickly, I was approached by one of the prisoners and he said he would show me where the American was. He brought me inside a long hallway that went along the prison cells and led me to the far end on the left. Then he produced a white plastic chair for me and said that he would get the American. He came back a minute later and said that he was taking a shower, and I should just wait until he showed up.

I couldn’t see very much from where I was sitting, but there were quite a few things that surprised me. For one thing, there was a table nearby at which a group of men were playing cards and betting what looked to me to be large sums of money. Lots of inmates walked past texting away on cell phones. (I couldn’t help but think they were communicating with people on the outside to coordinate the details of their escape.) There was a small sari-sari store near the basketball court. And I saw a number of inmates walk past with large and rather lethal looking clubs. On top of that, there were lots of women and children walking about – those there visiting inmates.

I half expected to be mobbed with people asking me questions, but only a couple of guys came up to me and talked to me. Once I had found my way into this hallway and been plunked down on a chair, I was largely ignored. A few minutes later, the American prisoner suddenly showed up. To my surprise, he was an older man. I found out later that he was in his seventies. He had a full head of white hair and a full white beard. He was a big guy, too. He was easily my height – over six feet tall – and looked to be in good physical shape. Not overweight and not skinny. Nor was he stooped over. He stood straight and tall with wide shoulders and solid arms and legs.

He was obviously quite surprised to see me. The inmates who had gotten him had told him that his son was here to visit him. That I was his son was an easy assumption for them to make. Who else could I be?

We shook hands and introduced ourselves. He told me his name, and he pulled up a chair to sit beside me. (I’ll call him Bill, which is not his real name.) Then we ran into a bit of a hurdle because though Bill was physically in very good shape, his hearing was not the best and he often leaned in and cupped his ear in my direction to indicate that he hadn’t heard me. I had to raise my voice almost to a yell to be heard. And Bill, since he couldn’t hear himself well either, spoke in a very loud voice. It felt a bit odd to be sitting there yelling to be heard. Eventually, Bill suggested that we move out of the hallway to somewhere quieter. We moved our chairs to the area just outside the fence that surrounded the basketball court. To me, it felt louder out there particularly with the singing of the hymns still going on, but it seemed to be better for Bill and we communicated more easily.

We chatted about how long Bill had been in the jail and how things were going with his case. Of course, I won’t include any of that information here to respect his privacy. I also didn’t press for too many details because I didn’t feel it would be polite to force myself on an inmate as a visitor and then demand that he tell me all about the charges he faced and whether he was guilty or not. I was interested to see the inside of a jail in the Philippines, and I hoped my visit would cheer up the inmate and I wanted to see if I could help in any way by delivering a letter or shopping for some essentials. I was not there to satisfy any morbid curiosity of crimes committed or not committed, or innocence or guilt.

Towards the end of my visit, I asked Bill if he could give me a quick tour of the prison. I was mainly interested in seeing where the prisoners slept. I had seen the windows and doors to the rooms from the hallway, but I hadn’t seen inside. I was particularly puzzled by the size of the place. It seemed far too small to house nearly 700 men. In addition, I hadn’t seen anywhere near 700 men. Where were they all?

We went back into the long hallway where one mystery was solved. Bill said that the entire length of the hallway from end to end was covered in sleeping men at night. They put down sheets of carboard and made pillows out of plastic bags stuffed with other plastic bags. With that many men sleeping on the floor of the long hallway, the size of the prison and the number of the inmates began to make more sense.

The rooms themselves were much larger than I expected and over the years they had been separated into a dozen little cubbyholes and bunks. There was an open central space and then on every side plywood walls had been put up to create little enclosures. There were small doorways and windows into these enclosures and these openings were covered with sheets acting as curtains. Men were lying down in all of these cubbyholes when we went inside. Bill was pointing out features of the room and most of the men poked their heads out of the cubbyholes to see what was going on. Bill was speaking quite loudly and I think it was disturbing them to an extent. Each of these rooms had its own bathroom – a tiny closet with a bare toilet bowl in the corner and a set of containers of water for flushing. The rooms were highly organized in every way. There was even a detailed and official chart on the wall showing the names of all the men in that room and the titles they held. Each room, for example, had a leader called the “Mayor.” Under him were other men with various titles and responsibilities. As Bill explained it to me, the inmates ran the prison themselves for the most part. The men with the clubs that I had seen were the trustees, and they enforced discipline. Bill had witnessed at least one instance where these trustees had broken up a fight between five men. One of the men was beaten bloody.

I had no idea what Bill’s place was in the prison. He didn’t point out where he slept and I didn’t ask. He did say at one point that he was considered a VIP prisoner. He pointed to a brand new fan on the wall and said that he had been required to pay 1,500 pesos for new fans – far more than the other prisoners had had to chip in. Apparently the “foreigner price” in the Philippines extends even into the prison system.

As Bill continued showing me around, he commented that he survived in the prison by being cheerful and positive and saying that everything was great and wonderful. I noticed that no matter what anyone said to him, he invariably responded with a big smile and a thumbs-up. I was fairly certain that with his hearing problem he didn’t even know what people were saying to him, but he gave a thumbs-up anyway. I had been surprised from the very beginning at how cheerful he seemed. Despite his situation, he seemed quite positive. It seemed that this was partially a front that he put on for protection.

The mystery of the missing prisoners was also solved to an extent by the tour. We went around the main building to find an open area under a roof filled with inmates either cooking or building arts and crafts. Making and selling items was a way for the inmates to make some money. And behind the main building was another open area with a small library and learning center and a chapel. Men were gathered there playing guitars. Finally, there was another building set up on the hill above the rest of the prison. More inmates lived up there. According to Bill, those men were part of a separate overall gang to the men down in the main part of the prison. There had been fights between these two gangs in which a number of prisoners had been killed. The prisoners even had the names of their gangs tattooed on their shoulders.

When we returned from the hill behind the main prison building, I noticed there was a high steel fence with an open area beyond it. Just on the other side of this open area was the towering cement wall topped with barbed wire that was the outer wall of the entire prison. The gate to this area was open and some prisoners were out there walking around. Bill mentioned that he never goes out there. The guards didn’t like it when prisoners got too close to the outer stone wall, and Bill figured he would just stay out of that area altogether. Better to be safe than sorry.

Inside the prison, there was also a separate women’s area. While Bill and I sat outside talking, a group of the female prisoners emerged from a doorway and set up a net on the basketall court for a spirited game of volleyball. They played it seriously with official teams wearing colored T-shirts as team uniforms. It was very difficult at times like that to remember that I was inside a prison. With the volleyball game, people texting, people playing guitar, people playing cards and gambling and otherwise hanging out, it was identical to the atmosphere in a typical Filipino barangay square. There was lots of laughter and joking and that sort of thing. The more established prisoners had developed their cubbyholes into something like small apartments. I’ve certainly seen lots of normal Filipino homes that were far less comfortable than the inside of this prison. I’m sure that spending months or years behind those walls would be no one’s idea of a good time, but nor did it have the atmosphere of our typical image of a hellish third world prison. Overall, it was the type of prison I would expect considering the goodnatured and fun-loving character of the average Filipino.

I asked Bill several times if there was anything I could do for him or if there was anything he wanted from the outside world. He insisted that he didn’t need or want anything. He indicated that his torn T-shirt, old and faded shorts, and flip-flops were all he had and all he really wanted. He said that whenever he had anything else, it was just stolen anyway. So there was no point trying to have anything else. He did say that he would like to have a book of sudukou puzzles. He knew they were available at a bookstore at Robinson’s Place – the big shopping mall a few kilometers outside of Tacloban. I rode my bike out there after I left the prison and picked up a couple of those books. My plan is to return to the prison this afternoon and give them to him. I want to bring him other things, but I can’t imagine what. He insisted that he didn’t want or need anything. Plus, he appears to have  access to his own money. He could almost certainly buy whatever he wanted if he so chose. He just chooses to live simply. Perhaps this helps him stay under the radar and stay safe.

This was my third visit to a prison in another country. The last time I did this was in Quito in Ecuador. When I left that prison in Quito after each visit, I did so with a huge sigh of relief. They had been intense and scary experiences filled with the threat of violence and even some real violence. Going in and out of that prison involved going through a series of thick metal doors each of which clanged shut behind me seeming to lead me deeper and deeper into a dungeon. I was only in the prison for a couple of hours each time and when I left I felt like kissing the ground and dancing around as I breathed in the fresh our outside. Being able to do whatever I wanted and go wherever I wanted seemed a priceless luxury. I had none of that feeling after visiting the prison here. Getting out involved nothing more dramatic than walking through one door, which a man swung open casually. It hadn’t even been locked. Everyone was friendly and jovial and relaxed. I’m sure the reality for Bill is anything but jovial and relaxed, however. He mentioned that the food provided by the prison consisted largely of rice and dried fish. I can see that becoming tiresome. I have yet to see a dried fish that looked appetizing. The worst thing would probably be the sense of helplessness – being stuck inside and not knowing what is going on with your lawyer and the courts and not being able to do anything about it. To have no control over your own destiny must be agonizing.

I have lots of questions I’d like to ask Bill, and perhaps I’ll ask one or two of them when I return this afternoon. I keep trying to think of other things to bring him, but at the moment I only have the sudokou books. I hope that will be enough. Bill did say that my visit had been a very nice change for him and he had enjoyed it. I’m glad about that.

 

 

Tags: bike, fee, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Place, Tacloban, VIP