Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (45 page)

Bangkwang was a maximum security prison. People here were doing hard time. I realised I would have to be selective about the people I chose as friends. Spending time with the same person, one eventually picks up their habits, and I needed to be acutely aware of this, even in prison. Drugs had almost killed me. Drugs were the reason I was serving a life sentence. Prison was not exactly an environment where one could afford or enjoy to be stoned.

It was vital to me that I do good time. Here was an opportunity for me to choose: I could change my life or fuck it up even more.

After learning that I had cash on me, Mohammed wasted no time and organised me two lockers on the other side of the building, next to the bakery. This happened to be a prime spot, where few of the other foreigners hung out. Next to the bakery was a small furnace with a huge metal tub. This was where the cotton used for the towels was dyed. In charge of this area was a Thai called Somchai, who spoke English reasonably well. There was another horse trough, smaller and square in size, in which the factory workers took their showers. More importantly, there was also clean running water. For 500 Thai baht a month, one of the Thai prisoners who controlled the clean-running water would fill two standard-size plastic dustbins for you to shower from – one in the morning, one in the afternoon. I couldn’t wait to take a shower in clean water; that fucking polluted river water had left me scratching all over. For 150 Thai baht I arranged for a Thai to also give me six bottles of clean, boiled drinking water. While I was unpacking my things and putting them into my newly acquired locker, he introduced me to a reliable laundry boy. Every foreigner received a small plastic bag of white rice and an inedible stew every day, which you could sell to the Thais for 150 Thai baht a month. The Thais were given red rice, so our white rice was in demand and one could use it as payment.

By 9am, which was when I was expecting a visit from my sister, I had already unpacked all my things, had a shower and pretty much got myself organised. Mohammed also introduced me to a guy called Lenny, who was from Hong Kong. Lenny spoke English and had done time in an American prison. He cooked Western-style food for some of the other prisoners, and 1 200 Thai baht got you one good meal. Things were looking good. The Hilton was certainly living up to its reputation.

It wasn’t too long before the names of those prisoners who had visits were called over the loudspeaker. First, a short announcement was made in Thai, which I didn’t understand. Then, after a series of names mispronounced in broken English, I heard mine: ‘
Alesanda Krebs
 –
leemyud
’ (visit). Because there were quite a few of us, we were required to wait at the entrance of Building 2. I was impatient, desperate to spend as much time with Joan as possible before she had to fly back to South Africa. This was her second-last visit. I complained to the guard about having to wait, and he seemed sympathetic. He allowed me to go ahead, without having to wait for the others.

The visit room was a long corridor, with two sets of bars, some wire mesh and a space of about 2m separating the prisoners from their visitors. I don’t know why, but I was surprised to see so many foreigners. It was a crazy scene and reminded me of the first day, when I was moved from the police cells to court. Visitors had to shout to the prisoners to be heard, and when the visit room was packed, like it was today, you could hardly hear anything properly.

Buildings 1, 2 and 3 had visits on Mondays and Wednesdays; buildings 4, 5 and 6 had theirs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Visit days also gave us the opportunity of meeting up with our mates from the other buildings. Magazines and books were exchanged, but, of more interest to us, information was exchanged, too. It was extraordinary how fast news travelled around the prison. It spread like wildfire.

The visit room was also a place where drugs were distributed. Dealers paid inmates to smuggle drugs from the buildings to the visit room. There was a whole underground postal network in place. Messages were written on small pieces of paper, which were folded and stapled and would be discreetly passed from hand to hand until they eventually reached the intended person. Meetings were even arranged at the hospital.

Joan was there waiting for me. I kept up a brave front, telling her about my new friend Mohammed and how he had helped me get organised. I told her there was nothing that she needed to worry about, that in fact this prison was far better than the other two prisons I’d been held in. Joan had arranged with the embassy to send an official letter to the Bangkwang prison authorities requesting the removal of my shackles as soon as possible. My sentencing, as well as the hassle of getting to the prison and having to queue to get inside, had really taken its toll on Joan. My poor sister was an emotional wreck. As much as she wanted to be with me for as long as possible, she also needed to head back home to Johannesburg and her family. The last bit of business left for her to do was to organise a lawyer to handle my appeal. The chance of getting a reduction in my sentence, without bribing the public prosecutor, was extremely remote. The ideal situation would be for me to get my sentence reduced to 25 years. If this happened, I could be moved back to Klong Prem, from where the Israelis had promised they could get me out.

The next day would be Joan’s last visit and this reality weighed heavily on both of us. From tomorrow, I would be on my own. It was always difficult saying goodbye at the end of a visit, especially as Joan would break down in tears. We agreed that tomorrow neither of us would cry, and instead of saying goodbye we would say the words, ‘See you later.’

My sister’s last visit left me unsettled. To this day I can see the expression of sheer helplessness on her face. It broke my heart.

Bangkwang was a money-making machine. Bribery and corruption kept the wheels turning. From the lowest-ranking officer to as high up as the Minister of Justice, everybody got a kickback. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say the government budget allocated 200 Thai baht per prisoner per day and at that time there were approximately 300 000 prisoners in Thailand’s prisons. The authorities provide food for only 40 per cent of the prisoner population, so if they only use 100 Thai baht a day for a prisoner … you do the math.

What shocked me more than most things in prison was the number of prisoners who were innocent. In Thailand you can be found guilty by mere association and get the death penalty. Entire families are locked up, parents and their children. For example, you could be in a restaurant while a drug deal is going down at the table next to you. Maybe there’s a suitcase containing heroin on the floor beside the table. The next thing, there’s a police raid. Nine times out of ten they have information, or else they have set up the whole operation themselves. Every single person, your waiter included, as well as anybody in the vicinity, will be arrested. Chances are, if you plead innocent and try to defend your case in first court, you may well get the death penalty and spend anything up to ten years after that fighting your case. After spending hundreds of thousands of rands, you most likely would still get a life sentence or the death penalty.

I hated the system the more I saw it in operation. Human rights abuses were sickeningly rampant in Thai jails. By now, I hated everything about the country. There was no way I was going to bother learning the language, as this would mean I was accepting my fate, and I wouldn’t ever have any use for it once I was free anyway.

There was a section opposite the security office where prisoners waited to receive the food their visitors had brought them. These packages passed through three different checkpoints before landing here. It was also the area where registered mail and parcels were handed out. Receiving parcels from your family and friends abroad was one of the most vital support mechanisms for prisoners. I think it went a long way to keeping you sane. The feeling of seeing a parcel with your name on it was indescribable.

Working in this section was a Thai inmate named Piscet, who was close to 60. He had studied at Oxford University, where he had majored in English. Then, while in Bangkok visiting his family, he had caught a taxi, but unbeknown to him the driver was a drug smuggler. In the boot of the car he had about 2kg of heroin. The police apprehended the driver, but his passenger was also arrested. The poor guy tried to plead his innocence and ended up with a life sentence for his trouble. That’s Thai justice for you!

Piscet was in charge of foreign mail, and he was also the official prison translator. He was the only prisoner who was permitted to walk around freely from building to building, as he delivered the mail twice a week. A couple of years later, close to his release, he and a fellow prisoner, a guy from Australia, smuggled a computer into their building. They got caught selling heroin on the internet and eventually got extradited to America.

Whenever a new prisoner arrived in Bangkwang, there was a general curiosity among inmates, especially among Western foreigners. Prison is a lonely place. Friendships are easily forged and just as quickly broken; one day somebody is your best friend and the next he is your sworn enemy. I had to learn this the hard way. Things work differently on the inside. There is no such thing as unconditional friendship. Nothing for nothing. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. I was suspicious of anybody who was too friendly. Now that I was at my third prison, I was more interested in befriending those inmates who worked in key positions and could help make life easier for me.

If the place was a jungle, I was a tiger among tigers.

Like an animal staking out its territory, I did my usual walking around and quickly familiarised myself with my new environment. It was not a pretty picture. There was open sewage and dust and dirt everywhere. Bangkwang comprised 14 buildings, with six buildings housing a total of 7 000 prisoners. Building 2 housed mainly the offenders who were in for murder, while Building 6 held the drug offenders. Building 7 was the monastery, Building 8 had a furniture factory that prisoners with low sentences worked in, Building 9 was the kitchen, and Building 10 was the punishment building, also known as solitary confinement. Building 12 was the hospital, and Building 14 was the university, where there was also a full-size football field. I’m not sure whether it was Building 11 or 13, but one of these was the pig farm.

Each building was completely walled in, and each was situated on about half a hectare. And each operated independently. They were worlds within worlds. At the entrance to each building was a double set of security gates, which during the day were manned by two guards and two Blue Shirts.

In one of the factories they made picture frames from mother-of-pearl, using sandpaper grinders to smooth the surfaces. The sanding released microscopic particles, and accounted for some of the dust that hung in the air.

The place was terribly overcrowded. Prisoners would sit around all day doing nothing and generally talking shit. The main topic of conversation usually revolved around the crime they had committed and their sentences. Many of the Thais were in Bangkwang because they had committed multiple murders – and their casualness around this fact, their disregard for human life, was something I couldn’t get my head around. There was an incident in my cell once where a Thai guy who had killed an entire family got upset with me for killing a mosquito – the Thai Buddhists believe in reincarnation, so the mosquito could be a member of their family reincarnated.

The disparity in the sentences for murder and for drug offences was also something that never failed to astound me. If you are convicted of murder, you will spend anything between seven and fourteen years before you are eligible for parole, while drug offenders remain in prison for anything between 18 and 24 years.