Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (52 page)

Beneath the chiefs were the officers in charge of sections. They were ranked C6, and included the factory supervisors, the officer in charge of the actual sleeping quarters, and the officer in charge of the workers who maintained the building. Beneath them were the junior officers, C5s, C4s, C3s and C2s. These guards, or commodores, were stationed at less important posts, but were more involved in the daily running of things. They would also be the ones who smuggled illegal items in and out of the prison, such as money, electrical appliances, CDs, Walkmans and earphones, among other things. The drug dealers would use them to take money out of the prison to their visitors, at a cost of 20 per cent for their services.

Prisoners who enjoyed privileges, such as having their own private room, owning a house or running a business, were required to pay or give a gift on holidays such as Songkran, the Thai New Year, and also on our Western New Year, to the Building Chief, second chief and the officer in charge of the room. Then, depending on your relationship with certain other guards, you might give something to them voluntarily. Failure to do so could result in your sudden and immediate transfer to another building or, worse, to another prison.

Building Chiefs and second chiefs were changed regularly. After serving a term of a year or two, they would be moved either to another building or to a different prison. With every newly appointed chief, there would be a new set of rules; it was like a new government coming to power. Prisoners would drop an envelope on the chief’s desk as a sort of welcoming gift, and then the whole process of paying for your privileges would start again.

Absurd as it seems, one is forced to make a life in prison, and I did the best I could. I am the type of person who loses interest if I have to keep doing the same thing for too long, so I had to keep thinking up things to change my routine. I cut my jogging time by half and for the remaining 20 minutes I started an aerobics class. Before long I had over ten members. It was a lot of fun in the beginning, and I made it really tough for the guys, but soon the novelty faded.

My first year really dragged by. All I knew was that I could not give up, and when that first anniversary came round, I would have to try not to be cynical: only another 99 years to go … I was a survivor. I had to be. I owed it to my family. Knowing my sister was doing everything humanly possible to try to secure my early release kept me going. I remember once thinking to myself that if I had gone to prison when I was a much younger man, I might never have found myself where I was now. This was the last stop before hell. I had my highs and I had my lows, and for the most part the lows were very low. I went through a serious depression. I know it’s a cliché, but I felt like a bird whose wings have been clipped. Even writing letters was beginning to bug me. I wanted to have no contact with anybody. The outside world ceased to exist.

In the many letters that I was receiving from family and friends, I had learnt of the upsurge in crime back in South Africa. I was concerned for the safety of my family. Then one day I got the dreaded news that they had been hijacked in their driveway. Thank goodness none of them was hurt. My sister played down the incident, not wanting to upset me, but I could imagine how traumatic it must have been. Joan and I were so alike; neither of us would ever complain to the other. She wanted to make my life in prison as manageable as possible. Every now and again she would send me a parcel containing luxury items such as biltong, dried fruit, nuts, rooibos tea, fish paste, vitamins and clothes. I was always hungry, so any food was welcome. Because of the extreme heat, I was forever breaking out in a rash on the inside of my thighs, so on top of my list of needs was always Canesten cream, an anti-bacterial fungal cream, which helped and soothed. I was so grateful for parcels from home and very happy when they arrived. Everything is relative, though, and on an emotional level I was drowning.

We were grateful for small wonders. My friend Ryan got a Christmas cake around Easter that was laced with hashish. There were probably about 15 foreigners who shared that cake. I ate only a small piece, but I got really high. Some of the other guys in our room really pigged out. We were all on our own mission. The mind is so powerful, independent of the body. For those few hours I could have been anywhere. When I took a walk around the building I would come across some of the other guys and we’d smile at each other and comment on how fucked we were. These may have been lighter moments, but actually prison life is fucked-up. It can make you, but in most cases it will break you. One of the things I hated most was that I had no privacy whatsoever, but at least my accommodation had improved – a small consolation where deprivation was the order of the day.

The communal toilets, which you had to flush manually, were such a freak-out. Twice a year the vaults in which the sewage was stored were emptied. These vaults were situated on the side of the building. There would come a moment when the vaults reached full capacity and the pipes leading into them would start to back up. Opposite my room downstairs was another foreign room in which most of the Nigerians stayed. Early one evening, during lockdown, shit started coming out of their toilet. The guys scrambled to move their beds, piling them on top of each other in the corner of the cell out of reach of the shit. In no time, though, most of their cell was flooded. The sewage reached the corridor and then began to flow into our cell. We piled up a bunch of wet towels along the bottom of the steel security gate to prevent the shit from flooding our room, too. Our Nigerian brothers really had it bad. They shouted, screamed and whistled through the bars at the rear of the cell, hoping to attract the guards on night duty, but to no avail. They shook their steel security gate so hard that pieces of cement dislodged around the frame. The smell was nauseating, and cockroaches came pouring through the toilets in their hundreds. Even the guys in the corridor were scrambling to avoid the floating faeces. It was disgusting. You can’t believe what people had flushed down the toilets and was coming back up again. Eventually the guards appeared, wanting to know what the commotion was about. When they realised what the problem was, they went to the side of the building where the sewerage pipes were and, using a steel bar, smashed the concrete pipe that led to the vault. This at least diverted the sewage to the house outside (which happened to be my friend Mohammed’s) instead of letting it flow into the cells. He was going to be in for a helluva surprise in the morning!

The vaults were sealed with a big square piece of concrete. When it was time to empty them, a crew of workers and several volunteers would dig up a section of ground in the area where vegetables were grown. They’d dig a trench about 6m long, about 1.5m deep and about the same in width. Then they would remove the concrete lid and take the shit out by means of small buckets attached to ropes. They would empty it into steel drums, which were transported by wheelbarrow to the new pit, where the shit was dumped. When they couldn’t reach any further into the vault with their arms, the guys would climb in. They would be chest-high in shit. When the vault had been completely cleaned out and all the shit dumped into the pit, this would be left open for a day or two to dry. The smell would permeate the building.

Every prisoner paid 5 Thai baht to his room chief for this service; once the money had been collected it would be handed in at the office and the money shared among the shit removers, as we called them.

On 25 June 1995 the Rugby World Cup final was broadcast at 10.15pm. It was
so
exciting to watch the hosts, South Africa, winning 15-12 against the All Blacks. I remember the thrilling drop goal in extra time from Joel Stransky that sealed our victory, and I felt such mixed emotions: huge national pride and homesickness, but bitterness, too, that my government was doing nothing for us prisoners on the other side of the world.

A few months after our inter-building football tournament, there was a volleyball competition. Again, the prisoners had to pay for the net, the ball and our uniforms. Building 1 was the only building that had a tennis court, which, for the occasion was converted to a volleyball court. One of the highlights of this kind of sports event was that we were allowed to take team and individual photographs, which we would post to our families. Needless to say, the photos weren’t free; they cost 20 Thai baht per picture.

A contact visit was coming up on 16 December, and my family wanted to come over. I wanted desperately to see them, but for two reasons I talked them out of coming. An Australian prisoner had a sister who came over to visit him quite regularly. On her previous visit she had met up with some people who claimed to be connected to the Thai government. These people had promised her that, with the right amount of money, they could get her brother out. I think she paid them about US$80 000. The Australian had confided in me and told me that there was a chance he would be getting out of prison. I’d even met his sister in the foreign visit room once – a very snice girl, and a brave one, I thought. Then we heard that she had been found dead in her Bangkok hotel room. The cause of death was a heroin overdose. This was a complete bullshit story. The girl had never in her life even smoked a cigarette, never mind used drugs.

There were many cases of foreign tourists being murdered in Thailand or simply just disappearing. I feared for my sister’s life. This was the first reason I didn’t want my family to come for the December contact visit. In my letters I told Joan that under no circumstances should she come to Thailand, as there was no guarantee of her safety. The sentence for murder in Thailand is less severe than for being caught with drugs and life was cheap. The second reason I told them not to come was because I saw it as a waste of money. The money a ticket would cost would be better put towards my allowance. Reluctantly, Joan and Malcolm agreed with me and they decided not to travel to Thailand.

We were allowed to withdraw only 200 Thai baht per day from our prison account, at a cost of 10 per cent. If you wanted to withdraw a larger amount, you would lose 20 per cent. This went to the owner of the coffee shop, who was also a prisoner. When you consider that there were 900 prisoners in each building, this worked out to a substantial profit. To afford the privilege of running the coffee shop, the owner had to prepare two meals a day for all the guards. Instead of losing the 20 per cent, I arranged with the consular officer to buy me cartons of cigarettes and stamps. Stamps were an excellent form of currency, especially among those prisoners who didn’t have regular visits.

I had been in prison for only a year and a half when I learnt of the tragic death of a fellow Arcadian, Mandy, who had been like a sister to me. As a kid, she was the most vivacious and beautiful girl. Mandy had contracted AIDS. I felt really sorry for her, and when I arranged to smuggle the drugs from Thailand, in my mind I had intended for part of the money I was going to make to go towards helping her obtain antiretrovirals. Now she was dead. It pained me deeply, especially being so far away from home.

By the end of 1995, I was completely clean of drugs. Because of my history of addiction, I could sense my sister’s concern in the letters she wrote me. She was so afraid that I would fall into my old ways, as drugs were in such abundance in prison. I wrote to her and tried to put her mind at rest:

Regarding the money you send me every month, please, Joan, never for one minute think that I am squandering it. I feel bad enough that you are supporting me, never mind still wasting it on something that would be detrimental to my health. I am one hundred per cent clean. I’m very much into my sport and through keeping fit my mind is expanding. I wasted enough years on abusing my body. I even stopped smoking cigarettes on the 13th November 1995. The fitter I become, the more my body is rejecting these foreign substances. Please rest assured, there is no concern for alarm. I’m also keeping out of trouble, understanding how important it is to have a clean record. I cannot afford to do anything irresponsible that would jeopardise my chances of regaining my freedom, nothing is more important.