Sitting in a
cell surrounded by dust and cobwebs and crumbling brickwork, I was taken aback
by the humanity of the people that I met. Somehow, standing in a circle with
twenty prisoners, of all walks of life, nationalities and backgrounds: some
innocent, some guilty of “crimes” ranging from abortion to murder, I felt safe.
The smiling
eyes and warm handshakes spoke of familiarity and friendship: I could be at a
dinner party, or a church service, rather than in one of Togo’s highest
security prisons.
We discussed
human rights and how they affected their daily lives; the topics ranged from
self-control to prison guard brutality.
All the while there was a cacophony of
squawking chickens, whirring sewing machines, guttural shouts and clobbering hammers.
All of this was amalgamated with the smells of pungent sewage and charcoal
fires. It was very difficult to concentrate.
Holding hands, we
prayed. Reverently unfolding their dog-eared copies, the prisoners read aloud from
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It seemed to remind them that they
were human; that they were valuable. Every now and again there was a ripple of
hollow laughter as they recalled that basic dignity and humanity also applied
to prisoners.
We heard how
the prison guards took forty minutes to unlock the cell door when a friend of
theirs was having an epileptic fit. The guards were blind to the thrashing,
contorted body on the floor until the money had been found for the medical
bill.
Once their friend had been unceremoniously
removed, they were informed that the prison’s only car had just broken down.
With deepest regrets, their friend could not be taken to hospital after all. When he was returned to them the next morning,
their friend shakily recounted how the guards’ remedy for epilepsy was dumping
him on the stairs overnight. Of course this required payment. The six thousand
francs were not returned.
The night
before our meeting, their friend Andre had suddenly started coughing up mucus,
despite being perfectly healthy just a few hours earlier. He was taken away by
the guards, and the next morning pronounced dead.
For the
first time, shock and quiet despair bore deep into the lines of their faces.
Their slack eyes were consumed by the middle distance as their minds paced
across the same rocky path of unanswered questions and impossibilities.
The bonds of
friendship created in this prison are hard to break. Here, the prisoners laugh
together; share dreams together and collectively bear the brunt of their
shackles. The shock of losing a brother; snatched out of the blue, was unimaginable.
We finished
the meeting with the weary conclusion that yet another letter had to be thrust
in the face of the Minister for Justice. Hopefully something would change.
Afterwards,
I walked to a smaller cell, to interview several mothers who were imprisoned
with their babies. There was something intensely horrible about a new-born,
whose wide eyes drank in his surroundings and perceived “normality”.
Slumped naked in his mother’s lap; dribbling
lollipop in one milky, sludgy stream, the cell was this baby’s universe. The
idea that there was a world outside the bars and padlocks and overcrowding was
inconceivable.
The lady who
I interviewed was pregnant. Her globulous eyes jutted out against her hollow
cheeks; her lips twitching of their own accord as she revealed her miserable
conditions in a hoarse, trembling whisper. She sank into a deep despair at the
prospect of learning motherhood within the walls of a prison. There was no family who could raise her child
in her stead, and besides; her voice grew firmer and her eyes fiercer, this was
her child. She would be his mother.
The small
blade of light that pierced her web of misery was the hope that maybe;
possibly, she would be released before her baby was due.
I felt
pathetically useless as I left her there, in a flood of tears that I could
neither wipe nor stem. I could do nothing but hope and pray for justice.
The rest of that week, the prison came with
me. I could not shake off the heaviness; the desperation that seemed equally
prevalent in the life that existed outside the prison walls. Worst of all, the
misery seemed needless!
I was shocked
to hear that Lomé has the only deep-water port in West Africa; bringing in over
(US) $1billion every day. The glass-
fronted, opulent Ministry of Finance seemed like a cruel joke opposite the
decaying ruins of the Ministry of Healthcare.
These two
factors betrayed the truth that the Togolese government can afford to invest in
healthcare and education and basic infrastructure, but instead chooses to leave
the population impoverished, in the hope that if they are consumed by the
unending task of scraping together today’s meal, then they will have neither
the willpower nor energy to raise objections.
Taking
myself off the drug of innumerable torture testimonies, I began to climb back
out of the darkness. There must be a way to bring change. Togo has seen some
improvements over the centuries, even if Time does seem to have forgotten this
small nation.
The simple facts that everyday city-dwellers
own smartphones and that Cybercafés are everywhere, show small signs of
development. An ever-increasing number of Africans can now connect globally and
access a world of information.
Change will
eventually happen in Togo, but it requires an army of people who are prepared
to dedicate their lives to facilitate it. It could take thirty, forty years for
one governmental apology: breaking the choking web of corruption may take several
lifetimes.
However, even the smallest progress will have
transformational results. Like the first trickle of water escaping from a
barricade; the cracks of a scorched and abandoned wasteland will be saturated,
and seeds will spring up; resulting in an uncontrollable flurry of life. Once
the roots of change have broken through the barren bedrock, regression will be
impossible.
This week, a
glimpse of this brave new world was offered to me. Visiting the prison again,
in the vain hope of interviewing another prisoner, I was embraced in the street
by a stranger. Upon clearing the fog of French, I realised that this was one of
mothers; she had just been released from prison. The slobbering baby with the
lollipop now slept serenely on her back.
Her smile
engulfed her entire face as she described reuniting with her husband and four other children after such a long time.
Her new-born baby would be oblivious to his incarceration: the entire ordeal will
never be fully formed in his memory. Incarceration would be nothing more than the
wisps of a bad dream.
I left the prison with lightness to my step.
Despite the mountain of problems and daily struggles that exist everywhere, here
was a living, breathing testimony of one happy ending.
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