Justice in the Congo, Part 8

Life in a Congolese Prison

Toward the rear of the lobby stands -- or rather leans -- an ominous-looking set of doors.  They are metal and painted green, but the paint has long since blistered and peeled back.  Swahili words are written (perhaps scraped, or painted) above a large latch.  Below the latch is a large gap where the doors have been bent (or pulled, or kicked) apart.  Some sunlight floods through the crack, but most of it is obscured by a head peering through.  A set of eyes, open wide, darts this way and that, staring out at me and surveying the rest of the scene in the lobby.  

We walk through the door furthest from the entrance and into an open-air courtyard.  Clothes lines hug the walls and crisscross the open space; I see brick walls, a dirt floor, the sky above, and the inmates.  There is little else to take in.  

As we enter, someone utters a command, and the prisoners respond with a deafening shout.  Before my eyes, 168 inmates materialize and rapidly assemble in the courtyard into neat rows, leaving a space in the middle to walk.  In less than a minute, all are seated and absolute silence envelops the courtyard.  

The inmate at the front of each row sits with his feet on the cement floor, knees bent, and legs spread.  The next person assumes the same position and then scoots flush against the first  -- his chest against the front-man’s back, his legs hugging the front-man’s legs.  The rows resemble a human version of stacked chairs.  The result is a condensed mass of humanity in a courtyard 10 meters long by 5 meters wide.  (All measurements were provided to me two days after the tour by the prison’s second-in-command, in response to my request.)  

All the inmates are black.  Most are men.  At first glance, they are no more malnourished than many of the unincarcerated Congolese I have encountered.  Lacking uniforms, they seem to be dressed in the clothes they were wearing when they were arrested -- mostly pants and short-sleeved shirts.  Nearly everyone wears sandals or is barefoot.    

I notice a group of women in the back right of the courtyard.  Two hold small children.  One of the children is three years old and has been in the prison for seven months.  The other, a year and a half, has been here for two months.  With nobody else willing to care for them when their mothers were arrested, our guide explains, the children “have accompanied their mothers” to prison.  

We tour six rooms that house a total of 156 men.  “Belgium,” the largest of the dormitories at 8 meters by 7, sleeps 33.  There are no beds, mattresses, or pillows; everyone sleeps side by side on blankets, heads near the walls, feet toward the middle of the room.  Typically, we are told, two men must share one blanket.  The floor is concrete.  (“Skin disease is a problem here,” the prison nurse later says.  He speculates that sleeping on the ground may be a cause.)  The ceiling is the underside of the roof.  Tiny windows, no more than 8 centimeters by 25 centimeters, admit slivers of natural light through the thick brick walls.  A large drawing of Christ on the cross is the only decoration.    

I notice a small pile of bowls to one side and no other cooking equipment.  (The prison nurse says that some inmates have diarrhea; he believes it may come from the food they cook, so he is making an effort to monitor what they eat.)  Shirts hang from nails above many of the blankets; few nails hold more than a single shirt.  The smell of human bodies is thick in the air.  

The tour moves on.  “Soweto,” the same dimensions as Belgium, sleeps 31.  “USSR,” though smaller at 8 meters by 5, sleeps 30.  “Iraq,” the same size as USSR, also sleeps 30.  Around December of this past year, the prison population swelled to 245 inmates.  Nearly 50 inmates were forced to sleep in some of these rooms.  

The men use two bathroom facilities, which contain a total of seven toilets and two showers.  One houses a tank of water with a tap (another gift to the prison).  I notice something odd:  These bathrooms, used by over 150 prisoners day in and day out, smell cleaner than any bathroom I can recall in Africa, certainly in the Congo.  They look, feel, and smell wet -- and that’s it.  I do not know what these rooms smell like on a day when U.N. officials are not visiting.  

Judging by the blankets lying within the entrance to one bathroom, two (or perhaps four, or more) inmates may sleep here.  The tour guide later says that these men don’t sleep here; they just provide “security” during the day.  

China, the fifth men’s dormitory, is 6 meters by 5 -- but it houses only seven inmates.  This must be the low-security wing of the prison.  A television sits on a chair, playing one of the two TV stations available in this part of the Congo.  “The prisoner brought it with him,” our guide says.  

We walk past the prison “market” -- some tiny dried fish and a few dried peppers on a towel near the rear of the courtyard -- and arrive in “Ethiopia.”  Like China, this room is 6 meters by 5, but it sleeps 25 inmates.  We learn that as many as 35 slept here less than a year ago.  

We walk into a dark, dank, narrow room -- it is 9 meters long and only 3 meters wide.  “Chicago” is currently home to 12 women, plus the two young children.  Here, I see the first and only heating implement along our tour of the prison:  a small device designed to heat food over a coal fire.  Aside from this, the only visible food-related items in the other rooms were bowls and cups.  Nearby, we briefly look in the women’s bathroom:  one shower and one toilet; the strong smell here is more what one would expect from a Congolese prison bathroom.  

And that is it:  seven dormitories, three bathrooms, and a tiny courtyard for between 150 and 245 inmates.  The total living space for all 168 of the current inmates is 25 meters by 16 meters.  There is no place to exercise; there is scarcely a place to walk.  As our guide put it during the tour, “there is no place to relax.”