“It isn’t easy to go through each day. Especially if you’re behind bars waiting for four more years to wishfully fly by”. – absracted from the eyes of the inmates I stood with last year. No, I wasn’t convicted nor imprisoned for any crime.
What happened? December o’nine, Greater Things Conference RevAmp, Kajang Prison, Juvenile Male Section. (exact date not stated not because it’s classified, I simply forgot.) Walked pass a couple of gigantic metal prison doors and some seriously tight security checks to give a talk for four blocks of jailed teenagers. If you’ve never tried being behind bars, trust me, this won’t be a nice first try for anyone, anytime, on any circumstance.
I’ll start with the arrival there after a long while of driving. The main MAIN entrance outside requested for identification and checked the bookings. Yeah, that’s right. You’ve got to be booked first before setting foot into thar sort of fortification. In addition to that, a black and white letter from the Prison Warden, High Commissioner, whatever you address him as.
Secondly, there’s the prison guards. Shifts after shifts of them came marching in in their dark khaki brown uniforms topped with a black beret and equipped with standard batons in their hands. You would never comprehend the feeling unless your feet stand amidst the changing of guards then.
Declaring and surrendering of possessions led to some more tedious security checks and prison gates and eventually to the shaking of hands with the Second-in-command Officer. (Forgot his name) He turned out to be the guide as he led the pack into the interior of the prison. It was then that I felt the scary goosebumps crippling inside of me as I observed the appearance of the depressing scene. “More than 365 days in here? In here?!”. Darts of frightening thoughts flew pass my eyes. It was no fun at all. In addition, the gloomy rainclouds and drizzling raindrops totally set in on the atmosphere. Barbwires everywhere. Scarce and depressing color of paint on the prison walls. These really added itself into, no doubt, the worst place to be. Matchless even when compared to a densely haunted house, I’d reckon.
So anyways, as per the runsheet, went along with my talk on change with the
inmates seated with discipline beyond my imaginations, surprisingly. Whether or not the security guards standing around closely was a factor, that I do not know. But discipline and uniformity was certainly their “bread and butter” there as displayed through their actions, greetings and also their color coded uniforms. Yes, red, dark blue, yellow, green and purple were the color were the plain colors of their uniforms if my memory serves me correctly. The color serves as a categorizing for the inmates indicating the period of time they need to serve behind bars.
The congregational talk (fast forward) was followed by my engagement in casual conversation with the individual inmates around me while some others went along with their daily routine of free time activities such as sports and chilling around.
Walked out of those prison doors not only with an unharmed body intact, but also with a whole lot of stories and testimonials from these inmates who are just like any ordinary people and in this case, teenage guys. People who did something wrong and sentenced to wake up each morning barely with the sun shinning on them but the horrifying walls staring at them… …
So stick around to get more of these meaty stories soon, amigos! :)
PS: By my first-hand experience, my opinion is that Prison Break made a fool outta some of us…Most likely.
