PRISON CHILD

I am a prisoner. I live a life of shadows; of untold drudgery, and unimaginable woe. It is a life that does not let go; the harder you try, the harder it keeps a hold on you. The more you struggle against it, the more firmly it binds its arms around you. And then, it smothers you. Kills you.

My mother was a strong woman; a brave one. She lived alone, and died in a cell full of people, watching her take her last breath. I was born in those last seconds, I’m told. I don’t know where she’s buried. Someday when I get out of this place, I’ll look for her grave. I’m twelve years old.

In my short life, I’ve experienced many sorts of feelings. Hate, anger and regret. Mostly regret. In different circumstances, I would be a normal boy, going to a normal school, playing with other children. I dream of them, these other children. Would they look like me? I want to see another child, and compare him with myself. Maybe then, I would discover my shortcomings. He used to say that it’s always good to know one’s weaknesses.

He taught me to read, using the bits of old newspaper that he gets from the guards. He said that of all the experiences man should go through, feeling helpless should never be one of them. Helplessness eats at a person. It disables one from the ability of getting out of bed in the morning. To be helpless is to be vulnerable. And vulnerable people cannot live long in the world.

I have not seen the sun in this existence. I have heard, that it is round, and yellow, and enables growth. I do not know. How does one who has never seen the earth believe that it exists? How does one believe that there is a better life, when one has not seen it? A life where one goes to school, and learns new things about the universe. A life where one lives in a house, with a patio, and has a room all to himself rather than a cell filled with ten other people? A life that is full of colour? How does one believe in all this?

I have hope, fed by the old man, that someday I’ll be free. For most of the people here, that hope was vanquished a long time ago. They have come to the point where hope, fed by maggoty food and having to urinate in the corner of your cell, has finally let go. What is left? Despair. And as the old man said, to despair is to die.

One day I’m going to migrate. To that place on the other side of the wall. Where the sun is supposed to shine. I’ll never look back. I’ll forget that once, I was a forgotten person, in a land filled with forgotten people. That I was an institution, within that institution. I shall rise, and be free.

His name was Mwangi. He used to tell me these stories. He stole a cell-phone, and was put in here. And then they forgot about him. He showed me a newspaper, and taught me to write on the walls, using little bits of cement etched out from the floor of the cell. We had all the time in the world. When was that? I cannot recall. For the days sweep into night, and the nights sweeps back into the day. It is always dark, and so one must learn to live with it, he used to say.

“I am not aware of all this” I said. “Then you have to learn” he said. “One day you will have to leave this place, and make a success out of your life. Show them,” he said, “that from the dregs of humanity can rise power, hope, success. Let them know who you are, and where you come from.” “How?” I say. “I will show you.”

And then blossomed forth in me, a feeling. It was hope; I would like to believe that it was hope. For one glorious moment, I thought that I would be a great man, I would show the world who I was. And for that day, it was enough. I was alive, and I was hopeful. For he had made me believe that I would be free; that one day, I would be remembered, and asked to cross to the other side, where a world full of people existed, a new breed of humankind, who had not seen in their lifetimes what I have seen in my nine years. I was alive. I was hope reincarnated from the ashes of sorrow’s wasteland.