Time: Their Number One Enemy

"You must receive education through labor" is a well known article in Yancheng prison's 38 articles like we inmates prefer to call that 'must-read' article's handbook once you are shifted from whatever provincial prison they transferred you from to Yancheng in Hubei province China PR. Work in almost all the Chinese prisons is non-negotiable. The only known route you as a foreigner can walk away on your two feets once inside there.  

District-4, the only foreign district in existence inside there, stopped weaving chairs we did for three years around the third quarters of 2013. The inmates started complaining to their embassies when they came on a visit that they were being treated like a slave. We submitted seven, or eight chairs each day for five days without pay and it had been on for three years till some started collapsing in the factory floor there and complaints increased. The central office halted the work. 

So, between 2013 to 2015, our work in there for you must work was education. They call the gathering we do each working day at the auditorium when we are supposed to be in factory education and one officer will sit behind us playing badminton or reading magazines. Then, the central office decided we might be more useful and assigned us entertainment as our official work. All manners of visitors visit that prison and our portion as Africans inside there was to entertain them with African dance to earn our  keep. 

      "Why can't there be Asian dance, must it be African dance all the time?" African inmates tired of being call for rehearsal too often complained.

"This is the Asian continent and most cultures are the same here. People wants to see something different from what they know"

That was what we got from the management as reasons for always subjecting Africans and not even South American guys with high populations like us inside there or even the Japanese with high numbers in there to same treatment. "Why always us?" That was what we did for those two years when we officially stopped factory work. Not as if it was the year the African dance started. I met it there when I came in 2010. 

Then, in  late 2015, central officers decided we have rested enough and must earn our keep by being more useful. They don't even appreciate what we had been doing for those two years. They seceded the figuring out of security of everything coming into the prison to us and assigned us a new factory. They fitted the factory with a scanning machine and our duty was to check anything from factory raw materials to kitchen department food items and see that nothing illegal passed through them into prison. The lorries will bring the materials to our factory, we offload them and make them all pass through the scanner and then load them back if it's kitchen items before the lorry will head to the kitchen side for offloading. 

We were at it for two years without any hitch or intercepting any illegal thing. So, it seems to be a formality move or the officers and lorry drivers started behaving themselves or something. By 2017, district two has started doing the chair weaving we did for three years meaning all their skeletal chairs have to pass through us for security checks before heading to their factory two factories away from us. Instead of transporting it there after playing our part, the central office ordered us to shift it to them too. We will load the thing in the manual mini trucks they bought for it and push it to them. Meaning we divided ourselves into three groups. One set will offload, another we pass it through the machine and ours was to push it to district two.

Everything was working fine till the third quarter of 2017. Emotionally and psychologically, I was down for three years even in state of acute disillusionment. I will say it started around 2013 when accusations of tampering with Japanese inmate's money during shopping started and was on for seven years. That duration it lasted alone will have told anyone that some kind of funny experiment was on. The prison was one of the testing grounds of Chinese 5G camera technology mounted everywhere. 

One officer in charge of drama said the prison was expecting high quality visitors and they needed to be entertained by African dance. So he came to the factory interrupting works and calling people in that group out. I was never an actor or performer of any kind, my work there was to close the demarcating boards we use as curtains in each stage of the play or dance. Why the officer was interested in me that wrong phase of my prison life, I don't know. He was particularly interested in my joining the group. "I borrowed a surveying machine from the laborers that came to work something in the prison and the man agreed for us to use it for the show. I want you to be the one to act out that part with the machine"

  I eyed him and said "sorry officer, i am busy now, i am not interested in learning anything now or interested in taking part in that entertainment, I am not just in the mood" 

"These people will be coming in a day time, we are running out of time" He said blocking my way. My portion in that chair shifting is nearly over and this officer came with another assignment without pay that will take my time away from me for a day plus. "I am not interested in that presentation, I am not even an important part of that drama group. Find another person to do that" what happened next was the man hooking me, I held him back and there was a mini tug of war from us and noise was everywhere. Inmates were separating us  and the district leader and number three leader appeared in the upstairs window and asked us to halt. 

My chair shifting halted, I was not included any more, I did not even learn how to use the machine which in retrospect was stupidity on my part. I think whenever opportunity present itself, you must acquire every knowledge that presented itself to you. But mood is something else when negative one strikes, it takes away sound reasoning. 

The false accusation and their refusal to pursue it to its logical end and then some denials of little rights inmates possess was getting to me emotionally and psychologically. The treatment i was getting was openly discriminatory in my calculation. It doesn't make sense to me for any reason outside being who I am, an inmate from Africa and the only inmate not possessing new human nature. They were just intentionally dealing with me and refusing to set the record straight.

I was in prison inside prison, prisoners don't possess any rights, even the illusionary one we have was being taken away from me for no reason at all. I was supposed to be out of that place and rejoined the living since early 2012 but this particular officer was throwing his weight around, same officer picked on me since 2011 and is still at it. I felt I was being intentionally emptied for nothing and needed to cut some of my good boy qualities off to balance the equation with what I am getting.

This officer in charge of drama in retrospect, I believed, heard something from the central liftest group that claims I wasn't a core member of the group, meaning I am not contributing something meaningful to the entertainment therefore doesn't have any value to them, not to myself. I think the officer was trying to make me have some value but I was passed beyond trying to impress anyone or live up to anyone's estimation of value. 

The officer himself is good in that drama thing. I heard it was what he studied in school. He was winning almost all the competition conducted in that prison and the Chinese way of calculation, it is what has value. Points for promotion were coming his way left, right and center and each winning and entertaining comes with an allowances so he was making little money from each of our outings. Our portion was daily points and ice cream, at times if in season, watermelon too.

 He was once my room officer so he knows me well and knows what was happening from their side as an officer on my issue i can't tell for sure. He interrupted my shifting skeletal chairs to district-2 and funny thing about human nature is, when you are down emotionally, not feeding well too, you see what others don't, you see red in everything and romp every one as an enemy. I was in that phase. Hating everything not in the uniform I was. That period, they were all in the same camp against me in my calculation. I ignored him twice, on the third he blocked my way and that spirit entered me and it happened.

I had been writing complaint letters with blue pen and later turned to red pen to the criminal department and submitting my petition and treatment complaint letter in person at the dining hall at times or put it in their box mounted in each district. Suggesting everything I know to free myself from that allegation but those Chinese have regulations about reviewing cameras and approaching issues that I still find stupid todate.

Two central senior officers have to sign a request from any officer from your district for the camera to be reviewed and if found guilty after the review, the officer from your district supporting you will be punished. Cut points and cut salary. Who will do that for you as an inmate, not just an inmate but an African one? Funny thing about their review is that it is only from 12 to 3 am it is done. It must happen not before or after. Another regulation I still don't understand unless they believe something bad will happen or pray for one. Over here in Africa, we know that nothing good happens after midnight. Why did Yancheng prison fix that hour as review hour?- my take is that they are playing for something magical to happen and turn your case against you. Central level is far away from districts and you can easily close the door and go to work reviewing whatever. Why midnight?

Our little dragging was consigned to the dustbin. I did not hear anything about it from anyone anymore for more than three weeks. We were in the factory sitting in our various positions one morning waiting for work to come when one officer left their side and came to inform me that i was needed. It never crossed my mind that some sect of officers were still interested in finding excuse to nail me for life inside there. I followed meekly ignorantly like a lamb heading for slaughter. I saw one gentle officer that looked like a Likun or some name that sounded like that. One well known guy who plays basketball for the Chinese national team carrying a file full of A4 papers. It still doesn't cross my mind that those papers contain what concerns me. 

I approached, every protocol of three feets away and asking for right to proceed before approaching the officer if granted permission and I was granted permission to approach. 

       "Acha, here you said you did not drag the officer that day but the camera here shows you did. See here" looking at how weak and sleepy his eyes were, i am sure he did not see an hour sleep that night for it is showing in his eyes. I peeped into the images he was showing me and all our little dragging and holding and shouting were all shown live on those papers. About ten of them. I still didn't realize what was in store for me and I was arguing, throwing counter argument here and there.

Then, district number four leader staggered out of their factory office and waved furiously and said haam! Signaling him to bring me outside. When we got there, he told him to shackle my legs and the office was doing that gently, he rushed and clamped my feet and cuffed my hands. I was marched to the confinement building. Everything being normal will about three minute walk from our factory but because my legs were jammed together, it took about ten minutes or more and both had patients following me. 

I was like, oh! For five years, and bajillion of complaint letters to the criminal department, you did see anyone at the central level to sign for you to review cameras for my case, but now you found maybe more than two willing officers to sign in record time? 

They took me to one room next to the one I eventually ended up in and made my room for a week. While in that initial room I entered, they stopped me and one was saying that it did not have a window for me to be observing outside or seeing my fellow inmates if they came out to the factory backyard for one thing or another. He was presenting it as if he was helping me. It took me only about an hour or two later to start wondering what was happening in that same room I vacated earlier. 

       Doom! Doom!! was what I kept hearing each time the iron door was opened and voices being heard. I was wondering if some other inmate was being put inside there till things continued that way for days and I figured out what had been happening. 

That was the spiritual room they set up there. Probably a spiritual computer there too to print out all the spiritual initiations they initiated against me. So, I was not sent there because of the officer and our little dragging but according to them. They wanted to initiate me into anything or everything but found it difficult so I was starved for a week, denied my prayer books I requested for, exposed to November snow cold weather believing that if my spirit is down and I am in anger 24 or something, i will be easier to be initiated.

       And two weeks later, our number three leader was delivering a weekly education day lecture with one fat bulging manila envelope by his left and forward movement signs being thrown around. No inmate in district-4 missed its meaning. They seem to be running out of time, my departure year is approaching and that theft allegation needed to be settled. That little excursion to confinement building was part of the effort to settle the issue.

#Reedsybewitched