Climatic climax

I stood mopping at what was dropping on our cell window. Everywhere were white, it was like it started while we were asleep. It was our third night in the new environ of North china hebei province. We the fresh arrivals from South had never as African inmates seen live snows, only in television. The structure of the temporary foreign district, for we were housed in district 2 instead of 4 that were for foriegners, were very nice for first encounter and inevitable experience we had.

The rooms were built in ‘you face me and I face you' style of Nigeria. 16 rooms in all, the hall which acts as the newsroom, cultural room, meeting and other communal activities is the first place you enter if you are coming from the main entrance for the block has two entry doors at each end. Each room has toilet that doubles as shower rooms. There’s general toilets and urinary which was the main one all inmates use for no one uses room one’s for hygiene sake. There’s washing andsd drying place meant for clothes but was being used as shower room by the inmates. Library was immediately after newsroom, the size was double of the the cells for it acts as game room and newsroom for the chinese speaking inmates that don’t understand English. All these general rooms were positioned by the left side of the district with three cell rooms:14, 15 and 16 while rooms 1 to 13 were by the right facing outside. I was in room 15, which means I was facing backyard which had large space used for block outdoor games. The authorities had only basketball, badminton and personal exercises in mind originally but the African and South American inmates converted the place to football arena while others became secondary.

Beyond the brass fence that demarcate the backyard was kitchen and dining hall, adjacent it was farms and plantation. After the farms were factories about 8 of them. Infront of the district were artificial football pitch that were use mainly for prison Olympic games as competitions among the blocks were referred to. Beyond the pitch were 1 and 2, adjecent the pitch were female district and controlling and visiting building. Adjacent the female district is education block which was originally kitchen place. Our district was built in V shape which means it houses two different districts. The three rooms by the left where we were camped were used as new intakes cells, so, it has bunks beds while others has single beds.

Since I was in room 15, it means I was facing backyard, that was where I witnessed the snow live and direct for the very first time in my life. I came down from my bed and opened the window a bit to the consternation of my room mates to feel the snow on the window sill. All the backyard including the brass fence and the kitchen side were all covered in white, Pure white everywhere. It was captivating, beautiful to look at. The norm there was that, whenever there is adverse weather, inmates won’t go to dinning hall for meals, people selected had to go the kitchen to wheel back food. In such occasions, newsroom had to be converted to dinning hall. Some inmates were selected for work like that and points where awarded at the end of the month.

By the way, it will be nice to introduce myself at this point. I’m Tobenna Achalugo as I was known there, Achalugo, one of the names Chinese can pronounce without accent and one name every living creature including demonic crows knows and pronounced uncountable times inside that coven without accent. I’m 47 originally but 53 in the passport bearing that name. Height, 80cm. Weigh about 75kg at times and 65 kg at times too. Hair black with handful of whites here and there. Eye, white. Introvert or semi one, I don’t really knows or cares. I came from Biafran land in eastern entity called Nigeria. My hobbies includes: readings, writing, football. Because of my slime nature, I was always assigned up bed or rather I preferred up beds to down ones. I think it has something to do with my nature also. The only problems associated with sleeping up was that easing oneself becomes problem. To avoid climbing up and down, you train yourself to deny your body enough water and peeing before climbing up even when you don’t feel like it.

When we were transferred from dongguan international prison in the south to yancheng prison in the north, we from South were enjoying the benefits of sleeping alone in a bed for in dongguan, it was two to bed. Snow and cup of coffee added to the enjoyment. I will climb up and hid under the blankets readings novels we from dongguan were surprised to see in large quantity there or listening to reggae song in borrowed Walkman. It was cool.

Cindi a Cameroonian inmate about 45, weighing around 78kg was among the three guys it was their duty to people that were not feeling well or the handcaps. Yeah, handcaps. Some came in on foot left with clutches due to mysterious diseases no knows. He was observing watching the snow, he came into our room for his opposite ours to educate me on the secret of the snow.

“Have you seen snow before?” he querried.

“No, this my first time” 

“I can notice that”

“I look so beautiful”

“This is not even real one, these were chaffs that were being blown to us from Beijing”

“How do you mean?”

“ Ah, if real one falls direct here, you will notice that it will be coldie and whiter”

“But am feeling seriously cold already”

“Yeah, it was because you came from guangzhou”

“You mean you are not feeling cold?”

“ Not like you. You see am wearing only one shirt inside”

“Are you sure we the new intakes will survive this?”.

“Nothing is even happening here, if you go to heilongjiang near Russian boarder, houses there has double windows”

“you serious?, I bet you can’t see African there”

“Why not, I have been there in many occasions, my friends are there.”

“Doing what inside such place?”

“ Some teaching, some business”

“ Places like that are not for me”

It was snow that introduced me to coffee drinking. In Nigeria, it was tea and milk. In guangzhou, it was the same. But the trend changed in yancheng and initially was preventing me from sleeping till my body normalized. My system needed something strong then and coffee was the best available. We from South don’t really knew the difference between winter and Autumn uniform we were given till someone pointed that out for us, they looked the same. The new intakes that came from qinpu prison in Shanghai were telling us that they wear their personal clothes there and we’re supprised when they were asked to shift their personal belongings to the store room in police side. In the afternoon, the snow was still fallen even though it had reduced in intensity. In the evening, the officers announced that anyone that want to take pictures can do so that Jaya the inmate incharge of camera is outside. Almost all the new inmates were rushing out and old inmates were telling us that it was of no use for us, that it was for police to decorate the district if there is need for that. They said that the regulation is that no inmate can leave the prison with anything relating to the prison for security reasons. Their explanation notwithstanding, we still stepped outside tentatively onto a frozen surface feeling the snow with our hands and foot.