Hola Everybody:

You won't be receiving too many more of these so you can all heave a big sigh of relief.

As I promised here is the email on our prison visit. We belong to South America Explorers' Club and they organize a visit every Saturday to either the men's prison or the women's prison. I had to do a little arm twisting to convince Stan it would be a very good thing to do. We arrived at the club at 9:30 but the Ecuadorian guide did not show up. Apparently he's quite tired of doing those visits or at least that's what he was saying. We later found out from Zoe, who we visited, that he was having sex with an inmate and had been banned from the prison. Yes that's the kind of chaotic, infernal place I am talking about.

We arrived for our visit, alone. The guy from the club just dropped us off, by cab, at the door.

He told us that Zoe was an inmate that club members often visited so we said her name at the door. We had to surrender our passports, get patted down, searched, I had brought a bag of assorted goodies, and stamped twice. Besides the guards and matrons at the door there was no other visible guard presence in the prison. We went down this open corridor with inmates free on both sides. There were children running around, men visiting, people cooking etc... We didn't get too many dirty looks. Zoe was brought down by an inmate who I had to tip. Zoe Savage is an Irish woman serving an 8 year sentence for drug posession. She has already completed over 4 years of her sentence in that hell hole. She's quite a well known case. You can google her name and find out about her case. She maintains she was framed and there were many irregularities in the course of her investigation. She filled in the details of the prison for us.

The prison was built for 250 and currently holds about 800 plus children. You have to buy everything, food, toiletries etc... You can buy from various outlets run by prisonners. The price is usually two or three times higher than on the outside. When you get your cell it's almost bare.

You have to buy and build your bed, shelves, cupboards etc...The previsous inmates usually take what they can with them. There are two gated wings for inmates with money. Each inmate who lives there has the key to the gate. Zoe lives in one of the better wings. I use better euphemistically. The cells are tiny rooms which can house two or three inmates, very uncomfortably. In the general population there can be up to 9 people in one cell. It seems impossible but it's true. You have to lock everything down because many people steal. Drugs are common in the prison brought in by corrupt guards. Inmates who have no money hire out their services to inmates who do, for laundry, cleaning, cooking. The pecking order is, as usual, always intact. Zoe has had a rough time in there but she had to learn to accomodate in order to survive. There are about 6 other foreigners in the jail, two are German addicts and one is from Bulgaria. She has served two and a half years and has yet to be sentenced! There is no Bulgarian embassy in Ecuador.

The inmates are basically free to roam from about 5 in the morning to 10 at night when there is lockdown. No attempt at rehabilitation here, nothing is offered. The yard is a pile of rubble. Picture an empty construction site and you will have a good picture.

The saddest is the children. Zoe says that early in the morning, they line up outside and pick up either newspapers, candies or whatever to go sell on the streets or in buses. This to support their mothers in jail. We have seen these children, some as young as 5 or 6, it really breaks your heart. There is a lot of violence and intimidation in the prison. Zoe got cut a couple of times and once they cut off her hair. She has long blond hair. It's really a dismal picture. Most of the Ecuadorian inmates are in for either drugs or murder. There are many so-'called "crimes of passion" in Ecuador. Murderers get less time than drug convictions. The U.S. exerts a lot of pressure on Ecuador to convict drug offenses very harshly.

It was a very moving experience in many ways. It's sad to see so many wasted lives.

Zoe was really happy to have visitors. I know I would have been if I had had that experience.

Hope this wasn't too depressing. I promise to write something lighter for my final email.

Josiane

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