Ken’s story - part three

I awaited trial in Carolina prison; the cells were no larger than a small living room and housed over forty inmates. I remember first walking into the cell, there was a smell, not the smell of sweat that you may have expected from an overcrowded cell but the smell of sunlight soap, a hard cheap soap generally used for washing clothes.

As you walked in through the huge iron rusted door there was a barred gate with flaking green paint. The ablutions was right at the door and comprised of a shattered sink that was stained brown, a toilet without a seat, (surprisingly clean for the only toilet between forty inmates) and a shower that was just a pipe sticing from the wall. The pipe had no head and was hissing like a tap with a washer that has blown.

I was escorted into the cell by the guard and made my way down a narrow isle in the middle of the tiny room, steel framed beds stood three high on either side of the passage with grey prison blankets pegged to the steel frame to separate one bed from the next.

I felt terrified. Myself and my accused were the only white men in the cell and I remember walking with my head up high, chest slightly out, looking the other inmates straight in the eye with an emotionless expression on my face, I hoped this would portray that I was tough and felt no fear.

The bed I was given was small, you could lie on your back and take up the whole bed. The mattress was a block of foam, it was filthy with bits cut from it and covered in burn marks. The blankets I was given stunk, they were hard, scratchy, and frayed, I was issued a quarter of a toilet roll, a cheap tooth brush and a bar of sunlight soap, these were now my only possessions.

The doors locked, the security of the guard had gone and I was facing a room of unfriendly strangers. A guy called Andries called myself and my accused to the bathroom and he had a few of his heavies with him. He introduced himself as the appointed cell leader and ran through a few ground rules.

It turned out that the people in that cell became my friends, I learnt about cultural differences and gained respect for other ways of thinking.

I sat awaiting trial for over nine months, in this time I escaped from the prison but was re-arrested two weeks later and brought back with a further charge. As a result, I had to serve three years to the date, no parole or time reduction.

I was to spend my time in a maximum security facility in Witbank and I would never be able to get a job within the prison as I posed a flight risk. I became a gang member within the first two months of my sentence and my disruptive behavioral pattern just moved from the streets to inside the prison.

There were plenty of drugs within the prison as well as home-made alcohol made from the rations of brown bread, sugar and hot water; guards were bribed to bring in yeast for making the potent concoction known as skit skit.

Witbank prison made shoes for other prisons and as a result there I was able to buy contact adhesive glue from the prisoners working in the factory. The deadly combination of smuggled hospital tablets, skit skit, glue sniffing and marijuana (which was freely available as guards were bribed to bring it in) landed me in endless trouble and I spent a large proportion of my time in the “Koolokoetz”, solitary confinement that was previously used for death row prisoners.

I was known by the guards as a gang member, a trouble maker and a waste of space….

To be continued….

Click here for part one and part two of Ken’s story