The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison (22 page)

We were the ‘banana brigade’, on the other hand, the ones who did the real work—carrying out requests for inmates, cooking meals for them and doing their shopping. After Garth and I had fallen in love,
Anne
and I forged a special bond visiting our jailbirds. We swapped romantic tit-bits that we wouldn’t have dared tell anyone else. I loved hearing how they met. They were both dating each other’s best friends when they met at a reception for a political cause. They became instant friends and couldn’t quite believe it when they found themselves falling for one another. Sadly, they each lost their best friend!

Visits can be extremely difficult on families and loved ones. I’ve lost count of the amount of times that I’ve held distressed mothers, sisters and wives. Bang Kwang is the last place you want someone you care about to end up. I knew a mother who had to literally watch her young son dying in front of her—there was nothing she could do. He contracted HIV and was given the fatal diagnosis upon entering the prison. Other parents re-mortgage their homes to try and get their children out of prison by hiring the best lawyer they can afford. It is inevitable, and even necessary, that regular visitors start to support one another and pass on smiles and words of encouragement. We’re a little like soldiers fighting a personal war in a strange land and if one falls, we all fall. I think I was a help to
Anne
on days when she felt low, while she certainly inspired me by sticking by her husband. I’ve seen men being deserted by their ashamed or sensitive wives who find it easier to pretend that they are widows.

I asked
Peter
to illustrate how harsh life could be inside the prison. He told me a story about a Thai inmate who made his living in Bang Kwang by repairing electrical equipment for the other inmates. He relied on a prison guard he knew to go to the shops and buy him the parts he needed. Then this guard was transferred so he had to approach another one who turned out to be an alcoholic. The inevitable happened. The inmate needed a part to repair a guy’s walkman and he gave the guard money to get it. That was the last he saw of his money. The guard kept coming up with excuses as to why he didn’t have the electronic part. After some persistence on the part of the inmate the guard confessed that he had spent his money on drink, saying, ‘Hey, shit happens!’

The inmate went away and simmered. He snapped a short while later. He spotted the guard reporting for work and grabbed an iron bar. He bashed the guard on the head and he went down. Blue Shirts jumped the Thai inmate. They dragged him to the supervisor’s office and left him lying outside. The supervisor came out with a bamboo cane and proceeded to beat the guy all over the body. This was just the beginning.
Peter
’s account tells how it went:

The guards took turns—two or three at a time—to beat the inmate, using batons, canes and even their boots. When one guard tired, another took his place. After two hours the beating abated, temporarily, until fresh guards from the other buildings took over. The Blue Shirts stood on guard around the scene, making sure that the rest of the inmates didn’t try to intervene.

We westerners, in particular, pleaded in vain with the guards to stop. The shock of witnessing this brutality was too much for one western guy and he collapsed with a heart attack. It took some time to get a guard to agree to bring him down to the infirmary but it was too late. He died.

We heard later that his embassy had actually brought him the prescribed medicine for his heart but the guards had delayed in giving it to him.

The Thai inmate was left lying in his own blood until the following afternoon when he was brought to the infirmary. We all assumed he would die but months later, to our surprise, we saw him hobbling slowly from the punishment building. He was a broken man and would live out the rest of his life as a cripple.

Like a lot of inmates
Peter
turned to heroin and he and Garth would snort it together. They would drink Pepsi afterwards to get rid of the taste—apparently it’s an acquired taste.
Peter
is a tall guy, 6ft 4”, and when he lost about 50 kilos he looked like a skeletal prisoner of war. He also lost most of his teeth to heroin. When he first got busted for possession of drugs,
Anne
was so angry that she didn’t visit him for almost a year. She told him that she wouldn’t visit him again until he got clean. I don’t know how she did it but she did and it probably saved him. He battled his addiction and beat it; not an easy thing to do in Bang Kwang. He got his hair cut, got his teeth done, put on weight, started working out and became a fitness fanatic. They got married behind bars. I asked her to tell me about the early years of
Peter
’s incarceration, and this is what she told me:

I was at university and working part-time and
Peter
went with some friend for a short holiday in Thailand. I came home from work one afternoon to see two policemen in civilian clothes waiting to speak to me … They told me that
Peter
had been arrested for drug-trafficking and was being detained in a Thai prison.

They informed me that drug-related crimes often resulted in a death sentence.

During those first years there were so many practical things to take care of and that was where I concentrated my resources after trying to just survive and keep
Peter
’s spirit up through letters. I had to locate an English-speaking lawyer in Bangkok, prepare the support documents for his trial, then the papers for the appeal, all the while struggling to understand the whole Thai prison and trial system, raising the money to visit him, establish contacts with our embassy and the ministry of foreign affairs in our country. Not one day went by without my writing at least one letter to get support to get him home. At the time there was no transfer agreement with our country. Together with a small group of relatives we managed to bug and create enough interest from the ministry of foreign affairs to start negotiating a transfer agreement with Thailand.

It took a lot of time researching other countries’ agreements so that we knew what kind of agreement to push for.

I think I was lucky that I was able to channel my energy, heartache and despair into doing practical stuff.
Peter
just had to survive, and if one hour felt long in my world it must’ve felt like years in his.

Some time during all of this
Peter
developed a serious addiction to drugs—the time behind bars, the waiting and the desperation got to him. I understood, but it was impossible for me to accept and just watch while he slowly disappeared.

I had managed to save enough money to go visit once or twice a year and I knew those visits were what kept us alive and fighting. His addiction was really bad, so I had to give him an ultimatum; I cancelled a Christmas visit and wrote that he had to choose between me or the drugs. It will always be the worst thing that I ever had to do in my life. But love conquers all.
Peter
beat the habit and has never taken drugs since. I can’t imagine how difficult that was for him. Behind bars there were no detoxification programmes, no counselling or support from his peers. He did it completely on his own.

On my first visits to Bang Kwang, sitting outside the prison office waiting for a visit application to be approved, I noticed that there were other westerners among the visitors. I was really surprised as I never expected there could be other westerners in the same situation as me—that someone else would have a husband, brother or father here.

I worked up the courage to go and speak to them and ended up making the closet friends I will ever have, in the shape of a big, friendly Scottish man and his lovely wife, the nicest, blue-eyed, red-haired Aussie, a beautiful but sad French girl, an English woman about my mother’s age, and the warm, chatty blond from Melbourne.

My love for my husband made me survive the years of separation but I have no doubt in my heart that those people were the ones who kept me sane.

There were, at that time, around 200 westerners imprisoned in Bang Kwang and we were some of the few relatives who visited, returning year after year, sharing our despair and our little victories—we truly were the ‘banana brigade’.

As I’ve said,
Anne
and I kept each other going. During her visits to Bangkok we always tried to make sure we did something to cheer ourselves up. We swam, went to the movies and took up dancing classes, where we failed miserably to learn how to either salsa or do the cha cha cha very well. One afternoon we arranged to meet for coffee after our visit. There were four of us; another friend of mine, a mother of an inmate,
Anne
and me. Garth gave me 500 baht along with a note from him and
Peter
telling us that they would love to be able to take the four of us out on the town, but since they couldn’t they wanted to buy us drinks. We were all in tears!

Peter
and
Anne
are still very much happy together, having worked hard to put their Bang Kwang years behind them. After serving his nine years in Bangkok
Peter
was transferred home to spend another year in prison, and then he was in a half-way house for six months before being finally released on a five-year probation. He started to study for a bachelor degree in the half-way house and graduated this year, and has started teaching at his local university. I asked him if it was difficult to resume a normal life together, and he replied:

It actually turned out to be much easier than I had thought.
Anne
and I have resumed our life together but in a deeper way. We know and love each other deeply and our ordeal has brought us closer together. We know that if we could survive that we can survive anything.

Chapter Twelve

I’m only back here in Thailand since 1 May 2006. Once I initiated divorce proceedings my days as a legal inhabitant in America were numbered. This seems to be the general pattern of my life; I have to give up something good in order to achieve something positive. Though maybe that’s a universal pattern, is it not? And aside from my heart-breaking, humiliating experience with Garth and my almost bleeding to death, I do have some very fond memories from my years in the States. It’s a country I never thought I would visit—let alone make a home there—because its politics and commercialism always discouraged me.

Things I miss about America: I would have to say firstly that I miss the people, from the homeless on the streets to Garth’s band mates, to my best friends Larry and Cathy. I thrive with people who are open to discussion and forthright in their opinions and the people I met were always outstandingly honest. Secondly, I would have to say that I miss the American male. Now, before you jump to conclusions, what I miss about the American male is that he can do platonic friendship with women. I made some great male friends in Monterey; far easier than I can here. As much as I love Thailand—my adopted country of 18 of my 26 years abroad—I do have to grit my teeth sometimes. There are a lot of social niceties that must be followed and it’s extremely easy to unintentionally offend. Thai men have to be handled carefully or they will get the wrong idea immediately.

For instance, I was visiting the women’s prison at Klong Prem several years ago, which was a fair distance from where I was living. A young lawyer I knew to smile at, offered me a lift home, which I gratefully accepted. He asked me all about my work and by the time I reached my front door he gave me his number and expressed an interest in helping me with my projects. A few weeks later he rang to invite me out to dinner. I brought Talya along with me and naively thought about any help he could provide me with.

However, the conversation took a surprising turn when he told me that he had gone back to his village to ask his mother if he could propose to me. I almost choked on my meal while he continued to tell me that he couldn’t sleep at nights because he was thinking of me. Talya cracked up, so he decided on a more practical seduction. He told my daughter that he was in love with her mother and he wanted to support and care for us both—for starters he would give us 1,000 baht a month. Talya stopped laughing and began to seriously consider his offer. Then he reached into his pocket and handed her a bundle of notes. It’s common practice in Thailand for adults to give children money, but this was really too much. I frantically searched my brain for a polite way to get out of the situation. Finally, I managed to say something like, ‘You have to slow down. I love my life and am very married already to my work.’

He seemed to accept that and we continued on with the meal. He rang again to invite me to dinner, this time to meet his boss who wished to see if I would do some work for his law firm. I thought that with the boss’ presence I would be safe enough. Again, I brought Talya, who was probably hoping for some more pocket-money from our wealthy friend. I really hit it off with his boss who was fluent in English. He was interested in the prison work I was doing at the time. My would-be lover felt a little excluded during our English conversation so he took Talya over to the play area in the restaurant. As he pushed her on the swing he waxed lyrical again about his love for me. Talya, very matter-of-factly, told him that I wasn’t in the least bit interested in him, that I just saw him as a friend and asked would he please ‘stop hassling my mum.’

She returned alone to the table eating an ice-cream cone. I asked her where our friend was and she shrugged and said that she had informed him that I didn’t like him so he left. His boss burst out laughing while I stared aghast at my proud child.

‘Talya! That wasn’t your place to say that. I was going to tell him tonight myself.’

‘Well, now you don’t have to. Can I have another ice-cream?’

A half-hour passed and there was no sign of him. His boss went to see if he had fallen down the toilet, but he wasn’t there. There was nothing else to do except pay the bill and leave. We found him outside the restaurant, sitting on the street, looking very dejected. He was broken-hearted. I felt awful, but what could I do?

This wasn’t even an isolated incident. An Indian guy proposed to me in McDonalds after his mother gave her permission for him to do so—I had had one conversation with him the previous year. The only comfort I have is the fact that I’m getting older and Thai men prefer younger women. In fact, Thailand is a good place to age; there is a lot more respect for the older generation and I certainly see the difference in peoples’ reactions to me now that I’m in my 40s. They take me a lot more seriously.

I miss the clean streets in America. More often than not I have to step around dead dogs on the crowded streets of the area in which I live, not to mention the frequent ‘hills’ of dog poop. My Thai friends laugh when I describe how Americans have to pick up their pet’s poop and deposit it in the nearest bin. I miss the decent second-hand clothes shops, good internet connections, friendly policemen, cheap health food, ocean walks and the changing colours of the season. What I don’t miss is the ridiculously huge food portions served in restaurants, the lack of global awareness, the chasing of the materialistic American dream and the fact that most people prefer to drive to a shop, or a friend’s house, in the next street instead of walking to it.

While I was still in America I began to form an idea of what I wanted to focus on when I returned to Thailand. It started as a little nub in my brain and then grew the more I thought about it, and it was so obvious to me; I wanted to work with women. I had gone through so much in my life—falling in love, giving birth, single parenthood and being dramatically dumped at my lowest point physically, when I couldn’t even get to the bathroom without help. I couldn’t possibly let all these precious experiences go to waste. So, after Talya and I returned to Thailand I got involved with a well-established shelter for women. It is located in a beautiful part of Bangkok, and I had known about it for several years. It was set up by a nun who was released by her husband to follow her vocation. She had cancer and pleaded for her freedom to do this one thing while she still could. Fortunately, her husband was an understanding man and didn’t stand in her way.

I actually met her 15 years ago when Nina and I visited the shelter to perform our ‘box skit’. We had devised a way to catch young people’s attention. Nina would narrate while I mimed the story of my life which would finish on a high note—that, at the end of the day, love was all that mattered. Coincidentally enough, Nina and I were invited back on Mother’s Day this year and we performed the exact same skit to great results, 15 years later.

The shelter is a safe place for women who have been raped, or who have been driven to take their kids and flee abusive husbands, or have been infected with HIV, or who are pregnant and alone. I love working there. With my prison projects things could get quite difficult as I was constantly hearing about people dying, or dealing with men who were going to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. Remember my friend Dtui who had so much to give and ending up contracting HIV in Bang Kwang, which ultimately robbed him of the chance to turn around his life? He died so young, it just wasn’t fair. This kind of work can become quite depressing as you can imagine. So, there is no better antidote than looking after pregnant women and then helping them to take care of their babies. The shelter is all about life!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not Heaven. Some of these girls have done the most dreadful things to try and abort their babies, but the babies survive and come out fighting. Other girls are unceremoniously dumped here by their families. I was telling this to another Thai woman recently and she thought I was making it up. She couldn’t believe that a Thai could ever dump their pregnant daughter and not want to have anything to do with their grandchildren.

‘Are you kidding?’ I replied, ‘It happens all the time, and not only in Thailand.’

I found it really interesting to discover how many women were there because they didn’t want their parents to know they were pregnant, and I’m not talking about young teenagers, I’m talking about women in their 20s and 30s whose self-esteem is fragile and are still very much afraid of letting down their parents.

I first started with giving a three month course to pregnant girls in which I taught them all about giving birth and the aftermath—how to take care of their nipples, their vaginas, how to breast-feed and care for their bundles of joy. Once I proved myself with this course I would be free to come and go and do what I wanted within the shelter. Technically, it was an excellent course but I felt something was missing. There didn’t appear to be any real connection between me and the girls. Some of them had become pregnant after rape and others had been abandoned as a result of their pregnancy so they were pretty much a damaged lot. I worried that they had too much respect for me as a
farang
teacher—which is a particular Thai trait—and this impeded their being able to fully relax in my company. I resolved to fix this.

One day after we had performed some floor exercises I asked the girls to sit up for a special meditation. They closed their eyes obediently and listened to me as I told them about the past few years of my life. I didn’t hold back. I told them I was adopted after being rejected by my birth mother, that I did drugs and alcohol, that my teenage boyfriend had broken my nose, that I had loved and had a child for a man I didn’t marry, that I was a single mother, wanted to help people, and of course the whole story of Garth and our subsequent break-up. The girls couldn’t believe what I was telling them. They couldn’t believe that they could so closely relate to a white
farang’s
experience.

It was worth it—it pushed our relationship to a whole new level. I wasn’t some perfect white lady coming in to talk down to them about their mistakes in life; I had gone through much of what they had and, as a result, I probably understood them better than most. It was a huge breakthrough. I even managed to get them to pose like a pregnant Demi Moore on the cover of
Vanity Fair
magazine. They weren’t naked, but it was a big deal for them to allow me to take photos of their swollen bellies. They saw me now as one of them, just as I had become one of the ‘banana brigade’ at Bang Kwang when I embarked on a relationship with an inmate.

I always find it beneficial to point out how important mothers are in any society. Without mothers there would be no king, no politicians, no anyone. The girls really responded visually when I reminded them that mothers were responsible for shaping the future. Of course, we don’t work pure miracles. Some girls have their babies and then take off, leaving the unwanted child behind. Others are too anxious to get on with their lives and leave the shelter too early, sometimes doing a runner in the middle of the night, only to return again with an unwanted pregnancy.

There is a lot of laughter at the shelter, courtesy of the women. The HIV women live in the building to the rear of the property. They used to be more segregated back in the early days when not a lot was known or understood about HIV. Thankfully things have greatly improved since and there is quite a good atmosphere of hope and strength. I had dinner in the canteen last week with three women who are HIV positive. Mae is from Chiangmai and always wears her hair in a tight pony-tail. Her body has been ravaged by the disease and she has few teeth left. Yet she is always smiling despite her circumstances. She contracted HIV from her unfaithful husband. She gave birth to a boy 13 years ago and thankfully knew not to breastfeed him so he was never infected with the virus. She was forced to leave the baby at a temple in Chonburi because there was no way she could support him, and she also had no way of knowing when the virus would claim her.

Today, he is a young monk. She proudly showed me photographs of him over dinner one evening. She was quite a gentlewoman, dressed in a pristine white blouse and dark skirt and looked like she had never had a bad word to say about anyone. Except, that is, for her husband.

‘I’m only here because of my cheating husband. He brought it home to me. Men are bastards!’

Then she giggled and put her hand to her mouth for using such a terrible word. Calling someone a bastard is one of the worst insults in Thailand. Her companions giggled with her in appreciation.

Rena also picked up the virus from her husband. She came down with a fever and took herself to the hospital because she didn’t know what was wrong with her. The doctor took a blood test as standard procedure and that is how she found out she was HIV positive. She has only recently been diagnosed, at the age of 45, and I don’t think it has truly hit home yet. The eldest one of the three still looks relatively healthy. Her long hair is dyed a chestnut-brown, but I can see her roots. She told me that when she was first diagnosed she consumed handfuls of pills and now she only takes a couple a day.

On another visit I made with my friend Marie, we met another woman, who was also infected by her husband. She had done a bit of research on the subject of HIV and explained to me that the choice of medication available to the women at the house comes down to financial means. They can go on a course of 1,000 baht or 5,000 baht—naturally, there are less side effects with the more expensive course.

She was in poor condition on her arrival at the house. Her blood count was only 50 before she went on medication and then it took her a couple of weeks to deal with the side effects, which ranged from fevers and unsightly rashes to severe nausea. We laughed when she told us that long term effects can lead to an increase in the size of the breasts and a decrease in the size of the bottom. We told her that many women throughout the western world would be envious of such a figure! She smiled at the idea; I was afraid I had gone too far, like the time I told a class of (single) mothers-to-be that they couldn’t be embarrassed about discussing their vaginas since they were all sexy mamas—which was why they were pregnant in the first place! However, they, like this particular woman, laughed as loudly as I did.