My time in prison. Part One...

I remember the first time I ever went to jail. A young friend of mine had gotten in trouble with the police in Saskatoon, and he ended up spending a year and a half or so in the maximum security youth facility in Prince Albert. He didn’t really have family or anyone to visit him, so I figured I should go see him. Eventually we ended up having a weekly Bible study together while he was there, so I got used to the whole lockup scene. But that first visit was intimidating…being locked in one room after another as they led you further and further into the building. Then waiting in a little cubicle all by yourself. I definitely had a couple of “Why exactly am I here?!” moments. But then my friend arrived with a big smile on his face and for sure it was all worthwhile.

My recent visit to the prison here felt a bit the same way at times. I’ve been into both the men’s prison and ladies prison before, but always with my friend Corina who knew the system. This was my first time setting things up and making connections on my own.

Corina called her contact in the ladies prison and told her I’d be there the next Monday afternoon. My friend Murray and I took off for the prison after lunch that day and I told him I had no idea how it was all going to work out, but we’d do our best.

The building itself is intimidating…which I guess prisons are supposed to be. There are definitely no gardens or golf courses anywhere near this place. We made it in the front gate okay, only to discover that I’d forgotten to take my ID (which I needed) out of my wallet (which I’d left in the truck). I also had more money on me than I wanted. So Murray ended up making a run back to the truck. It was kind of funny ‘cause right off the bat I felt kind of flustered. I felt like I should have known better and been a little more on top of things.

After the pat-downs and the signing in, we headed across a big open field to the woman’s prison part of the jail. There are a number of distinct areas within the main prison, the woman’s prison being one of them. It’s not like anything you might imagine. It’s a little community of one room houses and stores and even a couple of churches.

After going through another round of security, we went through the gate into the ladies section. I wasn’t sure where our contact lived, but I figured someone at the church might know. Sure enough, they pointed us in the right direction and we eventually found her little house, knocked on her door and met her. Margot was her name. Right away I was struck by her friendliness and sense of joy. She took us to meet another lady and the four of us got permission to leave their part of the prison to go and talk to the head lady of the prison, Coronel Salazar. We wanted permission to bring in the group from the Christian School to work with the children in the prison. When a woman goes to prison here, her children go with her. They can leave to go to school, but when their classes are finished, they come back. There’s quite a crowd of them actually.

On the way to the Coronel’s office, the ladies had the idea of talking to the head social worker as well (that turned out to be a good decision…but more on that later), so we walked over to her office to meet with her. I explained who we were and what we wanted to do. She thought it was a great idea (one of the joys of working in a Catholic country…they like God) and was very supportive. After that it was off to the Coronel’s office.

We had to wait quite a while before we were finally let into (what I thought was) the Coronel’s office. We spoke to two young ladies there and afterwards Murray and I laughed because we both had the same thought, “Which of these two is the Coronel?!” But after getting the okay from these ladies we were allowed into the actual office of the Coronel.

Whatever you’re imagining just now, about what the Coronel of a South American woman’s prison might look like? Yep. Exactly. It was the most cliché come to life experience I’ve ever had. She was the toughest (I want to say broad for some reason even though I know that’s not a good thing to say…but…well… it fits) lady military Coronel person I’ve ever met. She sat there in her uniform, chain smoking her cigarettes just kind of staring at us.

Margot (our contact) introduced us and then quickly left us alone. That was an interesting dynamic to observe too. Murray and I had been talking and laughing with Margot and the other lady like we would any friend or sister in Christ. To see her suddenly in the relationship of prisoner/warden was sobering for me.

Coronel Salazar sort of gruffly asked what it was we wanted (in her raspy, chain-smoker voice), so I explained once again what we wanted to do and asked for her permission. She was a little reserved at first, but as I continued talking, it seemed like she loosened up a bit. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part. At any rate, after I was finished, she said that we could have permission but that there might be a problem. There was a possibility of a hunger strike starting in the men’s prison that week and if there was, all visits would be suspended. I asked if we could phone to find out and she offered to give me her private cell phone number so I could call the morning of our visit. Okay then…

I left her office feeling quite pleased with how things had gone. When I called her a couple of days later to make sure everything was okay, she was positively chatty on the phone. It made me smile a little. She told me that a letter of permission was waiting for me in her office and that I could pick it up sometime before the team arrived.

Well…in my books, sometime before the team arrived meant arriving with the team and making them wait in the bus while I went in search of the all-important letter of permission. Imagine my chagrin when I arrived at the office of the Coronel only to find it closed for lunch. Yea…that would be a Bolivian lunch which meant until 3:30 in the afternoon. We were supposed to start at 2 PM. So…now I had a problem. Then I remembered our visit to the social worker and went looking for her. Thankfully she was having her lunch in her office and she was more than happy to help us. She came with me and talked to the guards and even got our bus into the prison (which didn’t actually make our bus driver all that happy since he had to sit on the bus the entire time we were there and wasn’t allowed off until we came back).

We ended up doing a program first for the women prisoners. By the time we set up, a crowd was already beginning to form. Then after the program and a bit of a break and a visit to the church, we continued with a program for the children. Somehow during the visit to the church (which I thought was going to be a fun little informal time with some of the ladies when we could visit and drink pop) I ended up translating for another church group who were there leading a service. We didn’t have an English Bible (way to go Saskatoon Christian School people) so I wasn’t even sure what passage we were using. I was fairly proud of myself afterwards when I did read the passage and discovered that I was fairly accurate in my translating.  Truth be told though, I did make a few things up along the way. I was the only one there who spoke both languages so who was going to know… =)  After the children’s program (and after a lot of goodbyes to a lot of cute kids) we packed up and headed back to our bus.

There’s a lot more I could say about what we saw and experienced, but this is turning (once again) into a novel, so I’ll close with something that struck me during the visit. Margot and another of the church leaders were both amazing ladies, so full of love and a quiet sense of God’s Spirit. Obviously God has changed their hearts dramatically. And yet they’re still paying the price for their sins. Margot may be in jail for as long as thirty years. The other lady has no idea how much longer she’ll be there. Margot has a young son who’s deaf and who she’s clearly being a great mom to. Before we left, some of the leaders of the team prayed for these ladies…that they would be at peace and know that God has a purpose for their lives. But it was very sad for me when we left, to see them waving goodbye to us from behind the chain-link fence of the jail.

That’s got to be a very difficult and painful thing…to be such a different person than who you were when you arrived…and yet to not be free in a physical sense…to still be faced with such harsh consequences to your sins. My heart really went out to them. And yet we serve a good God and we are not a people without hope. I could see that God was using both of these ladies to serve and minister to the other women around them. They were a bright light in a very dark place. And that at least, is encouraging.  But please pray for them.

I enjoyed the time we shared with these sisters in Christ, and the opportunity to encourage them, as well as the fun we had with the kids and the ladies of the prison. I hope to go back soon, now that I know what I’m doing.

Oh yea….and someone told me that as we were presenting our program to the children, Coronel Salazar was sitting outside the building listening, chain smoking her cigarettes. That made me smile too…

NEXT TIME: VISITING THE MAXIMUM SECURITY MEN’S PRISON A FEW DAYS LATER…