24 hours with the devil!!!

A NEW DAWN

It was another beautiful day in the city of Phils. The sky was blue as always, the smell of fresh air filled the city which gave me a pretty soothing relief. I watched by as I admired the beautiful colour of the golden daffodils in the nearby garden; I admired the way these beautiful creatures dance to the sweet chirping of the birds and the cool breeze of this beautiful summer morning. The trees on the other hand, had its usual greenish and partly golden colour and I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful the summer looked in the city of Phils.

I had been interning in this city for the past three months as part of the requirements for my course of study, law. The internship was meant to give me a real-life experience of what the practice entails outside the four walls of the school environment. Well, being the brightest student of my class, I was one of the lucky five who was given the exclusive privilege to intern at the Phils’ Department of Justice. Part of the exercise for students in their third month of internship was the visitation of prisons and the interaction with some inmates. Impressed with my work so far, I was given the opportunity to visit the Phils Correctional Centre all by myself. On getting there, I felt nervous as this was my first time doing this. I passed the necessary security checks and I entered being led by one of the officials working at the prison. Walking by, I noticed the unhealthy living conditions these ‘prisoners’ were exposed to. The cells were dilapidated, old, unkempt and filled with an unpleasant pungent smell. I was filled with pity and tears filled my eyes as I beheld the sad looking faces of these inmates. They looked like they had lost all faith and hope in life. They looked frail, unhealthy, some had skin burns, others have cuts and other injuries sustained from months and years of hard labour. But on the other hand, there was something most of these inmates shared in common. It saddened me as I could not help but notice that these people had the same dark-skinned complexion that I have. It felt like I was looking at my own fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins go through this extreme pain and t*****e while I watched unable to do anything. I walked by as I could see some of these wretched looking individuals cry, some groaning and some looked like their lives were hanging by a very tiny looking thread. Lost at the sight I beheld, I was grabbed aggressively by the outstretched arm of one of the inmates who cried “help me, please! I’m innocent”. I looked with tears circling round my eyelids as I tried to free myself from his grip. Before I could do anything, my escort, a prison warden hit him hard on his hand with the metal stick he was holding at that time. “Let go, you murderer!”, he said. “I’m not a murderer!”, the man replied. The traffic warden threatened to hit him further thereby prompting my intervention. “Stop!” I said. “Please don’t hit him any further!” “Get out of my way, you fool! You black folks are all the same! Bunch of worthless fellows”. On hearing that, I was filled with so much rage that I tried raising my hand to hit him. But then he said to me “Raise that hand one more time and I will make sure you never use that hand ever again in your life! I will make sure I whoop your black a*s so bad that you will never try that again!”. Surprised by the chain of events that just ensued, I was left dumbfounded and unable to utter a single word. As I walked out of the cell, I could not help but say to myself, “I was just racially abused.”

I left the prison feeling so terrible, helpless and numb as I thought about the chain of events that had just occurred a couple of minutes ago. I struggled to come to grips with the fact that I had just been racially abused by a supposed ‘Officer of Justice’. I thought about the depressed-looking faces I had just seen at the prison and this time, I let the tears all out. My experience was not a pleasant one and it is not one I can look back on with fond memories. Phils correctional centre houses the most ‘Notorious killers’ who are on death row. I remembered the man who grabbed me at the cell saying “Help me! I am innocent” and I thought to myself “Could he really be innocent?” “Has he been wrongly accused?” “Was this a plot to appeal to my emotions?” looking back at the horrific experience I encountered at the cell, I felt something. The feeling was quite strange. It was like a blend of all my emotions coming together in harmony. I felt sad, I felt anger, I felt pity, I felt rage, I felt mercy and all these bursts of emotions made tears pour down from my eyes just like the waters pouring from a waterfall. I only thought about one thing, ‘change’. “But am I not too young to start a journey I cannot finish?” “Am I not black as well? “Are some of these people really innocent?” “Even if they are actually guilty, should they live in such unhealthy conditions and be treated in such inhumane manner?” Thesa thoughts alongside several others filled my head as I journeyed back home. As part of our internship program, we are supposed to write down some experiences we had during the internship and make reports on these experiences. The experience I had in the prison is one I look back on with sadness and one I hope to forget in the long run. But can I forget the horrific experience? That was just a little glimpse of what these black folks face regularly and this happened in front of my very eyes. “What about the things unseen?” “What about the things that go on in the background?” “Do I know the full story?” “Am I too young to concern myself with matters such as these?” “Why are the authorities not doing anything about it?” “Is this an actual norm?” Several thoughts plagued my fragile and innocent mind as I sought answers all by myself to what happened in front of my very eyes that very day. Though horrific for my fragile little mind, my experience at the Phils’ Correctional Centre on that very day seemed to change my life. I sought answers to my questions on why the society discriminates. Perhaps, experiencing this for the first time as an eighteen-year-old law student of Harvard University seemed to give my life a whole new direction and thus, gave me the zeal and eagerness to seek answers to all my unanswered questions.