Most of the articles on this blog don't really deal with work-related issues. However, I´d like to share the story of how I visited the prison in Fada N´Gourma, which was part of a seminar that we held last week.

Our project organized a seminar to train advocates of all specialties concerning laws related to transhumance in order to defend mobile pastoralists rights. Part of this workshop was a visit to the town´s prison.

I appreciate so much the idea of one of the participants, who suggested to collect money to buy soap for the prisoners. What a nice idea!

Before we drove to the prison, we stopped at the market and bought two packages of soap. Arriving at the prison, I´m surprised how easy we can enter. No ID-check, no bag control. The gate is open. Some prisoners sitting in the garden, but they are not handcuffed. I asked, why prisoners can move freely like that, even if the gate is open. The director of the prison later explained: "We don't protect society from criminals, –we protect these criminals from society. If they go out of this prison, the family of the victims will find and maybe kill them." Harsh words. He goes on: "People who have done their sentence, like 6, 8 or 10 years, they don't want to leave! We have to blindfold, handcuff them and drive them to the other end of the city to free them. We have to force them to leave". Honestly spoken, I´ve expected the prison to be much worse. Well, yeah, you can smell feces, it is super dirty, all prisoners sleep on the ground, there are 300 prisoners even though there is only space for 100.

BUT there is an art-workshop, where they are being trained to do jewelry. There is a garden, where prisoners can undergo a formation in gardening. There is a so called "social service" inside the prison, who tries to make a lot possible for them: To buy a sewing-machine for instance or a to get a job during the weekend on the prison owned farm outside town. There are no cells at all, everything is more or less open space, where prisoners can move freely.

After we spoke to the director, my colleague and the security guard discussed whether we can have a tour through the prison. First they said, Paula, one of the participants and I, are not allowed to join the tour, because they think we would not enjoy going to through the men´s part of the building. But somehow we insisted to join them anyway. We were brought to the children´s part and the woman´s part of the prison. While we were interviewing the 20 children and 5 woman, I realized how armed guards went hectically in and out of the men´s building. It was obvious that they were preparing the prisoners for our visit. Maybe they were even cleaning rooms or hiding things, that our group should not see. Who know´s.

The director encouraged our group to hand over the packages of soap to the woman. And now, what has started as a nice I idea turned out to become a nightmare....The Director handed over the soap to one of the woman, he was trying to make jokes, to be funny. He asked for applause and wanted us to take photos. I felt so so so bad. And so did the women.

We handed over our gift, soap for like 10 Euros, and the director was celebrated it! The woman - – apparently disturbed and bothered - – did not know how to react. Again and again the director told us to take photos and he forced the woman to say "thank you".

I really liked the idea in the beginning, but I had no idea that our soap will be misused to make the director and the consultant booster their ego. I would have preferred not to give it to them. The women must have felt like animals in the zoo. And I felt so ashamed that the director was using our soap for his propaganda event!

Anyways, this "fake" soap-ceremony gave enough time to clean the men´s part of the prison where we could finally enter. This part –to my satisfaction was separated from the open space by a big security gate. Accompanied by four gun men, I entered the security wing of the prison. In there, it looked like in a bad action movie. We stood in the middle of a circle out of 300 prisoners. They all sat on the ground and where well watched by the gunmen. As soon as one of them would move, a security guard would shout at him. I looked around. I wanted to look into their eyes. I asked myself: How many of them are here without any trial? How many of them are stuck here without reason? These are the poorest of the poorest, who have no money to pay for their freedom, just as the other "real" bandits can do. How many are in prison for stealing a motorcycle (8 years) or because they burned a car (10 years)? I kept turning around....The men power of 300 people could easily overwhelm four gunmen –- this is for sure. But they stayed calm and looked at me, at this white little girl in the middle of the prison in Fada N´Gourma.

They for sure must have enjoyed the moment, when the key for the security door went missing and our group was stuck in there for another five minutes until the director found a spare key. At least we all had something to laugh at the end.