Read Online Hotel Kerobokan by Kathryn Bonella - Free Book Online
Authors: Kathryn Bonella
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room, it’s not your language, not your people, another planet. All the time you think you’re dreaming; it’s not really happening; you’re not really there. You don’t know what to do or think. It’s extreme. You go up and down. It’s like you’ve been kidnapped .
– Mick, Australian inmate
Checking into a third-world jail is a frightening ordeal for most westerners, but at Hotel K after a mug shot, a haircut and paperwork in the offices, inmates are taken on a surprisingly pleasant walk through nicely groomed gardens to their new cell. On that walk, Hotel K resembles a cheap Balinese resort. Prisoners stretch out like cats under shady palm trees, reading or sleeping. Some play tennis or pray in the small Hindu temple. The path turns at a small canteen, where a group of prisoners might stand about chatting. A laughing child runs across the lawns, flying a kite. Under a palm tree, a couple is kissing. This initial snapshot lulls a new inmate into a false sense of calm.
It doesn’t last long.
When the door of their new cell slams shut, the pleasant scenes cease. In the initiation or pre-sentencing blocks J and C2, there is no sunlight, only bright fluorescent lights. A thick blue haze colours the air, from the clove cigarettes dangling from people’s lips. They’re hot concrete boxes, each crammed so tightly, with up to twenty-five men, that the prisoners are constantly touching elbows or knees. There’s not enough room for everyone to sit down at the same time; they sit and sleep in shifts. No one can stretch out unless they nab a spot near the door where they can scissor their legs through the bars. Everyone else sleeps with their legs and arms weaving in and out of the sticky limbs of others.
In the corner is a single hole-in-the-ground toilet, which is usually blocked with old, hardened faeces. The stench attracts a cloud of mosquitoes. Rats run in and out of the cells. New western inmates watch in disbelief when a local corners a rat, breaks its neck and then eats it raw.
The initiation cellblocks are filled with heroin addicts, including some with AIDS and hepatitis, who will later be put in a cellblock specifically for drug addicts, known as ‘the junkie block’. Often they’re covered in sores, obsessively picking at them. The addicts shoot up, wrapping their arms tightly to find a vein before plunging in a blunt needle, taking a hit and passing the dirty syringe on. The tight squeeze ensures all prisoners are exposed to their diseases, skin rashes, sores and infections.
Three times a day in the initiation cellblocks, inmates are fed like they’re monkeys. Usually they just stretch their arms through the bars to those prisoners who wheel the food carts around the jail, holding out a hand or a piece of plastic to get a spoonful of undercooked hard white rice with a ladle of watery cabbage stew slopped on top. The inmates’ only respite is a walk across to the visiting room, although many have no one to visit them, so are deprived even of that.
When I first came from the police station, they put me in C2. When anyone comes from the police station, they put you there first, in one small room with twenty-five people. Not enough room for twenty-five people. Some people sit down to sleep. I was there for two months. That time there was no toilet. You have to shit in plastic. Piss in plastic. I went two weeks and five days with no shit .
Did you get out once in two months?
No. You cannot go out in the day time. That time I have no choice but to stay there. If you have money you can pay to move to another block. Some people make arrangement so that immediately they are moved from that block. American Gabriel started to make everything expensive. He paid seven million rupiah [$950] to move, because he didn’t want to stay even for one hour. So they start to charge everyone more. The guy from Africa, he paid seven million also to move .
– Emmanuel, Nigerian inmate
Although the guards always
– Mick, Australian inmate
Checking into a third-world jail is a frightening ordeal for most westerners, but at Hotel K after a mug shot, a haircut and paperwork in the offices, inmates are taken on a surprisingly pleasant walk through nicely groomed gardens to their new cell. On that walk, Hotel K resembles a cheap Balinese resort. Prisoners stretch out like cats under shady palm trees, reading or sleeping. Some play tennis or pray in the small Hindu temple. The path turns at a small canteen, where a group of prisoners might stand about chatting. A laughing child runs across the lawns, flying a kite. Under a palm tree, a couple is kissing. This initial snapshot lulls a new inmate into a false sense of calm.
It doesn’t last long.
When the door of their new cell slams shut, the pleasant scenes cease. In the initiation or pre-sentencing blocks J and C2, there is no sunlight, only bright fluorescent lights. A thick blue haze colours the air, from the clove cigarettes dangling from people’s lips. They’re hot concrete boxes, each crammed so tightly, with up to twenty-five men, that the prisoners are constantly touching elbows or knees. There’s not enough room for everyone to sit down at the same time; they sit and sleep in shifts. No one can stretch out unless they nab a spot near the door where they can scissor their legs through the bars. Everyone else sleeps with their legs and arms weaving in and out of the sticky limbs of others.
In the corner is a single hole-in-the-ground toilet, which is usually blocked with old, hardened faeces. The stench attracts a cloud of mosquitoes. Rats run in and out of the cells. New western inmates watch in disbelief when a local corners a rat, breaks its neck and then eats it raw.
The initiation cellblocks are filled with heroin addicts, including some with AIDS and hepatitis, who will later be put in a cellblock specifically for drug addicts, known as ‘the junkie block’. Often they’re covered in sores, obsessively picking at them. The addicts shoot up, wrapping their arms tightly to find a vein before plunging in a blunt needle, taking a hit and passing the dirty syringe on. The tight squeeze ensures all prisoners are exposed to their diseases, skin rashes, sores and infections.
Three times a day in the initiation cellblocks, inmates are fed like they’re monkeys. Usually they just stretch their arms through the bars to those prisoners who wheel the food carts around the jail, holding out a hand or a piece of plastic to get a spoonful of undercooked hard white rice with a ladle of watery cabbage stew slopped on top. The inmates’ only respite is a walk across to the visiting room, although many have no one to visit them, so are deprived even of that.
When I first came from the police station, they put me in C2. When anyone comes from the police station, they put you there first, in one small room with twenty-five people. Not enough room for twenty-five people. Some people sit down to sleep. I was there for two months. That time there was no toilet. You have to shit in plastic. Piss in plastic. I went two weeks and five days with no shit .
Did you get out once in two months?
No. You cannot go out in the day time. That time I have no choice but to stay there. If you have money you can pay to move to another block. Some people make arrangement so that immediately they are moved from that block. American Gabriel started to make everything expensive. He paid seven million rupiah [$950] to move, because he didn’t want to stay even for one hour. So they start to charge everyone more. The guy from Africa, he paid seven million also to move .
– Emmanuel, Nigerian inmate
Although the guards always
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