On September 24th, 2008, i was transferred from my five star Cabarete jail cell--where 12 of us--(including a 6'3 Haitian drag queen)--slept standing up all night--to the Puerto Plata jail cell. For those of you not acquainted with the luxuries of jail cells here in the DR, allow me elaborate: they come complete with Jacuzzi, mini bar, on-site masseuse (Jasmine the Haitian hermaphrodite drag queen was mine for the night), and Bidets & toilets.
In Puerto Plata, they only had two cells (just like in Cabarete). but they were both packed like sardines with young men. I mean packed! There was probably 30 of us in one cell. When i walked in, they surrounded me like a pack of dehydrated, hungry wolves. I don't exactly look Dominican...I'm circumcised; I'm easy to spot from across the room. I think when they saw me, they said, "Hey look, there's a stupid circumcised Gringo masquerading as a Dominican among us...let's eat him for dinner!"
I think i heard them saying something like, "The gringo is cute...and he smells good!" Maybe i was just imagining that.
Anyway, because i am stupendously naive when it comes to being locked up abroad with 30 other innocent Dominicans...and i really thought i would only be there for a very short stay--maybe until lunch... i was planning on what kind of sushi i was going to eat when i got back to Cabarete at Yamazota's....I was thinking maybe i was going to splurge and get Sashimi; i wasn't sure...i was starving!
Did i mention that i am criminally naive when it comes to being incarcerated on an empty stomach?
So, I started walking around the jail cell--all ten feet of it--talking to different people; i was asking them, "So, what's a nice, innocent, drug dealing, gun toting, tattoo filled, kid doing in a dirty place like this? I was listening to everyone's story and taking mental notes. Naturally, everyone was innocent...myself included. I could relate. I was like, "hey, i'm innocent too, man!
Sometime around noon, I noticed there were two young men laying down on their backs. they were not moving. they were staring straight up at the ceiling, not blinking, staring blankly, but breathing heavily. There was obviously something very wrong with them. I couldn't tell what was wrong. First, I examined them from afar, then i got closer and knelt down and started talking to one of them. I asked him--in Dominican--not quite Spanish--"Quele que diablo tu asses aqui?" ( i recognized him, or so i thought). He could hardly talk. he was in great pain. he was whispering something to me. I couldn't hear him. I knelt down further and put my ear near next to his mouth. He whispered something else which i couldn't understand. A kid standing above me said he was robbing people with a gun in Sosua. "Really? So what happened?" i asked. "He ran into a hotel where the police could not shoot him (in front of tourists), so they took back to the station and beat him until he couldn't walk. He had internal bleeding, probably a collapsed lung. I wasn't sure. Something was making it very hard for him to breath, and hence, talk. the word the kid standing above me used for "robbing people with a gun" was something that sounded like this: "Trocando." It's a word i'm not familiar with. It took some explaining from other people in the jail cell for me to figure out what he was doing with the gun.
The next guy i tried to speak to, was also whispering, but i could not understand hardly anything he said. He too had internal bleeding and probably a lot of broken bones; he was not communicating well. Nevertheless, i gave it my best shot and asked him a couple of questions. Other people chimed in and started telling me his story...he had a handgun and was up to no good--what exactly he was doing, i have no idea, and i'm not sure anyone else did either. No one gave specifics. No one seemed to really know exactly what he did. If they did know, they weren't saying anything. He was not communicating well.
Anyway, the afternoon turned into evening, and my sushi reservations would have to be cancelled and i dreamed of food like i never have before. Not long after, i was dreaming of a shower and brushing my teeth as well.
For those unfamiliar with the five start arrangements in the jail cells here in the DR, allow me to describe them to you: They are plush, elaborate, spectacular, invigorating, intriguing, funny, scary, and absurd--all at the same time. There is no water, no food (Its up to your family to bring you something to drink & eat), no toilet--but a hole in the ground over-flowing with beautiful, delicious looking & smelling human excrement, and very dark, ochre-yellow looking urine that pools into the corners of the cell and smells ungodly because everyone is dehydrated from the heat and lack of water.
However, you can have money on you in jail here, so you are more then welcome to purchase water or food from the prison guards...oh yeah, they take a small cut.
I was loaded, probably had 4 or 5 thousand pesos on me. But there was no way i could pull any of that out in front of 30 severely dehydrated and very hungry innocent prisoners. When it started getting dark, i was dying of thirst, i pulled out some money and told the guard to buy me some water. I asked him, "how much is the water?" he said, "10 pesos." Damn, that's cheap! I gave him 100 pesos and told him to buy me ten. He came back with six. I asked, "where's the rest?" "Oh, that's for delivery." great. Ok, whatever. I took two, gave two to a kid from Cabarete named--"Kelvin"--( a super nice kid and great kite surfer) who was locked up for the same reason as me (long story...something to do with a murder), and the rest of the water i gave to the others--only four small "bags" of water (the kind that look like a water balloon) to split between 28 guys! Do you know what they did? Despite being dehydrated and dying of thirst, they walked over and squirted water into the mouths of the two guys laying on the ground with internal bleeding who could not move...they were also severely dehydrated. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was totally not what i was expecting. I thought there would be fist fights and chaos over the water. Well, it turns out that somewhere in the cell, there is a pinched green garden hose coming from the outside that has water (Not filtered, not clean) coming into the cell. I wouldn't call it drinking water, but it will keep you alive. It's probably full of bacteria. I bought six more waters and gave them to the kids.
Around 11:30pm, the guard called out me and Kelvin. We got up and started walking out. I looked over at the two guys laying immobile on the ground. One looked almost certainly dead; the other was in bad shape. I don't know if he made it to the morning. The first guy almost certainly didn't make it to midnight.
Such is life when you are locked up abroad.
Here is what it looks like in a jail cell here (I think this is the jail cell in Sosua, but it could be Puerto Plata):
Frank
In Puerto Plata, they only had two cells (just like in Cabarete). but they were both packed like sardines with young men. I mean packed! There was probably 30 of us in one cell. When i walked in, they surrounded me like a pack of dehydrated, hungry wolves. I don't exactly look Dominican...I'm circumcised; I'm easy to spot from across the room. I think when they saw me, they said, "Hey look, there's a stupid circumcised Gringo masquerading as a Dominican among us...let's eat him for dinner!"
I think i heard them saying something like, "The gringo is cute...and he smells good!" Maybe i was just imagining that.
Anyway, because i am stupendously naive when it comes to being locked up abroad with 30 other innocent Dominicans...and i really thought i would only be there for a very short stay--maybe until lunch... i was planning on what kind of sushi i was going to eat when i got back to Cabarete at Yamazota's....I was thinking maybe i was going to splurge and get Sashimi; i wasn't sure...i was starving!
Did i mention that i am criminally naive when it comes to being incarcerated on an empty stomach?
So, I started walking around the jail cell--all ten feet of it--talking to different people; i was asking them, "So, what's a nice, innocent, drug dealing, gun toting, tattoo filled, kid doing in a dirty place like this? I was listening to everyone's story and taking mental notes. Naturally, everyone was innocent...myself included. I could relate. I was like, "hey, i'm innocent too, man!
Sometime around noon, I noticed there were two young men laying down on their backs. they were not moving. they were staring straight up at the ceiling, not blinking, staring blankly, but breathing heavily. There was obviously something very wrong with them. I couldn't tell what was wrong. First, I examined them from afar, then i got closer and knelt down and started talking to one of them. I asked him--in Dominican--not quite Spanish--"Quele que diablo tu asses aqui?" ( i recognized him, or so i thought). He could hardly talk. he was in great pain. he was whispering something to me. I couldn't hear him. I knelt down further and put my ear near next to his mouth. He whispered something else which i couldn't understand. A kid standing above me said he was robbing people with a gun in Sosua. "Really? So what happened?" i asked. "He ran into a hotel where the police could not shoot him (in front of tourists), so they took back to the station and beat him until he couldn't walk. He had internal bleeding, probably a collapsed lung. I wasn't sure. Something was making it very hard for him to breath, and hence, talk. the word the kid standing above me used for "robbing people with a gun" was something that sounded like this: "Trocando." It's a word i'm not familiar with. It took some explaining from other people in the jail cell for me to figure out what he was doing with the gun.
The next guy i tried to speak to, was also whispering, but i could not understand hardly anything he said. He too had internal bleeding and probably a lot of broken bones; he was not communicating well. Nevertheless, i gave it my best shot and asked him a couple of questions. Other people chimed in and started telling me his story...he had a handgun and was up to no good--what exactly he was doing, i have no idea, and i'm not sure anyone else did either. No one gave specifics. No one seemed to really know exactly what he did. If they did know, they weren't saying anything. He was not communicating well.
Anyway, the afternoon turned into evening, and my sushi reservations would have to be cancelled and i dreamed of food like i never have before. Not long after, i was dreaming of a shower and brushing my teeth as well.
For those unfamiliar with the five start arrangements in the jail cells here in the DR, allow me to describe them to you: They are plush, elaborate, spectacular, invigorating, intriguing, funny, scary, and absurd--all at the same time. There is no water, no food (Its up to your family to bring you something to drink & eat), no toilet--but a hole in the ground over-flowing with beautiful, delicious looking & smelling human excrement, and very dark, ochre-yellow looking urine that pools into the corners of the cell and smells ungodly because everyone is dehydrated from the heat and lack of water.
However, you can have money on you in jail here, so you are more then welcome to purchase water or food from the prison guards...oh yeah, they take a small cut.
I was loaded, probably had 4 or 5 thousand pesos on me. But there was no way i could pull any of that out in front of 30 severely dehydrated and very hungry innocent prisoners. When it started getting dark, i was dying of thirst, i pulled out some money and told the guard to buy me some water. I asked him, "how much is the water?" he said, "10 pesos." Damn, that's cheap! I gave him 100 pesos and told him to buy me ten. He came back with six. I asked, "where's the rest?" "Oh, that's for delivery." great. Ok, whatever. I took two, gave two to a kid from Cabarete named--"Kelvin"--( a super nice kid and great kite surfer) who was locked up for the same reason as me (long story...something to do with a murder), and the rest of the water i gave to the others--only four small "bags" of water (the kind that look like a water balloon) to split between 28 guys! Do you know what they did? Despite being dehydrated and dying of thirst, they walked over and squirted water into the mouths of the two guys laying on the ground with internal bleeding who could not move...they were also severely dehydrated. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was totally not what i was expecting. I thought there would be fist fights and chaos over the water. Well, it turns out that somewhere in the cell, there is a pinched green garden hose coming from the outside that has water (Not filtered, not clean) coming into the cell. I wouldn't call it drinking water, but it will keep you alive. It's probably full of bacteria. I bought six more waters and gave them to the kids.
Around 11:30pm, the guard called out me and Kelvin. We got up and started walking out. I looked over at the two guys laying immobile on the ground. One looked almost certainly dead; the other was in bad shape. I don't know if he made it to the morning. The first guy almost certainly didn't make it to midnight.
Such is life when you are locked up abroad.
Here is what it looks like in a jail cell here (I think this is the jail cell in Sosua, but it could be Puerto Plata):
Frank
