“A baboon laughs at the buttocks of another baboon.” – Kenyan Proverb
This place, a section of Kaduna’s
prison, is where they keep me along with the ones they call the “civil
lunatics”. In my own opinion, the state prison service couldn't have come up
with a more admirable name for mad criminals.
Admirable too is the way Prison warder Jubril
introduces the inmates whenever the politicians were visiting for inspection.
With a prideful smile, capped with bushy whiskers, he would say, “You are very,
very much welcome to The Prisons of the Civil Lunatics”. As though, with proper
scrutiny, one couldn’t tell too quickly that the prison was not the same thing
as the place for the gifted students of Kakuri Immaculate College. It wasn't a
place to be proud of but a place for sick, crazy people, of which by God I do
not belong.
My cellmate, Felix, feels the same
way too, feels he doesn’t belong here. But the difference between us is that he
is really mad. Yet in all his jabbering, he makes a good case – a case he's
made to everyone by now. “I need help!” you'd hear him say coherently, and then
in between he'd go on and on with a peculiar language that the rest of us still
find hard to understand. But usually, the conclusion of his talk would bring,
with some measure of clarity, the point of his argument, “I'm really not mad,
this is just a misunderstanding”.
*Photo Courtesy of the BBC
No comments:
Post a Comment