Mr. Nick Goes to Prison

Like most people who have seen Shawshank Redemption I have a keen interest in not going to prison. For one thing, I find orange jumpsuits unflattering. And aside from softball games and amateur winemaking courses, most jailhouse pastimes involve entirely too much stabbing for my taste. So you can imagine my discomfort as I stood outside the main gates of Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm, sweating profusely under the hot equatorial sun and wondering why the hell I was here.

~

Welcome to prison!

The Philippines penal system occasionally takes an interesting approach to rehabilitation. The famous dancing inmates of Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) have received international acclaim for their performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which has nearly fifty-three million views on YouTube. Prisoners at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa practice yoga and meditation through a course sponsored by The Art of Living humanitarian movement.

In Sablayan, the inmates watch birds.

~

Visiting the prison was Marie's idea. My sole objective in Sablayan was to leave as quickly as possible. But Marie had read something about a penal farm in her Lonely Planet guidebook, and she wanted to see it. The desk clerk at the ecotourism office thought she was insane, but happily agreed to arrange visitor's passes for a nominal fee. After paying said nominal fee, along with a very un-nominal fee for the dirtbike, we were on our way.

The woman in red is smiling because she just robbed me blind.

~

Before arriving in the Philippines I had no intention of visiting the prison, or even the island on which it stands. I planned to travel from the touristy island paradise of Boracay to El Nido, a slightly less touristy island paradise famous for its picturesque sunsets and spectacular karst formations. Instead, thanks to a slight miscalculation involving a ferry and two cities with identical names, I wound up 630 km from my intended destination in the backwater town of Sablayan, where there are no tourists.

And so I found myself atop a battered dirtbike, with a terrified French-Canadian girl whom I'd met the day before clinging to the back, racing furiously out of town.

~

Thirty minutes and eleventy-billion potholes later, we arrived at the prison. As we pulled off the main road, I noticed a small sign with the words 'DO NOT PICK UP MALE HITCHHIKERS' painted in urgent red letters. Continuing down the dirt path, we passed a gaggle of inmates carrying long bamboo poles. They stopped in their tracks to stare at Marie. Their smiles could best be described as predatory. I sped up.

Once we reached the main prison complex, we were directed to the administration office. There we waited while the warden finished the final touches on his new screenplay and eventually approved our visitor's passes. Meanwhile, a horde of secretaries fussed over Marie and cast venomous glances my way. Apparently they felt prison was no place for a pretty foreign lady. I didn't have the energy to explain that visiting this den of thieves and rapists was in fact her idea.

Freshly stamped papers in hand, we walked out of the warden's office and headed back to the main gates. We passed the prison hospital, which appeared to be completely empty. Apparently the inmates of Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm enjoyed perpetual good health.

This song was stuck in my head the whole time.

Back at the main gate we waited again while a different set of guards double-checked our passes. We sat on stools in the cramped, dark shack and made small talk with a group of Filipina prostitutes who had come to visit their incarcerated menfolk. The girls were flirtatious and light-hearted; two of them asked if I was married, while another gushed over Marie's curly hair. They were the nicest hookers I've ever met in prison. They carried small bags of candy and gifts for their men, which they would presumably trade for cigarettes and...backrubs, maybe.

Soon the guard returned with our passes, and we were free to enter the compound. 'It is illegal to give the prisoners drugs or weapons,' he added cheerfully as he shut the gate behind us. I felt like I was entering the world's least-fun human zoo. But I revved the engine and we scooted off into the bowels of the penal farm.

~

Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm occupies an area of over 16,000 hectares, a unit of measurement as meaningless to me as a smoot or potrzeble. However I can say with reasonable certainty that it is really, really big. So big, in fact, that we spent the next hour meandering aimlessly in search of something besides hills and rice paddies. Periodically we passed checkpoints manned by bored shirtless men who chuckled at the sight of two foreigners staring helplessly around at the endlessly repetitive scenery. The area was beautiful, no doubt, but so are many areas that aren't crawling with violent criminals.

Finally we passed an army outpost, and I stopped to ask for directions. The soldiers were surprisingly friendly. One of them put down the heavy black assault rifle he was cleaning and helpfully pointed us in the direction of the prison lake, which he assured us was quite beautiful. He and his buddies waved goodbye as we headed back onto the road. Later I would find out that a prisoner had escaped the day before, and the soldiers were very much looking forward to catching him and shooting him full of holes. 'Dead or alive, dead no problem!', one inmate cheerfully explained.

Basically what you'd expect from an average lake.

The lake was indeed beautiful, though there is only so much fun you can have at a lake without a fishing rod or jet ski. We left after a few minutes, and set out for the Inmates Recreation Facility.

~

At the rec center, a tall muscular guard escorted two prisoners over to us and introduced them with the enthusiasm of a third-grader reading poetry. Their names were Ricky and Manuel, and they would guide us on a trek up the heavily forested mountain to see the local waterfall. Marie looked mildly horrified at the idea of wandering into the jungle with two convicts. I looked mildly horrified at the idea of hiking in flip-flops.

Manuel was a small, thin man who looked to be in his mid-forties. His main job was to scurry ahead of us and smoke hand-rolled prison cigarettes impatiently while Marie and I pulled our sandals out of the muddy path and tried not to step on anything venomous. I don't believe he said a single word the entire afternoon.

Ricky was a different character entirely. He spoke perfect English and chattered incessantly from the minute we left the rec center. As it turned out, he and Manuel were the prison's two foremost bird experts, trained to identify the numerous endemic species that dwelt in the thick jungle around the penal colony. He told us that most visitors to the prison were hardcore aviphiles who were quite happy to tramp through the mountains for hours, then sit motionlessly for additional hours while they waited for a kingfisher or imperial pigeon to flutter into view. Ricky proudly informed us that he was able to discern a bird's species, gender, and age simply from the call of its voice. Looking into his broad, smiling face I felt ashamed of my lack of interest in bird calls.

Turns out the streamwater was totally potable. Refreshing!

Marie's sandal-clad feet were already bruised and bloody from the unforgiving jungle trail, so we decided to turn back when we reached the mountain stream. She wiggled her toes in the clean cool water and Manuel sat on a rock and chain-smoked while I stood and talked with Ricky. He seemed disappointed that we weren't interested in continuing the hike. It was obvious that he took great pride in his birdwatching abilities, and he seemed to sincerely enjoy sharing his gift with others. I was deeply impressed by his genuine warmth and thoughtfulness. I never asked him why he was in prison.

Eventually we made our way down the mountain and across a rice paddy. 'We have no irrigation,' said Ricky as I stared at the verdant fields, 'so we must wait for the rain. All in God's hands.'

When we returned to the rec center, we said goodbye to Ricky and Manuel as the guard led them back into the fenced-off compound. Some inmates were playing basketball on a cracked asphalt court. Others stood around and stared at us, and once again I had the horrible feeling that I was a paying customer at a human zoo. I waved goodbye to Ricky and wished him good luck in the future. I have no idea what 'good luck' entails in his world, but I hope he gets lots of it.

Marie and I climbed back on the bike. I kicked it into gear and pulled back onto the dirt path. Minutes later we reached the main road, where we reentered the free world. We had that luxury.