some interesting things
well, now I am Guayaquil which is on the south coast of ecuador after an eight hour overnight bus ride. Tomorrow morning I leave bright and early for the shrimp farm which is on an island just off the coast of here. I am looking forward to doing something instead of sightseeing and wandering around being stared at but man it is hot and humid here. I am told that it is a lot better off the coast out of the city a bit.
Yesterday I did one of the most interesting things I have ever done. I had met an irish guy at the hostel who had told me about his visits to the jails in quito during his time in the city. He told me that I absolutely could not go to the men´s prison (not that I at all wanted to) but that I should definitely go to the women´s prison to meet and talk to some of the foreign women there who are being held on drug related charges. So after gathering my courage about me I convinced an Israeli girl to go with me and we went to the Quito women´s jail to meet a woman named Zoe Savage from Dublin Ireland. There are 600 women in this prison built for 300 and there are also 200 children of prisoners living there because they have no other place to go.
We arrived with nothing on us except a bag of food and our passports (which we very nervously had to give to the prison guards...there were other visitors passports there, I could see them, so I felt ok about it). We were very thorougly searched and then had to bang on this big metal wall to get entrance to the actual prison itself. Once inside we had to ask someone to find Zoe for us and then had to pay them for the task. It ended up she was waiting with her roommate at the dentist´s office and we sat and chatted a bit until her roommate came back out and told us that the dentist had told her it would be eight hundred dollars (they use US dollars here) to get one tooth replaced. Needless to say she doesn´t have that kind of money. It also turns out that she has some kind of bleeding in her brain and is basically dying.
The main reason I went though was because of Zoe´s apparent story. You can read a version of her story here: http://www.fairtrialsabroad.org/?m=View&action=DocumentContent&L1=5&L2=19&id=204&secId=5&PHPSESSID=b841885fe4e4255a13e0f389e51c9e8d
or here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/8/prweb429768.htm or by typing her name into google (there are a few articles about her...she was a journalist for the bbc).
I know that there is a choice about whether to believe it or not, but I think that by meeting her I have chosen to believe in her innocence. There are 16 women foreigners in the quito jail, all there on drug charges. We met another woman from Bulgaria who was at least 45 and who didn´t speak english but Zoe told us that she had been on holiday in ecuador and had been arrested for reasons she doesn´t know. She has been in jail for three and a half years and has not yet recieved a sentence. The minimum sentence is 8 years and pretrial jail time does not go towards your sentence. Zoe´s sentence is eight years and she has already been in jail for almost four years and while she is not very hopeful any more, there is a chance that she will be out within the month on a direct pardon from the president. She has two children, age 7 and 9 I believe who she talks to everyday but who do not know she is in jail and think she has been working abroad. They have obviously never visited her there and she does not want them to.
Unlike in Canada, jail costs money in Ecuador. You must buy food and anything else that you may need but you have to rely on people from the outside to come in and bring you money and things that you can´t get inside. Drugs are very very common and the male prison is a centre for distribution of drugs and firearms. I asked her if there were any canadian women and she yes but that she wasn´t doing very well and that I shouldn´t talk to her. We also met a little girl named Naomi who was four and who was born in the prison. Her mother is from indonesia and when asked, Naomi also says she is from Indonesia although she has never been there. She has never been outside of the jail either so her official existence is generally a little bit up in the air.
When I am back in Quito I will definitely go back to see the women again. They need things like toothpaste and toilet paper and were made very happy by my chocolate orange I found in my bag fr0m home. All in all, an experience that I would recomend to anyone.
Well, it might be time to venture out into the heat again to see what I can of Guayaquil. Heard about the new snow in BC, bummer.
Yesterday I did one of the most interesting things I have ever done. I had met an irish guy at the hostel who had told me about his visits to the jails in quito during his time in the city. He told me that I absolutely could not go to the men´s prison (not that I at all wanted to) but that I should definitely go to the women´s prison to meet and talk to some of the foreign women there who are being held on drug related charges. So after gathering my courage about me I convinced an Israeli girl to go with me and we went to the Quito women´s jail to meet a woman named Zoe Savage from Dublin Ireland. There are 600 women in this prison built for 300 and there are also 200 children of prisoners living there because they have no other place to go.
We arrived with nothing on us except a bag of food and our passports (which we very nervously had to give to the prison guards...there were other visitors passports there, I could see them, so I felt ok about it). We were very thorougly searched and then had to bang on this big metal wall to get entrance to the actual prison itself. Once inside we had to ask someone to find Zoe for us and then had to pay them for the task. It ended up she was waiting with her roommate at the dentist´s office and we sat and chatted a bit until her roommate came back out and told us that the dentist had told her it would be eight hundred dollars (they use US dollars here) to get one tooth replaced. Needless to say she doesn´t have that kind of money. It also turns out that she has some kind of bleeding in her brain and is basically dying.
The main reason I went though was because of Zoe´s apparent story. You can read a version of her story here: http://www.fairtrialsabroad.org/?m=View&action=DocumentContent&L1=5&L2=19&id=204&secId=5&PHPSESSID=b841885fe4e4255a13e0f389e51c9e8d
or here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/8/prweb429768.htm or by typing her name into google (there are a few articles about her...she was a journalist for the bbc).
I know that there is a choice about whether to believe it or not, but I think that by meeting her I have chosen to believe in her innocence. There are 16 women foreigners in the quito jail, all there on drug charges. We met another woman from Bulgaria who was at least 45 and who didn´t speak english but Zoe told us that she had been on holiday in ecuador and had been arrested for reasons she doesn´t know. She has been in jail for three and a half years and has not yet recieved a sentence. The minimum sentence is 8 years and pretrial jail time does not go towards your sentence. Zoe´s sentence is eight years and she has already been in jail for almost four years and while she is not very hopeful any more, there is a chance that she will be out within the month on a direct pardon from the president. She has two children, age 7 and 9 I believe who she talks to everyday but who do not know she is in jail and think she has been working abroad. They have obviously never visited her there and she does not want them to.
Unlike in Canada, jail costs money in Ecuador. You must buy food and anything else that you may need but you have to rely on people from the outside to come in and bring you money and things that you can´t get inside. Drugs are very very common and the male prison is a centre for distribution of drugs and firearms. I asked her if there were any canadian women and she yes but that she wasn´t doing very well and that I shouldn´t talk to her. We also met a little girl named Naomi who was four and who was born in the prison. Her mother is from indonesia and when asked, Naomi also says she is from Indonesia although she has never been there. She has never been outside of the jail either so her official existence is generally a little bit up in the air.
When I am back in Quito I will definitely go back to see the women again. They need things like toothpaste and toilet paper and were made very happy by my chocolate orange I found in my bag fr0m home. All in all, an experience that I would recomend to anyone.
Well, it might be time to venture out into the heat again to see what I can of Guayaquil. Heard about the new snow in BC, bummer.
posted by mer at
8:44 AM
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