Saturday, December 23, 2017

My Christmas Prison Visit

Maybe most prisoners only get visits at Christmas time because today was ordeal far greater than previous visits – the lines of visitors stretched as far as the eye could see, all waiting to get to the first check-in.  After that, there is a bus ride to the section the prisoner you are visiting is in.  I don’t do the bus ride because I can’t and have a special dispensation (asked for) allowing Patrick to drive me to Medium B.  From there it is into a reception area where you are searched and then you take a seat and one by one the visitors have to sign in again.  When the prisoner is in the visitor’s area, the visitor is called and allowed in.   This is a new method of visiting and I cannot say that it is an improvement on the previous method.  
Both Luvuyo and Heini were happy to see us – and extra happy with what we were able to take in for them.  However, my Xmas card had to be opened and censored which I think is rather pathetic, given that it was a home-made card that was very rude – it was made especially to make them laugh.  
While I visited with the boys (they so much younger than I am), Patrick went to buy them a cold drink which can only be bought at the prison tuck shop.  It took him 45 minutes to get the cold drinks…the queues were that long.   The prison is bristling with Quick Response teams very heavily armed with bulletproof vests and dogs.  The atmosphere was far from being one of a happy time.
I asked if they would be given a special meal on Christmas day – both of them said that they would be given rice.  They get no rice the whole year, except on Christmas day.   How sad is that?
Heini told me a very funny story which I am still laughing about.  The wardens’ love curried prawns but their wives don’t cook it for them, so they get Heini to cook it for them.  Heini has made a little stove which he used in his cell before he was moved to a communal cell a month ago.   He was busy cooking the curried prawns when at 2am in the morning; the tactical team came to do a search.  As fast as he could, he grabbed the pot with its glass lid and shoved it under his bed.  The biggest of the members of the tactical team was also the leader and he could smell the food.  He leaned down and pulled the pot out from under Heini’s bed.  When he saw the gogo’s (insects) through the glass lid, he got such a fright he pushed and shoved the other members out of the cell … shouting with fright.  Heini was not punished for cooking in his cell, but another prisoner who they were after anyway, was charged with cooking.   Can you imagine such a sight?  I laughed when Heini told me the story until the tears were running down my cheeks.   And just then, that same leader of the tactical team walked past us.  I laughed even more at that, seeing such a big man running for his life from a pot of prawns.

A huge thank you to Patrick, for my Christmas present…of taking me to the prison.  It is a present that I will remember for the rest of my life. 

Friday, December 22, 2017

Christmas In Prison

My Christmas Gift
My husband, Patrick, has been in prison more than once for the “terrible” crime of having a bit of dope on him.  He spent too many years behind bars and has a phobia about the sounds, smells, and walls of a prison.
For Christmas, he asked me what I wanted.  I asked him to take me to the St Albans prison so that I could wish some prisoners a happy Xmas and take them some of what they need and are allowed.  This is the greatest Christmas gift from Patrick; for he is giving me his time and taking me to where he does not like to be.  I am very grateful to him for doing this.  Not only does he have to take me, but he has to take the wheelchair, oxygen cylinder, and facemasks and push me quite a distance to the visitor’s lounge.   The one hour visit we are allowed can sometimes take 5 hours with all the red tape and wait one has to do to see the prisoner.
I am going to see Heinrich van Rooyen and Luvuyo Lukas – two of many of my favourite prisoners in Medium B.  I am well acquainted now, after 2 years of visits, with 18 amazing lifers.  Their combined skills would shock you – our country needs to allow them out on parole when it is due because they have skills that we need as a country.  Some of them are even lawyers, accountants, and medical doctors.  Everyone makes mistakes – some of us are caught and pay the penalty.  How many of us have just been lucky and not caught?
In Matthew 25:36 it says: “I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”   This is what Christmas really means – giving of yourself for in doing so, you give to yourself.  I am not doing this out of duty, but because I want to.  I always do what I want to do when I can. Chronic illness is not an excuse to having a life of doing what you want when you can.  I prayed to be well enough to go today and I have woken up well enough to go visit.  Thank you, God.
Most of society sees prisoners or ex-prisoners in a very negative light.  I want to somehow in the future, change that view to one of compassion for these people who are doing their time for their crime.  If God can forgive them, if they have done their punishment; then what right do we have to be judgemental?   I am not a fool and I do not think that all prisoners are wonderful, but most of them have accepted their punishment and are making good on the courses offered to help them to change and become better people.   Even when no courses are available at the prison, they find ways of becoming better people by running book clubs and teaching one another the life skills that others have not got.
The sick are visited, the naked are clothed, but how many of us visit the prisoners?  A negative attitude to all prisoners comes from a lack of knowledge, a lack of care and a total lack of compassion.  Please spare a prayer for the prisoners of our country this Christmas.  We need to be more forgiving and more compassionate. 
I wish you all a very happy and safe Christmas and may 2018 bring you everything you need, and a little more so you can give some away as well.

God bless and keep you safe and happy during the festive season. 

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Christmas From the Heart


It was in in 1982 that I found myself with not a penny to my name and it was the day before Xmas.  I was a single mother with two children and my son’s birthday was on Xmas day.  I was feeling terribly sad and not knowing what to do.  In a walk to the letterbox to check the mail with no thought in my mind, I opened the post box to find an envelope in it with a R100 check in it made out to me.  There was no sender and it was a bank cheque.
I drove my clapped out beetle, with no floorboards, so the children had to sit with their feet on the seats as we could watch the tar passing by as we drove and I went to the bank and asked them who had sent the check to me.  They told me that it was an anonymous gift.
That R100 made the most wonderful Christmas with food and presents including a special one for my birthday child.
I have never forgotten that Christmas donation and every Christmas since that day, I have found a family to repeat the gift that was given to me. 
It was also that Christmas that we started the tradition of no Christmas gifts for one another but rather a letter written to one another, recounting all the good things that that person had done or had meant to us during the year.  It sounds like a simple enough gift, but the letters took a long time to write because it had to incorporate everything good that had come from that person for the entire year.  The other rule was that the letter had to be handwritten and had to have a handmade envelope.
That Christmas tradition as a gift has been a tradition since 1982 – no Christmas presents for the three of us but a beautiful letter showing us what we mean to one another.
Getting these gifts of letters ready to be in time for Xmas has to be started on the 1st of December to be in time for the 25th.  The only gift that is given is to my son whose birthday he shares with Jesus.
Perhaps you may like to make this a tradition for your Christmas instead of buying into the commercial Xmas that most people turn into a frenzy of buying and over-eating.

I would like to wish you a Christmas that will be filled with good memories for years to come and that the new year brings you everything you need.  Merry Christmas!!