It’s National Correctional Consciousness Week.
Gang Badoy, an alternative educator inside the Maximum Security Prison in Muntinlupa, posts about her experience with the inmates in a powerful piece. Read here:
Source: Gang Badoy
Full text reads:
Nine Years in Prison
His name was Bunso. I haven’t seen him in three years. He never missed a class. He introduced himself, “Ako si Bunso.” And I said, “Uy, ako rin bunso!” Then he smiled. It was a good smile underneath all the ink. He had ink even on his forehead. He became my pet student, always meeting me by the gate with an umbrella even on days that didn’t need one. He walked me to and from the gate and chatted about many many things as we walked past the carcel, the infirmary, turned left onto the row of churches, the mosque on our left, the psychiatric ward (called Ward 4) to my right. We’d walk more than half a kilometer from the gate to our classroom. I taught in the inner quarter of the Maximum Security Prison. One day in 2010 Bunso went to our usual Wednesday class and said he had a surprise for me. He lifted his shorts and on the back of his left thigh was a fresh tattoo of a woman’s face with my full name on it. “Oh wow,” was all I could say and he beamed at me expectantly. I wasn’t sure what the appropriate reaction was for such a situation (for no one really expects a tattoo benefaction) so I just said it again. “Oh wow.”
Eventually, I asked him lightly, “Ba’t ka nagpa-ganyan?” He said, “Wala. Gusto ko lang mag thank you dahil nagtuturo ka dito.” And I joked, “Ayaw mo bang magbigay na lang ng pansit o card?” Then we laughed. Filipinos are prone to resort to laughter when overpowered by emotion. I am Filipino. I wanted to hug him but it was too weird. I wasn’t sure if I was touched or creeped out but now, years later, I think what I felt most was wonder. Humans say thank you the way we know how. He thanked me the way he knew how. And I am all the richer for it.
In the same year Bunso asked me to be godmother to his daughter. I said yes but never got to go to a ceremony because of permit concerns. Eventually, he said he was about to be released and I rejoiced along with him. He said he wanted to visit NU107 – the radio station we were part of back then, and I promised him a tour of the place and said I’ll make sure he meets my friend, writer Lourd de Veyra whom he adored. We brought donuts to class that day, I remember – a belated celebration for his new baby girl. A few months later I noticed Bunso missed a class and then another and then more weeks passed with no sign of him. I asked his classmates if he was already released, was he sick, where is his daughter, and I kept hitting dead ends. No one was telling me anything. To this day, I have no answers regarding Bunso – except for the perturbing rumors that he doesn’t have a daughter, he wasn’t given a release, no one has seen him, too. There were rumors, too, that he was pulled out to do “something,” and then transferred – and so on. The ‘Bunso theories’ have become my class’ standard incredible joke for the day. “Nag astronaut, nasa buwan.” “Nag magic, nag disappear.” “Naka puslit nakasabit sa ilalim ng truck ng beer.” “Sumabit sa Fiera ng basura palabas,” and so forth.
What surprised me the most about teaching a Creative Writing class for prisoners is this: how they loved to read their works in front of everyone. No matter what they wrote. Very few of them hesitated sharing even their clumsiest pieces, fractured grammar, spelling so awful, but stories so rich and dripping with life. I was at first hesitant to ask, after giving them a writing exercise, “Who would like to read their work?” A flutter of large hands flew up. Everyone wanted to go to the front of the room and read their pieces out loud. Then it hit me. They were never listened to as children! Many of them never drew pictures and had no parent nor space to have those pictures stuck to the refrigerator door by a magnet that indicated parents who appreciated their tiny accomplishments. I realized all this crime and regret, all time lost and served were almost solely determined by the circumstances of their birth. Like the horrid mark of Cain. Not for all, I am certain -for the complexity of humans can never be captured by one theory – nor by a hundred.
I am still not sure where Bunso is or what happened to him and I think it’s better this way.
__________
Photo by: Either Zach Lucero the late Tado Jimenez, or Ninfa Bito (not sure now)
Gang Badoy is an alternative educator inside the Maximum Security Prison in Muntinlupa under their NGO called Rock Ed Philippines. She has been teaching a combination class of Science, History, and Creative Writing since July 2007. All teaching permits are on hold for now since the new administration started in July 2016. For more documentation on their prison outreach activities search for “Rock the Rehas” on Google.
This post is to mark “National Correctional Consciousness Week 2016.”
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