New England Clam Chowder

The first couple of days in here were the toughest.
I had no cash, no clothes, no possebillity to find out what was going on in the outside world.
Being last to enter the cell, my mandatory sleepingplace was offcourse the floor. The space 2*1,80 and 6 guys to try to fit. Offcourse, by being 1,90, I couldnt stretch my legs & couldnt either hav them bent, cos then my knees were in the back of the guy sleeping in the lowest hammock. We are lucky, in our room we have 6 hammocks, 3 high up hangin between the window-bars and 3 between the toilet-divider-wall and the cell-door. Saves shitloads of space.
5 nights the poor bastards had to try to fit around me on the floor, where the air is standing still and the heat making it unbareable, choking for air and sweating like pigs. Having stranger men on and under me skin to skin was also a new experience, not to easy to get comfortable with. Elbows and knees in yr soft areas, by any of the ones lucky enough to be able to fall asleep, was and is always handled with the "forgive and forget"-rule.
Finally my loyal and since long time close friend, -my brother, speaking a language I most often understand as well as my own, managed to get some basic supplies & well needed $ in to me.
The guards wont let u recieve visitors 1st month, unless u pay stupid amounts of money. But somehow he managed to get them to deliver a bag to me.
I paid 20 bucks & got a space on the platform, 1,90 long and 47,5cm wide space, with linoleum (wax-cloth) so we dont have to sleep straight on the concrete.
Sleeping without a mattress, on plain stone-floor, was first a painful technique I had to learn the first 5 nights in the holding-cell, back at the police-station in phnom penh.
But u can get used to most things.
Offcourse I cant fit in 47,5cm, laying flat on my back, so a new technique to lay on the side and spoon with my neighbours in whatever direction the entire platform seemed to have chosen for the night, had to be learned.
Its funny, how my old boss at Ellco Food had a saying that Ive carried with me for the rest of my life. Bubba was wise and many times when we had a shitjob that had to be done, he used to say:
If u cant change ur situation, the best thing you can do is:
Learn to like it.

Learn to like it... Well, its surprising how many times Ive found this wisdom useful, but never has it been so hard to practice this method, as in the situation I now found myself in.
But! Compared to the floor situation, this was rather easy to like and now I had cash to buy water and cigarettes & other stuff such as gas to cook the fish or choice of proteinsource to go with the rice.
Rice.... Fuck that is one thing I have never successfully learned to like. Most times it turns around and I chew it again and try to get it down the throat with amounts of water..

Im a bit tired today, so wont be much more writing, but want to mention that today we had a bit of a special day. Traditional tea-drinking-ceremony which is done when someone is going to go to the court. funny enough, coffe, they fill with sugar till it looses the taste of coffe, but tea is apparently supposed to be as bitter as possible.
If plants had a gall-bladder, their tea would be the direct contents from this one, then boiled looooong aand concentrated up till some undrinkable fluid, that will keep a horse awake for a week.
Urk!
Attached photos were taken in the ambient afternoon-darkness of the cell, during tea-ceremony.
Hereby I can personally confirm that torture occurrs in prey sar. This ceremony, I guess, is what makes the wait for court-date more bareable. At least I wont have to drink that piss for a while, I can comfort myself...

Header of the day is dedicated to the can of conserved food I got brought to me today. It was delicious! No rice at all!