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!

close together

my first words in my first blog ever...

its funny.
as I was registring the blog I was thinking weather it was a really bad or a good idea to start a blog.
Maybe this will only get me into some real trouble, like pissing of some real hotshot of prey sahr, by revealing what they work so hard to keep secret from the entire outside world.
As the page for creating a post is being loaded my screen goes blank and all thats left is the headline of the page-tab in the web-browser.
Obviously I cant help but looking at d only info available:
You are done!
Ironic. Or a mysterious warning.
I quickly go through the settings and remove the blog from search-engines & also decide to change adress from preysahr, to phnompenhprison, to ensure my half-inkognito so I wont have to worry about gettin paranoia-thoughts in the middle of the night.
Its amazing what efforts they go through to keep the reality of the inside of the walls, secret from the world.
No NGO or embassy has ever been allowed inside any of the blocks.
No photos. Not even thee guards are allowed to have mobile-phones.
US-embassy & a handfull of NGO:s have been allowed to walk on the main isle, halfway into the complex, take a left and walkthrough the "showroom" ie. Library and hospital, where things actually look really pleasant. Unless ur really sick and happen to be a prisoner. more about that later...
But its surprising, just try to google "prey sahr" and see for yourself the extent of information and statements about this place!
Just the essential little pieces of information, such as the fact that drinkable water must be paid for... Or.. Lets just say: Nothing in here is for free.
Everything you have to pay for.
It starts with your place to sleep, water and from there on, anything u whish to have or do -it has a pricetag.

When I first came to this place, I was surpriced to see how beautiful it actually was inside the high double walls with barbed wire on d top. (after I and the 5 guys I arrived with had been forced to remove all clothing except underwear.)
Prey Sahr translates to white forrest, and in here its very green with palmtrees and greenery of different size and vriations. Empty bascetballcourses and little parks with wlking isles, and a dousin of huge 2 stories-buildings with beige-yellow painting and orange roofs.
And it was silent. As we walked through the facilities, to block A (not yet sentenced-prisoners-block) I tried to look get an idea about the conditions behind the dark double-barred windows of the buildings we were passing by.
There seemed to be an incredible noise and thousands of voices shouting from within the dark holes of the beautiful facades of the buildings.
As we came through the big gate in the wall that divided block A from the rest of the prison, finally there was some real noise, not only the suffacated shouts from within the mysterious dark gaps, giving away an idea about the true nature of what to the eye could seem not so horrorful.
Behind block A- wall there were prisoners working hard under the afternoon-sun, with constructing what seems to be 2 new cell-blocks, - indicating that the present blockA building does not have enough room to house the amount of prisoners that were continously being sent here.
As we came up to the entrance of blockA, I peered into the darkness and now was closer than ever to the indistinctive shouts of a thoousand voices. Now it was very loud, but still impossible to separate one voice from another.
i will never 4get my immediate chock at arrival of my cell-door and my surprice as it was opened. It was exactly d feel of a overcrowded elevator& I instinctivly took a polite step 2 d side 2 let a few out. The guard grunted & pushed me in direction to enter the room where it seemed to not be any place for me to fit & as he closed the door, it swept me inside!
Hello, I say to about 20 faces staring at me, and I try to make my way through the room, in attempt to find a spot to not be in someones way.
-COOKIE!! I suddely hear and down in the corner I recognize fat-andy pale and still fat.
I was surprices to hear such posetivity in his vvoice as he shouted my name, as the last time I saw him, it was by the end of my telescope-batong, collecting a debt.
Well - he seemed to let that be water under the bridge, and truth to say, - I was really glad to see someone/something familiar, in this new enviroment.
Fat-Andy has a different style & is not someone who would ever be called "normal". On many levels. There is something "lurky", or hidden in his way to be. Certainly I would have an interresting time, stayin close to this man for an extended period of time -perhaps I would uncover his so doublesided appearance.
Fatty didnt have much, not even a towel, but whatever he had he happily helped me out & shared with me. His old T-shirt would have to do as towel for both of us during my first week, before my loyal and good friends from outside had managed to get me some basic appliances.