Bust!

Jail’s not a lot of fun.

5:49pm - Tuesday March 21, 2006 - There was a light knock at the hotel room door. Joanne wrapped a towel around herself, and answered, opening the door only as wide as the security chain would allow.

Blam! The door was slammed open with a flat-footed kick, throwing Joanne across the room, and four men rushed in, yelling ‘Police! Police!’

This can't be true, I thought. This kind of thing only happens in B movies.

One policeman crouched, holding with both hands a large pistol waveringly aimed at my face and naked body that, now sated, was weakly supine on the crumpled bedsheets.

I was ordered roughly to get up and make myself decent.

One of the men poked around on the dressing table. He lifted a box of computer parts I had placed on a quite empty space about 3 hours earlier, and revealed a clear plastic sachet, about 1”x 1½”, of what looked like rock salt or sugar.

“You know what this is?” he grinned at me.

Well, I knew by now what it was supposed to be, but I had never seen anything quite like it in my life, and said so.

It was supposed to be shabu, the drug of choice in the Philippines, and the basis of a very widespread culture of users, distributors, and very many parasites, like this man, expecting to make money out his professional ability to incriminate.

Another policeman showed, with two hands splayed, a couple of bits of folded tin foil, and some strips of tissue paper, obviously just torn off the roll of toilet paper the hotel provided in every room in the fleapit.

I was ordered to dress fully, and take my things. “You’re coming with us, now!” I was told, before I was hustled out through a crowd of gaping hotel employees and hangers-on at the bedroom door to a waiting SUV, pushed into the back seat, and we were off.

Joanne was left behind. Now just why should responsible policemen discriminate between a ‘rich’ foreigner and a poor girl from the slums? The first stage of my very first classic drug-bust scam was over in about two minutes flat.

I was taken to an office somewhere, with a sign ‘Vice Control Group’, and asked my name, age, etc, and for my passport, which I had left at home, thank God, about 2 days voyage away. I don’t recall any cautions, but I was asked if I had a lawyer. I didn’t, so no more was said about that.

Then I was ‘invited’ to the office of the chief officer.

“Because of your age, and because you haven’t a record here, we will drop charges against you for humanitarian reasons (this after graphically describing the truly dire punishments attendant on drug use or possession, and the conditions of the place where I might pass a very long sentence) but…”

There’s always a “but…”

“There’s a complainant. That is not in our hands. We can’t let you go without his agreement. You have half an hour to settle with him, so you can go free, or we have to  proceed.”

I couldn’t, still, believe what had happened.

These men had burst into my room, without a warrant, on the word of a police ‘asset’ that I knew, the pimp of another girl, Melody, whom I had been meeting regularly on trips to Cebu over the past year. She and Joanne, together, had shared my indulgence over nearly three full days until she took a break, just five hours earlier. (When it rains, for weeks on end, like it has this year in Siargao, and the boat service has been fitful, one tends to over-indulge in pleasures of the low life when one finally gets out). We had grown into very good friends, Melody and I, and she often out-stayed her prescribed time. Her pimp would then ring on my cell phone, hang up if I answered, and screech at her if she spoke. That morning, he had sent a message in two parts, both in Visayan cell-phonese. After the first part Melody left, and the second part came in a few minutes later. Had I been able to translate the message threat immediately, none of this need have happened. Had I not enjoyed Joanne’s company so much, I would have been on my way to the port, and the overnight boat home, around 5:30. Such are the minutiae on which all of our lives hang in the balance of fate.

The little s**t of a pimp wouldn’t meet me, but stayed outside, and one of the arresting officers relayed his demands.

“He wants money.”

“Of course. How much?”

“Fifty thou.” (Philippine pesos – about $1000).

“Tell the little f****r he gets nada, nothing, zilch. He’s a bugaw (pimp) and a nasty one. Nothing! Nothing at all for that filthy little shit.”

“OK, I’ll tell him.”

“Wait a minute. Hinay, hinay (slowly, slowly). Offer him 5000, max, max, max, and tell him he’s lucky to have got away with such a scam.”

The cop came back.

“He says no. He’s a bad boy. Do you want me to kill him?”

That was the end of any negotiations, even though I constantly asked any policeman who came near me if there was some way we could ‘settle’ this nonsense.

After thirty years or so doing business in the Middle East and Africa, I have never actually directly and personally bribed anyone, although I've done it often enough indirectly. It's a deep inhibition, but it’s a skill I wish, very deeply now, that I had acquired long ago.

I was left sitting for an hour or so, until Inspector George came back, glared at me, and shouted instructions. I was taken off to another place across the dark compound yard, and told to sign a piece of masking tape and write my name on it in capitals.

Then I was given a small plastic bottle, told to go into a corner and piss in it, which, of course, I couldn’t do. I was given several glasses of water, and finally produced a meagre sample, which I was quite confident would show nothing adverse at all.  If they wanted to play games, what could I do but cooperate, smiling all the time?

I noticed that the bottle top was screwed on loosely, not sealed, before it was taken off somewhere, together with a worn and dirty sample testing pack that I now know is the very same one used, or rather shown to suspects, in every similar case of a drug abuse arrest.

Then I was taken away, in the same SUV.

Then I was banged up. The cell was small (about 7’6” x 7’6”), smelly, dirty, and dark. The only light came from the narrow corridor outside. It contained three small-time petty thieves, a mad Americano, and a smooth-talking Fil-Chinese drug dealer.

I was quite forlorn and bewildered, my camera (the only true valuable I had with me on the trip) clutched to my chest.

The mad Americano stood up as I entered, and yelled: ‘Viva Las Filipinas!’, chorused dutifully by the other inmates. Meanwhile the drug dealer (who was also the ‘mayor’ of the cell) cleared a space, about 18" wide, next to him.

“In the Philippines, we respect foreigners as our guests” he said, and indicated I should sit, if not lie, down.  I wanted to believe every word he said, particularly the bit about how foreign visitors are respected so much and treated so well.

The mad Americano filled me in on his project, the ‘Philipines Freedom Front’; based, he said, in a snack stall beside Pier 1 in Cebu City.

His exposition on the totally honourable objectives of his freedom-fighting group was interrupted from time to time by his standing up, going to the door, shaking the bars, and shouting:

“You f***ing zeros. You’re not fit to be police, you f***ing c***s, you s**ts, you mother f***ers! Viva las Filipinas!”

Meanwhile, the Fil-Chin drug dealer, John-John, filled me in on the less than enticing details of ‘The Big House’ where I would be sent if I didn’t get out of this hole quickly enough.

“Don’t worry” said John-John “They want money. Someone from the police will come, tonight or tomorrow, and you do a deal. They’re greedy, and they need money. A Filipino would pay 10 or 20 thousand pesos ($200 -$400) to go free, but you’re a foreigner, you’re rich, Rich-ard, and maybe you pay more. I will help you to negotiate with them.”

Well, nobody from the police did come, but, later that night, Melody came to the jail door.

“Pay the money, Richard, and get out” she pleaded.

“Sweetheart, I am not going to pay anything to that little s**t boyfriend of yours, and if I ever meet him again, he’s a dead man. Get as far away from him as you can, now.”

Another chance missed.

I slept, I think, fitfully, for the first time in my life on a thin pandanus mat on a concrete floor. From time to time I was woken by the mad Americano while everyone humoured him with a heartfelt and loud rendition of “Viva las Filipinas!!” At about 4:30am I was “inducted” into the ‘Philipines Freedom Front’ but I was spared the oath to defend the Philippines Constitution with my life, because I was 'only a foreigner'.

In the morning, a TV crew, from the ABS-CBN network, showed up at the cell door, to interview the mad Americano, arrested in a very public scenario the previous evening.

I grabbed the opportunity; no one knew where I was (I didn’t even know myself), so I went to the door and introduced myself to a somewhat lovely lady reporter (Cecile, Giselle?) and said I wanted to be interviewed, but could they blur my face (my face is already blurred anyway due to ravages of time), and not broadcast my identity too much, and they agreed.

They also told me I was detained at the Mobile Police Group in Cebu's North Reclamation Area. The place is notorious for the activities of Cebu's unofficial, but fully tolerated summary criminal executioners.

I suddenly found myself imbued with the souls of Pericles, Socrates, JC etc (not Plato - he was a bit right wing), and made the best impromptu speech in defence of my personal freedom that I’ve ever made in my life. I can’t remember now what I said, but my whole spiel rang with ‘Democracy’, ‘Liberty’, ’Rights of Man’, etc, etc. I was the very reincarnation of Tom Paine.

That night, my blurred TV photo appeared, almost nationwide, on the early evening news, with the comment that (my full name), aged (my full age), of (my full nationality) had been arrested for drug abuse, and wasn’t that a funny thing to round out the end of the TV news.

None of my impassioned oratory about innocence, liberty, freedom, rights, etc, was aired at all. If I’d ever had a public reputation to defend it was, sure as eggs is eggs, dead on the water right now.

Later that morning, I was taken back to the first police office, across town, at Camp Sotero Cabahug. All offers of dropping cases, etc, I was told, were off. My urine test had proved positive for drug use.

Of course. I could expect nothing less. Strangely, though, I was never shown the lab report, and not a single mention of anything like it was made in the charge sheets. Funny, that.

I was in deep trouble, the chief, George Ynalan, told me, chortling.

But first of all, he said, “You’ve been charged. Your charge sheets are public documents, available to anyone.” So he introduced me to the Press, the reptiles of the local rags.

I didn’t see my own “public documents” until quite a few more hours later.

Had Joanne been about seven years younger – under 18 – I would have been in very deep trouble indeed. Although many of the flowers of Filipina maidenhood are put out by their families to earn their keep and send family remittances from the Big City at the earliest age (12-14) that they show any sexual promise, the age of consent is 18. This offers huge extortion opportunities for pimps, mama-sans, and their opposite numbers who supposedy defend the law. Working in casual prostitution or as a domestic  'maid' are by far the greatest female employment opportunities in any Filipino city.  

My story, something like the worst thing to have happened in my life, later appeared in small paragraphs

If I was 74, I might have done something similar. But I was only 64, had a few years left, and I wanted to get out of this hell hole.

Right now.

Melody came to see me, tears streaking her face, and stood up (she’s only 4’6” tall) to Inspector George, the chortling chief, with a face-off I could only sit back and admire, while he yelled and threatened to arrest her on some pretext or other.

Then my foreigner friends came. Miguel, Spanish, and Gary, South African, had traced me down, and I was more than grateful that they found me. But Gary was on his way to the airport and South Africa. He told me that I was in deep do-do and went to catch his plane.

Miguel stayed on, and saved not only my sanity, but my very life.

(If anybody ever reads this, I would like it to be known that Miguel Lacasa of Zaragosa, Spain, and now of Cebu City, Philippines, should, at least, be beatified, ASAP.)

Miguel was attentive, prompt (breakfast 8:14 on the dot) and gave up a lot of his very valuable time for me. The foods he brought to my cell door were far better than I could even obtain in my paradise island home in Siargao. (Baguettes? Cheese? Pizza? Lettuce Salad? – all unobtainable in paradise).

Now that’s a friend.

Later that day, I  was taken to the City Capitol to meet the Public Prosecutor, one Mr Osorio. My case papers were already about ½” thick.

Then to a public (free) attorney, Ms Llena Ipong, who sounded reasonable, asked sensible questions, and promised to defend my freedom, liberty, etc,  on behalf of the very democratic, freedom-loving Philippine Republic, who employed her. She gave me two phone numbers, and promised to visit me in jail the next morning. I signed a waiver of my habeas corpus rights, that gave me the option of staying in police detention for 10 days, instead of going straight to the Big House.

Neither of her phone numbers was obtainable, and I never heard from her again.

So now, I was very much lost in this morass, in a strange country (even if I’ve been living here 10 years, it’s still strange).

John-John, the smooth-talking Fil-Chin drug dealer, back at the cell, came up with the goods.

His uncle came from the family of a very revered Filipino ex-president. He came along like Santa Claus. He brought things that anybody who’s never visited a jailbird might not even think of:

Those items, if you are ever comforting someone who's banged up in a noisome cell, are the most welcome. That is, if you are not carrying a bail bond, a saw, a small gun, or a bit of dynamite to help get your visitee out.

Mau's brother-in-law, a lawyer, would visit me next day.

Roger Cuenco is closely related to a prominent local family, and his uncle, congressman Cuenco, is head of the anti-drug group in the Philippines congress.

Roger (real name Mariano, family nickname Wawoo) actually licked his lips as I related my sorry tale.

“Fruits of the poison tree…” he murmured to himself. The Supreme Court of the Philippines used that very phrase in a landmark case disallowing warrantless, speculative police raids.

Mine was a classic case of false, illegal arrest. No warning, no search or arrest warrants, merely a ‘fishing expedition’ by over-zealous cops. I’d be out in an instant.

Except for the weekend. Nobody, not even keen young lawyers, works at weekends. But, as you will see, I was, exceptionally, processed and freed on a Saturday, thanks to Roger.

So I resolved to contact Her Majesty’s Representatives in Foreign Parts – or at least, tried to phone the British Embassy in Manila. They, it seemed, had set off for the weekend on Thursday afternoon, and there was no response at all from any of their multiple telephone numbers. If you’ve ever tried to phone someone subversively, trying to hide a cell phone that is strictly banned inside, in almost complete darkness, with four or five curious cellmates crowding round, then you’ll understand the frustration of hearing:

-         “If you require visa information, press #1…If you require ****, press #2”

Cell phones that rely on prepaid charge cards have a limited useful life, and so do their batteries. I couldn’t hang on to a live call to Manila for the twenty minutes or so before a bored, dumb clerk answered me. I lapsed into despondency again.

All that boiler-plate stuff printed inside my passport: “Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary" -  was so much useless twaddle.

When Her Majesty ruled an Empire scattered, pinkly, over 360º of the globe’s circumference, She used to ‘Command’ roughly the same rights, plus a few more, for Her travelling subjects. Now She can only ‘request’.

A one-time 'student revolutionary’, a certain ‘Jack Straw’, is playing the part of Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in perfect Uriah Heep character. Fat lot he could do for me if he didn’t get the express permission of the US government first.

But Miguel came up trumps.

Miguel contacted the wife of the Spanish Consul, and the wife of the Spanish Consul told her friends the hilarious tale of the old Brit pensioner druggie in jail, and somehow the story of my plight eventually reached the ears of Moya Jackson.

Moya Jackson is Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul and (I don’t mean this in any derogatory way at all) one of the very few remaining relics of the old pink bits that spanned the globe in better times, and one of the very, very best.

She is one of those redoubtable and remarkable English ladies abroad, who can strike fear into any hardened criminal like me, with a slight finger movement and a sharp glance, and induce terror and obedience in any pompous ‘lackey of a foreign government'.

As we talked (she seemed delighted to find that I was born in Bath, only a stone’s throw from her ‘real’ home in Cheltenham) I detected a small, very polite twitch in her left nostril. Immediately, two very deferent officers from the gang who arrested me whisked me off to their own private staff washroom. For the first time in days, I relieved myself in private, showered, washed, and shaved, and met Moya again, now smelling like a spring bloom.

Moya ‘met’ and ‘interviewed’ the porky, chortling Inspector George, who didn’t chortle at all under her hard gaze, admonished him roundly for not advising her, as British Consul, of my arrest, and sussed the whole situation.

She told me she was ‘perturbed’ by the obvious set-up, and was not happy that an ‘English gentleman’ like me was sleeping on the floor of a filthy cell with 4 murderers, 6 drug addicts, 2 rapists, and a couple of others on strange criminal charges. For a moment, I almost thought she really didn’t know what was going on. But of course she did.

Moya was due to be on a week's consular course in Singapore by the next weekend, so I simply had to be out of jail before she went.

When my first meeting with the city prosecutor was fixed for Tuesday, April 4th, Moya rang him, and had it brought forward by 5 days.

As you will see, I was freed before she left.

Whatever happened to Dexter Uy?

Late on Friday, March 24th, the Mobile Police Group brought a new customer to my cell. A gangly, acne pock-marked man of about 24 was dragged from the squadroom to the cell, well hidden from casual public view by an L-shaped corridor . The arresting officers kicked, punched, and dragged him until, with a vicious and final well-booted kick to his ribs, breaking them a little, he was dumped, groaning, among us. He collapsed just inside the door. We sympathised, of course. Who wouldn't feel something for a new entrant, treated so badly? But I soon lost any sympathy. He was a hold-upper, a vicious and violent street robber caught in Pelaez St, just outside my hotel. Had I not been comfortably safe in jail, I might well have been his most recent victim. At about 2am, he stopped groaning and sat up, discussing something passionately with the other inmates. John-John also woke up, and advised me they were planning a breakout, which I ridiculed. "There's not only the SWAT Team outside, the MPG, and quite a few other nasties. You'll be mown down before you cross the courtyard" It was probably one of the very few sensible statements I made during my entire incarceration. Dexter was worried. The policemen who brought him in were some of the very worst 'free agents'. Certain policemen in Cebu have been allowed to reduce the overcrowding problem at the city jail  by being given a licence to dispense with suspects. No names, no pack drill. If he's ugly, pock-marked, has a record, and like Dexter Uy, has no loyal family to make trouble, then he's reached the finish line. Just one bullet will do, and you'll get a bonus at the end of the month. Dexter knew very well that he might be on their list for early termination with prejudice. It seemed that I had some devious relationship with Dexter Uy. His family owned "Pete's Kitchen" a Fil-Chinese restaurant opposite my hotel. Over a period of almost 15 years, I have asked for "Two freshly fried eggs!" for breakfast on every single visit. Over 15 years, I have always had to turn away the first offering of greasy, cold, stored eggs fried about 3 hours previously, before I got properly cooked new ones. I once tried, many years ago, to engage the owner about the quality of his cuisine, but he just sat, like a fat, disgruntled toad, counting his petty pesos at the cash point. He was very much on my list of dislikeable people, and Dexter Uy was his son. In classical Overseas Chinese family style, that cash-hungry old reptile had disowned Dexter because he was ugly (even uglier than himself) and was a drug addict. So Dexter prowled the street outside, a very desperate street hold-upper. He was also an intimate chum of Mark Clifford Dagani, the street pimp who had set me up, and got me into my current position, as a one time English gentleman, squatting on the filthy floor of a second-rate jail in a third-rate country. John-John told me, the next day, that the late night discussion was not about a bold escape, but merely young Dexter asking his cellmates to allow him to have a little bit of a violent go at me on behalf of his friend Mark. At that point, I lost any remaining traces of sympathy for him, and gave him a desultory kick where I thought his broken ribs might be. They came for him at about 9:30 in the morning. He was called to the door, and a policeman slammed his face, hard, against the bars. Then he was cuffed, high up on the door bars, so that, if he collapsed, he couldn't lie down, but would hang against the door. Then they reached in, beat his face and head, hands, feet, and ankles with substantial sticks of timber, giggling among themselves, and taunted Dexter Uy as they did so. I couldn't follow what they said, exactly, but I caught the word 'Patay' - 'Death' more than a few times. Dexter was dragged off to the squad room, out of sight, and all we could hear were the sickening sounds of cuffs, slaps and blows, interspersed with the odd cry or scream. There was a final long wail, the revving of a motor, and then quiet. "He's gone" said John-John. Perhaps Dexter Uy's bullet-ridden remains will sometime be found in the industrial wasteland that is Cebu City's North Reclamation Area (a one-time mangrove swamp) or perhaps not. I won't miss him.

Plantiran - The Evidence

Being found with 'shabu paraphernalia' can earn you a six-month sentence under section 12, in The Big House. 'Plantiran' is a newly-coined word, partly from American slang, but it follows the strict grammar rules of Austronesian, maybe the world's most widespread language group, apart from English. This is all that needs to be found in your possession to put you out of circulation for half a year in the Philippines: Some silver foil, some toilet tissue, and a lighter could, in the hands of a very zealous policeman, put you in the Big House for six months. But such a thing would be ridiculous, wouldn't it, like throwing a supposed Christian to the lions for having some bread and wine on his person. But perhaps messrs Nero, Caligula and Tiberius did just that. So 'the evidence' must be made a bit more convincing. Shabu smoking has a very defined and careful ritual amongst its regular devotees. 1. You buy a small sachet, the very cheapest at 200 pesos ($4) - an average Filipino's daily wage - of an nth of a gram of the stuff, together with 2 strips of silver foil, cleanly rolled. 2. One strip is very carefully rolled into the 'tooter'. 3. The other is very carefully straightened, and formed into a V-shaped channel as the 'pipe'. 4.You very carefully put every single scrap of shabu from the sachet onto a spot on the 'pipe'. Then you light the very carefully tightly rolled tissue spill, and melt the crystals. As they melt, they sublime into a white smoke, and the melted droplet runs down the foil channel. You suck through the 'tooter' and 'chase the dragon' of white smoke as the droplet runs down the channel. 5. You waste absolutely nothing - the stuff is expensive, so you burn every single grain. You even unroll the tooter, and smoke the final traces away. There's very little likelihood of any laboratory test finding traces of what you've just done, even if you've been careless and not destroyed the last bits of used foil and tissue. That's also an important part of the ritual, of course. So "Cebu's Finest" carry a few bits of evidence around to 'bolster their case'. But they are sometimes incompetent, and you may find they have landed you (as they did me) with crude imitations of real 'shabu paraphernalia'. Plantiran. - Folded silver foil pieces. These wouldn't produce a good 'tooter' or a smooth V shaped 'pipe', and no self-respecting shabu smoker would accept such accessories from a dealer. Any kinks in the foil will interrupt the rolling drop or perhaps block the tooter. - A clumsy tissue spill, not one that's been very carefully and tightly rolled, usually across the user's thigh, so that it burns smoothly. - A lighter? Well, every cigarette smoker carries a lighter, and perhaps two, because cheap Filipino ones are unreliable. But it is possible to make a shabu pipe from a lighter - one of  the very cheapest ones, where you can remove the metal flame guard easily to expose the gas nipple, roll up a tight foil tube of shabu and stick it on the nipple. I've never seen this done, so I'm not at all sure if this is quite right, but I do know that that a well-attached flame guard on a slightly more expensive lighter proves that it has not been used for shabu. Those items were the only evidence presented to the court. Somehow, the large sachet of 'shabu' shown to me at the scene, and the 'lab report confirming traces of shabu use' never made it. How am I such an expert on such arcane matters as street drug use? Well, I did spend eleven days in the close company of some real experts. One, my friend the bayut, even demonstrated the techniques in my cell for the photo above. The story isn't finished yet; the prosecutor dismissed the most serious case - drug possession - out of hand, but retained the case for 'drug paraphernalia', because, as he said, he could not 'completely discount the testimony of the police'. But even in his preliminary report to the judge, he himself mocked some of their assertions. My arraignment is set for May 11, 2006, Wish me luck, and don't get into situations like this yourself.

I wasn’t beaten, roughed up, or anything else, by the police who took me in, or by my fellow inmates in the squalid holes we shared.

The only in-cell troubles I ever had were from the mad Americano who kept on waking me up throughout my first night, making all his cellmates shout: ‘Viva Las Filipinas!!!’ and the bayut (lady boy) on my last two nights, who was a sloppy sleeper, and flailed his arms about.

The mad Americano was met the next morning, as he was shaking the bars, and calling the policeman ‘zeros’, ‘shits’ and a few worse things, by a serious cop, who grabbed his shock of white hair, slammed his face into the bars of the door, and took him away to ‘The Big House’ without even giving him a chance to wash his bloody nose.

The bayut couldn’t sleep without thrashing his body around, and had his patch next to mine. The first morning, I told him he would lose his itlog (eggs) if he tried to cuddle me again, but that was a useless threat, because he didn’t have any.

After another night we became friends, but, I swear, I never fancied him.

In the Philippines, as throughout the Far East, ‘lady boys’ are ridiculed a bit, but tolerated and accepted. After all, such a gene mix-up could happen to anyone.

If you are 24 years old, and have been trying to grow bigger breasts since you were eight, what else are you to do but take the Filipino drug of choice and desperation and find yourself in jail sleeping next to an English oldie?

Filipinos have adopted certain American phrases and made them their own.

One such is “Comfort Room” or “CR”- that designates a shit hole, with or without water. The cells I stayed in had alcoves, divided from the main room by 3ft high half walls. The CR alcove in the first cell was piled high with refuse, not cleared away until two drunks were brought in, and ordered by the ‘cell mayor’, my mate John-John, to clear up. At least the smell and rats went away, but that wasn’t a lot of use, since there was no water supply. 

The CR in the next cell was totally dark, very slimy, stank so much you could hardly breathe, and, again there was only a very intermittent water supply. For three days we had no water at all. But, at least, there was a worn rattan blind you could roll down to ensure privacy.

As an ‘English gentleman’ I haven’t relieved myself in view of anyone else since I attended an institution modelled on Dickens’ Dotheboys Hall, one of those famous English ‘Public Schools’ - open, not to the public, but to the privileged, many of whom, like my parents, scrimped and saved for their offsprings’ education. I have retained vestiges of school/jail culture ever since.

Toilet paper is absolutely banned in jail (shabu paraphernalia) and even though I’ve lived for many years in the Middle East and the Philippines, I’ve never yet got used to wiping my bottom neatly with a handful of water.

Miguel, my Angel of Mercy, came every day with essential sustenance, and was so absolutely reliable that I even dressed him down one morning because he was ten minutes late.

Every morning, at 8:14, he brought me a jar of hot native barako coffee, the best from the highlands of Luzon, and a few dozen local pieces of bread, which I used socially, to spread around the cell, and keep the natives quiet. A murderer or mugger munching a mouthful of sweet, soft Filipino bread (pan de sal) would be no physical threat at all.

Lunchtime, if Miguel had time, brought something better. Newspapers.

Maybe, in some places, daily newspapers just show you tits and sports, and anything sensational in your particular township.

Philippine newspapers are mostly the same, but they do have literate columnists, and they are really ‘The Fourth Estate’, pleading for the masa against the establishment, those traditional politicos or trapos, the bane of every democracy, but far more obviously corrupt, venal and totally lacking in moral fibre in the Philippines than in most other places.

Nothing written with much late night passion for a morning newspaper column makes any difference at all, but it is nice to know that someone, somewhere, cares for such high-falutin’ ideals as liberty, freedom, rights, and so on and so forth.

28 Filipino journalists in only the past five years, after writing what they thought or knew, have been murdered.

The ‘Cebu Daily News’ not only had the ‘official’ stories about many of the most recent entrants to the cell (very interesting, but usually quite false), sometimes with snapshots of them looking like typical criminals, but also Sudoku.

SU DO KU, as you will probably know, is a very, very simple number game. All you have to do is fill up a 9x9 grid with numbers from 1 to 9, not repeating them in any column, row, or sub-square.

It’s a “very ancient and traditional game in the Far East”, invented just last year by someone  who has made himself a small fortune, and it’s devilishly difficult. Concentrating on those silly problems kept my mind from wandering endlessly around the same small but important points of my situation.

The newspapers also had crossword puzzles, mostly syndicated from small-town American newspapers of half a century ago.

Who still remembers that “TET” means “Vietnamese New Year” or recalls the attacks that started America’s retreat from an unwise war? And who could guess that clues like  “Stops fat” (dieT) “Dislikes” (HatEs)  and “60s boy band” (BeaTles) could give you the answer?

In jail, I found that my mathematical visualisation ability would be of no use whatsoever in solving the ultimate problems of the creation, or otherwise, of the universe, let alone SuDoKu, and my recall of mid-century American trivia wouldn’t help me do crossword puzzles much, either.

So I talked to my cellmates:

John-John (known on the street as Pare Tagalog, celebrated in graffiti on the walls of both cells I visited) was a fulltime member of a widespread drug syndicate, now doing time in the Big House (six months) for possession of shabu paraphernalia, the same charge as me. He was an intelligent, though not particularly learned companion during my first few days as guest of the Mobile Patrol Group. I lent him my cell phone to contact his family for the first time; he phoned his mother in Bahrain, and an uncle, Mau Magsaysay, who put me in touch with his lawyer brother-in-law.

John-John also boosted my morale tremendously. He briefed me on some of the finer points of the local law ( from the sufferers end, very aptly) and on conditions in the Big House. He promised to be my protector if I should end up there.

Nolie Nerias was a dapper, clean, collected individual, the type you might be glad to have as your personal physician. He exuded a quiet authority, and was in, he said, after a similar raid on his house, set up by a jealous neighbour, had ‘found’ evidence of paraphernalia, just like mine. But he was poor, and couldn’t raise about $300 for a bail bond. He went, two days before I left, quietly and resignedly, to the Big House.

Peter Lim (Captain) was cell mayor in my second jail home. About 55, he had a deformed leg and hobbled around like Long John Silver. Had I met him at night, in a darkened street, I would have tagged him as a probably dangerous criminal, but he too was in for the same offence, drug paraphernalia possession. And he was the very essence of one of nature’s gentlemen.

Within moments of my arrival, he had organised me a clean(ish) sleeping space, offered me some very welcome hot coffee from his own thermos flask, and arranged my twelve cellmates in a seated circle to hear my case, and sympathise with my plight.

Among the twelve were four who had done the apparently celebrated Rotunda murder case of February 19^th, 2006, as the excellently wrought graffiti on the wall detailed, although I never did get a comprehensive account of it. Another boy was in for murder also, but the majority was there on drugs charges.

They were all likeable lads, usually in high spirits, kind and considerate. They shared their food at communal meal times, and invited me to join them, but even under those circumstances, I couldn’t stomach the poor Filipino’s diet of rice and ‘something’, usually overdone fish. In any case, by this time, both Miguel and Melody were bringing me food, which I also shared out after I had taken my pick of the best. Some of those lads ate pizza and real French bread for the first time in their lives, but not one of them liked either Emmental or Danish Blue cheese.

There was a constantly changing cell population, and I met a few more murderers, including the 74 year old stabber, a couple of young men who had been beaten very badly by security guards in the Ayala shopping centre after an altercation over change, and a man who had raped his own fourteen year old daughter. He was confined, squatting upright in one corner, by the majority of much less vile criminals.

There was not much to do but make the best of it. I ran through all the parlour tricks I could recall, taught them how to play pontoon, the only card game, apart  from Snap! that I can ever remember, and got them singing in chorus:

“We’re ‘ere because we’re ‘ere because we’re ‘ere because we’re ‘ere because…” which anyone can sing to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. And anyone can remember the words, very relevant to the conditions of all of us.

I also tried Sir Cliff Richard’s immortal “We’re all here on a summer holiday…” but I couldn’t remember any more words, and most Filipinos’ sense of humour doesn’t run to sarcasm and irony.   

Dramatis Personae

Richard Parker

A notorious member of the criminal fraternity.

Melody M., Joanne P.

Two nice young ladies who entertained said notorious criminal.

SPOs Darryl Alalim, Jeffrey Larrubis

Two of the police gang who broke into my hotel room.

Insp.George Ynalan

Chief of the Vice Control Group, and a rising star in the Cebu City Police force.

Miguel Lacasa

A true and generous friend.

John-John

Also a true friend, now a guest at BBRC.

Roger Cuenco

A very good lawyer and a very nice man - telephone: 0916 302 4586.

Moya Jackson

British Consul in Cebu - a truly charming, but kind-hearted, determined and very competent lady - telephone 0917 812 5535 - (Note: She CANNOT help anyone with British visa problems).

Mark Clifford Dagani, C Rey Bangas

A nasty little pimp, usually tanked up to incoherence on a mixture of shabu, Tanduay rhum and injected Nubain, and his uncle, who together criminally conspired to set me up for the purpose of extortion. Members of the Batang Cebu 45 fraternity are aware of their activities, and may take measures to discourage them from any repetitions.

Dexter Uy

A recently deceased member of the criminal fraternity.

Shabu 

After World War II, a massive supply of methamphetamine, formerly stockpiled by the Japanese military, became available in Japan under the street name shabu. The Japanese banned the drug soon after World War II, which is thought to have added to the growing yakuza activities related to illicit drug production. There is some suggestion that the Japanese government 'allowed' shabu and the Yakuza to prevent stronger drugs being distributed.

Today, the Japanese underworld is still associated with the drug, although its use is discouraged by strong social taboos.

With the 1950s came a rise in legal methamphetamine use, prescribed for "narcolepsy, post-encephalitic parkinsonism, alcoholism, ... depressive states...and  obesity.

Methamphetamine is legally marketed in the United States under the trade name Desoxyn, manufactured by Ovation Pharma. Generic formulations of the drug are also available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine

In Japan, amphetamines are the fourth most widely used drug after caffeine, alcohol and nicotine and the most widely used illegal drug in the country.

I have tried shabu myself, in very similar circumstances to trying many strange drinks and foods that I wouldn't try on my own, that is, when others around me are doing the same, and it would be 'impolite' to refuse to join in.

It didn't do anything very much for me, and I had no urge whatsoever to actively seek out and take more of it.

There's a long history of nations banning certain drugs, particularly those used by minorities or the 'lower classes', stretching back to the banning of 'bhang' (marijuana) by the British Raj in India. In every single case, including 'Prohibition' of alcohol in America, the bans have actually promoted criminality and corruption.

Bored, deprived people need stimulants of many kinds. Currently, alcohol and tobacco are both tolerated and heavily promoted, although there is a definite movement about to restrict the use of tobacco, sensibly, by using other people's intolerance of it. 

If just half the money and effort wasted on 'Drug Wars' was devoted to the drug education of parents and children, and particularly on increasing people's senses of disgust about them, their use could be dramatically reduced. 

If BO, dandruff and unsightly acne can be almost eliminated by cosmetics companies spending a fraction of the amount devoted to legal enforcement of drugs laws, then so can drugs.