I went to jail....

Yesterday I went inside a Bolivian jail for the first time. Don't worry, I wasn't arrested :P Jen and I went in to visit a guy named Cesar whose birthday was yesterday! We took him a cake, which drew a little crowd of some of Jen's street friends who are in the jail as well as some newer jail friends.

First of all, the jail was so interesting to me. When you first enter through the main gate, you're in a big, open, central area. There are stands where people sell food, and since it was lunchtime a lot of people were buying plates. There is also a little shop kind of like a convenience store. There were even people selling music and movies. There was a phone room where people can make and receive calls. I could also see a room where there was welding going on. Apparently the jail doesn't provide anything for the prisoners. No food, clothes, beds, nothing, so the inmates have to buy everything or their family/friends can bring things to them. It can get expensive living in jail!

We got ourselves a table and some chairs, and there was a guy in charge of setting those up. Jen gave one of the guys money to go buy a 2-liter Coca-Cola, and he brought it back with cups. We drank the coke and waited for a couple people that Jen knows and wanted to be in on the party. While we waited, Jen went to talk to a doctor who works in the jail about one of her friends who has been very sick. I stayed at the table with a couple of the guys, talked to them and got to know them a little. When everyone was there, we ate the cake and talked for a while.

After that, we went up to the room where Jen's sick friend lives. It's so interesting to me that we could just walk around anywhere we wanted in the jail! We walked up a couple flights of stairs, passed a smaller common area where people were watching TV, then went up this tiny ladder to the guy's room. It was kind of like crawling up into an attic. The room he lives in is tiny, and about 12 people live in it (There are about 600 people in this jail, and it is so crowded that people are crammed into rooms, and some people even sleep in hallways!). There are a couple little shelves and hooks on the wall where people had bags and clothes, but other than that there is no furniture. The guys sleep on the floor with blankets. I saw a couple other rooms that did have beds and even 1 had a TV, but I think those are things that the inmates have brought for themselves. Jen took some prescription  medicine to her friend and checked up on him. He has lost a lot of weight, sleeps into the afternoon, and coughs throughout the night. Jen suspected tuberculosis (a girl from the street recently died of it), but the jail's doctor said he doesn't think that's what it is. Hopefully this guy will get better soon for his sake and so whatever he has doesn't spread to others in the jail.

Also while we were in the room, one of the guys I had met and talked to a little gave me this:

A little bonsai sculpture!

He had made it, and he told me to take it back to the United States. I didn't know if he was seriously giving it to me, but he assured me that he was. Jennifer has one kind of like it but bigger that someone else had given her from jail. I think it's pretty cool, and I'll definitely bring it home with me!

When we were leaving, some of the guys asked me when I was coming back to visit. I told them whenever Jennifer came back I probably would, and they said to ask for them. So now I guess I have a few new friends in jail, haha. Overall it was super interesting and definitely a unique experience!