My name is Irina
No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. — Nelson Mandela
Bad trips are fun to read about, especially if they happen to someone else. Sometimes a trip gone wrong can be made right. Perhaps the worst trip I know of was one that didn’t happen to me, but to someone I met on one of my trips. The title of that story was: “This is NOT a tourist attraction.” It’s about a visit I made to the Kathmandu women’s prison in Nepal, which is where I met Irina. That’s where the nightmare began. What happened afterwards is the good part. Helping other people when you can, no matter how difficult, is what creates true happiness.
In the downscale Dilli Bazaar district of Kathmandu, just south and east of the downtown Durbar Margh shopping district, there is an unnamed dead-end street marked by a brick wall. Here you will find Kathmandu’s primitive men’s and women’s prisons, which are most certainly not tourist attractions. I went there with Prema, the staff director from Setunepal, a program that assists female prisoners make the transition from prison to the outside world by way of a halfway house and vocational training.
I had been given $500 by a donor back home in Vancouver and I hoped to spend that small sum in a way that would help the most people living in the most poverty stricken situation I could find. My decision was to sponsor a cosmetics training program in the prison so that women could become self-employed and be released. No matter how poor a country may be, like Nepal, there are always customers for beauty salons. Guided by Prema and her assistant, I bought the cosmetics in a downtown bazaar. In Kathmandu you don’t go to WalMart and buy a beauty kit off a shelf. We went to dozens of tiny shops to buy mascara here, shampoo there.
The sight of a giant western foreigner escorting two tiny ladies in their saris caused quite a stir. For those prisoners scared to join the training project but who might be jealous of their peers, I bought bars of soap. I cleaned out one shop of soap. Frankly, I don’t know if I have ever had so much fun shopping. Check out the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id3crjLpVmU.
Although Setu enjoyed an excellent reputation with prison authorities, clearly the Warden was not enthralled with my presence as a journalist. There is actually something called “prison porn,” where western tourists visit western prisoners jailed in foreign prisons, just to obtain a sick and perverted thrill at seeing other westerners locked up in squalid conditions. My promise to start (and pay for) a cosmetics project, to train prisoners and get them released went over well with the warden. He gave us a pass, we were frisked, had our bags and cameras taken, my passport and camera seized. Sorry, no photos of that adventure.
We did a tour of the prison. We were shown a musty old computer stashed away in a dusty cupboard, a room that reeked of stale urine, evidently a latrine converted into a library. The computer was not connected to the Internet, of course, but a few women were attempting to learn how to type. Next door was the new latrine. The day before a woman had committed suicide in a stall, pouring kerosene over herself and setting herself on fire. The image of a poor woman burning herself to death, all alone in a foul latrine in a disgusting prison in medieval Kathmandu, was more than I could bear, and we hastened back to the main courtyard to sit under the shade of a tree where I could gather my wits.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a most curious sight. Among all these ill-dressed Nepali women, in a doorway of a nearby building, her hair done up in a towel from washing, pale-faced and gaunt, stood a tall white woman with a look of wonder on her face. She looked a lot like Angelina Jolie. This strange apparition slowly approached in a timid fashion like a wild deer, finally squatting nervously in the dirt a few feet away, keeping her eyes tightly focused on mine. “Please, sir, can you help me? My name is Irina. I do not know what I am doing here.”
In a choking voice she explained that she was a Russian tourist, a devout woman of deep faith making pilgrimages to various religious sites around the world such as Jerusalem, Mecca, Lhasa and now Nepal, studying at religious centres. Her maid had been killed at her apartment in Kathmandu while Irina was in a monastery far away. Seeking some form of payment, the family of the murdered woman had charged Irina with accessory to murder, a serious charge resulting in her immediate arrest at the monastery. She gave her life savings to a lawyer and he disappeared. She had no idea what was happening next. She had no one to help her. She had been locked up for three years. She didn’t know if she would ever be charged.
After less than a minute the jail supervisor interrupted and indicated it was time for me to leave, immediately. I walked out the front door, a free man able to wander the world at will, greeted by a dazzling blast of fresh air. I steadied myself by leaning against a wall, breathing deeply, tears running down my face while I tried to slow the furious beating of my heart. Imagine being locked up in a foul prison in a remote country with not a soul to help you? It was a nightmare.
Even though we had met for only a minute, I could not keep the memory out of my head. What if Irina was me? I posted the incident on bulletin boards and emailed my friends. What could we do? I kept at this for several months until someone directed me to a Russian tour guide who organized trips out of Bangkok, Thailand. I emailed him and we chatted online. Could he find a way to help? He said he would look into Irina’s situation the next time he was in Kathmandu.
I subsequently learned that Irina had been sentenced to a 20-year term. The police were aware of her innocence but the family of the murdered woman wanted money, and Irina was a foreigner who must be able to find money. My new Russian friend and I bounced ideas back and forth. I told him the situation reminded me of the movie Midnight Express, where an American tourist was locked up in a prison in Turkey for smuggling dope. Perhaps I should write a similar story? He suggested that I produce a synopsis and he would translate it into Russian and send it to various journalists in Moscow he knew. Subsequently one of them forwarded the synopsis to a TV station, who immediately agreed to come to Kathmandu and make a documentary.
After this news about a documentary was made available to the Kathmandu police, they forwarded it to government officials. Apparently it was decided that a film about foreigners being locked up in Nepali prisons for no good reason might be bad for tourism. Irina was deported the next day to Russia, the Nepali government even picking up the tab for airfare. To this day I still think of Irina, who never knew what happened or who help her. It gives me great satisfaction to think I was able to help her, and memories like it linger in the heart and soul far longer than 5-star vacations on the beach.