In January,
the AIDIA office in Abancay is closed, and the staff are mostly on
holiday. Last year I found it very hard
to structure my time in January so this year I decided to spend most of the
month in Lima. It was great to have a
place to stay where I could also work on planning for the year, but also lovely
to be involved with the women’s prison ministry, help with catering at a
student training event, and spend time with Lima friends.
I was asked to
prepare a study about the Bible for the prison ministry i.e. who wrote it,
where it comes from, when and how it was compiled together, how we know it’s
reliable, and so on… I certainly found when I started looking into these things
many years ago (rather than thinking of the whole as some mystical book that it
was best not to question too closely) it increased rather than decreased my
confidence in the Bible, and I hoped to do the same for the ladies the ministry
works with. I led this study with 2
groups of English-speaking ladies - first with those on parole, and then with a
group inside one of the prisons.
Visiting the
prison is a long job, often involving many prayers that we will be allowed
in! We left at 6am to catch a 2-hour bus
to the other side of Lima where Ancon prison is. The journey was complicated by our first bus
breaking down on the motorway, so we had to join the crowd clamouring for a
refund then wait for another bus. Arriving at Ancon, we got a taxi (a motorbike with a 3-seat rickshaw
fixed behind) up the dusty track to the women’s prison.
The list of things you can take in is quite
strict - we had to wear skirts just below the knee, no hats or sunglasses,
nothing red, no keys or phones… so house keys had to be left in a little bag
with a lady outside. We joined the long
queue of people waiting to visit friends and family - all women as men and
women have to visit on different days.
Eventually a guard came to put a stamp and a number (our place in the
line) on our arms. Thanks to my necessary
suncream’s effect on the ink, by the end of the morning I had inverted “167”s
all over my body and clothes! After a
further wait we showed our ID and were through the first gate, where we walked
up to the main courtyard and joined another queue to have our names and who we
were visiting written in a logbook. Here
there were benches and shade, so after giving our information we sat and talked
and prayed.
Numbers were called, 50 at a
time, and after about an hour it was our turn to go in through the main doors. We queued again (it’s not just the British
that love it) to hand over our ID and be given a plastic card with a number on.
And then again for our bags (and us) to be searched. Here I foolishly described the hand-washing
gel we were taking as “alcohol gel”, so that was confiscated. The lady
supervising the search also decided that today no Bibles were to be taken in,
although it’s not on the list of official items (and there’s no problem with
the ladies inside having their own Bibles) - but the guard who was searching my
bag let mine through. The other 2 had to
take their Bibles all the way back to the lady outside the first gate, and then
come back - fortunately having received their number already they could come
straight through this time. After that
it was a 5 minute walk through 2 more checkpoints (where more numbers and
stamps were put on our arms) to the right prison module, and then we could each
give the names of 2 inmates to visit. Only
people who are called out by their visitors are allowed out to the
courtyard. There were 3 of us visiting
today, and there are 6 ladies who like to come to the group so it was the
perfect number. By the time we got there
it was 11am.
We hired a
plastic table and a sun umbrella, bought some milk and sugar and sat to chat
and have coffee. I led them through my study and there were lots of questions -
not all the ladies who come are Christians but they all have an opinion or
something they want to find out. We ate
lunch together (rice and lentils that we had brought with us) and talked some
more. At 3pm the guards gave the last
call for visitors to leave. It seemed a very short time to visit, and the
ladies (who are not Peruvian) don’t tend to get any other visitors. It put my
life and time away from my family in perspective - I miss them after a year and
a half away, but I have just been back to visit. These ladies can’t see their families for
about 10 years.
Getting out was a lot quicker than getting in
- we walked back, showing our arms at every checkpoint, paid 10p when we got
outside to have our arms cleaned with acetone, picked up our keys and then got
the bus back to the other side of Lima. A long day, a very hot day - but wonderful to be able to be involved in those visits.
