Daniel Holmes: A Memoir From Malta's Prison: From a cage, on a rock, in a puddle...

by Daniel Holmes

  I used to get vitamin tablets sent in till the authorities stopped them. And for a while after that, Prisoners Abroad sent me vitamin tablets, but even that was stopped.

  The water was a particular problem. The tap water was undrinkable, filled with so much calcium or lime that it furred the mouth and, I guess, even our insides. The whole island consumed bottled water and in prison that cost me well over €1,000.

  So many times, the taps would run dry and there’d be no water. Then suddenly water would come out brown and smelly. One time, on February 10, 2017, the water was even contaminated by diesel. We were told the pipes had been cleaned, but the sink, the toilet and the boiler continued to smell for weeks after, giving that morning tea an interesting tang of diesel and a head the same as a flat pint of beer.

  All my complaints were seen as moaning for the sake of moaning. The result was that a lot of the officers took it personally and that meant I had an uphill struggle all the way till the end of my sentence.

  Being part of an institution, inside a prison or within free society, the basic care of humans is too often considered an afterthought. We deal with the effect, rather than the cause. And normally the only reason behind this is profit and loss.

  An officer and an inmate

  The prison system had two shifts of officers. This created a rift because one shift was pretty useless and the other shift at least tried to help.

  The officers on the useless shift would do nothing except put off everything to the next day and the next shift. This unfortunately meant that the officers on the useful shift the next day were swamped with work and could only do so much.

  It felt like we were watched over by squabbling parents.

  There was another problem. Some well-meaning officers did not know their boundaries. Throughout my time in the Maltese prison, the main problem was that some guards were overly friendly, too eager to make friends and not just do a job.

  This means that many officers end up being corrupted because they would be too naive. They think they’d be doing an act of kindness by bringing in that mobile phone or bit of cash, but these would just be the first baby steps to becoming compromised. After that one act, the boundaries between inmate and officer always got blurred.

  There was once an officer who wanted me to make him a tattoo; we spoke of it openly, I would have done it of course, although I did make him aware that it would upset the balance of power. He was finally discouraged by his wife and a realisation that it could lead to problems.

  I have to say that there were some really good officers. It may come as a surprise to you that I say that, but I really mean it, there were some really good men. They were honest, people of their word and no matter who we were, they tried to do their job. I wish I could list their names here to thank them. They know who they are and the last thing I want is get them in any trouble.

  It is always the good few who make the difference.

  Food, glorious food

  Prison food. Can it ever be more than just sustenance in its barest form? I could fill these pages with horror stories about all manner of critters found alive and dead in our meals. Tales of raw meat; meat with more gristle than flesh; out-of-date food; and trucks full of products for inmates coming in through the front gate and quickly disappearing out the back.

  We were lucky to get six pieces of fruit a month, mostly oranges. I got my first banana in prison on January 15, 2016. A while after that, oranges stopped, and bananas, when they came, were our fruit.

  If you are not first in the queue to receive fruit, then tough luck, you’ll get the leftovers at the bottom of the box, squashed and rotten. When I told the British High Commission about this, they phoned the prison and were told that we got two pieces of fruit everyday, more if we wanted. Who do you think was believed?

  I – and others – have made so many applications to be able to buy healthy food products, but they all fell on deaf ears. The prison does a roaring trade on chocolates, snacks and junk food because the majority doesn’t care for their wellbeing. Moreover, food can be sent in from outside once a week by families, so it’s mainly the foreigners who suffer. There was a time when we were allowed to be sent food parcels from our home countries, but even that was stopped.

  Foreigners make up over half the residents of the CCF, but still they have no say. Before ending up in prison I cheffed for more than 15 years and I’ve worked in almost every part of the catering industry; from hospitals and factories, to pubs and Michelin star restaurants. I was always interested in the varied way people are catered for. Funnily enough I’ve never worked in a prison kitchen and thought that maybe I could add that to my repertoire.

  On first arriving at the CCF, I knew that would not be so. Conditions in the kitchen were truly horrendous: no uniforms; no hand-washing facilities; Surf laundry powder used for washing the dishes; smoking allowed while cooking; and old, broken, unsafe, unhygienic machinery.

  The officers in charge of inmates ran their crews with little or no care. Inmates devoted their time cooking for themselves and their own private rackets first, and for the prison second. All in all it was a veritable health hazard. I didn’t really fancy adding more years to my lengthy sentence because I’d have killed someone with food poisoning.

  Too many times myself and others have lain on our death beds, due to the unsanitary preparation of food. Just look through the reports in local papers to see what I mean.

  After one really bad case of food poisoning, I refused food cooked in the prison for months and only ate stuff I bought from the prison tuckshop and what I could get sent in from outside.

  In the end, on September 18, 2015, I was called to the guard room and informed that the kitchen had undergone a revamp, uniforms were being worn and the food had improved. It did slightly for a while, but soon enough laziness took over again.

  The main thing they did from what I could see, was to lock the gate to stop inmates going in to see the conditions for themselves.

  On my release, I walked past the kitchen and saw that some maintenance work was going on. I sincerely hope that things have changed, but forgive me for being sceptical.

  Although I am sure conditions and the food “served” were not as bad as some prisons across the world, this was a prison in the European Union, with only circa 600 inmates and for all of us it was a source of poor nutrition, pain and punishment.

  Food, itself, means only “what one eats” – as defined by any dictionary. But a meal is so much more than that. It is “an occasion when food is served and eaten, a special event”.

  Prison food should be all about trying to stay not only alive but also healthy, so that one day, God willing, people can be reunited with their family in good health and be able to contribute to society.

  I think most people would agree that in this life, it is not what you eat, but who you eat it with. For even a crust of bread, prepared and shared with love and conversation, is more fulfilling and satisfying than any banquet for one.

  Even though I ate most of my meals alone in my cell, the few I remember and enjoyed were those I shared with other inmates inside. The food we would get sent in and eat together for birthdays, Christmas and days when we wanted to forget we were prisoners.

  With every meal I ate in prison, I dreamt of a day when I would once again be with my family. I dreamt of eating from proper ceramic plates, not cardboard boxes that leaked, split and spilt their contents. I dreamt of metal cutlery as opposed to plastic ones that snapped at the touch of the softest food. I dreamt of a glass to drink from, not cracked plastic. I dreamt of the basic condiments like salt, pepper, vinegar and other things I never saw in all my years inside.

  I have included a week’s menu from 2012 and another from 2018 so you can see how little the food varied over the years. I ended up recording about three quarters of the food that we received while inside, and it is something that will never leave my mind.

  July 16-22, 2012

  Lunch

  Din
ner

  Monday

  pasta Bolognese

  chicken burger and chips

  Tuesday

  tuna pasta

  beef burger and chips

  Wednesday

  tuna salad

  baked rice

  Thursday

  tomato pasta

  cottage pie

  Friday

  curry rice

  breaded fish

  Saturday

  cold salad

  baked pasta

  Sunday

  tortellini white sauce

  chicken and potatoes

  Fruit of the week:one apple (given on Thursday)

  July 16-22, 2018

  Lunch

  Dinner

  Monday

  pasta Bolognese

  beef burger and chips

  Tuesday

  cold salad

  chicken burger and chips

  Wednesday

  rice salad

  beef wrap

  Thursday

  white sauce pasta

  breaded fish

  Friday

  pizza olives

  baked pasta

  Saturday

  chicken salad

  cottage pie

  Sunday

  tortellini white sauce

  spnott (fish)

  Fruit of the week: one banana (given out on Wednesday)

  Day in, day out, this food was served with little care, and cooked with much less. Burgers would be served still frozen; pasta and rice were platefuls of stodge; vegetables and salads were either frozen, or unwashed crawling with bugs. It was, and probably still is, a horrible part of the day. Unless you’re high, in which case it can taste delicious.

  The one time we had spnott fish (seabass), we had it on Sunday July 22, 2018. It was so badly gone off, that myself and others, who couldn’t eat it, left it outside Division V for the prison cats to eat. In the morning, the fish was still there. It was untouched by any cat or bug. We were, to say the least, amazed. To buy seabass for hundreds of prisoners would have cost a fair amount of money … unless it was unfit for sale to the general public?

  But I do not want to appear vengeful or negative only. Sometimes dishes would surprise us. The only thing most of us craved for was better preparing conditions. And more fresh ingredients cooked with nutrition in mind.

  Unfortunately, this seems to be a global epidemic, not just in the CCF. People seem to be all too eager to eat ready-made food, not knowing anything about the conditions they were made in, the conditions of the workers, and not caring about the nutritional value of the meal.

  There is a saying, “You are what you eat” – most of us are low-quality, cheaply produced and barely sustained. Food and eating habits have become a smaller part of our lives, since we no longer must forage and hunt ourselves. But this has driven a gap in our knowledge of food, nutrition and medicine, and as a result our physical and mental health as a species is suffering the consequence.

  It is a sad thing that we have strayed so far from the real purpose of collecting and eating food.

  The pizza wine

  Back in 2013, there was a buzz in the air. Inmates were dreaming of the amnesty that had been promised to them. Rumour had it that it was going to be the biggest amnesty Europe had ever seen. As a result of which, a certain collective happiness hung around the place as prisoners saw a glimmer of hope.

  Christmas was approaching and merriment was needed more than ever. I was working in construction, and myself and a Maltese man, Martin, were on the hunt for something else, some Christmas spirit.

  For the fermentation process to work a few things are needed: fruit with natural yeast, or just baker’s yeast, water, sugar, warmth and time. All the things you struggle to find inside the walls. Christmastime in Malta is humid and cold. As prisoners, the court and legal system we live by has a habit of slowing to the point of reverse. As men and inmates, that made us even more determined to hunt for anything we could turn into some form of alcohol to lubricate our dull lives. But we kept falling short, until imagination took over.

  We had somehow managed to get our hands on some raw bread dough, from the bakery, on the proviso that we were going to cook some pizzas in the small oven that we had access to in the little workshop that was set up for construction workers. This meant that we had yeast, albeit mixed with flour, oil and salt that make up the dough.

  Eleven days before the new year, we put our plan into action. Our list included some kiwis, some plums, sugar and a lump of bread dough. I was unperturbed. The recipe was created.

  All the solids, liquids and sugars were mixed together in buckets, topped up with warm water and heated in a makeshift bain-marie, using wires direct from the mains socket inserted into opposite ends of a bucket of water. The dough was split between the two, 10-litre buckets and mixed by hand until the whole concoction was a milky soup that resembled dirty dish water. The buckets were wrapped in bags, pushed under my bed and sprinkled with much hope.

  Day by day, I’d warm, stir, cover and hide, always expecting a search and discovery. I wouldn’t say that I was especially worried, as I believe when you make a decision to do something, worrying about being caught is useless. But I still waited.

  After a few days the buckets were bubbling. During cell open times, Martin and I would chance a look at the bubbles rising, and stir our concoction. The stench was quite foul, then again, I have yet to smell an alcohol that smelled good. Every time I would stir the buckets, the sediment of the flour would turn the liquid a horrid colour and it seemed to me that not only was the thing unlikely to give anyone any merriment, but it was undrinkable. But we were determined.

  The date was set: December 31, 2013 between noon and 2 p.m., when most of the prison and the Division would be locked inside their cells. Those of us who worked and didn’t have to be locked in had other ideas. Using an old but cleaned flyscreen; a new T-shirt; and a length of tubing, I was able to siphon off the liquid through these filters and leave most of the sludge at the bottom undisturbed. The once white of the flour had now turned into lead grey. When people heard how the thing was made, they turned up their noses. But in the end, they all drifted towards my cell. It’s funny how in dire circumstances, values change.

  That day eight of us celebrated together, drinking this concoction to gain a little false joy. It went down easy at first, but later, as we started scraping the bottom of the buckets, it had turned into heavy soup, and drinking it was hard work.

  With that pizza wine we drank away another year off our sentences. We also drank another year off our lives.

  The next day the hangover I had was brutal. While most prison binges make the drinker run for the toilet the next day, and spend half the day passing stools, this batch of pizza wine worked the opposite way. I don’t think any of us went to the toilet for a week, we were so packed up with raw flour.

  It must seem a crazy way to pass the time, and looking back it was. But these little moments of mischief were victories to us and gave us a sense of control and a false sense of freedom from the authorities. Along with the headaches and a few memorable smiles.

  *

  Prison life would not be complete without contraband. The CCF Prison Handbook states that an inmate shall be guilty of an offence against discipline, if he does … anything I write about in this chapter.

  In the past it was possible to pay a guard or two to bring in bottles of liquor. The pharmacist used to sell vodka in mouthwash bottles and mobile top-up. I myself have paid €150 for a bottle of whisky from an officer. My last Christmas in there, I was offered a bottle for €250. That’s €10-a-litre liquor, mind, not Glenmorangie. Big bottles are bulky though, so are harder to get in. I guess drugs will always be more profitable.

  On too many days and nights in the past years I have indulged in the traditional prison hooch: alcohol made from the fermenting of fruit. Now limitations have been imposed regarding the amount of fruit a prisoner can receive f
rom outside, and some fruits such as grapes and dried fruit have been banned altogether. We were lucky if we received one piece of fruit a week from the authorities, so saving up for hooch is unrealistic alone – so of course inmates save for a joint venture.

  Fruits of all descriptions – apples, kiwis, plums, pears, oranges, strawberries – are covered in hot water and sugar, kept in bottles or buckets and reheated using a makeshift kettle element. Wires coming from the main plug socket’s live and neutral pins, to metal plates submerged either end of a larger bucket, creating a bain-marie. Even washing powder is added to the water for better conductivity, so the hooch can be rewarmed a few times a day to keep it fermenting.

  Bread can be added, especially if it’s not cooked well, or just buying yeast from one of the workers in the bakery can improve and speed results.

  I once ordered some yeast from a guy, I paid 8 phone cards €40, but that was for half a kilo of dried yeast, in its original foil packet, a nightmare to hide, but what a summer.

  I have seen one inmate make a good alcohol from Coca-Cola, it tasted of brandy.

  The same guy also made a milk-made solution instead of yeast. It made another strong liquor. Man will always find a way.

  This prison hooch does distract from the daily grind and brings some cheer and relief for Christmas, birthdays and even gave me a stag night, but the day after is hell, with the stomach feeling like a washing machine, still swollen from gasses, and everyone saying, “Never Again,” until you walk past a cell and someone calls, “Come in, I’ve got something to show you.”

  Before, being caught only led to the hooch being thrown away and reports given, resulting in being locked down for a day or two. Now it comes with extra time and extra punishment. Another thing that is slowly stopping.