adminChristopher Farai Charamba The Reader
Two of my favourite shows on television, on the rare occasion I get to watch it, are Border Security and Banged Up Abroad. I always marvel at the individuals who attempt to smuggle drugs and other banned substances in or out of countries.
In Border Security there are often protestations from the culprits, desperate pleas of ignorance while knowing full well the crime they were in the process of committing. There comes, however, a sullen resignation when they realise that their fate has been sealed and there is no way out of the conundrum they are caught in.
Where Border Security ends with the arrest of the individual, in the case of drug smuggling, Banged Up Abroad shows their lives in after they have been arrested and sent to prison. Often in a country like Colombia or Vietnam where the drug mule has no local contacts, cannot speak the language and is at the mercy of a public defendant and a state trans- lator.
Unfortunately for a number of those who end up Banged Up Abroad, they are often pawns in a web of international drug trafficking and might have been naïve and gullible. Their experience in a foreign prison is what intrigues me the most. Travelling to a foreign country with a language barrier is daunting task in itself, being imprisoned in one more terrifying.
“Marching Powder”, a book written by Rusty Young on the imprisonment of one Thomas McFadden in a Bolivian prison, is one which captures the experience portrayed in Banged Up Abroad quite wholesomely.
Subtitled, “A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail”, “Marching Powder” explores the events, experiences and conditions of McFadden’s stay as a ward of the Bolivian State in San Pedro prison.
McFadden was born in Tanzania but grew up in England. Having left home to live in India at age 15, he soon became enrolled in the drug trafficking world as he was desperate for money.
After a brush with the law, McFadden leaves India and settles in South America where he goes into the trafficking of cocaine. His operation is brought to an end when he is arrested at La Paz airport in Bolivia with five kilogrammes of cocaine in 1996.
McFadden was subsequently sentenced to six years and eight months in San Pedro prison and finds himself in a massive predicament as he is in a foreign prison with no possessions and no support.
The prison conditions are also quite deplorable as cells are rented out and without money one can easily find themselves dead in the courtyard. McFadden soon finds out that San Pedro is a community of its own with a property market, businesses and justice system. There are some prisoners who live with their families and others who run thriving cocaine production businesses from behind the prison walls.
Through the generosity of some inmates, an Anglican Church volunteer and the Prisoners Abroad organisation McFadden is able to set himself up in the prison and even lands a job as a shopkeeper.
McFadden also discovers a way to earn more money by giving tours of the prison to international tourists. By bribing prison guards to let tourists in he manages to set up a lucrative business as a tour guide as one of the only fluent English speakers in the prison.
Rusty Young, the author of “Marching Powder”, is one of the tourists and so fascinated by the experience he volunteers to spend three months in San Pedro to capture its story.
The story quite vivid and paints a picture of not only the tumultuous time McFadden had but also the vile, harsh and dangerous conditions of the Bolivian prison cum cocaine factor.
McFadden is able to get out four years after he was arrested having paid a $5 000 bribe to do so, proceeds of which he raised through his tours and from well-wishers he had given tours in the past.
Young certainly wrote a gripping true life story of the horrors of a foreign prison, a read recommended for any would-be trafficker before they end up on Border Security and Banged Up Abroad.
Online Reporter