Tuesday, 17 February 2009

• Going to Jail in Panama

  by Molly
  

  
  
  

  Whenever you are abroad, the idea of ending up in jail is never a happy thought. I have definitely heard horror stores from my friends who got themselves locked up in Mexico, and was certain that I would never get myself into one of those situations. Once I got to Panama, that notion was definitely altered.

  Looking around Panama, I was pretty certain that ended up in jail there would be a less than pleasant experience. Although, that was kind of the last thought on my mind once we got to a smaller town in the mountains called Boquete. We spent 2 weeks at a Spanish school right outside the actual town, and had to travel into town by taxi (50 cents for the ride) to do our food shopping for the evenings. One particular night, my friend decided to go into town to get a few of the things that we needed for our dinner, while I stayed home to start making whatever I could before he got back. It only took about 5 minutes to ride into town, so the errand wasn't going to take too long. But then an hour and a half later, I started to worry as to what happened to him!

  The phone in the school started ringing, and it turned out it was his sister calling from the states. She told me that my friend was in jail and that I needed to call him immediately because he had been arrested. What! How is that possible? She didn't know much, just that I needed to get both of our passports and get to the jail in town. I called him, and he was able to answer his phone. It turned out that he had been detained because he didn't have his passport on him when he was going to town, and the police had set up a check point to check for identification papers. Because he didn't have any with him, the police took him into custody, and he couldn't get enough of the right Spanish out to really understand what was going on.  But the point remained - he was in jail and I needed to get there now. I grabbed both of our passports, flagged down a taxi, and headed into town.

  Once I got to the jail, I found my friend handcuffed to a rail attached to a side wall. There were about five men guarding the entrance, and one in particular who looked rather angry and menacing. I asked him what was going on, and he told me that my friend had been starting fights with the police. He went on to say that they were going to have to detain him for at least a couple of days to a week in David, a city located an hour away. I was horrified that not only was my friend in jail, but that they were going to transport him to another city because he was being so difficult.

  As my face turned white and I had this look of horror in my eyes, the guard looked at my friend and at me and started laughing. My friend had apparently not only made friends with the police, but had also persuaded them to play a practical joke on me! The fact that they took him to jail was no joke, but once he got there, it turned into an old boys club, with a mix between his broken Spanish, and their broken English to decide that they wanted to play a prank on me. I started laughing along as well....relieved that we didn't have to deal with him going to jail in David and being deported!

  Have you ever been to jail in a foreign country? How were you able to get yourself out of the situation?

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