Hotel Kerobokan (14 page)

Wanda entered Block W a hurt and fragile woman. At night she wept for her children. During the days she often didn’t eat. She spent her first Ramadan with no visits. She had no family and no friends in Bali. But the women comforted her, cheered her up with food, and gave her massages and affection. She was easily seduced into the nurturing bosom of the lesbians, the physical connection easing the pain in her heart.

Wanda was petite and beautiful. She was fought over by the lesbians. Renae Lawrence, the only woman in the Australian Bali Nine drug syndicate, who was a lesbian before checking into Hotel K, made a play for Wanda. She visited her cell, gave her food and tried to make her laugh. Renae’s girlfriend, Eda, was bitterly jealous. She refused to even speak to Wanda. One day, Renae’s flirting tipped Eda over the edge; she snapped after Renae offered Wanda a slice of cheesecake. Eda and Renae started laying into each other in their cell. With everyone locked in for the night, all the women were forced to listen to the screaming and the violence until it suddenly went quiet. Eda had collapsed. A doctor was called, but she was okay. Eda soon checked out of Hotel K.

The other lesbians called Renae Lawrence the playboy of the women’s block. She was big, muscular and masculine, had money and was western. Women threw themselves at her. Renae could comfortably accommodate the girls, having paid guards to have a soft double bed delivered to her cell. Renae soon fell in love with a cellmate, Ira, who she believed was ‘the one’. And despite still having fifteen years left to serve, and Ira now being free, Renae hoped to marry her in a Hindu wedding ceremony inside Hotel K.

Our love has given me hope. In the Hindu religion, same-sex weddings are controversial. But some believe marriage is a union of spirits – not male and female
.

– Renae,
New Idea

Kerobokan is the guards’ little kingdom
.

– Thomas

Kerobokan Prison is repeatedly being caught in humiliating situations, when the chief of security is arrested by the police over drug possession . . . when two security officers from Kerobokan Prison were caught by the police in, let’s say, a red light district, let’s say escorting one of the inmates . . . it keeps happening in Kerobokan
.

Why?

Corruption, I guess
.

How much do the guards get paid?

Those guards who actually guard the prison, not the administration or the higher ranking prison officer, the guard guarding the prisoners basically receive less than 3 million [$400] a month
.

– Journalist Wayan Juniartha of the
Jakarta Post

There are two constants in Hotel K – prison guards and prisoners. Every day they live and work together, while often despising one another.

Hotel K was a paradise for savvy guards on the lookout to make extra money, and, in much the same way, prisoners who had money could manipulate guards for their own purposes. The guards being so poorly paid opened up almost unlimited possibilities for prisoners looking for ways to make jail more liveable.

‘Prison guards struggle to survive. Their salary is the bare minimum. When people give them “tips”, they are usually grateful and tend to do their bidding. This is a big problem,’ said Djoko Sasongko, spokesman for the Indonesian Justice Department
.

–
South China Morning Post
(Hong Kong), 1 September 2006

Your main goal is to get free, but beside that, you still have a little bit of freedom if you pay the money. You can bring cans of beer, movies, girls, whatever you want, but every step you have to pay the money
.

– Den

While guards were always looking for ways to make extra money, they were also happy to use their power and influence to get sexual gratification. Several male guards regularly slipped into Block W for some quick lunchtime sex. They would give the female cellmates a bit of cash to play cards out the front and keep watch while they had their way with a prisoner.

It was easier for the lesbian guards who worked in the women’s block. One afternoon, a prisoner returned to her cell and found a female guard sitting on a mattress, kissing and fondling an attractive new female prisoner. The new prisoner was simply lonely, and wanted to use the guard’s mobile phone to ring her boyfriend. Phones were banned in prison – unless you had money, or something else, to offer a guard. In this case, it was sex.

It didn’t seem to trouble the conscience of the guard herself, who was married with three daughters. This guard was particularly slimy, often pulling prisoners onto her knee and fondling their breasts. She’d give them little treats, like letting them walk to the canteen. One day she took Australian inmate Schapelle Corby out of Block W and across to the tennis court to watch the men having a hit of the ball. The guard had seen the sadness and desperation on Schapelle’s face as she stood at the slightly ajar door of Block W, looking out longingly at those male inmates lucky enough to play tennis. The guard took her by the hand and walked her to the court. One of the players gave her a racquet, and for five minutes she forgot about being cooped up in jail and played tennis. Unlike the locals, westerners such as Schapelle didn’t succumb to sleazy advances, but it was worth smiling and being nice to the guard – just for the chance to be let out again one day.

For many westerners, that was the crux of the matter. As much as the guards made the inmates feel uncomfortable, or even disgusted, they knew that they could prove useful in the days, weeks and years ahead.

But, more often than not, it was money that drove the guards. Even a costly mistake, one that could result in an inmate being beaten and put in cell
tikus
for a month, could be overlooked provided the offending inmate paid up. One night after lockup, Italian inmate Fisco had just injected himself with heroin. He was spaced out, enjoying the high, singing ‘la la la la’ as he washed out the bloody syringe in a glass of water. No-one else was taking any notice. It was a routine night. He finished cleaning and casually tossed the filthy water out through the small barred window. Angry shouting erupted outside. Fisco froze while his cellmates leaped to the window and peered into the dark night to see who was there. It was a guard; his T-shirt splattered in bloody water. He was yelling, ‘Juri! Juri! Juri! Juri!’, aware that Fisco didn’t speak Indonesian and that his cellmate Juri did.

I got down from the upstairs bunk. I say, ‘What’s happened?’ The guard says, ‘He is using drugs, using heroin’. I say, ‘Yeah, why?’ He say, ‘Cannot, cannot’. So I say to the guy, Fisco, ‘Give him 100,000’. So he gives 100,000 rupiah and the guard goes away
.

– Juri

It wasn’t only poorly paid guards who used their position for ill-gotten gains. One jail boss regularly made Balinese girls strip and pose naked for photographs at his house, near the jail. Prisoners were permitted to work as cleaners in his house, and this boss took advantage of the fact the girls would do just about anything to escape for a few hours. He kept his nude shots of them in an album. The girls all knew that volunteering to clean his rooms meant they would have to strip naked in front of the ageing pervert. Still, a few hours shopping or time outside with their boyfriends was enough reward for them to take part in the demeaning act.

While some prisoners would have sex with guards because they wanted something, others would do it out of boredom or because they had formed an attachment to them.

The inmates sleep with the guards because they like each other; they actually have a relationship, boyfriend and girlfriend, although most of the guards do have wives. The sex happens in the clinic; we pay the doctor. The sex happens in the hall, the offices, empty corners, anywhere
.

– Elsa, female inmate

One Hotel K security boss had a girlfriend in the jail. The two had met when she checked in, and the boss regularly gave her leave to go to his place – a room he rented separate from the house that came with the job, which accommodated his wife and children. Hotel K really was a sexual playground for the guards, even the gay ones. In the men’s blocks, there were usually gay inmates and several transvestites, known as
benchong
. They wore wigs, tight sexy shorts, and T-shirts around the jail during the day. Several guards gathered in an office one morning to fondle and kiss one particularly pretty
benchong
who was checking in. The
benchong
were usually well-liked, often making prisoners laugh with their antics and girly conversations. ‘Thank God I got my period today, I thought I was pregnant,’ one
benchong
giggled to another in front of several prisoners one day. In the afternoons they’d often go to their cells to do up their faces, change wigs and put on evening frocks, spraying a cloud of perfume in the air and haughtily walking into it. The
benchongs
and gays often played sex games together, and sometimes the guards joined in.

One afternoon, a few inmates were sitting around smoking joints listening to local transvestite Dedi complaining about being broke. It sparked an idea. Dutchman Aris and Australian inmate Mick suggested shooting a gay porn video and selling it on the internet. Dedi was instantly convinced it would make them rich. A gay Nigerian inmate was also keen to do it. They devised a simple scene with the Nigerian inmate acting as a guard, who would pull off the pants of the transvestite and have sex with him on the bed. Mick asked one of the guards, who was married with kids but always sleazily touching men, if he would bring in a spare uniform.

He did. The next day they were ready to shoot. The guard stood watching, with Mick directing and Aris shooting. Dedi stepped out of the bathroom in a towel and underpants. The huge African ‘guard’ picked Dedi up, carried him to the bed, stripped off his own uniform and then tore off Dedi’s towel. The African already had an erection. Mick and Aris looked at each other. They’d both seen enough. Aris quickly handed the camera to the real guard and left him excitedly holding the camera with one hand, and fondling the two naked men with the other.

When the guard came out, he was so excited. His face was as red as a tomato
.

– Mick

They looked at the footage and it wasn’t any good. So the next day they decided to shoot another scene, with the actual guard acting in this one. Dedi dressed up as Cleopatra, with a wig, a full face of makeup, false eyelashes and wrapped in towels. The guard was dressed in a sheet as Cleopatra’s butler, and the African was a black bushman who would run in and rape Cleopatra. Aris started filming Cleopatra, who was sitting on a
batik
bedspread, holding a mirror while the butler brushed her hair. Then the bushman came in, stabbed the guard and raped Cleopatra. Mick and Aris filmed it this time, but walked out straight afterwards, leaving the guard and two prisoners all lying naked on the bed and smoking. Their blue movie didn’t reach the internet or make them a dime. But it was fun and broke the tedium.

Aside from sex, cultivating a relationship with a guard through paying them money could make life a lot more bearable. As part of the great hypocrisy in Hotel K, the guards keeping the prisoners under lock and key were often working as drug couriers themselves, overlooking drug use inside the jail and sometimes even using drugs with the prisoners in their cells. Getting drugs like heroin or
shabu
was no problem at all. Guards would bring in drugs in their shoes or pockets, usually safe in the knowledge that they would not be searched. The majority of guards were happy to turn a blind eye to all the smuggling, so long as they got a piece of the action. Need a clean syringe? Easy, just order it in.

Guards also smuggled in bags of the local brew,
arak
, for prisoners to drink. It was banned but that didn’t stop a nightly traffic of the stuff by a few of the guards. However, while the majority of guards were keen to make some extra money, there were a few who were either against drinking alcohol, or who were honest or didn’t want to risk getting caught. One particular guard smuggled in huge quantities of
arak
by pulling it up into the watchtower. Each night during his rounds, he climbed into the rarely manned tower to drop down a rope. Below, someone would be ready and waiting to tie the plastic bags of
arak
. Then he’d haul it up again. To avoid carrying it past other guards, he’d dug a hole under the inner perimeter wall, so he could pull it through. It was a smart strategy, but caused havoc one year when torrential rains washed his small hole into a gaping big one. The wall above it collapsed and two prisoners escaped.

There was no such thing as the perfect drop in Hotel K. The quality of the
arak
was largely dependent on how much stuff the guards mixed it with to increase the quantity and make more cash. One sly guard was notorious for diluting
arak
with water. The prisoners knew, but there was not much they could do – a little booze was better than no booze.

Of course, some inmates were smarter than others and targeted specific guards to bring in the
arak
. One in particular was known for bringing in the quality stuff from his village in East Bali, Karangasem, where the purest
arak
in Bali was distilled.

All an inmate had to do was fork out the cash, and the next night the guard would bring a plastic bag filled with enough booze for prisoners to get very drunk. Some guards scammed extra cash by selling
arak
to an inmate, only to then punish him for having it, locking him in the tower. The inmate would stay there until he could afford to pay to get out – so the guard won twice. Another lucrative racket the guards used was walking around confiscating phones, then simply selling them back.

As in every jail, it wasn’t only the crooked guards who inmates had to keep an eye out for. There were guards who were just plain sadistic and enjoyed torturing prisoners whenever they had the opportunity.