Helen Eager writes:
Went to the prison here in Pokhara again yesterday, usually we go to take the children we have to see their mothers and do not go inside but yesterday we went inside the womens section as they had requested us to buy some paint for the ladies side of the jail and also provide them a table for where the prison staff eat their meals.
It is interesting that in the mens side of the jail it looks quite clean and nice but the womens!! Anything to do with Government in this country is sadly neglected and it is very evident. Apparently there are a number of men in prison who are quite wealthy so they provide the money for paint or whatever is needed but only for the mens side.
There are more than four hundred men in this jail and forty two women.
There are two rooms in which the women sleep, twenty eight in one room and fourteen in the other. The walls are black and the windows do not let in hardly any light. Most of the women have a mattress and these are just side by side on the floor, there are no beds. The reason why the walls are so dirty is because in between the two sleeping rooms there is a kind of alleyway and at the end of it is where they cook their food with wood as fuel, so all the smoke goes into the sleeping rooms.
The other thing that troubled me is there is nothing for the women to do. They just sit in front of the TV set in the dark sleeping rooms or sit outside and stare into space. I don’t know just what we can do about this but pray that we may be able to do something.
Helen.