The maximum-security prison in the city of Blantyre houses 2,000 inmates and is located in the Chichiri district, directly behind a large shopping center. At the beginning of my work, I went there during lunchtime to get something to eat. But soon I could no longer bear experiencing this contrast, so I started bringing food with me and stayed in the prison the entire day. In general, the transitions in and out of the prison were accompanied by a dull feeling of helplessness and sorrow.

When entering in the morning, I usually had to wait up to an hour until the "cascade ceremony" was finished and an office was assigned to me (which was almost always the same one). During this time, I sat in the entrance area on a plastic chair and observed the women and children who wanted to visit their husbands and waited on narrow wooden benches. Many of them had already traveled for hours, hungry and dehydrated, full of anticipation to see their husbands and sons. These, on the other side of the bars, were packed together and waved to their wives while the officers operated the gate to let one visitor after another in and escort them to the visiting room. I sat aside watching, hearing the metallic clanging of the repeatedly banging gate and the many voices, and could almost feel the despair and tension of these people. When leaving the prison late in the afternoon, some of the inmates I had counseled accompanied me to the exit, where behind me the gate slammed shut and they waved goodbye to me gratefully. In those moments, my heart literally tightened. Even now — two months later — as I write these lines, I have to fight back tears. At my last visit, I could hardly tear myself away and had the terrible feeling of abandoning these people.

My work consisted, as mentioned, of counseling sessions, which mostly took place in the hospital section. The NGO Doctors Without Borders had built a really great station in Chichiri with examination rooms in containers, one of which I was allowed to use. The line in front of my office quickly became so long that it was clear from the start I could not counsel everyone that day. An inmate named Alinafe, who had a university degree and spoke excellent English, was assigned to me as an interpreter. Soon we were a great, well-coordinated team that could focus on the central questions to achieve as much as possible. Most of those seeking advice wanted to tell for hours why they were even here, that they were innocent, that they had acted out of necessity, that they had been waiting two years for their trial, that they were very sick (indeed many were HIV-positive or had tuberculosis or stomach ulcers), how terribly hard the conditions were to endure and that they had to get out as soon as possible because their wives, children, and mothers at home would not survive without them. The need was extremely great and partly beyond my influence, so after the third week I slipped into a phase of helplessness myself. I was able to get telephone supervision from Switzerland by Lea Keller, who guided me to distinguish the possible from the impossible and to declare this clearly at the beginning of every conversation. From then on, it ran smoothly; we could now also guide the conversations well and efficiently and thus give more inmates the opportunity to talk to us.

One of the most important points was recognizing the difficult situation each person was in, the strength it took to endure everything, and to look for new ways with questions and offers inside the prison. This allowed us to motivate some inmates to attend the internal school, where Alinafe was a teacher, and to complete their official schooling. Others, who had been incarcerated longer, could exchange experiences with desperate newcomers and share their coping strategies. In particular, the Shamba sleeping position leads after hours of enduring it to psychotic episodes in which inmates stand up and scream, after which they get beaten by other inmates in a way that kills all resistance. Before someone in prison can “settle in” to survive this torture permanently, they go through various phases such as despair, resistance, lethargy, and often suicidal thoughts.

Yale, a 49-year-old man, came to me because he was about to be released after 28 years in prison and was afraid. He had been in prison as long as Nelson Mandela and was incarcerated when Mandela was released. I let him list his resources on how he managed to endure those 28 years, and afterwards it was clear that he would be strong enough to face the outside world. My further work consisted of locating his sister and making sure that he could first come to her. I left a small start-up capital and a inspired Yale.

For other inmates worried about their families, I financed visits by their wives or brothers in our setting to talk personally about possible help. The women usually had very good ideas on how to start a small business to support themselves and the children, but they lacked the start-up capital. I could provide this whenever the plans sounded realistic to me and Alinafe.

I visited some families of inmates with Moses Waya, an employee of YCD, in their home villages. We brought building materials, flour, clothes, medicine, once a goat, and told the entire village community, which had gathered, about the inmate who had sent me to them. In this way, the inmate left a good impression in his home village and was certainly welcomed back kindly after his prison stay.