Guinea: total darkness

Before locking us up, the police officers beat us. I was hit 50 times with a stick on my back and buttocks. Then I was put into a prison cell that was less than 10 square metres with 15 other demonstrators. Three other prisoners, delinquents, tried to extort money from us. They told us that they’d be giving orders to all of the prisoners in this tiny room. They positioned themselves near the door, where one could breathe more easily and they pushed the younger ones among us into a corner by the slop pail. It was a 20 litre plastic jug, cut in half.

After a few hours, the room smelt of the excrements and urine that were spilling onto the floor.

When it was the evening, a guard threw a few loaves of bread through the bars, but the loaves were confiscated by my stronger cellmates. I didn’t eat anything because I wasn’t hungry. I just wanted to throw up. In the days that followed, I felt a lump of anxiety in the center of my belly. The nauseating smells and the prevailing filth made me nauseous and kept me from eating anything whatsoever.

At night, there were no electric lights, there was just total darkness. Everyone was sitting, legs bent, because there were too many of us to be able to lie down.

During the day, the only way we were able to get out of the cell was by taking on the chore [that consisted] of emptying the slop pail. For three days I kept asking the station head to tell my mother I was in prison. He finally agreed to inform her, but he refused to let her visit me. It was only thanks to my mother’s initiative of contacting her police officer friend, that I was finally freed, after seven days in those conditions, for the sum of two million Guinean francs.