Breaking Free

It’s now only that I realize how I have been wallowing in my own self-centered world.

Yesterday, I went to the Bacolod City Jail for Women in Handumanan. As I wrote before, I exercise (do zumba) with a group of active women (let's call them the Hataw Ladies) at the Bacolod Government Center every weekend. I know that they do some charitable work, but it was only then that I had the chance (and maybe the desire?) to go with them.

The images I saw at the City Jail were far different from what I see in movies. Although the women are imprisoned, they seem happy, and satisfied, and normal. I could be very well inside a school or a church or an ordinary place outside the confines of those barbed-wired walls. Everybody was wearing yellow shirts (not orange with a big letter P at the back-—cliché!), and they looked clean and well-kept.

This is the building where their cells are

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth delos Santos

But one inmate struck a striking chord to my fellow ‘Hataw Ladies’ because she was tall, young, and pretty. She stood out from among the others. Some ladies whispered that this twentyish lass was working at a call center with her husband. She had a five-year old daughter from a previous partner, but the child was autistic. The stepfather regularly beat the child, while the mother (the inmate) just turned a blind eye. This went on until the child couldn’t take it any longer, and died. Both of them are now incarcerated in the city jail. I don’t know why she became a bystander to the cruel fate of her own child, but she is paying for her sins with her youth, beauty, and a supposed bright future. During the whole ceremony, she was the emcee, and the leader in the dance presentations, but I could sense the sadness and regret (and did I see shame?) in her heart. This was no place for a promising girl like her. Or any other woman, for that matter.

The Hataw group gave some snacks and gifts to all the 75 inmates. The P20 collected every Zumba session we have on weekends is responsible for this.  

We danced with them...

...sang Christmas carols with them...

...and ate with them.

This gestures are really nothing compared to what these fine Hataw ladies have in their normal lives, but the humble gifts brought sincere smiles and a feeling of hope from the inmates. I honestly think that the Hataw ladies got more than what they gave. I know I did.

It was not a heart-wrenching nor a life-changing experience for me. Claiming that would be overly dramatic. But it sure gave me a tinge of unexplainable lightness deep inside. Thank you, ladies, for opening my eyes to a parallel world I have refused to see before. 

Breaking free is indeed sweet.