Upon arriving, after previously booking our visit, having provided the basic requirements of full names, dates of birth, and address.
We then had to go through the standard induction procedure of having our photographs and finger prints taken, and submit the required identification documents.
And then there would be the waiting period, and the process of observing others waiting to visit and be observed by them.
With us wondering who they are visiting and what have their relatives and/or friends done to have taken them along this path towards what feels like an 'outcast community of prisoners and their families and friends'?
We were all in the same boat, as it were, with those who had already been inducted into the process for some time, having arrived at a point of acquiescence, resignation or accommodation of the 'system.'
However reluctantly. But for us, we were new and were looking at the system and its procedures with the eyes and heightened sensibilities of newcomers.
We felt alien to and alienised by the system, and were critical of it, with its physical patting down of our bodies.
With our hands raised as the guards, who are, indeed, only doing their duty, doing what they, like other workers, have gotten used to doing.
And, most probably, do not approach it with the heightened sensitivity that we were applying to the procedure.
With the sense of unease as we and others stood in line with a prescribed distance between us, to await being smelled by the 'drug dog.'
As we emptied our pockets and place their contents in the plastic baskets for them to make their own separate way through the electronic scanning machine.
To be continued!
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