‘Africans going Dutch’: Part Twenty – A different kind of jail

Everybody knows what a prison is, but the meaning of the word is different in Africa, than in the Netherlands.
A few weeks ago I met an African man at the train station. He had a little black bag. I think he could see that I am from Africa, so he walked in my direction. He stood next to me and asked me where I was from. “Burundi,” I replied. It was clear he wanted to talk someone who understood him.
He told me he had just come from prison. He had a fight with some young people in a train and was sentenced to three months. But now he was free again. Of course he didn’t like the experience of being arrested and detained, but it proved to be an experience full of surprises for him.
He was impressed by the Dutch jail. He told me that he had a bed, a blanket, enough to eat, a television in the room and he could do sports and work out. I did know that life in a Dutch prison was not as bad as in Burundi, but that it was this good, was a surprise to me as well.
I’ve heard a lot of horrible prison stories. Friends had been in the Mpimba prison in Bujumbura. They told me it’s an awful place, with dark corridors and too many prisoners. They slept on the floor, without any bed, mattress, sheets or blanket. It’s even difficult to actually find a space to sleep. It’s even hard to breath, and the food is very bad. People get ill and die.
Some of these prisoners had only stolen some food because they were hungry. Others had done nothing at all. Still, they have to stay for years and years, because it takes a very long time before they are actually brought in front of a judge. This is not legal – not even in Burundi – but it is the reality. Nowadays, a civil society tries to fight for the rights of prisoners. But it will take a long time for the situation to change.
A lot of Burundians would say that Dutch jails are no punishment. They would say that Dutch prisoners have a better live than a lot of free people in Africa, who have nothing to eat and no place to sleep.
I don’t know where the African man in the train station was going, but I can imagine it was a place less comfortable than the Dutch jail he was just released from. But I was just glad to talk to someone who had just come out of prison without having to hear horrible stories. 
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