I’ve been inside the Correctional Youth Center where the girls who were incarcerated in the Rehabilitation Youth Center were moved after they trashed their building. My felt impression upon walking in through the barred doors to the girls’ cells and their living area was of heaviness and the oppression increased the longer I stayed. The roof seems to bear down on you and you cannot breathe. This is what it’s like on the inside of a prison.

There was an overwhelming stench of urine and I told the girls ‘it smells of boys’. One of the officers told me that, if I’d been there the previous week, I probably wouldn’t have made it past the front door. The girls have been cleaning up the CYC – while the boys have been sent to their building to clean up their mess. There was a room full of clothes sent from the other building that the girls had to sort through. The girls need to clean up their own mess at RYC and face the consequences of their actions. This would have been therapeutic. Once the broken glass had been removed from their windowpanes, the place could have been ‘safe’ enough for the girls to move back into. Meanwhile they’re fretting about what the boys are doing to their beds – probably leaving in their wake the stench of urine. The girls are locked up in their cells at night and they’re frightened because they feel the place is haunted.

I started to value the true meaning of “freedom”. To be put away for being no other than who you are – or for exploring and expressing who you are as an adolescent and might become as an adult. Well – what point is there to life? For me, there would be no life. I would be one of those who would just shrivel up and die. I would like to think that I could keep myself alive through imagination. Could I imagine the fields and beach I like to walk and keep myself alive? Inside a holocaust camp, Victor Frankl kept himself alive by imagining his wife’s face or taking walks in nature. This is the power of the creative mind when it has been well formed. Do children have this capacity? Some of the girls imagine belonging to each other and weave fantastic family relations amongst themselves.

I sat around with members of the group Kinouete and talked informally to some of the girls. One outspoken girl described the exhilaration she experienced when she started destroying things. She ripped clothes apart.

“That’s a mighty anger you had to be able to rip clothes apart. It’s not easy to do,” I said.

I noticed she had cuts below her collarbone and asked her what she had there. She was embarrassed and quickly covered herself. “Are you going to stay like that for the rest of the time I’m here?” I asked her. I apologised for having embarrassed her but I was concerned.

She cuts herself – probably to release her emotional pain. And she’s not the only one.The girls sit around and groom each other. They look so gorgeous in their elaborate braids. They groom each other because they have not much else to do.

This is rehabilitation. It’s more like punishment. After the ‘crisis’ a lot of their privileges were taken away. Some, such as cooking and art activities, were provided by Kinouete. Kinouete spent the whole of last week giving individual counselling sessions. I’m not sure about their qualifications and what kind of attending they were able to give the girls.

The minister of Social security told the girls to consider her as their ‘mother’. A mother – if she cares – does what is best for her children. She keeps them safe and nourished, emotionally and physically. A mother does not lock up her children and punish them for having expressed their discontent. Where is she now – this mother?

Kinouete went to the ministry seeking funds to employ me as therapist for the girls. We had spoken with the new manager of RYC and she seemed keen to try the arts as catharsis. But the government official whom we met was more interested in “procedures” and in “the way things are done here” than in providing healing for the girls’ trauma and emotional pain. She told Kinouete to carry on their excellent work – voluntarily. The government will be advertising to employ ‘psychologists’ to attend to the girls’ suffering. I will not be applying because I am not a psychologist and I do not like the official’s officiousness. She tells me she has several applicants from Australia. Who will come from Australia to work for the Mauritian government for around 10 AUD an hour when he/she could get 10 or 12 times that much in his/her own country? The remuneration does not even provide the basic minimum wage for a factory worker. Lies roll off her tongue like butter and her eyes squint as she relishes her power. She even spoke in French so she could exclude me from the conversation. This is the way things are done here and I’m getting used to it.

Where is the minister who calls herself these girls’ mother? It seems she is there whenever the media cameras are turned on and focused her way. But to put her money where her mouth is – she is not to be found. She sends her ‘official’ with her bad manners, her lies and her ‘procedures’.

Who loses out? The girls whom I saw grooming each other. They lay about like the stray dogs of the island. I am sorry for them. Their education is arrested, as is their emotional growth. They are not allowed to have books. Some of them have asked for Bibles to keep the diables (devils) of the CYC away.

Another minister – another woman – for the rights of women and children is outraged about the violence done to women by men. What about the violence against these girls by the government or their parents who had them locked up? What has been their crime – other than misbehaving as adolescents? Most of them are locked up for “out of control behavior”. One girl was happy to be at CYC because she was away from home where her stepfather beats her. She had run away. I have to wonder what else happens in that house for the girl to have run away. More than likely there is also sexual abuse. She was refusing to eat but then got frightened when she was threatened with being put on a drip to be fed.

At the heart of Mauritian society is a terrible malaise. It’s like the Blakean invisible worm that bores its way into the rose. When a society does not cherish and honour its young who are the hope of the future – then, what future is there?

When these girls vented their discontent, frustration and anger, the minister for Social security sent in the police. They were beaten and restrained. Imagine grown men beating young girls with their batons. These men are trained to disable, wound and even kill with their batons. When they saw the police, the girls had nothing to lose. It was then that they started to trash the place. But they were selective in what they trashed – focusing mainly on the manager’s office. One girl was looking for letters, which she suspected, had been kept from them. Sure enough in a drawer, there was a pile of letters. In Australia, it is a federal offence to steal someone else’s letters.

<I>The minister of Social Security told the girls to consider her as their ‘mother’. A mother – if she cares – does what is best for her children. A mother does not lock up her children and punish them for having expressed their discontent.</I>

The girls also destroyed a surveillance camera. For what reason are they kept under surveillance? It is not meant to be a prison. The boys in rehabilitation are treated differently. Their outside gate is not locked and there is no camera to monitor their every move. The boys are able to wander about at will.

The RYC girls’ crime seems to have been born a girl in a place called Mauritius.

If you lock up a person and treat him/her like an animal, don’t be surprised if she starts to behave according to your expectations. There have been rumours of homosexual activity. Who else are these girls meant to explore their sexuality with? They groom each other and have sex with each other. There’s not much else to give meaning to their lives.

Who will speak up for these girls? They are a time bomb waiting to explode again – not only against themselves, but against each other and their prison environment.

<I>Who will speak up for these girls? They are a time bomb waiting to explode again – not only against themselves, but against each other and their prison environment.</I>

I was going to show the RYC girls how to use the arts to express and contain their destructive emotions and behaviours, as this is my area of expertise. I wrote my Masters thesis on this topic. What will the government psychologists do? Using the arts and creativity the girls would have gained a sense of purpose and achievement – as when you draw an image, write a poem, or sing a song – and you see you can be creative and you are not useless, the world starts to open up, even inside prison walls. The arts could have given value and meaning to their lives and the girls would have started to feel human again. While some of the girls were cleaning up – they played “dressing up”. They got into some funny ill-fitting clothes and did what children like to do – play. I thought they are showing the grown-ups what they need to recover. An ability to play and be creative in their play. They spoke their outrage destructively and you do not listen. They show what can help them creatively and still you do not listen.

Let’s keep them feeling like the stray dogs of the streets. Lying about with nothing to do except groom each other’s hair, play with each other sexually and lick each other’s wounds without the chance of healing and growing a healthy self. It is the way things are done here! Where is the minister of Social security – does she call herself these girls’ mother – because it was a mother (or father) who had them locked up to begin with?

Members of Kinouete feel ‘betrayed’ to have taken me inside. Another director of an NGO who works with prisoners told me I could not write about what I’ve seen because it would destroy all their hard work and that I will leave the island and leave them in a mess. I’m an outsider and I do not know how things are done here! What I know and have seen is the climate of fear and powerlessness. Artists know that, to create, first materials need to be destroyed. Those who do not want to make a mess usually don’t create. As T. S. Eliot wrote “the fire and the rose are one”. The creative mind cannot be bound and it is what keeps some prisoners free. Whereas there are others who become prisoners of their own thinking while living outside prison walls.

I’d like to dissociate my comments from the Group Kinouete. They have no control over my anger and as well, they are too tied to express their own. The views expressed and my outrage against injustice are entirely my own and I take full responsibility. As I keep being reminded, I am not from here so my views are like an island.

<B>Joan CORNELL</B>