Tranquility Bay

I arrived on the island at the age of 12. Upon arrival I was stripped naked and forced onto a table by 2 guards. They gave me shots of some sort, and inspected my body and was then walked to a row of showers that stood outside. I was given no privacy as I was told to shower in the ice cold water while the Jamaicans watched. Following this, I was brought to my "family", which was the name given to the group of other kids I was to be spending my time on this rock with. I found out I was the youngest kid here by 3 years and quite a bit shorter than everyone else. The rules were explained to me very quickly. You must ask permission to do anything. I mean ANYTHING. Permission to sit, speak, fart, eat, stand... the list went on and on and the punishments for not complying varied. If you were to walk anywhere it was with your entire "family" and it was walked in a heel-to-toe formation, meaning your toes hit the person in front of you's heels if you ever made a stop, looking out of line or doing anything other than walking at a perfect cadence resulted in punishment. The favorite punishment, it seemed, was to send us to a place called Observation Placement, or O.P. for short. I spent a total of somewhere in the 14 month range in O.P. This was a place where you were told to lie on your face as the picture above displays. You were to keep your hands at your side and your feet overlapped at the toes. If you moved, spoke, slept, or didnt respond when a guard called your name you were beaten or worse. I was beaten very often and was picked on a lot by the guards. We were deprived of food and sleep and the temperature in the closed off, non ventilated room was unbearable. Many, many things happened to me in O.P. An example is one time I was called upon and had fallen asleep, so I was unable to respond, when I didnt call my name a guard walked over to me, kicked me in the back of the head and called for more guards. When they arrived I was dragged to another room and was pinned to the ground by 5-6 of them. They each had a limb, one had my head and one on my back. Now you can imagine, if Im 12 years old, maybe 13 at this time, and Im 4'6" or so and Im malnurished, I cant weigh very much. So to have a minimum of a 6 foot 200 pound Jamaican on my back while im pinned to the ground and spread out like a star, you can imagine how difficult it would be to breath and how easy it would be to have a sense of helplessness I cant quite describe. Each of the other Jamiacans were puting all of their weight on my joints or pressure points and grinding them into the concrete floor. You try your hardest to be stubborn and not let them get the gratitude of hearing you scream, but you can only last so long. The longer you go without screaming the more creative they get. So after holding out for so long, one guard leaves and returns with a mattress. He throws it on the floor and I get put on top of it. They force my face into the mattress, suffocating me and say, "Let's hear you scream now white boy." I try and try but my screams are muffled and the fear of losing consciousness sets in and I try to writher out of their holds. They respond with forcing my arms up from my side, toward my head. They continue and continue until I hear and feel a sickening pop and then I was out. That was my life in Jamaica for only 2-3 hours, and I spent a total of 22 months there. No communication with the outside world. Completely alone and no knowledge of when I would leave.