by Ramon Dacawi
City mayor Mauricio Domogan will be in prison early this Sunday afternoon, to toast with the city jail inmates the day’s twin themes of motherhood and humanitarian volunteerism.

“We, too, would like to celebrate, being either mothers or, like others, children with mothers,” a resident of the female dormitory of the city jail said Friday as she was finalizing the program for the computer print-out.
The rest in the cells of double-deck beds were scribbling their thoughts while a male detainee waited, so he could organize them into poetry or essay to be read in this afternoon’s program with the mayor.


“We are also observing Red Cross and Red Crescent Day,” another male inmate said. “We have set aside from our livelihood programs a little something for the calamity victims in Japan.”

He couldn’t give a figure but said the support from inside might help give substance to the Red Cross and Crescent theme “Find the Volunteer Inside You”.
The inmates are no strangers to the humanitarian side of things. Years back, they pooled over a hundred pesos for the ailing son of a pony boy at Wright Park who was suffering from congenital heart ailment.
Two years back, they counted from a hat that passed through cells P721. They then divided the amount, half for a woman detainee afflicted with cancer and the other half for Trinalyn Mangisel, then a two-year old girl born with a hole in her heart.

(Trinalyn eventually underwent corrective surgery, thanks to Peter Ernst, a Swiss benefactor, Jim Ward, a Zen Buddhism practitioner, and then five-year old twins Aira and Rhea Acosta who scooped clean their coin collection amounting to P476.25.)

Last March, the prisoners, for the third straight year, joined the rest of the world in marking “Earth Hour”. Cities and towns all over were in darkness for an hour. The inmates had it for three hours as with the visiting bands Blugraz and Shakilan piercing the darkness of the courtyard with folk and country music
They were into preparations for “Earth Day” last April 22, only to reset it upon realizing the day falls on “Good Friday”. They wanted to lump it into this Sunday’s program but wardress, Sr. Inspector April Rose Ayangwa, said another occasion to focus on the environment would be better.


It will coincide with the launching this month of the sale of now one-year old pine seedlings that the inmates began producing last year with support from the city and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Jail warden, Chief Inspector Severino Khita, has asked groups planning to plant trees during the rainy season to order their seedlings from jail in support of its reformatory program.

This Sunday afternoon’s marking of Mother’s Day and volunteerism are part of prison reform, Khita noted.
For the inmates, the twin celebration may serve as a reminder that, like the rest in the world outside, they are not what they measly own. Or do not have.

In-between these observances, the prisoners are into sharpening their writing skills through an informal journalism class, as an antidote to boredom and for the release of thoughts and emotions confined by their confinement.

Among those who recently went to prison to help guide the writing course were multi-awarded Baguio poet Frank Cimatu and Sunstar columnist Nonnette Bennett.

Last week, Cimatu had the newly re-established PNP Cordillera Press Corps adopt as its project the enrichment of the jail library.

Soon, the Cinderellas, Baguio’s multi-awarded women’s football team, will follow suit, this time to introduce the indoor game of futsal. – (PIO Baguio City/PIA CAR)