Tuesday, August 07, 2007 Malilong: When inmates dance By Frank Malilong The Other Side
PLEASE, please tell me this was a joke,” my youngest daughter wrote from France. “It is not,” I replied. “It is in Sun.Star.”
“I just saw an article about it on BBC today; it was one of the most e-mailed articles,” she wrote again. “When I saw the video, I thought it was too well choreographed, it must have been some kind of spoof made by some professionals. Anyway, I read that there’s going to be a dance to the music of Ice, Ice Baby, so I look forward to seeing it on YouTube.”
Well, eat your heart out, Mai. Last Wednesday, I watched the show live from the balcony of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center: about a thousand prisoners dancing to the beat of the “Thriller,” among others. And they’re so good even their pass-in review could shame many an ROTC unit.
Gov. Gwen Garcia and her brother, Byron, should be congratulated for trying to make the detainees, many of whom must have resigned to the inevitability of drudgery in prison life, believe in themselves again. “We have decided to put emphasis on the R in the CPDRC,” she said to the applause of the detainees who remained standing in the quadrangle under the blazing noon sun.
Except for a few who glumly went through the motions during their performance, the prisoners did look like they were genuinely enjoying the whole show. “Michael Jackson” was particularly convincing. So were the “nuns” in Sister Act.
But even as I thoroughly enjoyed the show, there were moments when I couldn’t escape remembering where I was and who I was watching such as during that part of the Thriller when the performers turned their backs and bowed. I saw a sea of big bold “Ps” and felt sad.
Then, there was that instance when women detainees took center stage. I looked at their faces and remembered mothers nourishing their children. Who are taking care of their children now while they are in prison?
“When we get out of these walls,” the mayor de mayores, Leo Suico, declared in Cebuano during his welcome address, “we will no longer be the weeds of society but will be responsible members of the community.”
Strangely, it sounded less of a promise than a wish that when he steps out of jail, the reformed prisoner will not again be oppressed by the same economic deprivation that drove him to a life of crime.
Oh, if only earning a living were as simple as acting like a zombie.
