"To none will we sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay, right or justice."
Not here.
Her Ladyship let her house for six months, renewable for a further six months, while she was abroad. During that time, to add to the already existing chaos and confusion, there was a presidential decree that all private tenancies would have to be supervised by what used to be the social housing agency, and that, in general, the owner would not have an automatic right to return to their own property.
You may imagine what happened to the rental market!
Her Ladyship's tenants had appeared reasonable: though they'd started to pay in arrears, not in advance as originally agreed, they had paid regularly. They'd kept a dog which they'd said they wouldn't, and let the house get a bit shabby, but nothing too awful.
After the six months, she gave them a six-month extension but told them very clearly indeed that she would want the house back after that. "No problem,” they said, "we are being given a house by the government, and if that hasn't happened we'll find somewhere else to rent.”
But when the time came to move, they started to tell a lot of lies and it became obvious that they were not going anywhere, so it was off to the housing agency to get a ruling.
We got some legal advice from quite a highly placed government lawyer friend who predicted there would be no problem though they might be given an extension of a couple of months. The contract was clear and fair and they'd already had a six-month extension and some shorter ones.
We also discovered that they'd made the first moves to have the property transferred into their names - a possibility here - but had been stalled by the local commune representative (something like a town councillor but with more power and administrative responsibility) who was also a friend.
The trick with the housing agency, which now handles all lettings, is to get a hearing at all. Only ten places are issued, twice a week, for a city almost twice the size of Bristol, and to get one of those you have to arrive before sparrow-fart and queue, though even then you may not get a place because the security guard can be bribed to reserve places so 'first' in the queue might actually be eleventh when the office opens.
When the day came, enthusiastically egged on by the door boy, the driver hurtled 'Blesséd of God' at breakneck speeds through the almost deserted city streets, slowing only slightly for red lights, the unsilenced exhaust and the wolf-whistle air horns echoing back from the tower blocks.
Slightly shaken, we clambered off the bus in the outside lane and scuttled through the old market, a dangerous place at night though probably not too bad at that time in the morning, but you can never be sure.
It was about 4.30 when we arrived at the office, and we were seventh in the queue. As often happens at government buildings here, the first to arrive had started a list and appointed herself supervisor of the queue. We signed in and then perched our bums on the metal tube running along the kerb and settled down to wait the three and a half hours till the office opened.
A steady trickle of others turned up, mainly owners trying to get tenants out.
A large pack of street dogs wandered round the square, grazing in the rubbish, shagging and fighting amongst themselves in a desultory fashion. There are lots of wild dogs here but it is unusual to see a pack.
It begins to get light shortly after five, and as the sky lightened you could see that the square had once been charming: a fountain, lovely trees, paths and benches. But like most else here, not now: rotting rubbish strewn in the waterless fountain and all around, and the remains of the previous evening's open-air, carnal activities.
The square is where you go when you want to hire a van in this city and, as the day got lighter, several turned up and parked; we noticed that the tree under which we were waiting had a toilet seat lid nailed to the trunk used as a makeshift whiteboard to advertise one of them. It seemed symbolic.
The queue grew to about thirty strong, the late arrivals disputing that first-come-first-served was fair, but eventually settling down to wait - and later to try and muscle or charm their way to the front.
Coffee and food sellers turned up and were soon doing a brisk trade with the queue.
Time dragged, but eventually eight o'clock arrived and the doors opened; the queue surged in, surprisingly in quite an orderly fashion thanks to that first arrival who had started the list and imposed her authority.
The first ten were given a numbered token each and directed to uncomfortable plastic chairs bolted to the floor to wait for another hour and a half before they could spend a few moments at the window with the bored, supercilious agency employee who then simply made a date for them to come back the next week.
And come back next week we did, at more or less the same time but on another day, to repeat the whole queuing process. Her Ladyship then had the privilege of handing in the relevant paperwork and briefly discussing it, which took all of five minutes. They would contact the tenants, they said, and then we would hear.
After that anti-climax, and having heard first-hand several tales of owners with nowhere to live, some in tears of desperation, trying to get tenants out for years and not receiving any rent, we went on to see our optimistic friend the government lawyer at his place of work, one of the main regional government buildings.
Her Ladyship told him what we had done, and he disappeared to have a brief conversation with his boss who informed him that the tenants would be given an automatic extension of six months with no certainty that the house would ever be returned.
Not even bothering to look shame-faced about his previous advice, he explained that the law had been brought in to curb exploitative commercial landlords in the capital and that 'unfortunately' landlords whose sole property it was got caught up in that. Hardly difficult to exclude those who need their houses to live in one would have thought, but you don't criticise let alone bite the hand that feeds you here - not if you want to eat or even to stay out of gaol.
We didn't particularly have anything to celebrate, but, slightly hysterical, bought ourselves a set lunch at a charming little Italian restaurant nearby, so different to the more usual wayside food shacks. The divide between rich and poor is huge here and nowhere is that more apparent than round government buildings.
Discussion with friends and neighbours over the next few days produced the consensus that Her Ladyship had a perfect right to move into the property, not least because one bedroom with an en suite bathroom had not been included in the letting and had been used to store her furniture. Folk wisdom had it that the police would back her up and force the tenants to leave.
Because of where she works, and where I've now joined her, she has a lot of friends in the military and the intelligence service, the elite in this culture, so she also had the offer of some soldiers to help the 'transfer', but not 'till after Holy Week and she wanted to move before that, so at ten o'clock the next Monday morning we loaded a battered old pick-up with our belongings here to lurch and bump our way across the city. (Think Beverley Hillbillies and you won't be far off the mark.)
The previous evening, she had contacted the local police to inform them what she was going to do, and they told her they would assist providing she had the correct paperwork, which she did, so the first port of call was the police station where the papers were checked. They were all in order, the tenants had been given the necessary notices, and the police said they'd be along later once we were in.
The lady of the house was there when we arrived at the house, and though she looked pretty fed-up let us in with all our belongings. Her Ladyship then left me there and went round to see the police again to find out when they were coming. They fobbed her off somewhat, but she was triumphant when she came back in because she had spotted an opportunity and locked the woman out!
I wasn't sure that was a terribly good idea, but she got on the phone to three different lawyer friends who advised her that she was perfectly entitled to do that. Since, in effect, the tenants have been trying to steal the house, have lied continually, and have had over six months to find alternative accommodation, though I felt sorry for them I could see there was also a kind of rough justice in it - and we have been living in far less comfortable conditions than they are.
The husband returned and began to batter at the door violently but stopped that when Her Ladyship started to take photos and told him to get a lorry to collect his things. They contented themselves with turning off the electricity from outside so we had neither fan nor air conditioner. It was quickly sweltering.
After ten or a dozen phone calls, eventually the police said they'd be round soon. Previously they 'hadn't had a car spare'. Meanwhile, the lawyer who had drawn up the original contract but who was now working for the tenants turned up to join the party, shouting the odds through the window. The suspicion is now that she was working for the tenants all along, colluding with them in their attempts to take over the house. It was she who recommended them in the first place. Talk about conflict of interest! But that's how it is here.
Despite what they'd said, the police didn't turn up, and then very suddenly after some hours had passed, without any warning whatsoever, the glass in the small panes in the door crashed in as a concerted attack with crowbars and a makeshift battering ram started. The houses here look like prison cells, but they don't withstand that kind of assault and quite quickly they managed to batter the door off its hinges, taking a large piece of wall with it.
We couldn't see much and it was all a bit dramatic, with glass flying everywhere, but just before the door came crashing in I could see that there were four or five armed police standing in the background. They carefully avoided having anything to do with the actual forced entry, and certainly didn't announce or identify themselves before the attack started, but the moment the door came down rushed in.
I believe only in fighting battles I can win, and so settled down in an armchair just before they came in and offered no resistance. Her Ladyship, though, was understandably somewhat hysterical and was quite badly bruised as she fought against the handcuffs.
I think because I'd been cooperative, the cop who handcuffed me let me pick up my street clothes when I told him I needed my passport. Then the pair of us, still handcuffed, were carted off in an area car to another police station from the one we'd visited earlier who'd said we were acting legally and correctly and that they would help.
When we arrived, we were put in an interview room with the station commander, a decent seeming chap who would, as far as appearances go, fit right in to an English police station - apart from his well-worn Smith and Wesson in a custom holster.
But from then on, it wasn't very English. His first question to Her Ladyship was, "Do you have money? ”and he said that if we could come up with about £700 as a 'present' we would be released.
He examined my passport, and took all the details, but, surprisingly I felt after he'd fingered it lovingly, seemingly very impressed by it, let me have it back.
Procedure was lax to say the least: we weren't searched and could have had anything on us. Her Ladyship was allowed to keep her mobile and rang everybody she could think of.
Then her friend the eccentric lawyer turned up. The whole thing was a bit surreal anyway, but now it got really daft. The friend is a lovely lady in her mid-fifties, though she does have something of the air of a Peke - albeit a very attractive one. I don't know what she'd been doing, but she was wearing a very short, layered skirt and masses of jewellery and perfume.
She launched an impassioned appeal which included stroking and kissing the commander! He did seem to soften at this, but soon left the room. Realising that here was an opportunity, the moment the door closed behind him I quickly handed her my passport and money and sundry other objects I had about my person. Her Ladyship did the same and they all disappeared into a handbag the size of a cushion. Then she started to hit the phone, which, as I was to learn very well later, is what you do in such circumstances here: you ring all your contacts who might have power and influence.
When she left the room in search of the commander, a few minutes later the most thuggish of the cops waddled in on pumped, bandy legs and, after first adjusting his wedding tackle and hitching up his gun belt, as all of them seemed to do frequently, produced a huge roll of dollars and then counted them with such exaggerated meaningfulness I felt a moment's hysteria.
Getting no reaction, he left the room somewhat sulkily and then a few minutes later the real power in the station sauntered in. All the other officers were reasonably smartly uniformed; this one was wearing the most ludicrous, baggy and flappy nylon Bermuda shorts you can imagine, coupled with sneakers and a baseball shirt proclaiming his allegiance to the local team, also a baseball cap worn backwards, and, even more unforgivably, to one side.
Wise-cracking and showing off his few words of English - "Mickey Mouse, Coca-Cola, bad boy” - despite his broad smile and seeming affability, it was obvious that he was a very dangerous and corrupt individual altogether. He made a pretence of examining the paperwork before casually upping the price of the 'present' to around £1000 if we wanted to be out that night.
I subsequently learned he was the intelligence officer, and was indeed the real power at the station though he was receiving instructions from elsewhere we later discovered.
He sauntered out again and sequestered himself with our lawyer to discuss terms. She came back in shortly afterwards to announce that, since I was a foreigner and didn't speak Spanish, they'd let me out but that Her Ladyship would have to stay the night. She told us that even if we had agreed to a 'present' they would have still done that and then asked for more.
Again we waited for a while until the commander and Bermuda Shorts came back in. Bermuda Shorts made a pretence of examining the papers again and then ambled off. The commander then told us that the steroidal one had said we had threatened them with machetes and that my Spanish was actually very good so we'd both have to stay in.
We assumed that they were simply holding us to ransom, equating my nationality with money, but as was to emerge in the next forty-eight hours there was rather more to it than that.
Her Ladyship was finally searched, albeit perfunctorily, and then led off in tears. They left me alone for a while and then padlocked me in a small cell adjacent to the main hall with a good view of visitors coming in and out of an open lobby beyond with a coffee table, rustic wooden armchairs like thrones and a small concrete reception desk with a TV and blaring police radio. Over the lobby's low walls, I could see the car park and the street outside.
The cell was in darkness and it was some minutes before I realised that there was another inhabitant, dressed only in his underpants and a pair of socks, leaning despairingly on the sill of a tiny interior window, beating his head rhythmically against the bars. As my eyes adjusted, I could see the cell was about twelve feet square, of rough, broken concrete and decorated in one corner with a dozen or so plastic bottles and cups of urine together with some newspaper, other litter and bin liners containing I didn't investigate what, though the smell was fairly conclusive.
I introduced myself as best as I could to the other inmate and we shook hands with great civility - as one does. He was just about able to make me understand that he had been drunk and disorderly but knew the cops because they were all bikers and had high hopes that the pistol whipping he'd received - his ear was a mess - would be considered sufficient punishment. That turned out to be the case and soon, after neatly filling an empty litre bottle and leaving that with the others in the corner, he was released without seemingly any hard feelings on either side.
Intermittently, I could see our lawyer buttering up the cops or marching up and down the lobby, mobile phone glued to her ear, gesticulating emphatically, or intently flicking through her address book.
Then another friend who lived nearby turned up in the lobby, also with a mobile glued to her ear, and gave me a two handed thumbs up, shouting encouragement to me in her few words of English. It was certainly comforting to feel we had friends.
What was less comforting was when the lawyer came over to the cell door to tell me she was off home. I suppose I was still harbouring hopes of being out that night. Her parting remark was, “Make sure you stay near the door tonight!"
Sitting down, the smell in the cell wasn't too bad but the heat and the flies were a bit of a nuisance. My skin now produces the necessary scents to keep most local mosquitoes at bay, but not the tiny flies. They don't sting but get everywhere and are a considerable irritant.
There was an antique air conditioner making a terrible racket in one of the offices, but it didn't make any difference to the heat in the cell, and sweat was pouring off me.
At first, some of the cops enjoyed a bit of gratuitous taunting, drinking water in front of me with extravagant, simulated enjoyment without giving me any, but I didn't give them the pleasure of a reaction and they got fed up after a while. Then, tap water was proffered, but I was careful not to drink any as it contains both amoeba and coliform bacteria. There was a clean water cooler opposite the door and eventually I managed to scrounge a drink from that which was a relief.
A little bit later the tenant turned up with the turncoat lawyer - a real piece of work - looking very smug. Sitting on the floor in the dark cell, I was not very visible and could see a lot, reading the body language. It was very clear that the tenant was good friends with the cops and I'm sure that the whole situation had been stage-managed - they were laughing and congratulating one another - which was almost certainly why the first lot of police didn't turn up as promised.
It was entirely obvious that the intention was to make the most drama possible out of this incident to prove what innocent victims they were and so deserving to stay in the house, and they were very full of themselves when they left.
Then suddenly all the lights went out, apart from the yellow street lights outside that remained on: another of the frequent power cuts here.
Fortunately, the outage only lasted for about an hour because another prisoner in his underwear was slung in a bit later. He was very agitated and paced up and down with clenched fists, beating the walls and groaning. I didn't much like the look of him, and was on my guard, but he wasn't a problem; my size is a help sometimes.
His lawyer turned up and, as with the smallest thing here, there were several fulsome conversations, interspersed with languid negotiations with the cops and the inevitable multiple phone calls.
It took a couple of hours, but eventually he got what he wanted and was led away. I learned from the same lawyer I met at the court the next day that he had kidnapped and murdered two people and wanted to be with his equals, where his status would be recognised, in the central prison. (Which is, quite literally, run by the prisoners themselves, openly armed.)
Though it didn't feel like it at the time, I was very lucky not to be sent to the main prison or to the longer stay section of the gaol at the police station - that's how they do it here: there's a prison attached to the station, for quite long sentences sometimes, not just short stays, and often without a trial, public or otherwise. In there, the male prisoners are crammed in naked.
It was now quite late. A few officers wandered in and out for drinks of water from the water cooler, and I was able to cadge several cups myself.
Various characters came and went in the lobby, some of them seemingly aggrieved parties, others with supplies, probably the family or friends of long-stay prisoners.
I didn't lie down to sleep because there were a lot of cockroaches of all sizes in the cell and I didn't want them running all over me, getting goodness knows where, so for most of the night I sat cross-legged and remembered my old meditation techniques, practising gratitude - as far as I was able.
I also slung a full bottle at the crack in the opposite wall where most of the largest ones seemed to have been lurking which was probably a more effective measure!
I did have to be a bit careful not only with my emotions but also in how I presented myself. It was important not to be overly subservient, but anything that could have been seen as cocky or arrogant would not have been good, so I aimed for slightly weary, good humoured tolerance and resignation. Some were veterans, but most of the cops were in their twenties, with the swagger and confidence that comes from being routinely armed, but apart from one or two brutish ones, they didn't seem really cruel, except as children are cruel, though I judged they would home in on perceived weakness.
I think I got it right, and didn't let the side down (I'm almost certain I was the first Englishman any of them had met - I have not met anybody from an English speaking country in the four and a half months I've been here) because by morning they were treating me with some respect and I had a good humoured group clustered round the cell door to be taught some simple English words.
It's odd: I'm awful with everyday life and only really seem to work at full steam when things get 'extravagant'. I'm not trying to make myself seem more than I am, nor is it something I take any pride in - it would be a lot easier if I coped better with routine - but it's just I seem to come alive and the world moves at a more sensible pace when it's chancier than normal. Perhaps that's why I create so many problems for myself!
But I was now alone with my thoughts, and I didn't really know what was going on beyond the fact I was locked up and at the mercy of a completely corrupt and very unpredictable system. Those without money here can simply disappear.
Clearly, there were some fairly unpleasant possibilities, and the situation I was in was really not an easy one so it would have been easy to give way to despair or fear and let my imagination run wild.
I found myself wondering all sorts of things - if I would be deported with or without a period of incarceration, how gaol might be, etc, etc - but let that all go as quickly as I could as soon as I realised what I was doing. It would not have been helpful.
Fortunately, when you are in a meditative state you are, by the nature of it, very detached. Also, time loses meaning somewhat, and physical sensations fade into the background, or it would have been a very long night indeed. I did return to normal consciousness every so often, and was quite touched to see a street dog slink in and take refuge under one of the wooden thrones, his usual night-time spot by his ease of manner. The duty cop spoke to him softly and affectionately.
Eventually dawn came, and I was offered 'breakfast': either a small cup of black coffee or water, but not both! But then at seven o'clock, an hour later, our friend turned up with a bottle of coffee, a bottle of ice cold water and an 'empanada', a cornmeal pastie with a chicken filling. Very welcome!
Shortly after that our lawyer arrived, more soberly dressed now but carrying a formidable fan. She barely said hello before hitting her mobile again, gesticulating and fanning herself energetically while pacing up and down the lobby. Our other friend was also on her mobile most of the time.
Then another friend from work turned up, and she too was soon on her mobile! The three of them were flitting in and out of the lobby with the phones glued to their ears, thumbing furiously through their little black books.
The lawyer eventually explained that she was trying to get us transferred to another station with a different type of police who would not be in collusion with the tenant. It might take an hour she said because they had to send a car.
She also said that Her Ladyship had had a quiet night and was fine, and that many friends, some of them high ranking military, were making phone calls on our behalf.
She returned to the fray, and I could judge roughly how things were going by how energetically she was fanning herself. Talking with the cops, she was jabbing them with it to emphasise the points she was making.
At one point, I saw her gamely clamber onto the back of one of the cops' scrambles bikes and roar off with him. I later learned she had cleverly managed to get permission to go to the house and secure our possessions. It would have been entirely consistent for them all to disappear.
Then Her Ladyship was led out and taken away in a car, but managed to call out that I was not to worry. I later learned her friend had advised her to fake heart problems - not completely a fake we found out afterwards - in order to be taken to hospital and to exert further pressure on the cops to release us. Deaths in the station give them a lot of paperwork and they don't like that!
The lawyer next calmly told me that we were running out of time and that if we couldn't get the transfer organised in the next hour or so we would be too late and the courts would be closed so we would be in custody for another six nights until things returned to normal after Holy Week!
Fortunately, I was able to maintain my detachment, at least to some extent; I have learned that almost nothing here is as stated, reality is only rarely as described, so there was no point at all in thinking about possible outcomes.
Then another character came on the scene. She was in her mid-fifties, egg shaped, short, with sallow hamster cheeks and a ponytail, dressed in skin-tight black slacks and, despite the heat, a black police bomber jacket, looking like a biker chick but with rather a cold presence and very watchful eyes.
At first, I assumed she was a messenger of some kind as she stood patiently waiting, but she began talking to the lawyer and our other two friends, also to some of the police and Bermuda Shorts. Wise-cracking to her face, he looked thunderous when he turned away, not realising I was observing. He had a huddle with some of the cops who had come to the house, and none of them looked very happy. Neither did the tenant who turned up at this point with his lawyer and joined the discussion.
And then Her Ladyship's 'religious' sister turned up with her evangelical church minister. She is given to casting out demons at the top of her voice, one of the loudest I've heard, and I was concerned that she would start that in the police station, but fortunately she didn't, although maybe it wouldn't have made much difference because I later learned that what she did do was to tell the police that her sister was a very aggressive person and should be kept in! Not only that, but she also the night before had refused to give some necessary details to another sister with some very influential friends who could have got us out immediately, saying that we deserved everything that was happening to us.
Knowing her, I suspect her voices were telling her being in gaol would 'lead us to God'.
I also later learned that our lawyer had been rung by a number of high ranking military officers with ample power to help but she had rudely rejected all of them because her estranged husband is one of them and she is extremely bitter. In fact, informed comment later was that we'd had to stay in overnight because generally she didn't know what she was doing. I forgive her all though: her love and concern for us was so very genuine.
Out of the blue, Her Ladyship returned and was allowed to stand by the cell door and talk to me, telling me that the lady in black was the sister of our friend and actually the Police Commissar in charge of that group of stations, powerful enough not only to get us straight off to court but also to get a controlled, pre-decided result at the court. We were to be completely exonerated without any record or stains on our characters.
In view of everything else, it didn't particularly surprise me.
The only problem was that it was now getting on for one o'clock, and the deadline for being able to get to court before it closed was fast approaching, yet Bermuda Shorts was stalling by pretending they didn't have all the details from my passport which prudently our lawyer had left at home as otherwise it would have got 'lost'.
Then food arrived, courtesy of the evangelical minister, in the shape of a huge cardboard box of chicken, rice, dumplings and salad, but nothing to eat it with. My hands were none too clean but fortunately the Police Commissar's sister had some disinfectant in her handbag with which I was able to wipe them.
That they then unlocked the old padlock securing the cell door and let me use the interview room to eat, I took as a good sign and, sure enough, I was shortly given the news that the police car would be taking us to court very soon and that they were now completing the paperwork - an immense bundle, as you might imagine.
What had finally swung things, apparently, apart from three different generals having rung, and sundry others, was a phone call from the state Governor himself! What it is, and how necessary here, to have friends, particularly as we later learned that the tenant was being helped by somebody very highly placed in the 'Justice' Ministry able to tell the police, via the intelligence service, what to do. No wonder they'd all looked so smug and seemed so confident the night before!
Bermuda Shorts did make a big act of not being able to use a stapler, which wasted twenty minutes or so, but soon we were in the back of a squad car bumping our way to the 'Palace of Justice' to the accompaniment of loud salsa erotica to which the police driver was beating time on the steering wheel.
Before we left, bizarre as it sounds, we hugged the male officers and kissed the cheeks of the female officers. That's what you do here: smiles and not entirely insincere affection all round!
Her Ladyship and I caught up on the way. I was somewhat chagrined to discover that, by comparison with my conditions, she'd been in a five-star hotel. She'd had a bed with a clean coverlet, had been given food and juice and a very friendly, comforting welcome by both the other inmates and the police officer acting as warder.
She even had a bucket!
She was in a locked cell with three other women, but there were other cells that were open, holding, among others, a number of women police officers, some of whom had been there for over a year, locked up on the basis of 'evidence' planted by other officers - believably so. Without enough money to buy their way out, they had no idea when they might be released and were treated, in return for essential favours, like the private harem of the male officers.
When we arrived at the court, the staff were very friendly, clearly primed. We were separated, and they showed me the main holding area, one huge cell with men crammed shoulder to shoulder in their underpants, but I was allowed to sit alone in the staff cloakroom with a very welcome air conditioner. It was an hour or so's wait, but I managed to doze.
I was reunited with Her Ladyship and led up into the 'court', a small private room with no public present. Our lawyer joined us, someone who stumbling read out the details of the case, clearly with no previous sight of them, and, on the desk in front, the judge and a young female police officer in the court police service who seemed to function as a clerk. There were also two other officials of some kind who didn't say anything at all and whose function I never did discover. Apart from the police officer who was in uniform, everybody was casually dressed.
The hearing was perfunctory to say the least, mainly checking our identities. As predicted, we were exonerated completely, issued documents stating that, and costs were awarded against the tenants for the door.
A quarter of an hour later, we were sitting in MacDonald's with our lawyer and our other friend eating, prosaically, Big Macs.
It was then that I learned the extent of the support we'd had, and because the tenants' 'friend' (their in-law) was so highly placed in the ministry and able to instruct the intelligence officer, just how necessary that support was. Without it, we'd probably still be incarcerated now.
And that's how things work here: 'justice' depends both on who you know and how much money you have. In many areas, particularly that of property and housing, nobody really knows what the law is; effectively, it doesn't exist.
The police are totally and routinely corrupt and are often in collusion with many of the worst criminals. Sometimes, people have to sell their houses to get out of their clutches.
A very welcome shower awaited us when we returned home. Also, a dose of Ampicillin seemed a wise precaution - antibiotics are cheaply available here over the counter.
The next day we were able to go back to the house and collect our belongings, though we first had to call in at the police station to get an escort.
That took ages. People here are scared to act, not surprisingly given the things that are happening under the surface, and I suspect that cops in particular are very careful indeed only to walk well-trodden paths and to wait for orders from people who will watch their backs. They also knew now that we had powerful friends.
We had time to talk to some of the officers from the night before. One of them, in his mid to late thirties, was a very affable and seemingly intelligent character who'd been quite kindly to me. He was in charge of the women's section of the prison.
He talked openly, and said in a very matter-of-fact way that the reason the police are so corrupt is simply that they are very badly paid. After fifteen years in the job, he gets about £350 a month (at black market exchange rates, the 'real' value of the Bolivar) and this in a culture where some things, particularly food, are as or more expensive than in England - though others, admittedly, are much cheaper. So, to survive they have to supplement their income. He has four children, one of them at university.
He also informed us that it was routine to have to pay about £3000 not to be sent to work in the central prison where a police officer's life expectancy is very short.
After about four hours, we managed to coordinate the escort and a truck - the most ancient American Ford flat-bed you can imagine, literally held together with wire and string - and went round to pick up our stuff. The tenants weren't happy, but let us in and it was not long before we were back at Her Ladyship's mother's where we have been staying, though I was surprised the truck made the journey across town.
The latest twist is that a couple of days ago, the tenants did indeed appear to move out - two vans moved their stuff - but moved a pregnant girl in!
The problem now is that where tenants have huge assumed rights to your property, it's quadrupled for pregnant women - in lieu of welfare provision, I suppose.
We've been over to the cop-shop two days running where they now express indignation at how we were treated. Partly, it's a bit, "We was only following orders, Guv," because of our connections but also I think that, while the party line is stunt socialism, for ordinary people, and probably cops more, it goes completely against the grain that things should be this distorted. Despite, or perhaps because of, their corrupt cupidity they still have a strong, instinctive respect (of a kind) for private property.
Yesterday, the Commissar joined us at the station with another police officer who is also a lawyer, the one who finally manipulated our release and the pre-determined court result so smoothly. The Commissar doesn't want any money for what she's done - just an astrological chart and some tutoring for her son - but this officer does. She is, however, extremely confident she can get the girl out quickly. (We think she's the girlfriend of the tenants' son.)
This is obviously a final, vindictive act by the tenants, almost certainly enthusiastically supported or even initiated by the lawyer who drew up the original contract and who seems to have such a massive grudge against her ladyship, despite at one time having been quite a close friend.
We suspect that the tenants are being advised by her that in this way they can retain effective ownership of the property. We're being told that, because of the support we have it won't work and that soon she will be disbarred for at least a year, if not criminally charged. She will also be forced to pay damages.
Who knows here!
The problem is also now we're not at all sure we can stay in the house, assuming we are successful in getting it back. There's already been a veiled text message threat from one of the tenants' friends - something you take seriously here - and it could be a difficult position with the local cops if we move back there, despite it being hugs and kisses now (sic) when we visit the station. It's hard to tell.
So what will happen is anybody's guess.
I'm not sure what lessons I've learned from the experience. None of it has been particularly a surprise; it's just how things are here: there's little effective law and you have to fight your own battles with the all-important support of family and friends, while 'justice' is something you buy.
Where this culture is going, I don't know, with people living in fear of armed robbers, the police and the authorities, all too aware of how things are but unable usually to do anything but look after their own interests and certainly not to say anything publicly.
There seems to be an ever increasing desire for change but it's hard to know how that will develop or what will be achieved, not least because the current system suits very well those most able to change it.
But what I do know is this: the protective customs and constitutional safeguards we have in England, built up through the centuries for over twelve hundred years, are strong and effective. I know what it is like to live without them, and we should not lightly be allowing them to be given away in exchange for something inferior.
"To none will we sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay, right or justice."
Magna Carta
June 15th 1215
