The first thing I noticed about my cell was the stench. It
smelled like someone shit in a pan, then pissed in that pan, then
cooked that pan on a hot stove. I gagged as the jailer slammed the
solid steel door and slid the bolt into place. “Un momento!” I
cried out. “Donde esta la luz?” He laughed lightly. “No
hay.” Then he was gone.
I found a lighter in my pocket (their search was less than thorough)
and examined my cell. I was standing in a quarter-inch of water
overflowing from a hole in the corner. That hole wa supposed to be the
toilet.
The cell was the size of a standard office cubicle and designed to
hold four prisoners, with four concrete slabs protruding from the
walls. Rats, big motherfuckers, started to squeeze under the door to
investigate. I climbed onto one of the high bunks, away from the rats
and the fetid water, praying that there wouldn’t be any more surprises.
There was a small window near the bunk, but no moon.
Never had I imagined that I was going to end up in a third-world
jail. I’d never even been to a first-world jail, and this isn’t the
kind of thing a person should plunge into headfirst. You should be able
to warm up to it—maybe with a disorderly conduct charge and a
night in the drunk tank back in Seattle for practice. But I was a
science geek. My time in a research laboratory, staring at bacteria all
day, did nothing to prepare me for the squalor of a Central American
prison.
The story began six months earlier, on April 12, 2007. That morning,
I received a phone call from the University of Washington saying that I
had been awarded a prestigious travel fellowship. They’d pay me to
travel for eight months, by myself, in two different regions of the
world. The farthest I had ever traveled before was a quick jaunt over
the Mexican border for cheap tequila. My friends were jealous.
Three months later, I flew to Cancún and boarded a bus headed
for Guatemala. The first few days were filled with apprehension and
horror. I had no fucking clue what I was doing. For example: I paid an
“exit tax” to a border official when I left Mexico, only to be informed
by a fellow traveler some days later that Mexico doesn’t have an exit
tax—which made sense, since I had watched the border guard tuck
my 200 pesos ($20) into his overstuffed wallet.
I learned as I went, riding buses through Guatemala and hitchhiking
across Honduras, studying Spanish and climbing mountains. I whiled away
long days lounging in hammocks, reading books about Central American
political history. I basked in the sun on white sand beaches, smoked
joints, and went diving in the warm waters of the Caribbean.
Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the western hemisphere,
an ideal place to study Spanish if you’re trying to stretch your money
as far as it will go. I arrived in Granada anxious to start a new round
of Spanish classes. The locals seemed proud of their city: Granada
represents a modern Nicaragua, where $200-a-night hotels, Irish pubs,
and high-end tourists line the ancient stone streets. To me, Granada
represented just another tourist attraction. This was not what I
expected.
The euphoric cloud I had been riding on during my first two months
was evaporating; I was beginning to feel homesick. I spent a melancholy
week, halfheartedly studying Spanish, anxiously waiting to finish my
classes so I could get out of the city. I was desperate to recapture a
bit of the adventure that had fueled my first two months on the
road.
I was about to get more of it than I wanted.
On the morning of my arrest, I woke up in a funk. When I
arrived at school, my Spanish teacher, Omar, asked me if I wanted him
to buy some pot for us to smoke that night. I have been a more than
casual smoker since I was 14, and decided before the trip even started
that (despite the penalties) I wasn’t going to quit smoking. I
enthusiastically handed over 100 cordobas (about five dollars) and
agreed to meet him in Parque Central later that night.
We met as planned and started walking down Granada’s cobbled streets
toward my hostel. As we walked, Omar pulled a small plastic baggie
containing about two grams of pot from his pocket and handed it to me
for inspection. I glanced at the bag and slipped it into my pocket as
we continued on.
I was in a better mood than I had been for days when a voice yelled
“parese!” (“stop!”). I turned and saw an obese cop precariously
perched on the handlebars of a bicycle, peddled by an old Nicaraguan
man struggling to keep the bike upright. Awkwardly dismounting from the
handlebars, the cop rushed over to us. Omar said “fuck” (in English),
and we were up against the wall.
After searching Omar, the cop turned to me. He quickly found the bag
and said: “You are in big trouble.” This must have been one of the only
English phrases he knew because he kept repeating it over and over
again. That and “take it easy” any time I tried to speak to him.
The gentleman on the bicycle had ridden past us a few minutes
before. I remembered him staring, but I didn’t think anything of it at
the time. He had probably seen Omar hand me the bag and, thinking he
might extract some money from the situation, found the first policeman
he could. I offered to pay a “fine.” The fat cop refused. I offered
again. He refused again, handcuffed me, and took me to jail.
We stopped at my hostel on the way so I could retrieve my
belongings. At the jail, I was ordered to remove all my valuables from
my bag so they could be entered into the evidence log. I had been
planning on leaving the next day for the east coast of Nicaragua and
had gone to an ATM to take out the cash I would need for two weeks. I
had over $900. Throw in an iPod, a camera, and a watch and there was
well over $1,200 in cash and electronics sitting on the counter. It is
profoundly uncomfortable to watch someone count out your traveling
money, probably over half his annual salary, knowing that he thinks you
are a stupid, ignorant, rich American who is about to get exactly what
he deserves—which you kind of are.
I lay on my concrete slab for hours, questions racing through
my head: When am I going to be released? Will I be able to call my
embassy? How long before my parents or my girlfriend start to worry?
How long can they keep me here? I finally willed myself into a
fitful sleep. I awoke frequently, once completely confused about where
I was. When I remembered, I curled up on my concrete pad and cried.
Around midmorning, a female jailer came on duty. She taunted me in
Spanish and laughed when I tried to ask questions. She instructed the
prisoner in charge of handing out food to give me none and refused to
let me use another cell to go to the bathroom.
That afternoon, I was moved into a clean(er) cell with two other
prisoners who were very kind to me. When I told them that I had not
been given any food, they produced a couple of small bananas and a cup
of instant milk. We spent the afternoon trying to chat. During our
halting conversation, I learned that one had tried to kill his wife in
a drunken rage and the other was an accomplice in the murder of an
American woman during a botched robbery three months earlier.
I didn’t really formulate my escape plan—I just started it and
realized I would have to keep going no matter what. I began clutching
my chest and complaining about the size of the room, then pacing
quickly and working myself into a panic. I told my cellmates that I
needed
medicine for my heart and asked them to call the jailer.
She looked in on us, slammed the door shut, and began walking away when
my cellmates came to my rescue. They shouted at her to come back, and
soon prisoners in other cells began shouting, too. Five minutes later,
she returned with her boss who
escorted me down to an office. He
screamed furiously at me while I stood, feigning chest pain and asking
to see a doctor. Luckily, they did not want to take the chance that
some American kid might actually keel over and die in their jail. Can
you imagine the paperwork associated with that sort of fuckup?
Two hours later, my angel arrived. Inspector Amaru was one cool guy.
He was like the detective you see on TV who drives a car that is way
out of his pay grade, sleeps with gorgeous female officers, and busts
the really bad motherfuckers without breaking a sweat. He also spoke
fluent English. He led me to the cafeteria and offered me a cigarette
and a plate of gallo pinto. After I wolfed down my meal and
sucked my cigarette down to its filter, he explained that he was going
to take a statement. If he believed me, he would try to help me. If he
thought I was lying, that was the end of our time together. Obviously,
I spilled my guts.
As he had promised, Amaru went out of his way to help me. He called
the police commissioner at home and convinced him to let me out due to
my “medical condition.” I was released—my passport and belongings
were not—and instructed to return Monday morning, at which time I
would sign a formal statement and meet with the commissioner.
On Monday morning, I went to the police station filled with nervous
anticipation. I spent the first hour giving a formal statement, with
Amaru translating and an officer taking dictation on a decrepit
typewriter that looked like it had seen action in the Nicaraguan
Revolution. Then I was led into the commissioner’s office. Again, Amaru
translated as the commissioner said he could not waive the charges
against me because they were drug related. “If you had robbed someone
or beaten someone up this would not be a problem, but this is out of my
hands,” he said. “There needs to be a trial.” I felt as though I had
been punched in the stomach. Leaving the police station, Amaru calmed
me down and told me a friend of his was a good lawyer and that we would
see her immediately.
I had expected an office building, but we pulled up in front of a
bar. My lawyer was drinking a beer and chatting with some friends. She
came over and talked quickly with Amaru, but not with me. I started
freaking out again. “Don’t worry,” Amaru assured me casually. “We’ll
meet her at the courthouse tomorrow morning and we’ll see the judge
then. You want some lunch?”
On Tuesday morning, Amaru picked me up and I rode to court on the
back of his motorbike in a complete downpour. We were soaking wet and
dripped on the floor throughout the pretrial hearing. A trial date was
set for that Friday and I was released on my own recognizance, meaning
I could get my passport and belongings. I paid my lawyer via Amaru and
he drove me back to my hostel. When we arrived, he handed me my
passport and said solemnly: “I would be out of the country by Friday if
I was you.”
We shook hands and I just stood there repeating “gracias“
over and over until he pried his hand away. He gave me a small grin and
hopped on his bike, never asking for anything in return for all the
help he had given me.
The following morning, I slipped out of my hostel before dawn and
boarded a southbound bus. Three hours and three buses later, I was at
the Costa Rica border. Somehow, I managed to walk through immigration
without freaking out.
I hitchhiked south. By nightfall, I had arrived on the Pacific coast
in a small surf town called Samara Beach. After checking into a
guesthouse, I took a long walk, basking in the fading sunlight and
enjoying the fresh coastal air. I passed a young Costa Rican surfer
sitting on the beach lighting a joint. “Quiere unos?” (“Want
some?”) he asked politely. “Hay policía aquí?” I
asked, smiling slightly.
“Soy un policía!” he laughed. He handed me the joint.
We sat chatting amicably and leaned back on the sand, watching the sun
set over the Pacific Ocean. It felt good to be free. 
Not credible.