Hello out there. This is my little patch of OurPatch; and that patch is cell 182 at the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre, Silverwater, NSW, Australia.

It has been raining this week. Rain gives a sense of freshness to prison. The dampness. The smell. The sound. Your senses become acutely aware of sounds and smells in prison – they make attributes that somehow diminish in the world outside the walls.

I watched some birds fighting over bread scraps in the exercise yard. There were all kinds, a dozen in all, starlings, sparrows and even a few ibises or coat hangers (because of their shaped beaks). They were under the awning out of the rain. I watched their feeding squabbles through my cell window. Then a large black crow flew in, his presence created a flurry of indecision and he took what he wanted. The feeding squabbles and the crows arrival is a bit like prison life, survival of the fittest.

My new cell-mate, Bango, is a Nigerian who emigrated to the United States and made a living driving limousines in Austin, Texas, while saving to bring his wife and kids from Nigeria to the big US of A.

Bango is a simple man, friendly and respectful and deeply religious. Each night and morning he prays to his god and the other day he stuck a cardboard sign on the door: “Glory be to God for all his help and mercy in the time of trouble and may all mighty God bless this room in Jesus Name, Amen”.

The sign was crudely written in biro and at first I was inclined to pull it down. I am not a religious man although I was brought up in the Catholic faith. Hypocrisy and repeated scandals turned me off religion, but I like to believe I’m tolerant of others who practice their beliefs. If the sign brought Bango a sense of comfort, who the hell am I to take that from him?

The sign stayed on his door, and Bango told me about his life in Austin, Texas. His eyes glistened with the memories as he told me what put him in jail. In the pursuit of money to bring his wife and kids to America, Bango’s simplistic hopes and dreams became a target for a couple of mercenary entrepreneurs who offered him a job in Australia working in a computer company with an all expense paid air-fare and an annual five-digit salary.

Too good to be true? You betcha, and sympathy is a rare commodity in prison, you will find it in a dictionary in the prison library nestled somewhere between shit and syphilis, but that’s the only place.

The day Bango told me his story was the first time I came close to feeling a semblance or a twinge of sympathy for another human being in this place. Bango’s mentors flew him to LA where they put him up in a hotel and arranged his flight. They even bought him traveling luggage (shades of Schapelle Corby) but Bango’s innocence and naivety failed to detect any warning signs.

He boarded his flight with instructions that he would be met at Mascot Airport. On his arrival at Mascot, Australian Customs detected three ounces of cocaine stitched into his luggage. Bango fainted. He was taken to hospital and charged with drug importation and he finally ended up here, alone in a strange country, a simplistic pawn in an importation scam.

He will probably do 10-15 years, but I didn’t have the heart to tell Bango that. If a crudely-printed cardboard sign on a cell door can give him some sort of hope, who am I to take that away? And the people who were going to meet Bango at Mascot to take him to his mythical job in Australia? Yeah, you guessed it, they were a no-show, and Bango was left holding the baby.