The Value of a Pen

First of all I would like to fill you in on a bit of the back-ground to this story.

A friend of mine works for a charity Criminon, which does rehabilitation services for inmates. Recently they started a project with inmates in Rwanda. Rwanda has a prison population of over 100.000 inmates, most of whom have never even been sentenced or are still awaiting trail.

To understand this one has to know that a genocide occurred in Rwanda in 1994, similar to what is happening now in Darfur, over 800.000 people were killed in the space of just 100 days. That amounts to wiping out a small town with 8000 inhabitants every day. After peace was restored the search for the guilty began, over 100.000 people were rounded up and put in jail. That was in 1994, today almost 15 years later, more than half have not been given a trail or sentenced yet. Obviously some are guilty of horrible acts, and similarly some are not. But as been demonstrated by history, and our most recent ongoing tragedy in Darfur, populations are prone to "witch hunts" when driven by propaganda and we must look at the root of the problem in order to arrive at a solution.

This is what Criminon Rwanda is now doing, through the use of courses, classes and lectures to inmates. Criminon Rwanda is reaching out to restore values amongst those to whom all hope had been lost. You can see an example of the results here through a letter left by a graduate of the Criminon Program
in Rwanda.

Now in view of the above introduction I wanted to share the following story about the priceless value of a pen and some paper to write on....

Prior to visiting the different prisons upon our arrival in September 2008, we called the prison officials to organize briefings with the inmates.
We were a bit puzzled, each time, to find out there was some insistence about bringing 'a pen and a note book' for each student.

The pen was indeed needed for writing answers on the answering sheets of the correspondence course. But why the note book, since the correspondence course provided enough space between the questions to write down the answer?

I found out later from one of the prisoners what the note book was all about....

"You see, if we take good care of the pen and we don't use it up while doing the course, and if we write in very small letters when answering the questions so we don't need more space than provided in the answering sheet, then we will end up owning a note book, wouldn't we? And that is a very good thing to have when you are prison! You know, I am rich if I have something I can use as a diary or when I have paper to write a letter to my wife, kids or family members."