We were joined in building 6 by a new British lad this month. Scott, a 30 year old from
Scott was first remanded to Sragaew Prison on
BARBECUE THAI STYLE
During the many months that would eventually see me winding up here in Bangkwang, I spent 6 months in the Provincial Prison in Rayong. This would turn out to be an experience in more ways than one. As in all Thai prisons, everybody is expected to work. Rayong Prison was made up of Thai, Khmer and Burmese prisoners, OH! And one ‘Farrang’ (foreigner) me!. I quickly found a way out of having to work in one of the many sweatshops. I joined the boxing team.
The boxing team was expected to train for two hours each morning, five days a week with the weekends off. I was well chuffed, two hours of bag work, a little jogging and basically keeping myself fit, then the rest of the day was mine to do as I pleased. Not bad at all.
Following the daily training sessions, the fifteen of us lads in the boxing team were left with very little to do. There was a distinct lack of entertainment and most of the team would spend the reminder of the day sleeping or waiting for a visit. Not a great deal of excitement. Then about three weeks into my stay at Rayong, after a hard mornings training I noticed a certain amount of excitement building amongst the rest of the team. My team mates started to run around looking for blunt objects and were coming back with sticks, truncheons, bamboo, brooms and even a shovel. I had a truncheon thrust into my hand by one of my team mates.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We are having barbeque Scott!” Came the reply.
The first thought to cross my mind was that someone was taking the piss, yet another joke at the expense of the ‘Farang’, but then it was explained to me that about once a month the boxing team would go ‘Ratting’. At first I assumed that this exercise was carried out in order to keep the level of rodents in the building to a minimum but my team mates kept saying” Barbeque, Barbeque” over and over to me?
We went into the yard where there is some small areas of grass and shrubs and the search for nests of rats began. A nest was discovered and one man started digging with a shovel. A second started poking a stick down the mouth of the hole while a third was trying to smoke the rats out with a small fire. I had never seen anything like it.
Finally, a rat shot out of the hole. Screams of delight went up as this poor rat ran here and there while fifteen fully grown men attempted to bludgeon it with their clubs and home made weapons. Feet stamped down as the rat dodged, sprinted and scrambled in a panicky attempt to avoid its own inevitable death. It was finally cornered and I guess it knew what was coming. The poor bastard looked thoroughly beaten and defeated. It reminded me of a bunch of Mill wall fans getting their hands on a West Ham supporter, it had no chance!
The same method was employed repeatedly over the next hour and in all seven rats were rounded up in this fashion, caveman style. One rats nest was uncovered and within the nest were about five pink babies huddled together, their mother having already been beaten to death.
I am no big fan of rats but I could not stomach the idea of these little fellows’s being clubbed to death in the same way as their older relatives. I immediately jumped over the nest to stop the wholesale murder of these wee little rats.
“You can’t kill them, they’re only babies!” I told them.
“Scott go crazy, better give him babies” came the reply.
“If you leave them a month or two they’ll get bigger” I reasoned I think my suggestion slowly sunk in and they went off in search of bigger targets. I was quite pleased, in jail there are very few good deeds a man can achieve. I had found one by saving five baby rats from being killed.
The Thais were insistent that I should kill a rat of my own so on the next hole I was given the best position strategically in the ‘strike zone’ right outside the mouth of the hole.
After a few minutes of prodding and poking a large male rat appeared. Approximately 58 to 60 cm. long, it came tearing out of the hole like ‘ a bat out of hell’. Did I swing? Did I what! I swung and missed and a few laughs came from the rest of the guys but they kept it in the general vicinity with the brooms. I chased the big bugger, swinging at it five or six times, missing each time. I finally got in a lucky shot and twatted him on the head but not quite with enough force to kill it. It lay there stunned and twitching.
“Kill it Scott, kill it!” the Thais were screaming at me. I struggled with myself inside. I saw that it was in pain and suffered but I just couldn’t bring myself to issue the ‘coup de gras’. I looked into its beady little eyes and saw its agony. I struck the little guy twice as hard as I could. Finally, he was dead.
My team mates started to clap, the’Farrang’ had bagged his first rat!
Instantly there was a huge roar of cheers and whoops of utter delight to be heard from the sweatshops. The prisoners working there had been watching and waiting for me. The only foreigner, to make my first kill. I kid you not, the cheers and noise were as though I had scored the match deciding goal against
I would like to emphasize the fact that I honestly believed that the whole ‘barbeque’ thing was a sick ‘wind up’ and that the whole event had been an exercise in pest control. How mistaken was I!
After a hard days rat catching I went and put my head down for a sleep. I slept for about an hour only to wake up alone. Where was everybody? I went looking and found them in the shower area, dipping the rat carcasses into pots of boiling water then plucking the fur from their bodies. It was then that it finally hit home that these rats were being prepared to be barbecued.
I had to walk away, the thought of eating rat just did not agree with me, not in the slightest. I began to tell them all that they were mad to be even thinking about eating rat.
“Delicious, you should eat. Delicious”, they all told me.
Once the fur had been removed and the animals had been gutted and semi-butchered they were hung out on the razor wire fences for two days to dry in the sun and mature before ‘barbecue day’.
The method of cooking rat is simple. Even blind Freddy could do it.
The rat is seasoned with salt, pepper and chilly. Then thrown onto the hot charcoal to cook for a few minutes. It’s then removed and placed on a plate in the center of the table as the main meat dish in the day’s meal. ‘Bobs your auntie’, off the boys went, tucking into the barbecued rodents. I was offered some. It got to my lips but it wouldn’t go past them. My brain was screaming “this is fucking rat!” and I couldn’t eat it.
I asked a few of the Thais why they would even consider eating vermin, their answers were simple and a little sad.
“Many of us do not have family Scott. We have no money. We eat the rat because it is meat. It keeps us alive and we enjoy eating it. If you had no money Scott, we think you would enjoy eating rat too….”
So next time you are all enjoying your lovely summer barbecue spare a thought for some of the poor bastards in this world who have to eat rat instead of prime beef or sausages.
By Scott Hurford 2006
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