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Status Anxiety

Toby Young

Wednesday, 23rd July 2008

Should I have forced myself to accept a diseased prisoner’s licked spoon?

Like most Englishman, how well mannered I am depends upon the social status of the person I am interacting with. If he is below me in the pecking order, I am unfailingly polite, bending over backwards to reassure him that I do not think of him as my inferior. If he is above me, by contrast, I am insolent and contemptuous, doing whatever I can to convey that I do not consider him my superior.

This code has served me pretty well over the years, but it was tested to breaking point on a recent visit to Westville Prison, one of the most infamous jails in South Africa. I was making a documentary for a forthcoming television series in which eight different ‘personalities’ experience life behind bars in eight of the world’s toughest prisons and I had drawn the short straw. Originally built to house just 5,000 prisoners, Westville is currently home to over 12,000 of them. Officially, the rate of HIV infection in Westville is 33 per cent, but unofficially it is closer to 60. Gangsterism is rife and violent assaults are routine. On my last day, for instance, a prisoner standing a few feet away from me was stabbed in the head.

I suppose I should have been concerned for my safety but, being English, my main preoccupation during the week I spent in Westville was not committing a faux pas. For instance, is it infra dig to ask someone to tell you about himself if you know that his main distinction is having raped an 80-year-old woman? If an attractive young woman invites you to accompany her on an overseas adventure, is it impolite to point out that she is serving 115 years for four murders and one attempted murder? And if a ranking captain in the 28s, a notorious prison gang that specialises in sodomy, refuses to relinquish your hand after you have just been introduced, should you pull it away or allow him to caress it indefinitely?

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Fergus Pickering

July 25th, 2008 10:32am

Don't be ridiculous. You're a hack, not a saint.

Victoria

July 25th, 2008 11:11am

Toby, You did the right thing. If you felt you had hurt the boy's feelings (not as important a consideration as exposing yourself to not only potentially resistant strains of TB but perhaps many other pathogens), you could have used the opportunity to explain to him about contagion and contamination. I am sure if he understood he would not have wanted to expose you to danger. And if he didn't care about that, you still would be dong the right thing.

Timothy Weller

July 25th, 2008 2:35pm

I am an Australian journalist now working in PR here in London, however my roots are from outback Queensland Australia in a mining community mainly derived from Aboriginals. Many a time I had to "keep a stiff upper lip" and accept the spoon while in a less than appealing hygienic situation socialising within an Aboriginal culture in creek beds or whatnot, but I think this lad actually having TB is a step too far! Don't feel ashamed.

Val Manchee

July 25th, 2008 3:13pm

I wouldn't have used a dirty spoon if the Queen herself had handed it to me - there are limits with regard to demeaning yourself for someone else's benefit. Ans so what if his feelings were hurt? Did he care about his victims when he committed his crime?

Kevin Dunn

July 25th, 2008 4:02pm

Only in modern Britain would a person be ashamed of their own good sense and of not having done something both totally stupid and, in the last analysis, totally selfish.

Douglas Wagner

July 25th, 2008 4:12pm

The choice you describe is a false dichotomy. Your lie revealed your self-centeredness to the boy. In my experience most young people are far brighter than some of us give them credit for. I expect he was teasing (or perhaps, testing) you.
Knowing his condition, I expect he would have understood if you had thanked him for the spoon, and then explain you prefer not to use it because of his TB.

Stephen Chiaroni

July 26th, 2008 1:48am

Great story! While trekking in Nepal in the 1980's a friend and myself stayed a night with a family in a village. "Dinner" comprised rice, a hard-boiled egg and tea. We watched horrified as the father, with filthy fingers, peeled the shells from the eggs, then graciously handed one to each diner. Hepatitis was rife. My friend and I both just wordlessly left our egg uneaten. It was a meagre meal, our hosts were probably offended, but our livers survived.

James

July 28th, 2008 5:50am

Pull yourself together, man.

Global Warning

Theodore Dalrymple

The other day, the 9.56 bus to the nearest train station was late and the people at the stop — of whom I was by far the youngest — began to grumble a little. Then, looming out of the mist, appeared the driver.

Ancient & Modern

Peter Jones

Barack Obama has risen to power on the back of an enviable oratorical ability. But it is a two-edged sword. Ancient Greeks, who had a word for it (rhetoric) and were the first people to analyse and describe its rules, were both captivated by and fearful of it. One thinker, Gorgias, likened it to magic for its ability to charm you into unexpected courses of action.