That's How It Happened

“Shopping,” Batam argot for the lowest level of piracy, is roughly equivalent to robbing a liquor store. Even the smallest cargo ships and tankers carry sizable amounts of cash, used to buy supplies in port and to pay the crew. Often these ships are older and have less security than newer, larger ships. Sometimes, Jhonny says, the captains are running their own scams, conserving fuel by going slow, then selling the excess to passing ships and pocketing the cash. He explained that shopping trips are carried out by teams of “jumping squirrels,” pirates who use wooden boats called pancungs, rigged with powerful engines, to stalk the ships at night and climb up the sides and rob the crew. I tell him I would like to meet a jumping squirrel. “It’s possible,” he said, and dialed a number.

Plumbing is non-existent. There’s never enough food, and the best time to shower is when it rains. It sounds like the perfect example of the worst prison on earth, but it’s actually not so terrible. Because there are no guards—really—the prisoners have to organize things for themselves. They do this along cellblock lines. Although the doors to the cells are never closed, the prisoners operate under the rubric of 13 cellblocks, or brigades, with between 100 and 200 members to each 100-square-meter “home cell.” Every cellblock elects its own bosyo, or mayor, whose job is to keep the peace and solve problems for the prisoners. He gets medicine for the sick, helps fill out paperwork, and organizes ritual beatings for prisoners who get out of line. The beatings are not too brutal, though, because any prisoner can just go join another cellblock if he feels hard done by.