Jump-- Jump On!!

Jump, Jump-On and bounce on our new luxury mattresses! It is unbelievable that we have a brand new 10" box spring mattress. This has been a magnanimous event.

Last week, Friday the 21st we got new mattresses, "not prison mattresses", real mattresses. How did this happen?, I really do not know. The first night that I slept on my new mattress, I woke-up in the middle of the night and I thought I was dreaming. I dreamt I was on my 7 day furlough already and I was looking for my sons. Then I realized that I was still in prison, sleeping on my comfortable new 10" box spring mattress. After sleeping more than 10 years on a 2" springless, nasty, raggedy old mattress, I am sure you can relate to what I am feeling. When we were told that the prison was going to buy mattresses for all of us; I said:"yeah, yeah, lies and more lies, that's never going to happen". I must admit I was wrong-- completely wrong. I am still in shock, but enjoying my new mattress before someone on top takes them away again.

A few months ago we had an ACA inspection. The American Correctional Association (ACA) is an organization that inspects prisons and enforces prison regulations. In their last inspection they ordered us to remove the polyfill that we had placed on our 2" mattresses. It was what we relied on for cushion and comfort. The majority of my fellow prisoners bought bags of poly fill from the commissary to make the mattresses thicker. The poly fill that they sold in commissary is for hobby craft purposes (to stuff our crochet animals), but we were authorized to use it on our very thin mattresses. Some of us spent more than $20 on poly fill. Suddenly ACA said we could not have it because poly fill is a fire hazard and was highly flammable. We were ordered to throw away our poly fill. We saw our dollars and the little bit of comfort we had over flowing in the trash cans and dumpsters. We were all upset, cranky and sleepless. Our metal bunk bed has 3 metal support bars for the metal spring that we could feel sleeping on those 2" mattresses. There were days when I got-up that I was feeling like those support bars were beating my kidneys all night. Like me, my fellow prisoners were in the same predicament, especially the elderly and the sick.

The mattress change came along with a lot of other changes that are happening inside our prisons systems. There are so many changes that I can hardly keep up with then. Of course all the changes are for the worse-- we are getting overcrowded, the food is less and worse everyday, there is less staff to process paper work and to enforce the rules, more inmates fighting, much more noise and the mattresses came like an Oasis in the desert. I was so excited that day that I volunteered myself to work to take the old mattresses out and bring in the new ones. We came together in line-ups with each other down the hall, military style, and passed down the old mattresses and the new ones. A total of 256 mattresses per unit were moved. We did the work in our Unit in less than a hour. We worked as a team for a good cause: "to sleep better". It please me to see how we get together and work as a team. The little child inside of me still loves to jump on beds, but with a 2" mattress on 3 metal support bars, it was not a good place to bounce, however with my new 10" box-spring mattress, the child inside came out again after 10 years and I am bouncing away. I just hope that my fellow prisoners do not get too comfortable in prison, because this is not our place and NEVER WILL BE.

I love you all.
Yraida L. Guanipa (Leo).

Feel free to share this e-mail or write to me at:
Yraida L. Guanipa # 44865-004
F.C.C. Coleman-Camp
P.O. Box 1027
Coleman, Florida 33521-1027