In the final session of Writers Fortnite, Mr Suarez recounted the story of 2 jail inmates he had met while teaching in Argentinian max security prisons. Their names were Gaby and German. They were popular criminals and brought a lot of people to Mr Suarezs class, but eventually, the two became friends with Mr Suarez and impacted his life majorly. He was a major criminal, therefore brought a lot of attention to Mr Suarez’s class.
The story begins on a school trip when Mr Martin visited a prison. He had the chance to visit a class going on at the prison, and the amount of love and respect the inmates had for the teacher. He knew at that moment, he wanted to be a teacher at these prisons, and felt like he was obliged to do something for these poor people.
While teaching, Mr Suarez encountered the above mentioned Gaby and German. Gaby had been imprisoned for stealing drugs and money from other criminal gangs, while dressed as the police. He had grown up on the streets, abandoned by his abusive father and helpless mother, and had gotten into criminal activity as he wasn’t educated about anything else. German was imprisoned because he killed his wife and a military officer while walking in on them having an affair.
These two inmates met Mr Suarez in a prison class and used the opportunity well. Gaby wrote many stories about his life and tried to get into law school. He used provisions from Mr Suarez and studied to become a Lawyer, and had excellent results, attempting exams that he arrived to in handcuffs. German studied well and started teaching others, he became a leader among the community.
Both are supposedly out of prison now and are doing well. This story taught me a lot, as it unravelled I understood more and more of how one bad mistake can really set a person’s life back, but a lot of them aren’t villains, just people who got unlucky and made bad choices. It made me understand that everybody is human inside, and people who are suffering need to be given compassion, and how the result of their actions can act as learning for us so that we don’t make the same mistakes they do. As Gaby said,
“past is destined, the present is inevitable, the future is up to me”