When the audience, stocked with hot and cold snacks, pop-corn and drinks, is seated, the venue is flooded by the screeching voice of the official announcer donning a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, a content oval face, and a southern accent: »Goooood afternoooon laaadies and gentlemeeen! Weeeeelcome to Angoooola Prison Rodeooooo!" The voyeurism works both ways, but both the visitors and the prisoners are so intensely apathetic that at least the part in front of the stadium feels like you are at a Walmart. The prisoners are behind fences, watching the fair from cages. The area accessible to the visitors includes three parts: the stadium, the food court, and the hobbycraft fair where inmates can sell their works. Visitors are allowed to carry a cell phone everything else is forbidden. The new rodeo stadium has a capacity of 8 to 12 thousand. Needless to say, the rodeo is also a source of income, as it pays better than the usual hourly rate of 0.04 to 1 dollar for prisoner's labour. For someone serving a life sentence, this is a rare moment that affords a sense of humanity, unpredictability, responsibility and control over one's life. Most of them apply just to experience the six seconds of freedom. The inmates do not practice their first and only contact with the animal is at the stadium. To keep the inmates focused, the Rodeo takes place twice a year, in April and in October. Six seconds of freedom – this is the time an individual is allotted to ride a wild bull or horse – is a privilege that any prisoner can earn with good behaviour. People we met along the Atchafalaya described and advertised the event as modern gladiator games, with blood and presence of death drawing large crowds of visitors. Max and I visited the Angola to see the Prison Rodeo.