Blog: Rockin' in Fidel's back yard

"No news is good news" isn't an expression that applies to journalists. For us, bad news is often good news and, sometimes, good news is bad news. Like today. The Red Cross is visiting Guantanamo this week and it's messing with my schedule. An interview with the Deputy Joint Task Force commander is cancelled, and our tour of Camp 4 - where the most well-behaved detainees are held - is curtailed. We can't get in to see the recreation area where they pray, play soccer and generally hang out because the Red Cross has priority. That's how it should be, of course, but from a purely selfish point of view it's frustrating.

But all is not lost. We do get to visit the library and hospital at Camp 4. Both are small but impressive. The library houses thousands of books, magazines and DVDs in 18 languages - Arabic, Pashtu, Russian, English, Farsi, Somali, French, German, Spanish, Uzbek, Urdu ... you name it. Detainees request the books they want and the books are taken to them. If the library doesn't have a book someone wants, they'll order it, provided it doesn't contain explicit sex or violence. And what do the men at Guantanamo like to read? When it comes to magazines, it's "sports and cars, nothing else - like regular guys," according to Rosario - she didn't want to give her full name - the head librarian. Sahih Muslim, Agatha Christie and, inevitably, Harry Potter top the list of favourite books. The library also delivers newspapers to all the camps twice a week. They redact anything that refers to US soldiers being killed "so that the detainees don't harass the camp guards about it," says Rosario, along with any sexual content or pictures of scantily dressed women. Other than that, they don't bother because all the detention camps have live satellite TV. "If something happens in the world," one of my public information escorts tells me, "they hear about it before I do."

Next stop, the hospital. It's clean, compact and well equipped. If they don't have the equipment or expertise required to treat a patient, they ship it in. The only difference between this place and the medical facilities in a small American town, the senior medical officer says, is that here there's one doctor per 50 patients, instead of 1 per 500 or so. Another difference is that they're well set up to deal with hunger strikers, although the physician says it isn't as much of an issue now as it was a few years ago. He shows us feeding tubes - "about the consistency of al dente spaghetti" - and small pots of high nutrition formula they force feed anyone who refuses to eat. They also have pain-scale flash cards in Uighur, Arabic, Pashtu, Turkish and other languages so patients can tell them how much it hurts.

And there's a behavioural health unit to treat the 15% or so of the detainee population who suffer from some kind of psychological problem. I ask how the US military can treat people who are depressed about the fact they're being detained by the US military. I'm told that the patients differentiate between medical personnel and others. Really? I can see how that might be true when it comes to prescribing medication, but general therapeutic services? Counselling? I just don't see how that works.

We have lunch at one of the canteens on the base. It's good - there's a lot of choice and it's less than $4 for all you can eat. There are a few different canteens here, as well as some fast-food places and a couple of restaurants. Now that I'm on the base, I can see why the government has spent so much money on R&R for the military personnel. The whole naval facility is only 45 square miles and around a third of that is water. Most people stay for 6 months or a year and cabin fever can be a problem. There are also a few people - contractors, mostly, I think - who just live here. There's a high school and elementary school, Girl and Boy Scouts clubs - the usual stuff of daily life. If it weren't for the fact it houses one of the most notorious detention centers in the world, it would be a normal US Army base, on a very beautiful island. Well, not quite. It's also the only US base on communist soil. One of the two local radio stations - Radio Gitmo - uses the slogan "Rockin' in Fidel's back yard", which probably doesn't endear them to the Cubans only a few miles away.

After lunch we meet with a couple of the camp guards. They're so young! One of them was already in the military and was assigned to Gitmo, but the other one volunteered. Why, I asked him? "I heard some things on the news and I was interested to see what was really happening down here." Besides, "it's the Caribbean." Wow. I've heard of working vacations, but being a camp guard at Guantanamo? It's a far cry from grape picking in France or the other kinds of holiday jobs I'm familiar with. Still, he's the first person here who admits to any ambivalence about what he's doing or the nature of the camp. "It's hard to go to work every day and think these men, they may be innocent. But some of them may verbally abuse you, may throw faeces or urine or semen on you ... Maybe it's a deep seated hatred for us. It's a difficult situation." But, he concludes, "it's not my job to decide whether or not they’re guilty. I try to keep it on a professional level." And from everything I hear and see here, the guards are very professional, young and in many cases inexperienced. The good news is that it means they do their best to treat the detainees well and in accordance with all standard operating procedures, Geneva conventions, cultural sensitivities, etc. The bad news - from my point of view - is that all questions of legality, morality and responsibility are pushed aside. At the end of the day, it's just a job.

Also read Hermione Gee's earlier blogs from Guantanamo: