Book Excerpt: Incarceration Nations

7/25/2019 Book Excerpt: Incarceration Nations

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Introduction

Here there is a world apart, unlike everything else, with laws

of its own, its own dress, its own manners and customs,

and here is the house of the living deadlife as nowhere else

and a people apart. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Mzungu! The prison guard growls, beckoning me with the Swahili

term for white person.

Shit.

Id been trying to blend in, though thats an absurd aspiration

for a white girl in a Kampala slum. Im poised outside the side gate

of Luzira Maximum Security Prison, a rambling complex built to

accommodate six hundred but currently home to an estimated fivethousand men, women, children, and death-row prisoners.Strap-

ping on my inner bulletproof vest, I approach the Uzi.

What do you want here? comes the growl again.

With a plastered-on smile, I string together a sentence involv-

ing the words volunteer, please, sir, and thank you. The


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growling guard flicks my words away with his wrist, shooing me off

as if Im a stubborn mosquito.

Five minutes later I am back, prostrated before him with my

fellow volunteer. Having worked here for four months now, she,

unlike me, actually saw her paperwork properly processed by the

prison powers-that-be and was thus legal to enter Luzira. Id been

mostly slipping in on the sly, having been given unofficial permis-

sion to be herein the form of a you may enter and you may teach

from the head officer on duty last weekbut granted no papers to

prove it.Two grovelers work better than one. With enough kowtowing

and please, sirs, and sorry, sirs, we bow our way beyond the

Uzis and into the prison complex, through the shantytown-like

living quarters of the prison officers, past the military barracks and

the central gate where the guards wave us inside, into the throngs

of men milling about in sunshine-yellow uniforms, and through

the concrete door ofa little library.

Good afternoon, Professor Baz!

Its the best greeting Ive gotten all dayno, all week. Uganda

has proven to be many things but welcoming isnt one of them;

most days I am pleased to get a polite nod from even the hotel con-

cierge, a professional at the art of service with a scowl. This greet-

ing comes from a prisoner, Bafaki Wilson, aka Headmaster Wilson,

aka Pastor Boma, all of which means that Wilson is a kind of peer-

elected prison official. Hes pastor of the Boma block of Luziraand lord of this library, erected by the London- and Kampala-based

NGO African Prisons Project.

How areyou today? Wilson asks, grinning as he always does,

and looking long and hard at me with those eyes, surely the kind-

est eyes in all of Uganda. At thirty years old, Wilson is an uncanny


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combination of frail old man and lively little boy. His small, slim

stature, unfettered smile, and spirited stare, not to mention floppy

sun cap, fashioned from the yellow prison-uniform cloth and much

too wide for his narrow face, all of these scream boy. But the wiz-

ened old man shines through in Wilsons slow, wounded gait and,

most of all, in his style of speech. Every sentence emerges slow and

studied, finely crafted with pronouncements, as if lifted from the

transcript of a Martin Luther King sermon.

Wilson, I am well, I answer. Conjuring up my second smile

of the day, this one genuine, I shake his hand. Then I make therounds, greeting a dozen students with handshakes and broad hel-

los. Theyre assembled around a wooden table in the center of the

blocklike library, scribbling on loose-leaf paper or flipping through

random books they arent really reading: Speaking Norwegian,

Hamlet,A Travellers Guide to the English Countryside.

Creative writing class is under way. Wilson sits to my left and

reads, with studied enunciation, from the Maya Angelou poems Id

handed out yesterday:

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

During my first class in Luzira Id assigned the men personalessays, and Wilson told his tale. From rural Uganda, he was born

into a polygamous marriage that produced over sixty children. His

mother died when he was a baby and he was abused by his step-

mothers, so he ran away. He committed crimes; he was too poor

to pay either the fine or the bribe that could get him off the hook


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for these crimes. So he became one of the 35,000 Ugandans behind

bars, living in prisons at six times their capacityprisons created

almost a century ago by former colonizers who used them as a form

of social control and intimidation. More than a year later, Wilson

has yet to be tried; this is not surprising, considering more than half

of Ugandas prison population consists of pretrial detainees. Wil-

son took it in stride. He eventually found faith behind bars, trans-

forming himself into Pastor Boma.

Did you want to see me broken?Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops.

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Applause. Baz, I must tell you, Pastor Boma begins. This is

indeed a beautiful poem. And indeed it speaks to our experience

directly here, in this prison. The other students nod solemnly.

We spend two more hours indulging in pretty words. The class

gaily crafts and shares their own poems; Wilsons, entitled The

Liberator, is a lament about the dictators who have lorded over

East Africa, followed by a declaration of faith in Ugandas trium-

phant future. Another student writes a poem that begins, AIDS,

oh AIDS, why have you taken my family?

When its time to go, I gather up my papers and give Wilson

another firm handshake, wishing him a good nights sleep.It is never a good night here, Baz. And there is no room to

sleep. He says this with a radiant smile.

I step out of the library and arm myself, emotionally, for the

world outside. Crime is a reality in Kampala, but its the citys

omnipresent security that really rattles me. East African terrorist


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organizations, like the one behind a bombing in 2010 that killed

seventy-six people, are a persistent threat, so the country

can feel like a ticking time bomb, laden with armed guards and

military checks. Daily life here often feels like a grand obstacle

course. Prison guards, then the dreaded mzungu-walk through

the slum. Hoping todays taximan will show up and not leave me

stranded; assuming he does show up, renegotiating a price weve

already negotiated twice this morning. Kampala traffic, Kampala

sweat, Kampala scowls, car-bomb checks, metal detectors. More

guards growling and more Uzis and security checks, back at thehotel. Exhale.

No one said this global journey would be smooth.

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Book Excerpt: Incarceration Nations