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 five
thousand men, women, children, and death-row prisoners. Strapping 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 involving the words volunteer, please, sir, and thank you. The

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I N C A R C E R AT I O N N AT I O N S

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 permission 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 concierge, a professional at the art of service with a scowl. This greeting comes from a prisoner, Bafaki Wilson, aka Headmaster Wilson,
aka Pastor Boma, all of which means that Wilson is a kind of peerelected prison official. Hes pastor of the Boma block of Luzira
and lord of this library, erected by the London- and Kampala-based
NGO African Prisons Project.
How are you today? Wilson asks, grinning as he always does,
and looking long and hard at me with those eyes, surely the kindest eyes in all of Uganda. At thirty years old, Wilson is an uncanny

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INTRODUCTION

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 wizened 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 the
rounds, greeting a dozen students with handshakes and broad hellos. 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 personal
essays, 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 stepmothers, 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. Wilson took it in stride. He eventually found faith behind bars, transforming 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 triumphant 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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INTRODUCTION

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 the
hotel. Exhale.
No one said this global journey would be smooth.

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