Prison: A Ugandan Tale of Rugby, Betrayal & Redemption

When I was twelve or so and in my first year of Secondary School, I discovered rugby—or rather, the sport discovered me.

A chubby, plump fellow with more energy than talent—I was second to few in the breakneck stampede to the dining hall—I had been tried out and successively thrown off the school’s junior soccer team, the class athletics team, and the dormitory basketball team.

Perhaps in what should have been a final straw, even the baseball and woodball captains—theirs’ both then only debuting sports in the school—informed me politely that they’d rather field incomplete teams than risk an ‘‘Achilles’ heel’’ in the formation.

‘A chain is only as strong as its weakest link!’ the woodball fellow sagely pronounced, fixing me with a gaze more penetrating than a contemptuous laser-beam. This of course notwithstanding that his sport— if I may condescend enough to call it one—was not far removed from a medieval pantomime reenacted in the present-day for little else than the entertainment value furnished by the clowns and lack-wits self-abasing enough to be caught playing it.

Being the precocious diplomat and peace-maker I was (or growing to be) however—I refrained, amid much-warranted compulsion of course—from violently resetting the order of the so-called captain’s dental pattern. From my view of things, it would have been a just war.

But I couldn’t afford to be seen as leaving the ring without having thrown a punch. Sarcastic disdain may be a bitter pill to ingest—but perceived cowardice haunted a man (let alone a fat boy) for a lifetime. 

Well, in a moment of rare (and with hindsight, foolish) brazenness—I said something about the chap’s mother.

To this day, I swear there is a joint in my hip that is yet to recover from the beating I earned that day. So single-minded and passionate was its delivery that even now, thinking of the fellow’s name or remembering his face breaks me into a cold, tremulous sweat.

The captain’s name—etched permanently in memory on account of the beating’s thoroughness, since unequaled—was Rwatamutwe; [Runyakitara for ‘he who cracks heads open’.] 

To bear this out are living witnesses. A goodly number of maidens who’ve had the misfortune of sharing nocturnal confinement with this writer have, upon dawn’s arrival—pale and wild-eyed with terror—reported that I woke them in the middle of the night with thrashes, groans and desperate entreaties to a strange-named assailant, a one ‘‘Rutsamutse’’ (that is how they always pronounce it—with an Ebonic lilt) to ‘please have mercy!’

Of course—like any sane and sober individual—I have insisted that it is they (these lovers turned accusers) who must have been dreaming. But I never have the chance to prove my claim because the lasses (now duly deflowered, to this writer’s credit)—afraid perhaps of being murdered in their next sleep—always blacklist me a few minutes within taking a hasty, worry-faced leave.

Who can blame them, poor girls.

***

Reliving the wild old days with a few Old Boys at a meet-up recently, some unkind voices opined that the whipping was deserved. Let them talk—I still maintain ‘injustice!’

But anyhow— a few weeks after being discharged from the sanatorium—where the woodball beating had sent me—I was finally strong enough to walk without help again.

Limping and feeling sorrier for myself than a wet rag—I eventually drifted, somehow, to the school’s playing fields—this despite their location a good many miles away from the main learning campus. I imagine the thrill of the violent death they promised was too tempting for a friendless boy with a dull life to pass up.

As I shuffled across the first group of boys intently punting a football from one end to another—I rather felt like the football. It was inside this self-piteous reverie that I was drowning when a guttural voice barked a warning. Too late!

From the corner of one dreamy eye, I espied what looked like a flying egg hurtling toward my head. The impact—duck as I might— was inevitable; and as the two empty, air-filled objects collided, I felt as if the long-awaited reaper had finally arrived in all his grimness.

After what I thought was a number of months—but which I was firmly informed was only a few seconds—I regained my (preciously few) senses.

Hovering over me was something resembling a young mountain. So completely had it blocked out the sun’s rays that at first, I half-suspected a solar eclipse. On squinting twice however—I noticed that it had a head and eyes and could talk. It was an older boy who I later discovered was in his final school year.

With a chest like a sack of sweet potatoes, shoulders like small anthills, and arms like coiled pythons—Kabonero, then captain of the Ntare School rugby team (who later went on to become an accomplished Pharmacist prior to playing for the national 15s team—to his opponents’ untold terror), invited me to join his charges.

And that is how rugby saved me—by almost killing me.

***

Anyhow, this blog wasn’t meant to be about me. But then—in this world of fickle loyalties—even the noblest intentions are bound to come to grief.

I had been telling you about how rugby met (or rather, struck) me—and went on to salvage me from what would have been an inevitable social death—in the hope that we would get around to talking about my friend.

For discretion’s sake, let’s keep said friend anonymous, and call him—J.

J returned home last week from Luzira Maximum security Prison, where he’d been on remand for four years, waiting for his day in court.

In his pained opinion, J was rounded up by the police as part of a lot of unsuspecting passersby, and slapped with the charges of a crime he neither planned nor knew the first thing about.

‘I was in the right place at the wrong time!’ he hisses between clenched teeth, making the statement sound like an indictment on fate or those responsible for directing it.

But J is the farthest thing from a bitter man, as the subsequent transcript of our long conversation will hopefully show.

A few years before his arrest and subsequent detention—J had been a star player on the Uganda national rugby team. 

A real phenomenon, he came at the game with a ferocity, velocity and skill that only few could stand up to in his heyday. 

Tall and muscled like a 21^st Century Xuma (and yes, from the North as well)—J had under his belt a Commonwealth Gold Medal, and was, together with his teammates on the national 15s side, reigning African Champion at the time. 

For any rugby-loving boy dreaming of making it to the national side therefore—such as I was—J was the quintessential role model.

And for me, J was of particular interest because he played the number I dreamt of playing on the school’s fifth junior team. (I had by then made it the bench of said team, as a dangerous substitute—though strangely, never once was the team in any danger sufficiently grave to call for my being unleashed).

When I later found out that, through some welcome conspiracy, fate had conspired to make J’s and my family neighbors in the Kampala suburb we both then called home—I couldn’t have hoped for a better mentor in the game, or as I then saw it, in life. You may not believe it looking at the sorry thing my life has become but I—like many ill-fated boys before me—once harbored illusions of making a career out of rugby.

J was living the dream—then the dream loosened from its celestial moorings and came crushing upon his head.

***

After I left school, J was the first (alas—the only) person to offer me the opportunity of joining a club in the topflight of the domestic rugby league. He was one of the club’s leading lights, and perhaps on account of being his ‘godson’ (that peerless Ugandan passport to boundless socio-economic opportunity)—I got treated more courteously than I rightly deserved.

People called me ‘sonny’ and ‘yanga’ and ‘our kid’, showed me winners’ tips and tricks on and off the field, and generally refrained from hitting me harder than they ought to. A few sycophants desperate enough for god-fatherly favors even pressed pocket money (against my will, of course) into my hands.

I felt like a prince.

And then J began to drift south. Rugby and its players are known to be harmless louts who like to knock each-other on the pitch before storming the nearest pub and emptying its beer vaults. But perhaps because J was having trouble at home and in his relationships—he became an alcoholic. Before long, he’d resorted to stronger ‘substances’ to drown out the troubles. He began having trouble holding down a job (because the sport is ‘elite’—most rugby players in Uganda have well-paying day jobs for which they qualify). 

He lost contract after contract, before falling out of work altogether.

***

The last time I saw J—I had freshly left University and was walking to my first job interview one morning. Because the rains had recently returned and the hour was early, the air was damp and the roads still shrouded in mist.

Suddenly, out of the thinning fog—I beheld a towering figure lumbering toward me. Stifling a scream, I offered my final prayer and prepared to die. But on drawing close, we recognized each other—the giant and I.  It was J.

His trousers were soiled, his breath reeked of a cheap gin—the kind distilled to ‘knock out’ its imbibers—and his feet were sandaled in thin umoja slippers. He tried to say something, gesturing for me to stop.

All courage—and I have never been famous for possessing too much—deserted me.

To my eternal shame, I bolted across the road and was—unluckily for karma—missed by a speeding bodaboda at a mere whisker.

J was arrested the next day.

Needless to say—the job interview was a resounding failure.

***

The following—in J’s own words (italicized)—is a recounting of his travails (albeit ever so slightly paraphrased). J knocked at my door last evening, and after recovering from the initial shock of thinking his ghost had come to murder me for my treachery (I never once visited him in all his prison time—though I toyed with the idea before characteristically chickening out), we sat down to a weak tea and talked:

Returning from Prison

Solomon, nothing tastes as beautiful as freedom. Nothing! Not riches, not cars, not a good meal. When you are inside, all you see are walls. Very high walls with only some small vents for air. And the walls become your world. It’s like another planet, like being on Mars. We liked to joke in there that ours is a state within a state. And it’s true, you know.

Take this house for instance—he gestured around the room—if they were to lock you in here for a week. You’d be forced to rethink all your problems. People out here think they have problems, but nothing beats having your freedom taken away.

Even if out here you have no house and sleep in a gutter or under a tree, but have your freedom—I tell you—you remain better than the richest prisoner.

When I had just been locked up, I contemplated escape briefly, before giving it up as a silly. foolish dream. I remember thinking about all the movies I had watched like Prison Break and if it was actually possible. But that is all Hollywood nonsense—reality soon sets in and you realize you are going to be in there for a long time.

Arrest: Chase & Capture

During my first few years, I constantly replayed the scene of my arrest over and over in my mind. I tried to get rid of it, but it kept coming back. How could they have got me, I asked myself? It was like a scene from some movie. I remember the policemen coming out of nowhere and beginning to beat on everyone around. I didn’t know what was happening, so I ran. They moved to block my path, waving batons and shouting for me to stop. I sprinted and sidestepped almost ten of them before they trapped me in someone’s compound. I remember jumping over a high wall to escape, but they still got me. One can’t fight fate. I have always been a big, strong man capable of devastating speed—but in that moment, I felt like a helpless rat. Perhaps it was my fate. For a long time, I wondered why … but perhaps it was meant to be.

Life in Prison

On my first night, everything I had was taken away from me. I was given a small blanket, thin uniform to wear and then shown a place on the bare floor where I would sleep.

There are so many people, so you sleep like logs pressed close to each other. You are not allowed to move in your sleep. If you roll over someone or kick another prisoner, you could end up with a leaking head or a punctured liver.

The bedbugs and lice are another nightmare. I didn’t sleep on my first few nights. People wake up in the middle of the night screaming and talking aloud to themselves. I saw many prisoners ran mad. Two men took their own lives.

Women, what are we without them?

When an eighty-year old woman, maybe someone’s grandmother, comes to visit the prison, you may think she is Miss World. The way people elbow each other out of the way to catch the smallest glimpse of her, and the excitement that overwhelms them after—are a truly disgraceful sight. The first time I caught myself in this action, I felt so ashamed that I vowed not to look at another woman for a month. I failed to keep my vow of course. I began thinking about how ironic life was. Me, J—who had been a famous star, who could get any girl I wanted—being reduced to a grandmother ogler! I concluded that life was certainly a joker, and men were the joke.

Hope, Family and Friends

When I had just been put inside, I thought I would get out very soon. I was J, after all—the great rugby star. I had many important friends in high places that would come to my rescue. But soon turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. No one came to see me, and my case was always pushed ahead to another hearing date every time it was just about to be taken to court. Bail applications were rejected as soon  as they were filed. It was as if there was a higher power intent on my suffering.
The years flew by.

I stopped counting, and then I stopped hoping. Hope became my enemy, and all my friends became enemies in my mind. Even my family distanced me; I think they suspected I could have been guilty because of my previous reckless living. I realized that I was actually alone, and that if I was to survive, I had to believe—not in my friends, not in my family, not in the court system—but in myself. That is the most important thing in prison—a must never lose hope in himself.

[At this point in J’s narrative, a lump of guilt began to grow in my throat. Attempting to swallow the thing, it proved rather indigestible and set me off into a coughing fit. J half-rose, concerned perhaps that some fool would die on his hands and get him sentenced this time for sure.  I recovered however and, smiling half-apologetically, motioned for him to proceed …]

So, as I was saying … it is after I accepted my position that I began to make peace with the world. I told you before that men go mad in there. They become so angry with the world and begin to hate everything and blame everyone. They refuse to make friends, refuse to socialize, refuse to talk to other people. Then they begin talking to themselves … that is when they lose their minds.

I vowed I would not end up like that. I said to myself—J, you have always been a fighter. You have to fight this.

And I did.

Denial, Finding God

When you speak to many people in prison—God is an enemy, not a friend. I was like that in the beginning. A man gets sentenced to fifty years for a crime he didn’t commit—while the criminals go scot free and continue to enjoy their lives. He watches helplessly as his land and house are taken, his wife remarries, his teenage daughter gets pregnant. So he says to himself—Nonsense! God doesn’t exist!

I was a hard, mean guy who didn’t give a damn about religion. I used to see people praying and wonder what was wrong with them. I was full of rage and energy and rebellion. I was not going to let anything soften me up. Not J, not I.

But after the first year or so—when I realized that my situation was hopeless, that I was going to rot in jail for a crime I didn’t commit—I began to change my attitude slowly. I began to remember prayers my mom used to make me say as a boy, and I began saying them at night, every night.

I had lost everything—my freedom, my reputation, and probably my life. There was nothing left to lose. If God had put me here, then I would accept his will.

Choices, Acceptance

Many new fellows in jail refuse to accept that they are there. They keep crying and complaining—claiming to be innocent. This usually angers other prisoners who say to them—okay, if you are innocent, then walk out. The gates are tight there.

I learnt this lesson quickly, and after painfully accepting my fate, I decided to find a place for myself in this new world. I began by volunteering to do work in the dormitory—cleaning toilets, cleaning the sleeping areas, sweeping the compound. I even went to the kitchens and mingled posho, after all I had a lot of energy and very little to use it for—(I was lucky enough not to be in the section that was taken outside to farms to cultivate under the hot sun).

It was at this stage that I noticed the prison library. I used to like reading storybooks as a boy, but when I discovered rugby—it became my wife and my life. I didn’t care about books after that even in school.

But there was only so much mingling and sweeping and scrubbing that could be done in a day in the prison. I began aching for something to fill the remaining hours. Because I had become godly again, I didn’t want to join gangs or resort to smoking again. I wanted to do something positive.

So I walked into the library and asked to look around. The first thing I got interested in was some sports magazines from the 90s, and some old newspapers. Then after a while, I started reading longer and more serious books.

Around this time, the warders started noticing my general discipline. I preferred to just work and then sit to read. I was generally quiet and didn’t involve myself in fights.

In a while, I was chosen to become an RP in my dormitory. I was responsible for supervising the other inmates at work and solving disputes. I could also give punishments if someone disobeyed my orders.

I had never been a leader or anything like that in my life. Even in school, I was the guy who went clubbing and gave prefects headache. Yet here I was. Senior inmates would say to me—we have been in here for twenty years, what can a young man like you tell us. Some were old enough to be my fathers. Others were impossible cases and they bragged about it. They said—we are already in prison, what is the worst that can happen? Others boasted that couldn’t be tamed by the combined forces of their families, the LCs and the village police—who was I therefore to tell them what to do? But I was a big and strong fellow, and eventually when I warned someone twice—they somehow carried out my instructions.

However, I learnt later that the key to leadership is to be patient with people. That is why I think the RP system in jails works very well. The warders just mostly stand around and do nothing while the inmates supervise each other.  This reduces on cases of torture in my opinion, because no one understands a prisoner like his fellow.

Living with HIV

I think that the greatest gift to Uganda’s prisons is something called the African Prisons’ Project (APP). These people work with different organizations to rehabilitate prisoners and give them a chance at life. They work with MUBS for instance—to offer diploma programs in various disciplines to interested people. They also bring in young professionals to speak to the inmates.

Around that time, I had been promoted from RP to become the ward doctor. And despite never having stepped in a medical class, I was the fellow responsible for dispensing medicine and treating  my colleagues. I thanked God that he had saved me from getting AIDS despite rampant promiscuity in my previous life. In prison, many people who are diagnosed with the disease refuse to accept the diagnosis. They say to the doctor—‘but look at me, I am healthy. Look at my arms, are they thin?’ If you refuse to take ARVs in prison, you can’t last a month. The conditions are so rough.

Prison Subculture, Social Dynamics

Once you adjust to prison life, you notice that the same forces that shape human interaction outside its walls still apply inside. The inequality, the power relations, the hierarchies all re-emerge once the inmates fall into the routine. 

Inmates who were rich before their jailing still have ways of exerting power over those who were poor. You would assume that the fact that you are all convicted felons should create uniformity—but no. I witnessed men without money behaving like small boys just in order to gain some advantage from the rich. Even something as minor as good food brought by relatives would cause an inmate to have power and control over those who hoped to be given a mouthful or two. Some went a step further and submitted to sodomy. It was a real disgrace.
Another element of prison life is the gangs and cliques. In there, one must have a small ‘‘family’’ of loyal friends to bank on in case of trouble. Despite my size and height, I realized I would never be able to save myself if a small group ganged up against me. Those gangs are actually smart, they don’t just use brute force to punish their targets. But once they have you in their hands, there’s very little room for escape.

Keeping to basics, Prioritizing Home

It was after attending the first few sessions of the APP that I thought I could perhaps give education a second chance. When I was still young and foolishly ambitious, I had dropped out of University hoping to play rugby for a club in England, but I that hadn’t worked out.

So hesitantly, I enrolled for a MUBS-Awarded Diploma in the prison—thinking I could always drop out if things got too hard, or too boring. But I was disappointed. I realized that if someone has time and opportunity, they can actually do anything they want. Most times, we never give ourselves the chance to try out new things.

I vowed to finish the course and earn my diploma, so I started spending more and more time in the library reading and discovering new things.

At the end of the APP sessions, they would always give participating inmates about five minutes to share their views. I remember shocking people by standing up one time and talking about the concept of freedom. I told everyone that we are all in prison, whether we accept it or not—whether we are behind locked gates or not. I think prison is anything that keeps us from achieving our potential and keeps us doing it against our will. It may be cigarettes, alcohol, sex—even a job that one does because they have to earn money, though they don’t like it. These are all forms of prison.

The session’s organizers—many of them white interns from the West—were so excited by what to be was a simple and obvious idea that they began paying attention to my case. They even offered me the legal aid which eventually helped me prove my innocence.

After I came out, they wanted me to join the APP staff and fly around the world sharing my story. But I refused. I was not a clown who was hungry for praise. I was a young man who had suffered innocently, but I had also made mistakes and disappointed my family. My time in prison had taught me that a man who doesn’t build strong roots in his own community is worthless, even if he becomes famous around the world.

Family, Love, Manhood

When you are a single man in prison, you realize how much of your life you have wasted chasing different girls and dodging responsibility.

I saw families, women and children, coming to visit their men in prison and I felt so bad. There is no greater feeling than knowing that someone out there cares and actually wishes genuinely for your freedom.

For me, not even one of the many so-called girlfriends I had had over the years came to visit or brought me a drop of water. It was heartbreaking. I realized I could die and never be remembered. I would not have left a child or family. What would be my legacy? Who would even claim my body if it happened? I was disturbed beyond words.

I vowed to God that if I ever came out—I would look for a girl I could truly love and give my full self to. I would never joke around with anyone’s daughter.  If you are a man in life without a family—however much money you may have, or whatever the size of your mansion might be—you are really just wasting time. A man who has children to worry about, and a wife to return home to—even if he stays in a box—is a thousand times better than you.

What I want now are children to call me daddy, and a deserving woman to whom I can be a good husband.

In many ways, I have walked the full gamut of life—I have been celebrated and loved by thousands, and also hated and scorned by hundreds. I have given my best and worst to life, and got the best and worst from it. I guess I’m like that fellow who was thrown by fate from the top of the mountain to lie at the bottom of the sea, but found his way back to the water surface and began to swim. The best I can do now is try and put both lessons to work. A man cannot ask for more.

Justice
I do not think that there is any justice in the world, at least not in the short term. Perhaps justice only comes to us in the long run, after we have passed some kind of test or something. There are so many innocent people in prison, man. There was one very old man who was brought in a few months before I left. His hair was completely white and he couldn’t even stand without support. According to him, he had been accused by his neighbors of defiling a five-year old girl, so that they could share his land among themselves.They had even paid off the police so that the old man could be arrested minus any evidence, or hearing his side of the story. He died within a few weeks. 

Putting the past behind you

The key to healing is forgiveness. I never thought I’d ever get over my bitterness, but I eventually did. I also realized that one must never be ashamed of their past, even when they should refuse to be judged, or judge themselves by it.

I rejoined my former rugby club the moment I came out, and I was shocked when they gave me a better contract than I even had previously. When I stepped onto the pitch last weekend, the fans were shouting my name like I was a god or something. I guess most people had written me off completely, or given me up for dead.

I was faced with a choice. I could have come out of jail and decided to withdraw from society, or to hide from my friends in shame—but what good would that do. I would only be confirming my guilt, even when I did nothing. But even if I were truly guilty, there is no profit to be had from living like a convict forever. There is no greater prison warder than the prisoner himself, and no kinder jury than the condemned herself. 

***

J is a free man now—rebuilding the life and rekindling the friendships he’d once considered forever lost to him. And while the Ugandan justice-system that stole four years of his life is more slothful than the infamous sloth, we cannot say that it is entirely bereft of the potential to rehabilitate and reform the few who fall into its good graces.

Maybe, as MLK once said—it only is when the night is truly dark that we can see the stars.

 © Surumani Manzi