I Bought a Rolex . . . and Ate It

I Bought a Rolex . . . and Ate It

On Wednesday morning, I went for a run on a dirt road by Lake Victoria – the largest lake in the world.  The air was clean and crisp, if not a bit muggy. What seemed like such a good and healthy idea quickly turned south.  The morning vehicle traffic on the road stirred up so much dust that my vision clouded, my lungs constricted, and legs morphed into pillars.  The thronging children in their cute school uniforms all smiling, pointing, and chiming in chorus “mzungu!” added to the obstacle course atmosphere.  After fifteen minutes I was spent.  Pitiful.

The rest of Wednesday was fairly uneventful, and intentionally so.  David and I continued to nail down the logistics for the upcoming adult prison session, and I picked up gorilla trekking permits for my colleague Professor Carol Chase, her husband Judge John Doyle, two of their children, and four of our Pepperdine students here.  Since the prison we are going to is in the western town of Fort Portal, and since the world famous mountain “gorillas in the mist” are in southwest Uganda/northern Rwanda/eastern DRC, a subset of our group decided to take advantage of our proximity to Dian Fossey’s old stomping grounds by introducing themselves to these highly endangered beasts.  I am waiting until Jennifer, my youngest, is 15 – the minimum age to trek – so we can do it as a family.

I did have a chance to catch up with my friends in the Criminal Division of the High Court, where I worked during my six-month sabbatical in 2012.  Big changes are coming, and I will admit to being a bit nervous about how the transitions will affect our ongoing work.

The Ugandan Judiciary is critically understaffed.  Last year, a Judicial Services Commission was established to nominate a large group of judges to fill the growing vacancies.  They submitted the names about nine months ago.  Uganda’s national budget is stretched rather thin (the 2012-13 budget consisted of 25% foreign aid), so there hasn’t been money allocated to plug the holes.  Early last month, President Museveni announced a total of nearly thirty new appointments to the three court levels (High Court, Court of Appeals, Supreme Court).  These appointments take effect on July 15^th.

The Criminal Court Registrar – the person who is primarily responsible for scheduling court sessions in Kampala – has been appointed to the High Court bench, but outside of Kampala.  And two of the four High Court judges in the Criminal Division are being rotated into other departments.  Compounding the threat to the momentum we have built is the fact that the Director of Public Prosecutions, Richard Buteera, has been appointed to the Court of Appeals.  Director Buteera has been very supportive of the J-FASTER program, and will be replaced by an unknown commodity.

On the positive side of the ledger, word of the multiple successful J-FASTER sessions we have run has spread such that the growing consensus among the judges seems to be that this new structure is here to stay.

I beat traffic out of the city back to where I am staying and caught a late afternoon nap before venturing into Gaba outdoor market in search of dinner (Joline, Jessica, and the Gregstons are still on the road – they treated over four hundred patients at a church in a rural town on Wednesday and Thursday).  I found what I was looking for – a Rolex.

My Rolex Chef

Eating Ugandan street food is one of the wonderful cultural experiences all visitors should sample – road meat, chapattis, roasted cassava/bananas/corn, and Rolex.  When I was here in 2012, I read an article about the derivation of the rather curious name.  As the moniker obliquely suggests, it is a phonetically challenged combination of roll-eggs.  Two scrambled eggs spiced with tomato and onions are poured onto a concave skillet, on top of which is placed a tortilla-like piece of flatbread called a chapatti.  The eggs cook and adhere themselves to the chapatti, which is thereafter rolled into what vaguely resembles a breakfast burrito.  Delicious.

Like Wednesday, Thursday was another day of planning and logistical preparations.  I had a chance to watch part of a trial of Chinese national for trafficking in children – he is accused of kidnapping and selling Ugandan village kids to the Far East.  Quite disturbing.

David and I had tasty and heart-warming dinner with Dan Owens, one of the Directors of Sixty Feet — a stellar NGO dedicated to improving and redeeming the lives of Uganda’s imprisoned and vulnerable children.  He had been in Africa for two weeks, including a two-day stint to Malawi, where he and their resourceful and visionary legal intern Abby Skeans (Regent Law student with whom I worked closely last year) met with top government officials about potentially expanding J-FASTER (the implementation costs of which Sixty Feet has been generously funding here in Uganda) into Malawi.  Please pray for this exciting new possibility, as the remand homes in that former British protectorate are also badly swollen with detained juveniles awaiting trial.  The work Sixty Feet is doing here is truly amazing, and it seems to be finally recognized as such by the too-often too-bureaucratic administrative agency tasked with overseeing Uganda’s imprisoned children.

I got to spend an hour or so with Joline, Jessica, and Gregstons before bed as they returned to Kampala to resupply and recharge after two intensive clinic days.

It is now Friday morning, and today is packed.  I have meetings today with Mark Riley (Welshman who is doing transformative work here in orphan care through his Alternative Care organization), Justice Chibita (Fort Portal judge with whom we are working on this pilot adult prison program), Justice Mukasa (head of the Criminal Division), and soon-to-be-retiring Supreme Court Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki.

Thereafter, David and I will be heading to the airport to pick up the Pepperdine team flying in for an intense week of prison work.

More on the identity of the team and our specific work in the next post.