Detained and Disassembled

Friday morning started off quite promising, but those promises were soon broken, sending me into panic mode and forcing me against my better judgment to scramble onto the back of a motorcycle taxi in the rain.

While I was with Andrew on Thursday, he called his friend and mine, the former Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki, to schedule an opportunity for us to drop by and bring him greetings on Friday morning.  CJ Odoki is uniformly held in high esteem as the father of Uganda’s constitution, having served as the lead drafter on the constitutional committee in 1995.  Under the constitution he authored, Supreme Court justices are termed out at age 70.  He reached that age mid-year last year and retired.  Shortly thereafter, Uganda’s President Museveni appointed him back on the bench under a temporary contract, which is allowed by the constitution, but then sought to make him Chief Justice again.  This caused a furor among Uganda’s lawyers (they disbarred the Attorney General for advising the President that the appointment was constitutional) and a lawsuit by a Member of Parliament seeking to block the appointment.  This litigation is still ongoing, and Uganda has been without a substantive Chief Justice for more than a year.

While he was CJ, Odoki signed in 2009 (along with then-dean Ken Starr) the Memorandum of Understanding between Pepperdine and the Ugandan Judiciary solidifying the relationship that had begun two years earlier.  Odoki came to Pepperdine in 2010 and later permitted me the opportunity to be admitted to Uganda’s bar to argue the appeal in Henry’s case.  He also invited me to move to Uganda for six months, which my family did, to assist in the development of Uganda’s juvenile justice program.

On Friday morning, we had a chance to catch up for about ninety minutes on a variety of topics, including the Luzira Project on which we are now working.  It was good to see my old, though sharp and vibrant, friend.

With the Chief Justice and Andrew in CJ's office

Because President Museveni was giving a speech at my hotel, the roads were barricaded around the hotel for 500 meters in every direction, so my uphill walk in a suit carrying a backpack drenched me in sweat.  At the hotel, I met up with the first member of the film crew to arrive (Thursday night) and walked her downhill to Tango, the driver who would be picking up the other three crew members, and off they went at 11:30 a.m. for a 1:00 p.m. pick up.  I walked back up to the hotel looking like I had just been swimming.

At 1:30, my phone rang.  It was Tango.  He proceeded to hand the phone to Andy, the director of the documentary film we are making.  Andy was not in a good mood.  They had just flown more than thirty hours on a three-leg journey and he was tired, hungry, and angry.  The customs official at the airport had detained their five cases of camera equipment and was insisting on a substantial payment in exchange for its release.

“What do we do?” he asked.

I don’t know, I thought.  I had never encountered customs issues before.  I called Andrew, our go-to guy, for help.  I am convinced that it is not a coincidence that Andrew had just exited the office of the Chief Registrar of Uganda’s High Court.  After I caught him up on the situation, he promised to call me back.

For the next hour, I paced and attempted shuttle diplomacy, trying to assure Andy that we were doing everything we could, and trying to find out from Andrew if there was anything we could do.  The camera guys, John and Tyson, weren’t about to leave behind their highly valuable, cutting edge equipment, so any logjam would have to be broken at the airport.  Finally, Andrew called me and told me to meet him at the High Court and that we would go out to the airport together with a letter from the High Court Registrar.

“Will it work?” I asked.

“I don’t know.  I pray it will,” Andrew said.

So threw my sweaty suit back on and raced downstairs . . . into the rain.  I flagged down a motorcycle taxi, hopped on the back, and held on for dear life.  On a rain-slicked road, we hopped onto sidewalks, weaved between stopped cars, and rode for stretches on the wrong side of the road.  Good thing I was wearing Depends.  At least the rain diluted my sweat-soaked suit.  When I arrived at the Registrar’s office, I was a mess.  But protocol demanded that I sit and talk and have some fruit with them.  It was mango, and it was good.  But I knew we had a ninety-minute airport ride in front of us and the traffic jam would intensify with every passing minute.  Finally, we left and tracked down Susan Vincent’s court-assigned driver and set off for the airport.  Within two minutes, the car sputtered.  It lurched.  It belched.  It flipped us the bird and refused to move.  In the middle of traffic.

Are you blanking kidding me?

We trudged a quarter mile uphill in the rain back to the High Court to jump in Andrew’s private car.  Finally, we were off.

When we arrived at the airport, Andrew went to work.  He talked our way through security and Andy escorted the customs official over to meet with him.  Andrew spoke calmly and directly, and presented him with the letter.  Since they were speaking Luganda, I didn’t know when I was allowed to breathe so I just slowly turned purple.  Andrew pointed out the signature and seal on the letter, and the man nodded slightly and left with Andy.

“Well?” I asked Andrew.

“He will check with his supervisor.  We must wait and see.”

Thanks.  That is precisely the answer I was hoping you would give.  He was calm.  I was not.

Twenty minutes later (which seemed like six hours), we saw through glass walls all three of our team pushing luggage carts toward a customs office.  For the next forty-five minutes, they disassembled and catalogued every piece of film equipment they had, writing down the serial numbers on a customs form.  Finally, the customs official told Andrew he would release them only if Andrew would surrender his official government credentials as collateral until the film crew flew home.  Andrew didn’t hesitate.  My hero.  I felt like I needed both a cigarette and a stiff drink, and I don’t partake in either activity.

Needless to say, the guys were relieved to be released but were so ready to get to the hotel.  They did – three hours later.  The traffic was as bad as I have ever seen.

While the team wanted me to ride with them to discuss the upcoming week, protocol demanded that I ride with Andrew.  Back at the hotel, just as we sat down to eat, Henry arrived, after having dinner with the Gregston family.  I was supposed to have been there with our Twin Family, but duty called elsewhere.

For the next two hours, we discussed the upcoming week and they learned Henry’s full story of wrongful juvenile imprisonment and ultimate redemption, which will likely play an important role in the documentary.

Professor Carol Chase arrived just before midnight after a much less eventful trip through customs.  Before bed, I presented Henry with the commemorative photo frame Joline had made before I left.  Henry’s father passed in March of this year.  He was quite touched.

Henry and his father's memories

I appreciate your continuing prayers.  Please pray for less excitement as the film crew tries to capture life around Kampala on Saturday, which we hope won’t include more detention and disassembly.  As I know from personal experience, the Ugandan police can and will detain people taking pictures in ways they don’t like.