Firm Foundation

As in all of life’s ventures, it was important for us to establish a firm foundation before attempting to build upon it this week.  So the Pepperdine lawyers who have traveled to Uganda and many of the students living here this summer gathered on Sunday morning in a hotel conference room for a time of worship and prayer.  After Henry opened us in prayer, the manager of the Nootbaar Institute, Dana Hinojosa, led us in a few songs with accompaniment from Bryon Josslyn, one of our students who is working for the Family Division of the High Court this summer.

Pre-Project Worship

Several among the group shared thoughts and/or led prayers, and we closed with a final prayer consisting of a poem that became special to our group last summer that captures the essence of our work:

A Future Not Our Own, by Oscar Romero

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

After our time of prayer and reflection, the attorneys went on a Kampala bus tour while Susan Vincent and I worked on final preparations for the launch session at 2:00 p.m.  By 2:05, the conference room at our hotel we had secured was overflowing with Ugandan prosecutors, Ugandan defense lawyers, Ugandan students, members of the judiciary, members of the prison authority, Pepperdine students, Pepperdine lawyers, and the film crew.  In all, there were close to seventy in attendance for the orientation meeting for The Luzira Project.

Participants in Orientation Session for The Luzira Project

Group Photo of Luzira Project Orientation

After brief introductions around the room, the Chief Registrar of the High Court (fourth in command of the judiciary) led off with a welcome and overview of the program.  This was followed by further remarks of encouragement by Andrew, the Secretary of the Plea Bargain Task Force, who provided details to the group of the Task Force’s trip to Malibu that concluded just over a week ago.  We then watched the fifteen-minute video the Task Force had prepared about plea bargaining.  Then it was my turn to provide an overview and description of Pepperdine’s relationship with the judiciary and to explain the parameters of The Luzira Project.  I told them that there were going to be eight groups interviewing prisoners, each consisting of one or two American law students, one American lawyer, one Uganda Christian University student, and one Ugandan lawyer.  I also showed them a sample copy of the final report we will be delivering to the Ugandan lawyer at the end of the week.

The Head Table -- Chief Registrar Paul Gadenya, Andrew, me, and Joan from Prosecution

The Luzira Prison Warden followed me and told the group that Luzira’s capacity as constructed is 600 prisoners, and described the challenges associated with having over 3300 inmates – nearly six times capacity.  He also described the prisoners’ frustrations with the pace of justice and his (and their hopes) for the Project.

Professor Carol Chase then provided an overview of the plea bargaining process in the United States so they could get a sense of what might be possible after successful implementation.  We closed with a group photograph after a thirty-minute Q & A session.  All in all, a firm foundation was established for the prison work that begins in earnest Monday morning.  The film crew captured the entire gathering, up close and personal.  All in attendance patiently endured the moving cameras, close ups, and periodic light adjustments incidental to the filming.

The opening film shot of everyone entering Luzira for the first time on Monday morning will be a critical stage-setting piece, so two members of the film crew took the Luzira warden to dinner to develop a good rapport with him in advance of what will be unprecedented access to the facility to capture the true living conditions inside.

The two cameramen and I went back into the city to capture more B-roll footage of the bustling and raw life of Kampala.  I won’t go into details of what we encountered (you can ask me in person sometime), but suffice it to say that our biggest fears were realized with the police.  We were stopped, interrogated, searched, and threatened.  It became necessary to present our,  um, “documentation” for our work.  There were some really tense and uncertain moments, but we finally got an approving smile and an “it is OK.”  A few minutes later, the same officer was back at our window – this time with a warning.

“These people are poor and uneducated and don’t know that what you are doing is approved.  If you stay in this area much longer, they will give you trouble and you will be in danger.”

“What about if you are with us?” I asked.

“They will not disturb you if I am with you.”

“Would you like to come for a ride with us and learn about what we are doing?”

“It is OK.  Let me come.”

So for the next two hours, we had a police escort in the car with us.  He cleared the way to capture everything they could conceive of capturing, including John filming from the roof of the safari minivan, through the open sliding door as he hung out into traffic, and from the open trunk after Tango wrapped a seat belt around him that I held tight from the seat behind him.

Excellent footage.

A quick team meeting before bed closed the evening.  We head for the prison first thing in the morning.