Fourteen Layovers

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Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport feels way too familiar as I upload this update on this, my fourteenth journey to Uganda in the past four years.  The fifteen days I will be on the ground are pregnant with unpredictability.  But such is life in Africa.

On Saturday, I delivered to LAX the nine members of the Uganda delegation who spent a frenetic week of what they are fond of calling “benchmarking” – studying the best practices in plea bargaining.  Over the past four years, I have had the privilege of assisting them as they seek to transition from a heavily back-logged criminal justice system where all criminal cases are tried before the court, to one in which a majority of cases are resolved through a negotiated guilty plea in advance of trial.  In the United States, something approaching 98% of all criminal cases are plea bargained.  Uganda’s current system leads to delays of up to five years (or more) between arrest and trial.  Part of the challenge arises from the fact that the constitutional right to a lawyer only effectively materializes when trial starts.  This, quite naturally, impedes quick resolution of criminal cases.

The delegation who came here is the third in the past four years to move the plea bargaining ball closer to the end zone.  We are now in the red zone and can smell the goalposts.  The delegation consisted primarily of the Plea Bargaining Task Force appointed by the former Chief Justice, which included the Principal Judge (head of the trial-level High Court of Uganda), the Head of the Criminal Division of the High Court, two more High Court judges, the Director of Public Prosecution for the country and one of his senior attorneys, the Secretary of the Task Force who works as a legislative drafter for Uganda’s Law Reform Commission, and the Personal Assistant to the Principal Judge, who is also an accomplished lawyer and scholar.  Rounding out the delegation was the Deputy Ambassador to the United States from Uganda (Dickson Ogwang), who flew in from Washington, DC and is someone I got to know during my first trip to Uganda in January of 2010.

Following a Mexican food meal at my house after they landed on Sunday evening, they endeavored to adjust to the ten-hour time difference with some much-needed sleep.  Monday was a full day of de-briefing and vision-casting with me, Professors Carol Chase, Chris Goodman, and Harry Caldwell, and one of my former students, Jake Glucksman, who has served as both a prosecutor and a defense counsel in Los Angeles. This session was critical in defining the parameters of the remaining work.  We closed the evening with a dinner hosted by Danny DeWalt at Dean Tacha’s house.  Danny has just joined Pepperdine’s administration and was staying at the Dean’s house while she is out of town.  As a co-professor with Bob Goff at Pepperdine Law, as a law partner to Bob Goff, as the Vice President of Restore International, and as the Honorary Counsel for Uganda for San Diego, Danny’s roots are long and deep at both Pepperdine and in Uganda.  Danny was kind enough to record the USA vs. Ghana opening World Cup match for us to watch over dinner.  Our Ugandan friends were gracious to cheer our victory, but they would have failed a lie detector test if they said they were rooting against their fellow African country.

Tuesday was a stellar day at the Ventura Courthouse – Ventura DA Greg Totten is an alumnus and always comes through for us.  He gathered a blue ribbon panel of prosecutors, judges, public defenders, investigators, and probation officers to walk us through Ventura’s approach to resolving criminal cases short of trial.  In the afternoon, the Ugandans were granted the rare privilege of sitting in a court’s chambers while the parties negotiated case resolutions right there in front of us, demonstrating that the judge can be involved in plea bargaining, and can make a material improvement on the outcome.  On the way back, we stopped at Costco for what was supposed to be a thirty-minute visit.  Two hours later, they had materially added to the Westlake Village GDP.

We were hosted on Wednesday by Melissa Mertens, a public defender at the San Fernando Courthouse where we were given a behind-the-scenes look at how to provide indigent counsel with competent representation.  This was particularly enlightening because Uganda doesn’t have a public defender system.  Each defendant charged with a capital (serious) offense is assigned a “state brief” lawyer at the last minute who is paid a pittance to represent the accused.  And from what I have personally observed, and what I have been told by numerous judges, the pittance they are paid is profoundly more than they deserve.  Uganda is currently considering a bill in parliament that would put things on the right track, but there isn’t the money set aside for such a venture.  After the public defender’s office, we got a tour of a county jail given by Melissa’s husband David, who is an LA County Sheriff.  While the jail presents a stark contrast with the prisons in Uganda, it was still not a pleasant place to be.  Next week, I will be posting pictures from inside Uganda’s maximum security prison.  They won’t be for the faint of heart.  Three of the Ugandans decided to accept the optional invitation to go on a ride along with the Sheriffs and had a dead-body, crystal meth, domestic violence riddled time.  They really enjoyed it.

Ugandan Delegation at the LA Police Department

Thursday started off at the LA PD with briefings by alumnus John Gehart and Adjunct Professor Steve Lurie, both of whom are police officers and lawyers.  There was some good discussion about relationships between police and prosecutors in both countries and what sort of evidence is turned over at what stages.  As you might imagine, we turn over much more, much earlier than in Uganda, which is how the parties can make informed decisions about whether to plea bargain a case.  The afternoon was spent hammering out the final edits to the Practice Direction that is about to be issued to all attorneys in Uganda that will govern plea bargaining.  Next week’s project that about twenty-five of us from Pepperdine will be involved in will be the final test run before full launch.  Thursday evening closed with a wonderful dinner hosted by Chris and Mark, and Alex Goodman, all three of which will be joining me in Uganda later this week.

Friday was a day of shopping, and boy can they shop.  Costco again, Camarillo Outlets, and Walmart had good days.  On Saturday, Danny DeWalt took them to Hollywood for a two-hour bus tour before meeting up with me (and their luggage) at LAX.

The next two weeks have the potential to go really well.  There are milestones and a court decision that may bring a fresh start to a new chapter and may close the book on an emotional journey.  Or they may inject further delay into a strung-out system and may send a few of us back to the edge of despair.

Whatever happens, I promise it won’t be boring or uneventful.  So check back here daily to ride the roller coaster with our team of 14 students, ten lawyers, and five filmmakers as we try to capture the story of the partnership between Pepperdine and Ugandan Judiciary that is unfolding and unfurling before us, behind us, and inside us.

We covet your prayers these next two weeks.

Joshua in Uganda!

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Joshua and a team of his high school classmates from Oaks Christian School are on a mission trip in Uganda right now.

They have been working on service projects and sharing their faith with Ugandan students.  Today they got to have some fun at the Croc Farm and visit the Equator.

Joshua (orange shirt) and friends at the Equator

If you want to see photos and hear about what they are doing, you can go to their blog:

http://ocsuganda2014.blogspot.com/

 

Moving Pictures

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Gary Haugen Interview for Documentary

It was such an honor and privilege to have IJM President Gary Haugen teaching at Pepperdine last week.  My role was to be his “co-teacher” in this one-unit, one-week intensive class on International Human Rights.  I reached my highest and best use as his “co-teacher” by taking roll, preparing the written administrative materials, and smiling politely as he taught the course.  The class largely centered around his groundbreaking new book called The Locust Effect, which I have now read twice.  Occasionally, I interjected with an experience or two from my work in Uganda, but I was thrilled to mostly be a student learning from the leader in this arena.  I will be grading the papers the students turn in on Monday.

Just before Gary taught the final class, he graciously agreed to be interviewed on camera by one of the filmmakers who will be following our group of Pepperdine students and alums to Uganda this summer.  When we started our prison projects in Uganda in 2010, former Global Justice Program Director Jay Milbrandt began visually capturing our experiences.  He captured many moving pictures of us engaged in our work, and also created two different moving pictures in the form of short documentary films in 2010’s “The Masindi Project” and 2011’s “Remand: Jail for Kids in Africa.”  After last summer’s project in an adult prison in Fort Portal, we were approached by filmmakers about making a much longer, more comprehensive film about our work in Ugandan prisons.

About two weeks ago, we got the green light from Pepperdine and entered into a relationship with Nashville-based Revolution Pictures to make the documentary film.  Revolution is run by an award-winning filmmaker, Randy Brewer, who also graduated from my alma mater, Abilene Christian.  Anticipating that we might go ahead with this, Pepperdine film professor Craig Detweiler has been capturing footage of interviews with Ugandan judges visiting Pepperdine over the past several months for possible use in the film.  It was for the same purpose that Craig interviewed Gary Haugen last week – for possible use in the documentary.

The Nashville production team is flying out this week to film interviews with the twelve Pepperdine students who will be traveling to Uganda for the summer to work for Ugandan judges and to join the prison project.

The prison project this summer will involve spending one week inside the Luzira Maximum Security Prison preparing the cases of more than 100 adult prisoners who have been waiting several years for a lawyer, the evidence against them, and a court date.  The team will consist of 6-10 American lawyers, 12 Pepperdine Law students, 6-10 Uganda law students, and 6-10 Ugandan lawyers.  We are still finalizing the team of American lawyers, so if anyone reading this is potentially interested in joining the team, let me know ASAP and I will send you the precise dates (late June/early July) and the cost structure.

It appears that the filmmakers want to include some of Henry’s story as background and lead-in, so it will be fun to visit with and film his family as part of this trip.

Speaking of Henry, his extended family had a meeting this past week to discuss the path forward in the wake of the passing of Henry’s father.  The aunt who is trying to take Henry’s family’s land was not among the 79 attendees, though she sent a representative on her behalf to continue to assert her claim on the land.  I was heartened to learn that the rest of those in attendance refused to allow the representative to even speak at the gathering.  Nevertheless, Henry is moving forward with trying to secure legal title to the land, which will be a lengthy and expensive process.

Post-Mortem Report

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Unfortunately, I spoke too soon.  In my prior post a few weeks ago, I explained Uganda’s lamentable history of “land grabbing” in the immediate wake of the death of the male leader of a family.  Too often, and too successfully, relatives of the deceased forcefully (and forcibly) eject the grieving widow and her children from her land and “reclaim” the property for the family of the deceased father.  Because Henry had been named the new family “heir” (head of the family), I had assumed that the father’s relatives had decided to behave themselves.  I was wrong.

At the second extended family meeting following the burial of Henry’s father, Henry’s aunt (father’s sister) announced that she had something to tell the entire group.  She declared that immediately prior to Henry’s father purchasing the land upon which Henry has lived his entire life, she had loaned him the money for the purchase and that he was holding the land for her.  The land is now hers, she proclaimed.  Needless to say, this was quite a shock to all in attendance.  In response to questioning, she claimed to have proof, but refused to say what it was.

The next day, Henry consulted with the Local Council Chairman (roughly equivalent to the mayor) and with a lawyer.  Unsurprisingly, the land title is not recorded anywhere, so the aunt will likely try to record the land in her name.  Fortunately, the Chairman has now been alerted to these shenanigans and has promised he won’t let that happen.  He has been Chairman for more than thirty years and has no recollection of anything like Henry’s aunt is claiming.  Fortunately, a friend of mine is the field office director of International Justice Mission’s Kampala office, and they focus exclusively on combating this type of land grabbing.  He was able to send me a manual setting forth the step-by-step instructions for securing the land, and I was able to get that to Henry.  The first step is to secure a death certificate for Henry’s father, so Henry set out for Kampala to meet with the doctors at the hospital where his father died.

A couple days later, Henry returned with the death certificate in his hand, but more importantly, he returned with an abiding peace in his heart.  While at the hospital, he learned that a post-mortem examination of his father was performed in conjunction with the training of medical students at the Makerere medical school – his father had been designated as a test patient for study by the students.  That post-mortem revealed that Henry’s father had advanced liver cancer and had tumors throughout his bile duct and massive internal bleeding.  This, of course, means that there was nothing that could have been done to save his father and that surgery would have been futile – the doctor told Henry as much in person.  This came as such a relief to Henry (and me) as we are now able to stop the second guessing about whether we should have done something differently.

When Henry told me this last week, he said the fact that the hoped-for surgery never happened “was a blessing from God.  My father did not have to go through the painful operation, but was able to die in peace.”

A few days later, we began another post-mortem, of sorts.  In mid-March, Uganda released the national examination results we have been waiting for since Henry took the exam in November.  These results will determine Henry’s educational future, or lack thereof.  In order to understand and appreciate what the scores mean, a bit of background is necessary.

In Uganda, kids begin school at the age of five or six in what is called Nursery School.  They then complete Primary One through Primary Eight, after which they take a national exam to see if they qualify for Secondary school.  Those who do qualify enroll in what is called O Level, which is Secondary One through Secondary Four.  After Secondary Four, they take another national exam to see which ones of those qualify for what is called A Level.  This national exam consists of ten subjects and is taken over the course of two weeks.  The results of these tests are segregated out by subject.  The best possible score on each subject is 1 and the worst is 10.  The aggregate score is determined by adding up the scores on the best eight subjects, so the best aggregate score is an 8 – one point on each of eight subjects.  A Level consists of Secondary Five and Six where students select three main subjects and one subsidiary subject to study.

Entry into A Level is highly competitive and students apply based upon the subjects they want to study, based upon the career they want to enter.  To have a chance of being admitted to medical school, students must select Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, along with Subsidiary Mathematics.  This “PCB” is the most competitive program in the country.  Following completion of A Level, students take yet another national exam on the four subjects they studied in A Level.  That exam is scored on a twenty-point scale, with 20 being the highest possible score.  The highest possible score on the main subjects is six, with the lowest being a zero.  Two additional points can be earned – one on the subsidiary subject and one on a general paper.  In order to be eligible to apply for admission to a university, students must score at least a 2 in at least two of the main subjects.  Admission to university can be achieved through either a government scholarship or through private admission (full pay).

In November of 2011, Henry scored an aggregate 18 on his O Level national exam, which included scores of a 1 (highest possible score) in Chemistry, a 2 in Physics, and a 5 in Biology.  These solid scores (and lots of prayer) got him admitted to the top A Level science Secondary school in Uganda.  In November of 2013, Henry took his A Level national exam.  Two weeks ago today, he received his results.  He earned the maximum 1 point each on the General Paper and Subsidiary Mathematics portions.  In Chemistry, he earned 5 of 6 possible, and on Physics and Biology, he earned 4 of 6.  His total score, then, was 15 of 20.  We were elated.

Of the 114,000 total test takers, only 54% earned at least a 2 in at least two subjects, only 29% earned a 2 in all three subjects, and the vast majority of the test takers avoided the sciences – the most difficult subjects.  In Physics and Biology, less than half the takers even scored a 2 in those subjects, and in Chemistry, only five percent of the takers earned a perfect 6.  While we don’t know exactly where Henry ranks in the aggregate among those who took the requisite Physics, Chemistry, and Biology for medical school, we do know that Henry will be in the running to be considered for private admission to Makerere Medical School, the top in the country.  We have learned that he will not qualify for one of the fifty government sponsored admissions, but my parents have committed to paying for Henry’s medical school if he is admitted.  Applications for the remaining fifty private admission spots will begin in early May.  Your prayers are greatly appreciated as this process unfolds.

The night before we learned of these results, I had the opportunity to guest lecture in a Crime and Punishment class at Long Beach State taught by my friend Sienna Hopkins.  Two years ago, Dr. Hopkins was babysitting for my sister (with whom she is quite close), and she happened to notice on my sister’s desk an early draft of the manuscript Henry and I have been working on in an effort to tell our story.  On a whim, she started reading it.  When my sister returned home, Sienna asked if she could continue reading it at home.  Now two years later, Sienna asked if she could distribute five of the chapters to her students to read, and then have me come to class to talk about our story and fill in the blanks between the chapters.  I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and Henry awoke quite early (4:30 a.m.) so he could join the class discussion via Skype for a few minutes.  A good (and occasionally emotional) time was had by all.

In other happy news, one of my former students who has been following the plight of Henry and Joseph surprised me last month by insisting on paying for Joseph’s A Level (Secondary Five and Six) school fees over the next two years.  What a blessing for Henry and Joseph’s family!

Thin Dividers

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Professor Bell receiving Ugandan expressions of gratitude

As I rode to the airport on Friday, I once again saw through unjaded eyes the raw texture of the landscape and peoplescape around me.  My companion was California Superior Court Judge Paul Beeman, who had never been to Africa before.

“God, this is beautiful,” he said as the sunset on both the productive day and the intense week of training.  “Looks like they are working late this Friday afternoon,” he said as we drove by a man using a grinding wheel on the side of the road.  It was just after 7:00 p.m. and the small produce stands and metal and wood workshops along Entebbe Road were still bustling with activity as the locals continued to grind out their subsistence life.

We had arrived less than one week earlier under cover of darkness, and we had been so busy during the ensuing week that he hadn’t really gotten a glimpse into daily Ugandan life, at least not beyond that of the elite judges and lawyers with whom we had been interacting.  Judge Beeman’s comments reminded me that I had become so accustomed to life in Uganda that I failed to see both the awesome beauty of the God’s creation in this part of the world and the desperate state of many of its citizens.  This realization transported me back to my first trip in 2010 when the stark contrast between my life and those of my counterparts here came into such sharp relief.

I came face to face then – and once again on Friday night—with the sobering recognition that an inexplicable thin, and inexplicably thin, divider separates my life from theirs.  I can fathom no rational explanation as to why I was born into an intact, secure, stable, and loving family in a safe, flourishing, and wealthy environment, in contrast to those I see on the way to and from the airport and on the rare occasions when I visit the bush villages.  I suppose that a similar observation could be made when comparing circumstances between the “haves and the have nots” in the United States, but the “have nots” in the United States would be among the upper quartile of the “haves” in Uganda.

Clean and readily accessible water, reliable electricity, quality education, and a responsive and responsible police force are so easy to take for granted.  I am thankful for the fresh eyes of Judge Beeman that helped me see that again.

Just two hours earlier, the one-week training session culminated in a touching closing ceremony during which judges and lawyers alike lavished profuse compliments, profound gratitude, and prodigious gifts on the four Pepperdine mediation trainers.  I wish I had a video of the remarks because I find myself at a loss to capture the sentiments expressed.  The highlight of the ceremony was the announcement by a group of attorneys that they were forming a lawyers’ Mediation Society.  The Ugandan judges were stunned.  For years, the constant drumbeat from the lawyers had been that they opposed mediation because they were convinced it would negatively impact their revenue stream.  In fact, ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) is jokingly, though not in a funny way, referred to by Ugandan lawyers as Acute Deficiency in Revenue.  But by the end of the training week, not only had the Ugandan lawyers accepted it, but they warmly embraced it to the point of actively promoting it.  Very satisfying.

Earlier on Friday, Susan Vincent and I spend a couple hours with Andrew, the Secretary of the Plea Bargaining Committee appointed by the Chief Justice.  It was so encouraging to have the undivided attention of someone with legislative drafting training and experience who so intimately understood both the theoretical and practical challenges facing Uganda in the wide-scale implementation of this time- and resource-saving practice.  As we wound down, he expressed confidence that “we shall succeed in this, with God’s help, and if He wills it.”  I took this comment as an invitation to suggest that we pray together.  His face lit up, as he confessed that he had been disappointed that we hadn’t prayed together when we met two days earlier with the Principal Judge.  He grabbed our hands and we prayed like the future of Uganda’s criminal justice system was entirely resting in God’s hands.  It is.

A couple hours later, I called Henry to catch up.  The burial the day before had gone according to plan and he was in the middle of a meeting with his relatives.  We agreed to talk an hour later.  When we did, I learned that the relatives of Henry’s deceased father had decided that Henry would be the new head of his family, even though he has an older brother and a few older siblings from his father’s prior marriage.  This is a great honor and a great responsibility, and Henry is humbled to be asked “to lead the clan.”  I am not entirely sure what all this entails, but I do know that it is not at all uncommon for major land-related problems to arise when a man who owns property dies in Uganda and in other developing countries.  Too often, the relatives of the deceased descend upon the land and expel the widow and her children, claiming entitlement to the land to exclusion of the survivors.  It appears this will not happen in Henry’s family, since he (rather than his father’s brothers or other male relatives) are not asserting possession of the land.

Another meeting is scheduled for Monday, and I will talk to Henry shortly thereafter to ensure things are settled and secure.

Just before boarding my flight out of Uganda on Friday night, I encountered another thin divider – between me and the guy responsible for the Ugandan chapter of my life opening up.

Bob Goff travels to Uganda two or three times a year and we occasionally overlap.  This time, our overlap was only for a few minutes, so I decided to snap a picture of us together in Uganda, separated by a thin pane of glass.

As I write this, I am about halfway home – sitting in an airport lounge in Amsterdam.  This trip never gets easier or shorter.  Thanks for following along.

Bob and I during a brief encounter at the Entebbe Airport
Closing Ceremony

Providential Confluences

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Birthday Dinner (Denise Madigan, Professor Bell, Aaron, Judge Goldberg, Emily, Susan, Judge Beeman

The events of the past two days have reminded me that diligence, patience, and prayer often lead to positive outcomes.  Henry’s father David was laid to rest from his toil and pain on this earth on Thursday.  Regretfully, I was unable to travel the three-plus hours each way to attend the gathering due to the full schedule of meetings at which I was a necessary party.  Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday, my mourning was seasoned heavily with dashes (and perhaps truckloads) of hope and anticipation.

On Wednesday morning, I met for an hour with the Principal Judge of Uganda, who is in charge of the entire trial court system (called the High Court).  He Chairs the Plea Bargaining Committee, which consists of ten men and women tasked with creating the structure for Uganda’s adaptation of plea bargaining in their criminal justice system.  (A structure we developed in 2012 for doing this in the juvenile realm is functioning, at least as well as such systems function here).  Joining us at this meeting was the Secretary of the Committee, who is responsible for drafting the judicial instrument (called a Practice Direction) that will be used to roll out plea bargaining on a wide scale.  He will then be the one responsible for turning that instrument into legislation before Parliament.  The Secretary and I spent another hour together walking through the current working draft and making revisions and edits.

During this meeting, he informed me that a delegation of eight Ugandan judges and lawmakers are hoping to engage in a final “benchmarking” visit to the United States before they finalize their internal and external plea bargaining documents.  This visit to Pepperdine will likely take place in early May.

While I was at the High Court for this meeting, I learned from a highly placed source that the Austrian government had just approved a new three-year funding program for mediation training and implementation.  At a time when several donor nations have announced they are curtailing their aid to Uganda in the wake of some recent legislation passed by Parliament and signed by the President, Austria has decided to step up to the plate in a big way to assist the Judiciary in its effort to provide more effective and efficient access to justice for its people.  The parameters of that aid package are such that many of my Ugandan friends on the Judiciary are confident that much of the additional training by Pepperdine the Ugandans desperately seek could be funded by this new grant.   

One of our four Pepperdine mediation trainers, Judge Mitchell Goldberg, celebrated his 71st birthday in style on Tuesday.  The room full of Ugandan judges provided a rousing Ugandan version of happy birthday, as did the room full of attorneys shortly thereafter.  It was quite touching to see how emotionally affected Judge Goldberg was by their warm and sincere wishes to him.  We ended the evening with a birthday dinner at my favorite restaurant in Kampala – the Emin Pasha.  Susan had sneakily bought a birthday cake for the occasion.

Up until earlier this week, I had no idea there were veterinarian doctors in Uganda.  There are relatively few dogs, and almost no cats (other than the big cats roaming the plains in search of antelope), so the need for vets in the capital city of Kampala is quite anemic.  Perhaps that is why this veterinarian doesn’t practice medicine, but is instead the Commissioner General of Prisons in Uganda.  This meeting had been arranged by the Director of Public Prosecution, Mike Chibita, earlier in the week and was aimed at accomplishing several tasks.  The first of which requires a bit of context.

A couple months ago, a judge from Louisiana, after reading Bob Goff’s witty and inspiring book Love Does, called Pepperdine to ask some follow up questions about our Uganda work, which is mentioned in the book.  The judge was routed to me, and we have become long-distance friends.  About a month ago, he sent me a book called Cain’s Redemption that chronicles the pioneering and transformative work on moral rehabilitation of prisoners by warden Burl Cain at the Angola maximum security prison in Louisiana.  My meeting on Thursday morning represented the providential confluence of my work here in Uganda and some proactive thinking by the Louisiana judge.  We have now penciled in a visit of the top Ugandan prison officials to the Angola prison later this year.  They are thrilled at the prospect of learning how to improve the quality of the correctional work they deliver at their 224 prisons.

As always is the case, there are logistical and funding details that need to be worked out, but I have a high degree of confidence this will happen, especially after what I found out at dinner Thursday night.  More on that below.

The second task was to secure the cooperation of the prison system for our continuing work in Uganda prisons.  Since 2010, Pepperdine has been bringing teams to Uganda to assist in the case preparation of prisoners who have been languishing in prison for years and years, just waiting for someone to do something.  No lawyer, no evidence provided against them, no trial date, and even less hope.  The problem is not so much with not caring about the prisoners, but much more about not having the knowledge or resources to deliver timely access to justice.  From early 2010 through mid 2013, our focus was exclusively on the juvenile realm.  Following a measure of success in that context, we turned our sights toward the adults.  Last July, a team of American lawyers, American law students, Ugandan lawyers, and Ugandan law students descended upon Katojo prison in Fort Portal to prepare for trial seventy cases for disposal through plea bargaining.  More on that here.  After Thursday’s meeting, we had the green light from the prisons to step up our efforts by conducting another intensive week of case preparation in late June at Uganda’s maximum security prison called Luzira.

The third (and potentially very exciting topic) of this meeting went according to plan, though we need to get a letter agreement with final permission before I feel comfortable disclosing what this is.  Needless to say, Susan and I left this meeting quite encouraged.

From there, Susan and I met an Austrian who heads the arm of the Dutch government that funds various judicial improvements and training programs.  I have met with her on numerous occasions before, and she told us a bit more about the Austrian mediation grant, buoying our spirits even further.

Before dinner, Susan and I met with the appropriate judicial and prosecutorial figures to finalize the June Luzira prison project from their end.  The meeting couldn’t have gone better.

As is our custom when I am in town, we organized a dinner at the elegant Fang Fang Chinese Restaurant with the Ugandan judges who have previously made the trip to Pepperdine.  These men and women are becoming dear friends and it is always wonderful to spend an evening with them.  But this gathering was extra special because we were joined by a friend of mine who works at the US Embassy.  His day job is to manage a variety of justice system projects, and as a retired police officer, he performs lots of training for the Ugadan police.  He and I had been trying to coordinate our schedules to share a meal, and this was the time that worked out.  He was very pleased to meet the ten or so judges who were able to attend the dinner, at least one of which he has been wanting to meet for a while.

At the dinner, the Embassy official announced a new program the US will be funding that relates directly to the work we are doing, and may very well provide an answer to the prayers we have been offering about how to pay for the aggressive training dreams the Ugandan judges and I have been dreaming about on the criminal side of the ledger.

I went to bed on Thursday with a smile on my face, knowing that two separate governments are allocating substantial resources to the very types of projects we have been delivering and planning to deliver.  We now turn our prayers toward the prospect of our grant proposals being looked upon favorably.  I have a sneaking suspicion that these developments are not the product of random chance or coincidence, but are instead providential confluences of several streams flowing in the same direction – toward efficient and effective justice for Ugandans.

 

Temporary World, Eternal God

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Pepperdine became engaged with Uganda’s Judiciary as a direct result of a speech by Restore International founder Bob Goff to Pepperdine students in February of 2007 during “International Justice Mission Week” at the law school.  During that talk, Bob whimsically invited the Pepperdine students in the audience to accompany him to a judicial conference he was putting on the following month in Kampala, Uganda.  Two of them, Matt Kraus and Lizz Alvarez, caught the vision and convinced me and Dean Starr to fund their two-week Ugandan adventure a few weeks later.  They came back full of ideas about how Pepperdine could serve the judiciary in its work.  Two months later, Lizz and a few other Pepperdine law students spent the summer launching the partnership that is now flourishing.

Fittingly, Restore International and International Justice Mission both crossed my path here in Uganda over the past 24 hours.  I spent Monday afternoon and evening with the Kampala Field Office Director of IJM, Jesse Rudy, and had breakfast on Tuesday morning with a Restore International team, most of whom had flown in the night before.  (Bob arrives on Friday night, minutes before I lift off for home).  At breakfast, I met a young lady who now works for Restore who lived with Lizz and the other Pepperdine students during that first summer in 2007.

Small world, big God.

Because Henry’s mom had traveled from Hoima with Henry’s one year-old brother on Monday evening to join Henry and his older brother Kegan, there was no room on the floor between the hospital beds for all of them to sleep on Monday night.  (I, of course, had offered to pay for a hotel for them on previous nights, but they insisted they needed to be there during the night to attend Henry’s ailing father, David).  Accordingly, Henry stayed with me at the conference hotel on Monday night, and set off on an 8:00 a.m. three-hour bus ride to his hometown of Hoima on Tuesday morning where he planned to stay for 24 hours before returning to Kampala to be with his father.

When I walked into the mediation conference room at 9:40 a.m. after the breakfast with Restore, Pepperdine’s Nootbaar Fellow in Uganda, Susan Vincent, was sitting at the back of the room looking at her phone.  As I sat down next to her, she whispered, “have you seen this yet?” and set her phone down on the table in front of me.  It was a text from Henry addressed to both Susan and me.  Three simple words that took my breath away.

“Dad is dead.”

Henry had received this devastating news from his mother while he was bouncing around on a crowded bus.  I stepped out into the hallway to call him, but I received no answer.  My mind resumed its racing through the “what if” questions that had been ricocheting around my mind for several weeks.  Once again, I received no answer.  I suspect this sort of second guessing is hard-wired into many situations of medical uncertainty preceding the passing of a loved one.  But it doesn’t make it any easier to fight off feelings of guilt and confusion.  I am not sure those emotions will ever fully subside, however, as we are all forced to confront the inescapable truth that we are not meant to have all the answers.  Not yet, anyway.

Temporary world, eternal God.

Over the course of the day, Henry and I texted much, but spoke little.  Understandably, he is taking it hard.  I suspect he is wrestling with same “what if” thoughts.  I did my best to assist with the arrangements of claiming and transporting David’s body back to his ancestral burial place a mile from Henry’s home.

                                                                                                     

In the early afternoon, I met with the Director of Public Prosecutions to discuss a variety of planned and potential points of collaboration in the near and distant future.  We also had a chance to discuss at length some rather controversial legislation Uganda has recently passed.  During our visit, he made a call and secured a meeting for me with a veterinarian doctor on Thursday.  I am quite excited and hopeful about where that meeting might lead.  More on that front on Thursday.

Following my meeting with the DPP, I had lunch with someone who is fast becoming an old friend – a Welshman living in Uganda who is pouring his heart and soul into securing families for Uganda’s orphans.

After lunch, I had a chance to watch a fair bit of the mediation training the Pepperdine team is delivering to the judges and lawyers.  It is nothing short of fascinating, and the trainers are nothing short of spectacular.  The participants are attentive and engaged as they strategize and envision how they can use the tools they are acquiring to serve the people of Uganda.

On Tuesday evening, I had the privilege of meeting a very special young man for the first time.  Shortly after lunch, I had received a text from Justice Kiryabwire – a man who has become like a brother, which said:

“Your God child made a perfect landing on this planet.  Thanks for your prayers.”

Brilliant, as they often say here.  Last month, Justice K had asked me to be the Godfather to his third child, who was providentially scheduled to arrive during the week I was here.  After dinner, I had a chance to hold baby Mark and congratulate the family.

It feels too trite to write all about the circle of life, joyful beginnings and tearful endings, comings and goings, etc.  But those are the thoughts swirling inside my head right now.

Baby Mark Kiryabwire and his Proud Godfather

 

Newly arrived Mark Kiryabwire

Mediations

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Just Before Opening Ceremony with Chief Justice Kavuma and Justices Kiggundu and Wangatusi

 

Like other African countries, Uganda has a lengthy history of resolving its disputes informally.  Before the arrival of the Brits in the 1860s and its subsequent colonization, Uganda didn’t have a formal justice system in the way that term is commonly understood.  Rather, the tribal leaders served as judge, jury, and (sometimes) executioner.  Conduct we would consider criminal either resulted in physical punishment, compensation, or even banishment from the tribe.

As a formal rule of law was established, cultural dispute resolution norms were replaced by “modern” means of delivering justice in both the civil and criminal context, at least in the urban areas.  Even after Uganda gained its independence from Britain in 1962, it retained the British common law system in its justice sector.  With the dawn of the 21st century, however, Uganda began its rediscovery of alternative dispute resolution, beginning with a mediation pilot program in its Commercial Court.  Pepperdine Law School’s Straus Institute was instrumental in the expansion of this effort, providing training to more than a dozen Ugandan judges over a period of eight years.  Indeed, the first court-annexed mediator in the country, John Napier, was a recent graduate of the law school and dispute resolution program when he became a mediator here in 2009.

Justice Geoffrey Kirybwire (Justice K), Uganda’s designated liaison between the Ugandan Judiciary and Pepperdine, presided over the successful implementation of mediation in the Commercial Court while serving as the Head of that division.

Sunday morning, I attended All Saints Church with Justice K and his two children.  Once again, I stood out like the photographic negative of a fly in a bowl of milk.  And no, this was not because of my skin color, but rather because I have no rhythm.  Church in Uganda is a bit more, well, energetic than in the United States.  I am confident I provided more than a little comic relief for those sitting behind me.  On the good side of the ledger, the music and singing were so loud that I could fully utilize my lung capacity without shredding the ear drums of those around me.  I couldn’t even hear myself.

After church, I met up with Henry at a local mall for lunch and an update on his father, David, who is in dire need of a different form of mediation as his condition deteriorates in Mulago Hospital.  I have forwarded portions of David’s medical charts to doctors in the United States and they have impressed upon me the critical nature of his current condition.  I visited David in the late afternoon and even I could tell he was worse off than the day before.  As of Sunday evening, the private doctor who was attending to David at this public hospital remained unwilling to operate unless and until his condition stabilized – surgery is impossible until he is stabilized, but it seems as if the only thing that can stabilize him is surgery.

Late Sunday night, the Pepperdine mediation team returned from their African Safari and Nile River cruise exhausted, but glad they had taken the trip.  We finalized plans for Monday’s conference over dinner.

On Monday morning, Uganda formally launched an expansion of mediation into the other three civil divisions at the trial court level.  Fittingly, Pepperdine was in the middle of it.  While incongruous in one level (I am not trained in mediation techniques), I was honored to be the Pepperdine representative for this occasion.

As per usual, the gathering started about an hour late.  In attendance were fifty Ugandan judges and fifty Ugandan lawyers.  Among the judiciary were one Justice from the Supreme Court, seven Justices from the Court of Appeals, and twenty-one Justices from the High Court (trial level).  About twenty Magistrates and Registrars were also in attendance.

After two welcoming speeches from the high court judges who convened this gathering from the Ugandan side, I was invited to the podium to say a few words and to introduce the four mediation trainers who would be presiding over the five-day program.  I took the opportunity to congratulate and encourage them as they embraced civil mediation for the entire country in an effort to greatly reduce the case backlog in their courts.  The Chief Justice of Uganda spoke next and lavished thanksgiving on Pepperdine for its long-standing and transformative service to Uganda’s judiciary and its people.  It was a proud moment for our school.

As the media-rich opening of the program came to a close, we divided the Ugandans into two separate rooms – judges in one, lawyers in the other.  During this transition, we broke for tea and took some pictures.  Several of our team were photographed while engaged in a side conversation with the Chief Justice, which ran in Tuesday morning’s paper.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/All-civil-disputes-set-for-mediation–judiciary-says/-/688334/2238594/-/rurny1/-/index.html

Good thing I have such a huge forehead, or I would have missed my opportunity for this photo op.  Also pictured with the Chief Justice are Professors Stephanie Bell and Denise Madigan, along with Judge Paul Beeman.  Just off camera was Judge Mitch Goldberg.

As the day unfolded, I drifted in and out of the two training rooms (the participants were fully engaged), even while David drifted in and out of consciousness.  In the late afternoon, the private doctor told Henry that David’s chances of survival were 50/50, and that prayers were his best hope.  More mediation on David’s behalf would be greatly appreciated.

In the early evening, however, a team of doctors and medical students from Makerere University arrived at David’s side and have apparently decided to use his case as a training exercise for the students.  This, in and of itself, felt like an answered prayer.

Henry and I discussed in depth the options – I was leaning toward trying to move David to a private hospital, perhaps in Nairobi, Kenya, but Henry is convinced that his best chance for survival is to remain with this medical team that has now replaced the private doctor.  Practical wisdom is playing hide and seek with me now.

In the late evening, Henry’s mother arrived at the hospital to help take care of David.  Now that he is no longer ambulatory, an additional layer of responsibility exists, including those related to bodily fluids that Henry’s mother has insisted on handling.

Henry joined me at my hotel late Monday night and will venture back to Hoima on Tuesday morning to ensure his brother Joseph is settled into the school he began attending on Monday.  Henry will return to Kampala on Wednesday.

 

Judge Beeman and Professor Bell Training the Judges

Settling In and Booting Up

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Because none of the four others who have joined me on this trip – Professor Stephanie Bell, Mediator Denise Madigan, and Judges Mitch Goldberg and Paul Beeman – had been to Africa, they were eager to see the local wildlife.  Given the intense training schedule this coming week, the only time for them to go on safari was this weekend.  Accordingly, they were in bed for about four hours before climbing into a safari vehicle Saturday morning for the five hour drive to Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda’s premier game park.  Having been there three times myself, I opted to stay behind and connect with others in town.

I began the day with a quick trip to the local mall to get my wireless internet stick charged, and then had tea with Justice Kiryabwire (Justice K), who is the liaison for the Pepperdine program and serves as a Justice on the Ugandan Court of Appeals.  Halfway through our meeting, he picked up his law professor wife (Winnie) from the doctor, where she had her final pre-natal checkup in advance of Tuesday’s C-Section delivery of their third child.  As I always, I very much enjoyed getting their insider perspective on recent legislation and developments in Uganda.

During my last trip to Uganda in January, I met up with someone whose family was on an unexpected adventure in Uganda.  She, her husband, and three children had traveled to Uganda in the fall with a plan to stay four to six weeks.  Six months later, they are still here, still in the process of navigating some challenges they encountered during their stay here.  It was a blessing and an encouragement to see them flourishing and trusting fully in God’s timing as they wait for things to unfold on Uganda time.  Their kids are adapting so well, and they are such a positive influence on those around them, especially other American families who come through Uganda.

On the way back from lunch, I stopped at Mulago Hospital to meet up with Henry and his father, David.  During my last trip to Uganda, I did my best to assist them in getting David admitted to the hospital and evaluated for symptoms that included a swollen and painful stomach and worryingly yellow eyes and skin.  I will never again complain about the length of time it takes to get a referral or test in our American medical system.  They waited in the hospital two weeks for an MRI and CT scan, and then ten days for the results.

And the conditions in which they wait would make an uninitiated westerner weep.  The hospital beds are placed wall to wall in open rooms that lack any semblance of sanitation.  The beds are bare mattresses – sheets and blankets are strictly on a BYO basis.  Same with food, water, and any hygiene products.  Same with medicine.  The beds are approximately two feet apart, providing barely enough room for the relatives who care for the patients to sleep on the floor between the beds.  The doctors and nurses come by infrequently, and usually only when specifically bidden by the relatives.  The sights and sounds and smells of literally dozens and dozens of injured, ill, and incurable cannot be adequately captured in words.  This is a waiting game of the worst kind.

Feelings of helplessness barely fended off waves of hopelessness as I scanned the room.  When I enter a prison, whether juvenile or adult, I can envision each person’s case.  I can understand where it is in the process and how it can possibly be moved forward to resolution.  I can see the starfish stranded on the shore and I can operate within a system that holds the prospect of bringing them hope.  But in a hospital, I don’t know what to do.  I don’t speak the language of medicine, and I don’t know where to begin.  I see starfish baking in the sun, and am thankful to those who are making an effort to help those in this realm of need.

As Henry and I snake through the labyrinth of patients, I finally see Henry’s father.  He is hooked to an IV drip that Henry has himself prepared and inserted, after he purchased the contents of the bag.  One of the silver linings in this dark cloud of David’s life-threatening illness is that Henry has had the opportunity to dive deep into Uganda’s medical system.  Having just completed his Secondary education in November, Henry is hoping to enroll in Medical School in August at Makerere University – Uganda’s top school, which is located at the Mulago Hospital where David is a patient.  Henry has now been by David’s side for about six weeks (mostly here in Kampala at Mulago), which is four hours from their home town of Hoima.

Henry has been proactively interviewing and interrogating doctors as they try to figure out the source of David’s ailment and the best treatment.  The tests and scans show that he has a tumor in or near his gall bladder that is blocking his bile duct.  Henry had been visiting with numerous doctors around the city and finally got one to agree to operate on his father in the next couple of days.  But by the time I arrived on Friday with the money for the surgery, David’s blood tests revealed an alarming lack of certain chemicals/minerals and a worrying excess of others.  The doctor declared him to be unlikely to survive the surgery unless he was stabilized.  Accordingly, this next week will be critical as he aims to be ready for surgery by next weekend.

David painstakingly mouthed words of gratitude as we talked.  His face gaunt, his belly distended, and the color of his eyes reflected the battle raging inside his organs.  Conflict raged inside of me, as my mind raced through the options.  Should I move him to a private hospital?  That was the plan just before I took off from the United States.  The private surgeon had recommended as much because of the lack of success they were having getting the attention of any doctors at Mulago.  But when I arrived on Friday night, Henry had secured the assistance of a doctor at Mulago who was now overseeing the treatment in advance of surgery.

Should I fly him to India for surgery?  That was the suggestion of the doctor who initially reviewed the CT scan and MRI.  But David had no passport, no support structure in India, and didn’t want to go there for surgery.  And what if I persuaded him to go and he died on the operating table there?

Ultimately, I accepted Henry’s conclusion that the best plan was to the stay the course, even if that course meant remaining in the substandard conditions where he currently resided.

On the good news front, Henry’s younger brother Joseph was just admitted to Mandela Secondary School in Hoima for his A-level, which is the last two years of high school.  On Saturday afternoon, I converted dollars to shillings and Henry sent the $600 necessary to pay for Joseph’s first-term (of three per year) school fees and the books and supplies he needed for this boarding school.  Joseph is excited to continue his studies closer to home and will be focusing on physics, economics, mathematics,  and information technology.

Just before we left the hospital, Henry’s older brother Kegan arrived from Hoima with some food and essentials for David and Henry, and plans to stay in Kampala for a few days to keep Henry company as he cares for David.

I brought Henry and Kegan back to my hotel room and gave the surprise I had been waiting to deliver for more than a month now.  During my last visit to Uganda, I had learned during a tour of the Makerere Medical School that Henry would need a laptop for the fall (assuming his admitted).  Fortunately, the Zacharia family (Michael and Debi are the proud parents of Tyler and Dana, whose separate weddings to Katie Black and Jason Hinojosa I had officiated over the past few years) had graciously donated some money to the work I am doing here in Uganda.  Providentially, their donation almost exactly equalled the cost of a new Dell laptop I was able to deliver to Henry on Saturday.

Ecstatic doesn’t even begin to describe his reaction.  And since Joseph will be studying computers in his secondary school, Joline and I decided he needed a laptop also.  Because their older brother Kegan runs a small business burning CDs and DVDs, he is sufficiently conversant with computers that he has promised to teach Henry and Joseph how to use them.  For a few hours on Saturday afternoon, Kegan booted up and formatted the computers for Henry’s and Joseph’s immediate use.

More tomorrow.

 

l

Henry with his new computer
 

Triskadecaphoria

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That might not even be a word, but it well describes my mood as I am borderline euphoric about my thirteenth trip to Uganda.  A little while ago, I landed at the Entebbe Airport with a group of American judges and lawyers to carry out a plan hatched this past August.

Each year, Uganda sends two of its judges for a week-long training program in mediation at Pepperdine Law School’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution.  The Straus Institute is world renowned and has been ranked first in the country for nine years in a row.  Judges and lawyers from across the county and around the world regularly descend upon Malibu for this intensive and valuable workshop.  During the training session in August, I spent some time with the two Ugandan judges who had made the journey.  That conversation led to a plan, which turned into a proposal, and is now embodied in a program.

Rather than bringing two Ugandan judges to be trained in Malibu, we have brought four trainers from Malibu to provide training in Uganda.  And rather than two Ugandans receiving training, that number has been multiplied . . . by fifty.

Mediation was first rolled out in Uganda in 2009 in the Commercial Division of the High Court under the able leadership of Justice Geoffrey Kiryabwire (fondly known as Justice K by his Pepperdine friends).  In fact, the first-ever court-annexed mediator for the country was Pepperdine Law graduate John Napier, who served as Pepperdine’s first Nootbaar Fellow – a one-year fellowship program.  Mediation in the Commercial Court has been so successful, it is being rolled out this month to the rest of the civil divisions (Land, Family, Civil) in the country.

And the centerpiece of that rollout is this week’s training session, which is a joint project of the Pepperdine’s Global Justice Program in the Nootbaar Institute and Pepperdine’s Straus Institute.  As the Global Justice Program’s Director, my role is primarily logistical and diplomatic – the actual training will be provided by Pepperdine Professor Stephanie Bell, Pepperdine Adjunct Professor Denise Madigan, and Judges Mitch Goldberg and Paul Beeman.  Pepperdine’s current Nootbaar Fellow, Susan Vincent, has been diligently working directly with the Ugandan Judiciary to ensure everything was arranged on the Ugandan side.

As we planned this project, we envisioned training forty judges and forty lawyers.  But when the program was announced, the interest was so strong, we agreed to expand it to fifty judges and fifty lawyers.  We are told that the lawyer slots were filled within a few hours of the announcement.

The Straus Institute agreed to put on this program for an amount of money that may or may not fully cover the actual expenses incurred by the team.  None of the presenters for this week-long training session are being paid for their time.  The standard price for this program is $5,000 per attendee.  I am proud to be a part of an institution that values the rule of law and its relationship with Uganda enough to invest in the country’s future in this important way.

While I won’t actually be actively involved in training the Ugandans, I intend to be quite busy during this eight-day trip.  I have lined up numerous meetings relating to ongoing projects I am involved in, and will be actively exploring additional projects, a few of which appear very promising.

I will also be connecting with Henry and Joseph as they prepare to begin their next educational chapters.  Henry and Joseph are Ugandan young men I met four years ago while they were imprisoned juveniles, trapped in a broken system.  More on that here.  Joseph recently received his Senior Four national exam scores, and will hopefully be starting Senior Five in just over a week.  He scored quite well, though not as well as he hoped or expected.  We are in the process of nailing down where he will complete his high school education.

Henry should be receiving his Senior Six national exam scores at some point in the next month or so, after which he is very much hoping to enroll in medical school in August.  Over the past six weeks (since I was last here in Uganda), Henry has received an up-close-and-personal view of the Ugandan medical system as he has tried to navigate through the frustrating and time-consuming process of getting his father treated for acute abdominal pain and yellowing eyes.  Initially, they waited in the hospital for eight days, just to get an MRI and CT scan.  A few weeks later, they received the results.  A few weeks later still, they had a chance to meet with a surgeon and have learned that a tumor in his bile duct requires immediate surgery.

 

Henry and Joseph’s Dad, David

Joline and I were able to borrow against the equity in our home to pay for the medical costs and I am hopeful the surgery will happen while I am here this next week.  Prayers are greatly appreciated as medical care in Uganda lacks the predictability and success rates we enjoy in the West.

On a brighter note, Justice K and his wonderful wife Winnie are expecting their third child to be born via C-Section on Tuesday of this week.

I remain hopeful that we will receive the ruling in Henry’s appeal in the near future – there is an outside chance it could happen this week.

My plan is to provide daily updates while I am in town.  Thanks for following along.