Moving Forward, Heading Home

Since we started the J-FASTER juvenile justice project early last year, the Uganda Christian Lawyer’s Fraternity (UCLF) has provided legal representation for the children imprisoned in the remand home in Kampala.  Just before I left Uganda last June, Shane Michael (Nootbaar Fellow) and I prepared and submitted a funding proposal to the Danish government on behalf of UCLF that would allow UCLF to staff up and provide legal representation at all five of Uganda’s remand homes.  Shortly thereafter, the proposal was granted, and UCLF began expanding its reach.

When I was here in January, David, Kirby (from Sixty Feet), a UCLF attorney, and I visited four of the five remand homes and connected the wardens with UCLF so they would know that the kids have lawyers.  The fifth and final remand home is in Western Uganda in a town called Fort Portal.  So that is where David and I (and Daniel our driver) were headed after the oral argument at the court of appeals on Tuesday.

On our way out of town, we stopped at UCLF headquarters and picked up a UCLF attorney named Docus.  As she had just started at UCLF, I had never met her, but when she climbed into the car, I thought I recognized her from somewhere.

The five-hour drive to Fort Portal was both uneventful and beautiful.  Fort Portal rests in the foothills of the Rwenzori mountain range, and is thus a bit cooler than muggy Kampala.  David and I checked into on inn run by a Dutch couple situation just on the outskirts of town.  Daniel and Docus ventured into town in search of a more “local” place to sleep.  Before dinner, I walked into and around the entire town over a half-hour period, checking out the local scene and reflecting on the days’ events.  I didn’t see any other white faces.

The next morning, David, Docus, and I met up with another UCLF attorney named Regina who is based a few hours outside of Fort Portal.  She is representing the juveniles currently confined in the Fort Portal Remand Home, and is funded by the two-year grant UCLF received last year.  The four of us then went to the judicial chambers of Justice Mike Chibita, who is the Resident High Court Judge in this area.  Justice Chibita is the former President of UCLF and is a stellar individual and judge.  He was just starting a combined adult/juvenile court session and was fully on top of the challenges faced in delivering justice efficiently to Ugandans.

During my last visit to Uganda two months ago, I had dinner with Justice Chibita and pitched the idea of running a pilot program in Fort Portal this summer, whereby we would take the J-FASTER model we have been using for juveniles and apply it to the adult realm.  To succeed, we would need a progressive and organized judge, a big backlog at an adult prison, cooperation and assistance from that prison, cooperation from the prosecutors’ office, and a team of Ugandan and American lawyers.  I had heard there was a large prison backlog in Fort Portal and knew Justice Chibita was exactly the judge we wanted.  After we discussed the idea, Justice Chibita was in.

Providentially, Friday’s local paper ran an article decrying the huge prison backlog in Fort Portal and quoted Chief Justice Odoki as saying that he would look into solutions to this problem.  The timing could not be more perfect.  So the purpose of this trip to Fort Portal was to secure buy in from the necessary constituents.

We first met with Justice Chibita on Wednesday morning and agreed upon a number – we would try to handle 60 of the cases in a session scheduled for July.  We decided that the team of American lawyers (and Pepperdine Law students) would work hand-in-hand with a team of Ugandan lawyers and law students to prepare the cases for trial, so they could be plea bargained in advance of trial.  Since I am going to be in Uganda with Joline and Jessica from June 3-26, and since seven Pepperdine students will be in country during this time as well, we settled on the week of June 10-14 for an intensive time of case preparation.  The task ahead was then to convince the prison, the prosecution, and the central judicial authorities in Kampala to go along.

From Justice Chibita’s office, we headed five miles out of town to the Katojo prison for a meeting with the warden.  Katojo had been built to accommodate 283 prisoners; it currently houses just over 900.  The prisoners fall it three almost evenly divided groups – those who have been arrested and committed to the High Court (the prosecution is ready to proceed with trial), those who have been arrested and have not yet been committed (the police are still investigating the case), and those who have been convicted of crimes and are serving their sentences.  Our focus is on the first group, many of whom have been waiting for more than three years for their promised trial.

Over the course of an hour-long meeting with the warden and deputy warden, everything was worked out.  They were thrilled with the prospect of moving the cases forward and pledged their full support and cooperation.  Now we needed to convince the prosecution and the top judicial brass in Kampala.  Our meeting with two of the three prosecutors in Fort Portal went exceptionally well.  They understood what we were trying to accomplish, and pledged their support and cooperation, as well.  So all we had left for the leap of the J-FASTER program from the juvenile realm to the adult realm was the approval of the Chief Justice, the Principal Judge, and the Head of the Criminal Division, all of whom are headquartered in Kampala.

Before we left town, we went to visit the Fort Portal Remand Home.  As noted previously, this is the only remand home I had not yet visited.  The grounds and buildings were habitable and relatively clean, though clearly aging.  We met with the warden first, and she informed us that there were 34 juveniles on remand – 33 boys and 1 girl.  Justice Chibita has things moving well, and only one boy had been there longer than the statutory limit of six months.  The biggest challenge has been the speed at which the juveniles are committed to the High Court – the police seem to have a challenge completing their investigations in a timely manner.  We were immediately impressed with the warden, and the juveniles seem to look to her as a mother figure.

Among the challenges she identified was the difficulty in getting fuel money from the central office in Kampala.  Without fuel for the remand home van, they cannot transport the kids to court, and cannot transport them home when they are released.  The warden informed us that they were in a crisis situation at the moment – they had no fuel to get to and from court in the morning, and they certainly didn’t have any fuel to resettle two boys who had been released by the court.  She went on to tell us that one of the boys had been released two weeks earlier, but they didn’t have the 250,000 shillings (just under $100) necessary to transport the boy back to the remote village where lived.  The 14 year-old boy, she said, cried himself to sleep every night, and was refusing to wear the prison uniform, reasoning that he was no longer a legitimate prisoner.  Within minutes, two phone calls were made.  The first call was to UCLF, who agreed to provide funds for the fuel to and from court from the grant money they had (we had built fuel costs into our original proposal, just in case they were needed).  The second call was to Sixty Feet, who have been funding the J-FASTER sessions, and providing loads of other assistance to the remand homes throughout the country.  Predictably, Sixty Feet again stepped up, and agreed to provide the fuel to get the released prisoners home immediately.  David and I had a chance to pull the two aside before we left and let them know they were going home.  There are few better moments than these.

The warden then gathered all the kids together and introduced us.  They were polite and playful.  They had lots of questions and several requests.  Many of the requests concerned food and educational activities.  We are going to work with Sixty Feet on seeing what can be done to improve their conditions.  Previously, I had learned that they didn’t have a soccer ball, so I asked them if they wanted one.  The response was predictable – there is little else more important to Ugandan kids than soccer (football).  Within an hour, we had bought and delivered a shiny new ball.

At one point, they went around the room and introduced themselves to us.  About two-thirds of the way around, a rather awkward and tentative boy stood for his turn.  It was immediately clear that this boy was three standard deviations from the IQ mean – to the south side.  He stumbled and stuttered his way through his introduction, which clearly took all the concentration he could muster.  The other kids laughed and nudged each other.  I guess cruelty toward those less fortunate knows no borders.  David immediately jumped in and thanked the boy for introducing himself and telling him he did a good job.  The other kids got the point of David’s compassion.

Most of the questions were handled by David, Regina (local UCLF lawyer), and me.  At the end, one of the children wanted to hear from Docus.  She stepped forward and said what do you want to hear?

“Sing them a song,” I jokingly quipped.

“Do you want me to sing for you?” she asked the kids.

“I was kidding,” I jumped in, trying to give her an out.

She didn’t need one.  She took a deep breath and belted out a gospel tune.  Now, Docus is five foot nothing and can’t see 100 pounds with the Hubbell telescope, but her voice filled every inch of the large room in which we had gathered.

Then it hit me.  That’s where I had seen her before.  In July of 2010, I had visited Uganda Christian University with Tim Perrin and we had attended a noon worship time of about 1,500 students.  The leader of the worship time was a little lady with a huge voice who looked just like Docus.  And she had sung that same song.  When Docus was done, everyone clapped.

“You went to UCU, right?”

“Yes.”

“When did you graduate?”

“September of 2010.”

“And you led singing during the worship time, didn’t you?”

“Yes, how did you know that?”

“Your voice.  I remember you!”

I think this freaked her out more than a little bit, and I don’t blame her.  Later, in the car ride on the way back, I pull out my daily report from that day and let her read the paragraph I had written about how great the worship time had been.  Small world, big God.

We had a good trip back, but long car rides on bad roads are not good combinations for bad backs.

On Thursday morning, David and I met with Chief Justice Odoki.  Unsurprisingly, he enthusiastically endorsed our Fort Portal plans.  I later got ahold of Principal Judge Bamwine, who was in South Africa, and he also threw his support behind the project.  At noon, we met with the Head of the Criminal Division, whose endorsement completed the trifecta.  All is a go.

I am now at the Nairobi airport on my first of two layovers on my way home.  As usual, it was great to be in Uganda, but it will be good to be home also.