When I was living in Uganda in 2012, I received a request from the Missions Committee at our church – “Will you pop over to Ghana to visit the Christian high school our church supports?”  I readily agreed, but neglected to point out that “popping over to Ghana” from Uganda is akin to “popping over to London” from Los Angeles.

Africa is that big.

(In the picture above, Ghana is in Southern California and Uganda is in South Central India).

I have now traveled to Africa 26 times since early 2010, but the primary purpose of every prior trip revolved around my beloved Uganda.  Until last week.

Ghana has been beckoning to me for several years now from multiple angles.  Initially, my Memphis-based former ACU classmates JP and Jennifer Webber connected me on multiple occasions with a Ghanaian human rights lawyer who almost attended Pepperdine Law ten years ago.  This lawyer, Francis, spent part of his youth in the Village of Hope – a ministry organization largely sponsored by American churches.  Through JP, Francis heard about our work with Uganda on criminal justice reforms and has been encouraging me to keep Ghana on the radar screen if we ever expanded our African lens.

Then last year, two things happened that caused me to revisit this idea.  First, Pepperdine graduate Laure Sudreau decided to invest heavily in the future of the global justice program’s work.  Her incredible generosity allowed what is now the Sudreau Global Justice Program to think more expansively about ways we could provide access to justice beyond East Africa.

Second, the field office director for International Justice Mission (IJM) in Gulu, Uganda – with whom I had been able to work for several years – relocated to Ghana to lead that field office.  Just before Will Lathrop made this move, we were together in Washington, DC during the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between IJM and the Ugandan Justice, Law, and Order Sector.  While we were together, Will probed Pepperdine’s willingness to expand into West Africa.  While IJM’s work in Ghana is focused upon rescuing children trafficked into the Lake Volta region for forced labor and/or sexual exploitation, he and his IJM colleagues, he explained, would be happy to open up their network of contacts within the justice system to allow us to discuss Ghana’s level of interest in us providing the type of assistance we have provided to Uganda (and, to a lesser degree, Rwanda) in the criminal justice realm.

From my prior research on Ghana, I was aware that, like Uganda, Ghana had inherited a British form of criminal justice structure that mirrored in important ways our own.  I also knew that Ghanaians spoke English, had democratic elections, and had an infrastructure that would be sufficiently safe and comfortable for our students.  Likewise, I was aware that Ghana, like virtually all developing countries, struggled with the same challenges that Uganda did in providing timely access to justice for those charged with crimes.

So, over the course of the last six months, Will and I settled on an early December collaboration between Pepperdine and IJM in Ghana.  For his part, Will and his team would arrange for meetings with all of the important sectors necessary for Pepperdine to ascertain whether the Sudreau Global Justice Program could assist Ghana in its quest to deliver justice to its people through the involvement of Pepperdine faculty, staff, students, and alumni.  These meetings were to be scheduled over the course of two or three days, with Associate Dean Danny DeWalt joining me.  (Danny is Chief Counsel to the Sudreau Global Justice Program and has been traveling to Africa through his co-leadership of Restore International (AKA Love Does) for over a decade).  My schedule didn’t allow me to leave until Tuesday – landing in Ghana on Wednesday evening.  This left us only Thursday and Friday, which we assumed would likely be enough if we were efficient.

Two weeks before take-off, two challenges arose.  First, the eyeballs of Pepperdine Law School Dean Paul Caron – the man to whom Danny and I report – fell out.  Not literally, but almost.  Both retinas inexplicably detached, necessitating emergency surgery so as to stave off permanent partial blindness.  The result was temporary blindness that would last long enough to ensure that Danny and I couldn’t both go on this trip.  (Thankfully, all is now well with Paul’s eyes).

My first call in search of a substitute for Danny was to Dane Ball – a Houston criminal defense lawyer extraordinaire.  Dane is a former student, a good friend, and nothing if not adventurous.  He joined our prison project in Uganda this summer and made me promise to let him know when the next African justice trip was coming.  He immediately accepted my invitation to join me in Ghana the next week.

Second, we learned that Ghana declared that Friday would be a national holiday to celebrate farmers.  This, of course pinched us to one day of meetings.  If our flight was delayed, then the trip would be for naught.  But we were feeling lucky.  So Tuesday morning, I set out from LA and Dane caught a plane in Houston.  We met up in Amsterdam and then took the seven-hour flight from there to Accra, which is near the southern coast of this West African country that borders Togo, The Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso.

We arrived at our hotel a little before midnight on Wednesday.  Will and another IJM colleague picked us up at 7:00 a.m. and then perfectly orchestrated a series of highly productive meetings with: the Legal Counsel for the Ghana Prison Authority; the Chief Director and Deputy Director of the Ministry for the Interior; an influential Member of Parliament; the Director of Public Prosecutions; a Supreme Court Justice; and two human rights lawyers who are leaders among Ghana’s criminal law bar – one of these was the aforementioned Francis with connections to ACU friends.

The meetings couldn’t have gone better.  Ghana does have many of the same criminal justice challenges as Uganda, is eager for the type of assistance we can provide, and wants to have Pepperdine summer interns and year-long Pepperdine fellows.  Accordingly, I think it’s Ghana be relatively soon when Pepperdine has a year-round presence on the ground, and I think it’s Ghana be a long, long time that our relationship will last.  (With apologies to Elton John).

I expect that we will have 2-3 students serving as interns in Ghana this summer and I predict that we will have a year-round Sudreau Fellow on the ground in the near future.

Because Friday was a national holiday, Dane and I decided to venture to the coast to check out sights our students, fellows, and short-term prison project volunteers would want to see during upcoming trips.  We spent the whole day driving to, exploring, and driving home from Cape Coast.  Sobering is woefully inadequate to describe our visit to the castle that served as a busy hub in the West African slave trade.  Slave ships would come to this castle and buy West Africans who had been captured and enslaved by the local tribal leaders and then transport them to Europe.  The conditions inside the castle and on the ships were horrific.  For those venturing to Ghana, a visit to Cape Coast is a necessity.

This otherwise downer of a day was made markedly more interesting by a Nigerian internet/phone scam we were able to witness up close and personal.

Just before we set off from Cape Coast for the three-hour drive back to Accra, our driver Stephen informed us that he needed to stop to buy some airtime for his phone, and he needed to do so right away.  As in most of the developing world, phone usage is ordinarily purchased via scratch-off airtime cards, so we thought nothing of it.

Until it became clear there was nothing ordinary about this transaction.

After he bought the airtime card, he got out his phone and called a number he had been sent via text.  What ensued was an animated discussion about prize money, bank accounts, and transaction fees.  During the call, Dane jokingly muttered to me, “I am a Nigerian prince who has inherited a fortune that I can share with you if you just send me a small transaction fee.”  The call ended with Stephen reading the number on the airtime card to the woman on the other end.  As you might expect, I was quite curious, so he excitedly showed me the text he had received that had prompted his call.

I read to Dane the message: “Congratulations!  You have been selected at random by FIFA as the grand prize winner of 75,000 Cedis.  Please call to arrange to have the prize money sent to you.”  Or words to that effect.  I am embarrassed to say that Dane and I burst out laughing at Dane’s earlier prescience.

Jim: Stephen, you know this isn’t real, right?

Dane: Dude, this is a total scam.  Did the person on the other end have a Nigerian accent?

Stephen:  She did!  How did you know that?

Jim: How much did you send them in airtime?

Stephen: 10 Cedis

Dane: OK, that’s only two bucks.  Don’t send them any more money, OK?

Stephen (tentatively): OK, she said I won 75,000 Cedis (several years’ wages).

Jim: Stephen, my friend, FIFA is an international soccer federation.  They are not based in Nigeria and have no incentive to send random text messages giving away lots of money to Ghanaians.

And yet . . . Stephen did not seem convinced that today wasn’t his lucky day.  So, we all agreed that Stephen could call them back after the promised next instruction came in a few minutes, but he swore to us that he wouldn’t send them any more money.

Ten minutes later, he gets a text.  We pull over and read it.  Good news – the airtime he sent them enabled them to process the electronic transaction for the 75,000.  He just needed to call back and arrange to receive the money.

Stephen: (smiling and nodding)

Dane and Jim: (frowning and shaking our heads)

Dane: Do NOT give them your bank account number.

Stephen: OK, I won’t, but I should call and see what they say.

This was getting interesting, so we leaned in to hear Jennifer the Nigerian as she answered Stephen’s call.  Jennifer informed Stephen that he didn’t need to provide any bank account details.  Instead, she had a paper check in her hand that he could pick up as soon as he was ready.  Stephen excitedly inquired about where he needed to pick up the check.  His shoulders slumped when she told him that the check was in Tamale – a remote village a mere 12-hour drive from Accra.  “But I can’t come to Tamale right now,” Stephen complained.  That was unfortunate, Jennifer explained.  But they weren’t able to mail the check.  Her supervisor, however, might be able to assist.  Wait for a text from him and then call him back.

Stephen: (smiling and nodding)

Jim and Dane: (frowning and shaking our heads)

Dane and I then laid odds on how much the supervisor would ask Stephen to pre-pay for the wiring fees.  A few minutes later, we got the answer.  The text from the supervisor confirmed that they could, indeed, wire him the money as long as Stephen paid the bank’s transaction fee.  Stephen called him and learned two things – first, the supervisor’s accent was distinctly Nigerian, and second, the transaction fee was 150 Cedis (a few days’ wages).

So, we hatched plan.  I called Jennifer from my US phone and calmly told her that I was governmental agent Bob.  (It may or may not be a federal crime to impersonate an FBI official, so let’s assume, ahem, that I steered clear of said law . . .)  I explained to Jennifer that Stephen is an undercover agent for us and that we have been listening in on his calls with her.  In a nervous and belligerent tone, she pretended to not know what I was talking about and then hung up.

Thirty seconds later, Stephen’s phone rang.  Guess who answered?  Yep, agent Bob.  I told Jennifer that we were about to carry out a raid on the building she was working in, but Stephen asked me to tell her to run so she didn’t get arrested.  “Run, Jennifer, Run!” I yelled.  The line went dead, and we nearly died laughing.

Numerous subsequent calls to Jennifer from three different phones (Stephen’s, mine, and Dane’s) went to what now appeared to be a dead line.  Moral of the story?  Unless Publisher’s Clearing House shows up on your doorstep with a check that is bigger than you, you didn’t actually win anything.

On Saturday, Dane and I headed north to the Lake Volta region where we had a chance to spend an hour or so at a shelter where the 21 trafficked children that IJM recently rescued were being fed, loved, and educated after having spent years in forced and dangerous labor in rudimentary fishing boats on Lake Volta.  These kids were sold by family or community members at the age of 5-7 and spent 12 hours a day diving down to untangle nets of their masters.  One of the young teenage girls nursed a baby fathered by her master.  The traffickers of these kids have been arrested, but hundreds more are still out there.  The work IJM is doing is truly transformative for these kids.

We also had a chance to visit Sonrise Christian High School, which was founded and is run by Pepperdine graduate Joseph Dzamesi.

Joseph grew up in Ghana and returned after graduating from Pepperdine nearly twenty years ago.  The University Church of Christ helps sponsor this school and the accompanying church.

This is a long overdue quick summary and catch up of the last few days of my trip to Uganda just over a month ago.  I will do better in the future, including on my maiden voyage to India later this week for a global justice trip.

During the January Uganda trip, the goal was to get a few things rolling and to plan for the ambitious summer we have waiting for us.  As part of our ongoing efforts to assist Uganda in delivering justice to those detained and awaiting trial, we are in the midst of helping them launch a public defender system, pursuant to which all detainees would be guaranteed access to a lawyer shortly after arrest.  In the developed world, such access is hardwired into the system.  Not so much in the developing world.

Thursday (January 19^th) was a day of meetings about the public defender project, plea bargaining advancements, and the upcoming anti-trafficking conference we are hosting in Uganda.  We started out at the home of the Chief Justice, where we discussed all of the above, plus our plans for a Women in Leadership conference this summer (which is coming together nicely).

We then moved to the office of the Commissioner General of Prisons, who was quite animatedly excited about how plea bargaining was decongesting his prisons.  He insisted on having a speaking role at this summer’s national plea bargaining conference, and further reported that in his role as president of the African Jailer’s Association, he has been spreading the word about the success in Uganda around Africa.

The day closed with a dinner with John Richmond (Human Trafficking Institute), Kelsey Galaway (Willow International), and Moses Binoga (head of Uganda’s Anti-Trafficking Task Force) to plan the two-day conference this summer.

On Friday, Henry took a bus to Kampala from Bushenyi, where he is in his second semester of his third year of medical school.  He is thriving, and it was so good to be with him and his younger brother Joseph, who is in his second semester of law school.  As depicted in my book Divine Collision, I met these wrongly accused brothers in January of 2010 when they were teenaged prisoners wasting away in a juvenile detention center.  I could not be more proud of the men they are becoming.  We spent much of Friday together, and Saturday morning before John Richmond and I headed to Jinja to meet up with a friend.

At the Source Café, I ate something so life changing, so “Who’s Your Daddy?” that I temporarily forgot the identity of the man who sired and raised me.  It was that good.

The trip home on Saturday and Sunday was nearly 42 hours due to weather delays.  It is good to be home.  I did, however, leave behind something in Uganda that will remind them of me – during the month of June, the entire judiciary structure will be looking at my mug every day, and they will be admiring our students for the month of July.

Those acquainted with me even in passing know I am an idiot.  I can’t help it.  My parents aren’t idiots, my siblings aren’t idiots, and my kids aren’t idiots, so it doesn’t appear to be genetic.  My wife isn’t an idiot, and most of my friends aren’t idiots, so it doesn’t appear to be contagious.  Whatever its source, what I have is bone deep – it infiltrates my marrow, as I have proven time and time again.

As demonstrated below, I provided further evidence of my imbecility yesterday here in Kampala, Uganda where I had arrived on Saturday evening on my 20^th trip in the past seven years.  And this, after I was so proud of myself for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat just before I departed on Friday.

As I searched for the elusive balance between price and sanity in scheduling the body-punishing, soul-denting trip from Los Angeles to Uganda, I had settled on an itinerary that took me from LA to Portland to Amsterdam to Kigali (Rwanda) to Entebbe (Uganda).  It was “only” 28 hours of travel time (32, when measuring door to door) and shaved about $400 off a (slightly) more direct route, which would have been 23 hours.  The problem is that if either of the first two legs were delayed, I’d be hosed and lose an entire day.

Well, you guessed it.  A “ping” on my cell phone while I waited in the frequent flyer lounge (membership has its privileges) notified me that LA to Portland had been delayed 40 minutes.  Because my layover time was only scheduled to be 65 minutes, I knew I was done unless I acted quickly.  Having previously exhaustively researched the various alternatives, I convinced the nice lady at the computer in the lounge to route me through Salt Lake to Amsterdam where I could resume my original itinerary, assuming nothing else went wrong.  A little hustle between planes in both Salt Lake and Amsterdam got it done.  To top it off, I snuggled up with my Ambien BFF (magic sleeping dust conveniently packaged in a little white pill) at all the right times and arrived without feeling like I had been hit by Brian Bosworth (like when he played for OU . . . not like when Bo Jackson made him his girlfriend).

I felt so smart.  So I decided to stick with the good decision making and got up five hours later on Sunday morning to go to church with Justice Kiryabwire and his family, including grabbing lunch at their place and playing with my God son Mark and his siblings Kirabo and Matthew.

 

A couple hours later, I had the privilege of attending a birthday party for Andrew Khaukha’s two-year old.  (Andrew is the Ugandan project manager on the Memorandum of Understanding with Pepperdine).

I went to bed feeling good, and things went quite well on Monday.  I met with our Pepperdine Nootbaar Fellow, Joanna Brooks, at her mediation chambers and had several other productive meetings about ongoing and upcoming projects.

Tuesday morning started off swimmingly.  Andrew and I made it from Kampala to the Entebbe Airport in 90 minutes – unusually quick for the morning rush hour.  We arrived at 9:30 for our 11:50 departure to Rwanda, where we were scheduled to spend the day with Rwandan justice sector leaders and Uganda’s IJM country director, Shawn Kohl.

As we walked from the parking lot to the terminal, I developed an uneasy feeling that something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t place what it was.  I slowed my stride and eventually came to a frozen halt.  My blood pressure spiked into the danger zone as my metaphorical head emerged from my metaphorical tailpipe with what had to be an audible suction “pop.”

“You have got to be kidding me . . .” I gasped as I stared at the back of Andrew’s head.

“Yes, Jim?  What is the problem?” he replied.

“MY PASSPORT!”

“Yes, Jim?  What about it?”

“Um, it’s in the safe in my hotel room . . .”

“That is a problem, Jim.”

I quickly glanced at the fitbit on my wrist (the function of which, as my belly can attest, is only to tell time) – 9:47.  Two hours and three minutes until the scheduled departure of the ONLY flight to Rwanda that day that would arrive in time to attend our meetings.  And Rwandair is never late.

Let’s see . . . 90 minutes each way, five minutes to run to my room, and twenty minutes to get through security, check-in, and immigration.  If I started right now, I could get to the departure gate just under two hours after my flight left.  I might have mumbled something that rhymes with “spit.”  I might have.

As he is want to do, Andrew sprung into action.  “Now, Jim.  You call your friend Tango and have him go the hotel straightaway.  I will call my friend who can help us.”

As I am want to do, I stared back at him blankly, then finally said, “We don’t have time.  Even if Tango could get my passport, he will never make it in time.”

“He will make it.  I have an idea.  Just call him and tell him to go to the hotel.”

I did as instructed.  Fortunately, Tango has been driving me for seven years now and is a good friend.  He happily did as I requested.  Meanwhile, Andrew had tracked down one of his friends (he knows virtually everyone in the country) who worked at the hotel where I was staying.  She was off duty, but she agreed to call one of her friends who was working.  After several conversations and an e-mail to the hotel authorizing them to go into my room and retrieve my passport, Tango had it in hand at 10:15.

Rather than getting into his car and driving the 90 minutes (at best) to the airport, he hopped on the back of a motorcycle taxi and sped away from the hotel, weaving in and out of traffic.  In the midst of the frenetics, Shawn arrived at the airport and jumped into the planning, calling his friend to meet Tango at a gas station near the airport where he would dismount the motorcycle and jump into a taxi because motorcycles aren’t allowed near the airport.  At 11:00, we were still waiting and getting increasingly nervous.  Tango was close, but still hadn’t yet transitioned from two wheels to four.  Shawn then had the idea of going ahead of us with the plan of delaying the flight through some charming fast-talking.

Ten minutes later, Shawn had convinced them to wait a few more minutes for us before the check-in process shut down (which is normally one hour before boarding on Rwandair).  They would give us five minutes.  At 11:10, Tango came running up the road from the parking lot and thrust my passport into my hand.  I almost gave him a wet kiss, but settled for showering him with Ugandan Shillings.  When Andrew and I finally arrived at the check-in desk, Shawn was sharing family stories with his new best friend behind the ticket counter.  When the plane pulled away from the gate and onto the tarmac, we were on it, with about five minutes to spare.  I think I aged four years during the process.

Had we not made the flight, we never would have had such an encouraging set of meetings in Rwanda.

Our Global Justice Program’s goal for our work in the developing world has been, is, and always will be to educate, equip, and empower our friends to create, implement, and sustain the needed reforms to their justice system themselves.  In a very real sense, we seek to become superfluous.

Measurable progress rarely comes easily or quickly.  But when it comes, there is little that is more gratifying.

Within the past week, I received three separate confirmations that brought profound satisfaction.  The first was in an e-mail to my wife from a prosecutor with whom we worked in the Mbarara and Bushenyi prisons – more on that in my prior post.  She informed Joline that the day after we left, the prosecution and defense returned to the prison and continued working together to reach plea agreements for prisoners who were interested in resolving the charges against them.

A couple days later, the warden of one of the prisons e-mailed me to offer some kind words of gratitude and to tell me that (i) our work had given the prisoners confidence that the new plea bargaining system could be trusted, (ii) a flood of additional prisoners had registered to participate, and (iii) the lawyers had returned to move these cases forward.

The third piece of good news requires a brief explanation.  Due to high demand and administrative ease, our Global Justice Program has always been limited to Pepperdine law students.  Earlier this year, however, we re-evaluated this limitation after conversations with Baylor University about the possibility of helping their law school start a similar program in a nearby African country.  Consequently, we accepted a stellar Baylor law student (Megan Pepper) into our program this summer, and she was stationed about four hours from the capital city.  (She, and Baylor Law Professor Brian Serr, joined our team on the prison project).  So, just a couple days ago, I learned from Megan that, in the wake of the National Plea Bargaining Conference (described below), the justice for whom she worked in Mbale just completed a large group of plea bargained cases this week.

Confidence is growing and implementation is scaling up in my beloved adopted country, and I could not be more proud of my Ugandan friends and colleagues.

What follows is a relatively quick overview of our third week in Uganda, which revolved around two national conferences.

After a Saturday evening BBQ (the goat in Uganda is to die for (sorry Shelby)), we left for Kampala on Sunday morning, but not without two important stops.

The first was nominally to drop Henry off back at his medical school so he could complete his final week of exams after joining us for the weekend.  The bigger purpose for this stop, however, was for us to meet his NEW GIRLFRIEND!

Lillian is from Kampala and is in her third year of nursing school, also at KIU with Henry.  We mobbed her with hugs and questions before returning to our buses and cars to continue back to Kampala.

Our second stop was at the Mbarara Prison where we had spent the prior Wednesday and Thursday.  After presenting the prisoners in Bushenyi with a cow and three goats to eat, we thought it only fair to do the same for these prisoners.  They were immensely grateful, but, unlike those in Bushenyi, they didn’t insist that we initiate the butchering process ourselves.

Eight hours later, we arrived back in Kampala.  Joline, Aaron, Austin, Brian, Jon, and Avery took quick showers and then headed to the airport to return home, as Mike, Brad, Darren, Jenna, and I began preparing for Tuesday’s national plea bargaining conference we were co-hosting with IJM.  We spent Monday finalizing the conference program (incorporating what we had observed the prior week about challenges Uganda still faced in plea bargaining) and meeting with Ugandan prosecutors to help them better understand the plea bargaining process.

As is unavoidable in Uganda, the conference started nearly an hour late on Tuesday with numerous speeches, including by the Deputy Chief Justice and by me.  I kicked off the substantive part of the conference with an interactive fifteen-question quiz on their own rules, and then we moved into two sessions on special issues encountered in plea bargaining.  IJM’s Gulu Field Office Director Will Lathrop led a session on land grabbing (huge problem in Uganda), and Los Angeles Public Defender Brad Siegel led a session on juvenile justice.

The highlight of last year’s first national plea bargaining conference had been a re-enactment of the plea bargaining process, so we spent about ninety minutes doing a similar presentation this year.  Kirkland & Ellis associate Darren Gardner played the juvenile defendant, who was accused of engaging in land grabbing with the aid of a panga (machete).  Brad Siegel played his lawyer, while Will Lathrop played the prosecutor.  Utah Judge Mike DiReda donned the Ugandan wig and technicolor robe to play the judge.  Pepperdine Law student (and theater major in college) Jenna King played the aggrieved victim.  Over the course of six scenes, which I narrated, we walked the Ugandans through the first client meeting up through sentencing.  Once again, this was the highlight of the conference.

After lunch, we divided the hundred-plus attendees into groups of four – one defendant, one defense lawyer, one prosecutor, and one judge in each group.  We provided all four with a one page list of the allegations, and gave the defendant an additional page of facts.  We then dismissed the defendant (played by prison officials) and the defense lawyer for an initial interview to see how much of the additional facts the defense lawyer could elicit through questioning of the defendants – a huge challenge in Uganda is the lack of personal engagement and investment in the criminal justice system by the defense lawyer, so we were doing our best to help reprogram this shortcoming.

While the defendant and defense lawyer were meeting at separate tables in the ballroom, Judge DiReda took the judges and prosecutors through his typical process of taking pleas in the wake of completed plea agreements, helping them streamline the process – some of the judges had been taking nearly an hour with each plea bargained case, rather than the five-ten minutes that is actually necessary.  During this session, we singled out for special recognition, Justice Batema, who had, over the course of three days, taken nearly one hundred pleas in cases we had completed the prior week.  A national newspaper in attendance ran a story about him and our work the following day.

A little while later, we dismissed the prosecutors to their respective groups to see if they could negotiate a deal, and then subsequently sent the judges to the groups to take the plea.  We closed the conference with a lengthy discussion about how this process went (quite well) and to answer whatever questions arose.  As is customary in Uganda, we held an awards ceremony at the end during which each participant received a certificate memorializing the eight hours of training received at the conference.  We also surprised the Principal Judge, Dr. Yorokamu Bamwine, by naming him Pepperdine Global Justice Program’s Person of the Year for his vision and leadership in implementing plea bargaining.  We presented him with a beautifully engraved crystal plaque to commemorate the process.

That night, Mike, Brad, and Darren flew home.  (After Mike returned home, a large Utah newspaper ran a nice story about his involvement in our program).  The following morning, we kicked off the final aspect of our three-week trip.

Two years ago, we brought a contingent of Ugandan judges to Pasadena to meet with judges at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  During that visit, the Ugandans were introduced to a new concept called appellate mediation.  This process uses mediators to try to assist the party appealing an adverse verdict to reach an out-of-court settlement with the prevailing party in the trial court, rendering moot the pending appeal.  This doesn’t work for all cases (not applicable in the criminal realm), but it is effective at reducing the number of cases that go for a hearing before the court of appeals.  This visit intrigued the Ugandans, and Justice Kiryabwire (very involved in the Pepperdine/Uganda relationship) commissioned two of our interns to write a feasibility study.  The following year, Ninth Circuit Judge Clifford Wallace and Ninth Circuit Mediator Claudia Bernard traveled to Uganda separately and prepared recommendation reports.

This all culminated in a two-day training session hosted by Pepperdine and led by Ninth Circuit Mediator Peter Sherwood.  The vast majority of the Ugandan Supreme Court and Court of Appeals attended the training program, as did numerous court officials and a few private lawyers.  After two days of theorizing and role playing, the room was unanimous – Uganda was going to take a shot at reducing the huge backlog in appellate cases, which has resulted in a five to six year delay between filing the appeal and receiving a ruling.

I had experienced that myself in Henry’s case – we filed the appeal in the summer of 2010 and received a ruling in the summer of 2015.

Even as I write this post, the Ugandan Court of Appeals, under the leadership of Justice K, is in the midst of a pilot appellate mediation program!

One final note – I received word from Henry today that he passed all three portions of his final exams – written, practical, and oral.  Of the 500 who started the program two years ago, only 175 remain.  In September, Henry begins his third year, which will allow him to start interacting with actual patients.

Déjà vu enveloped our team on Wednesday morning during last week’s prison project, as we started the day’s activities in plastic chairs under portable tents once again.  This time, though, we were in Mbarara rather than Fort Portal.  After gathering into our seven teams and beginning the process of interviewing the assembled inmates in a prison designed to hold 350 prisoners, but which housed over 1,200, we paused at around 9:45 a.m. for the opening ceremonies.  One of our students covertly distributed a sign-up sheet where we all placed 1,000 shillings (30 cents) into the betting pool on when the ceremony would end.  I went with 11:15.  I lost.  Badly.

Once again, there were several speeches, including one from me.  This time, however, I remembered to introduce my lovely wife.  After an inmate choir performance, the reading of an inmate grievance letter, and a few other speeches, the Principal Judge took the microphone.  Fifteen minutes later something really bad happened.

Before I tell you what tragedy befell the ceremony, let me tell you what I ate for breakfast that morning.  I started with two eggs, a sausage, and some pineapple.  My mistake was then taking a piece of toast and slathering onto it a thick layer of narcolepsy.  At least that’s what it must have been.

As the Principal Judge delved into his speech, I slipped through Queensryche’s door into silent lucidity, drifting in and out of consciousness with the frequency of a hyperactive metronome; I could have easily been mistaken for a life-size bobble-head doll.

At least I was on the third row and shielded from the view of the 1,200 prisoners and others in front of me.

Oh, wait.

I was actually on the front row, wasn’t I?  Yep, just a few feet from the third-ranking judicial officer in the country.  How could it get any worse?

Two words.  Jimmy legs (aka Periodic Limb Movement Disorder).

In an effort to fight off Mr. Sandman, I pinched my wrist, stabbed my palm with my thumbnail, fiddled with my shoes, and constantly adjusted my posture.  All of this left me about as effective at fighting off sleep as if I had eaten a fistful of Ambien thirty-seven minutes earlier.  At one point, I decided to cross my legs at the knee because my ten knee surgeries (yes, ten) has left them a little, shall we say, sensitive to pressure.  Didn’t help at all.

As I once again skateboarded down a steep ramp into a magic new dimension, Jimmy popped in for a surprise visit.  Like an auditioning Rockette, I nearly pulled a hamstring as I catapulted back into consciousness.  Thinking quickly, I made an exaggerated show of re-crossing my legs rather deliberately in a vain attempt to make it appear that I always kicked my legs when I crossed them.  I fooled exactly no one.

Seated directly behind me, Joline was doing her best to keep me from embarrassing myself (and her) by jack-hammering me in the back and neck, and gave me what can generously be called a smack after my kickboxing display.

Mercifully, the speechifying ended at 12:45.

We spent the rest of the day in our seven groups (American lawyer, Ugandan lawyer, two American law students, two Ugandan law students, and a prisoner).  The success rate mirrored the first day in Fort Portal – the process of explaining this new plea bargaining system to a new set of defense lawyers and prosecutors is laborious and time consuming, yet well worth it.

That evening, a few of us joined the Principal Judge at his nearby ancestral home for an hour of reflection and strategizing on the next steps for plea bargaining.  On the two-hour drive back to the safari lodge, Andrew (Ugandan project manager) received a call.

“Yes, my Lord.  Thank you, my Lord.  That is very good, my Lord,” was all we could hear before Andrew hung up.

“That was Judge Batema, the resident High Court judge in Fort Portal,” Andrew reported.  “He took forty pleas today and entered sentences on them.  The prisoners met the team on Monday, reached plea agreements on Tuesday, and received their sentences on Wednesday.  Nothing like this has ever happened in this country.”

Needless to say, we were quite pleased.  Over the course of the next two days, Justice Batema took pleas from another fifty.

The team left before dawn on Thursday morning and returned to Mbarara for the second day at that prison.  As was the case in Fort Portal, the second day was much more productive as the local lawyers got the hang of things and as the prisoners developed trust in the seemingly foreign process unfolding before them.  Because we were moving to the Bushenyi prison for Friday, Andrew and I separated from the group and accompanied the Principal Judge to that prison for the opening ceremony.  Fortunately, I managed to mostly fight off the sleep demons during this re-run of Wednesday’s events.

There is no such thing as fast food in Uganda, particularly outside of Kampala.  So as we travel around the country on the prison project, we bring with us our own cooking team.  Each morning, they set up their makeshift kitchen outside the prison to cook two kinds of rice, beans, matooke (cardboard flavored banana-type thing that is boiled and mashed), gonja (plantains), chapatti (flat bread), and ground nut sauce (made from grinding and boiling small nuts), chicken, and beef.  At around 1:30 p.m., they set up buffet tables under the tents so we can eat quickly and resume work.  When Andrew and I finally made it back to Mbarara, the team was just finishing lunch.

As the afternoon wore on, the crowd of prisoners waiting to have their cases added to the program swelled.  With the help of a prison guard, we prepared a list exceeding 100 of those we didn’t have time to meet with and left it with the Ugandan lawyers who promised to continue in our absence.  (We have since learned that this was largely done).

As we were working for two days under the shadow of soccer goalposts, it seemed only fitting to leave behind a few soccer balls.  I rarely have brilliant ideas, but lightning struck as the driver returned with the four balls I asked him to buy.  We hadn’t brought a change of clothing and didn’t have time for a full-scale soccer match, but we did have time for a penalty-kick sudden-death shootout – five alternating 10-meter penalty kicks for each side.

Suffice it to say that this idea was well received by the inmates and our team.  One of our students, Greg Lewis, was selected as our goalkeeper, and he blocked their first shot.  The crowd on our side erupted.  I took the first shot for our side.  Big mistake.  Not only has my thigh been throbbing for a week now since my attempt to pull my team into the lead, but the Ugandan keeper added insult to my substantial injury by batting my shot away like a hovering mosquito.

Back and forth we went with the keepers dominating the strikers.  The prisoners’ fourth shot snuck just inside the post, just under our diving (in his suit) keeper.

When the Ugandan keeper deflected the final shot by Austin Watkins, the prisoners erupted and started singing and dancing with the wooden cup we had secured from a local wood craftsman – a fitting end to two days of intense case preparation.  The Ugandan prisoners could use a bit more winning in their lives.

Tomorrow, I will report on Friday’s day at the prison, which included a visit from Henry, who is in medical school just a few miles from the prison.