Nearly two and a half years ago, my love affair with Africa began in a juvenile prison in a sleepy town in central Uganda called Masindi.  I arrived with three other law graduates from Pepperdine hoping to do what we could to assist twenty-one minors who had been arrested and charged with crimes, but had not yet been to trial.  Some of them had been waiting for their day in court for nearly two years.

Earlier today, I arrived back in Masindi with three American lawyers – Jay Milbrandt, who had been with me on my first trip, Carol Chase, academic dean at Pepperdine Law, and Michael Mudgett, recovering lawyer who serves as a pastor at Malibu Presbyterian Church.  We were also joined by ten Pepperdine law students and one Regent law student.  Our three-day task will be to brief the cases for approximately twenty-five juveniles who are being warehoused at the Ihungu Remand Home just outside of town.  Most of these juveniles are charged with capital offenses, which are crimes that would carry with them the possibility of the death penalty if committed by adults.

We checked into the same Masindi Hotel where I had stayed in January of 2010 (and several times since then).  We had dinner with one of two Legal Aid lawyers who will be representing the juveniles when the cases eventually are presented to the court, and with the probation officer who serves as the warden of the Ihungu Remand Home.  Collectively, they delivered to us partial case files for eight of the twenty-five prisoners.  Of these eight files, six are charged with aggravated defilement – sex with a girl under the age of fourteen – one is charged with murder, and one is charged with rape.

We divided ourselves into three teams.  Each team has either one or two American lawyers, and three or four American law students.  The two Ugandan lawyers will join us for some of the interviews we will conduct with the juvenile prisoners.  Each of the three teams will also have one interpreter.  One will be a member of the court staff, one will be my driver (Michael), and one will be a boy named Joseph.  I first met Joseph on my first visit to the Ihungu Remand Home when he and his older brother Henry (with whom I am now quite close) were prisoners there.  During our work back then, Joseph and Henry both served as interpreters for the other children.  Joseph is now one of the top students in Senior 3 (equivalent to 10^th grade in the United States) at The Restore Leadership Academy, which is Bob Goff’s school in Gulu.  When I presented Joseph with the opportunity to return to Ihungu to assist those who find themselves in the same situation he was once in, he leapt at the chance.

As I write this, the students and lawyers are poring over the files in preparation for the interviews that will begin in earnest tomorrow morning.  For most of the students, this is their first encounter with a real, live case where the freedom of the one they are helping hangs in the balance.  We covet your prayers.  More tomorrow evening.

For those who have been keeping up with the J-FASTER program in Kampala, things continue to go according to plan.  Another few cases resolved at the end of last week via plea bargaining, and the lawyers on both sides are getting more comfortable with the whole notion.  On Friday, the deal in one of the cases collapsed as the juvenile changed his mind (yet again) and decided not to plead guilty.  The first witness of the entire session was called on Friday.  The session resumes on Wednesday of this week.

On a personal level, Joline and the kids boarded a plane for Kenya this afternoon to meet up with the youth group from our home church in Malibu.  This group is spending two weeks at Made in the Streets, which is a Christian organization that rescues Kenyan street children, loves them, and teaches them a trade.  A few minutes ago, I received a text message letting me know that Joline and the kids arrived safely, though the youth group is still in transit.  My plan is to join them a week later for their second week in Kenya.

This past week marked the beginning of Phase Three of the Juvenile Justice Pilot Program I have been working on for the past five months.  Phase Three is the culminating judicial phase of the Program, with Phase Four only involving the resettlement of the children into their home villages by the probation officers.

Phase Three is what we are calling the Resolution Phase, and follows the Investigatory and Evaluative Phases.  This Phase began on Monday with the kickoff of a Juvenile “Session.”  When the Pilot Program officially began on March 1st, we had sixteen juveniles who had been charged with “capital” offenses, eligible for the death penalty if they had been adults.  These cases were for murder, aggravated robbery, and aggravated defilement (unlawful sex with a minor).  These juveniles had been imprisoned in a Remand Home (juvenile prison) from between nine and twenty-four months.  This, even though the maximum time allowed for a juvenile to be held awaiting trial under Ugandan law is six months.  Shortly after the Pilot Program commenced, one of the murder cases was dismissed after the prosecutors carefully evaluated the file.  The juvenile in that case had been on remand for close a year.  And then there were fifteen.

During the last week of May, the prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation officers, one Ugandan court research attorney, Shane (Pepperdine Nootbaar Fellow), and I gathered in my office’s conference room and utilized principles of plea bargaining, heretofore outside the Ugandan procedures and comfort zone.  Then last week, the prosecutors and defense attorneys announced in court plea deals for ten of the remaining fifteen cases.  And then there were five.

On Tuesday, nine of these ten kids will be sentenced, with either one or none having to serve additional time.  (The other one will likely be committed to a mental health facility).  Over the next two weeks, either one or two of the remaining five cases will be dismissed, and one other one will likely be plea bargained (a deal was already reached, but failed to come to fruition last week due to a dispute as to some of the facts when they were read into the court record).  It looks like we will reach our goal of having four or fewer of the sixteen juvenile cases actually go to trial.  All in all, we are very pleased and are praying that the court and the participants are able to carry this momentum into future sessions.  Special thanks go to the American organization called Sixty Feet (www.sixtyfeet.org), known as Children’s Justice Initiative Ministries in Uganda, for footing the bill for the court and resettlement costs for this session.

A new set of prosecutors, defense lawyers, probation officers, and judges will be baptized into plea bargaining beginning in about ten days in Masindi – about three hours north of Kampala.  Prayers are welcome.

In other developments, our good friends from Midland (Alan and Holly Brown) who have been living below us for the last three weeks got a court ruling about ten days ago, which granted them legal guardianship over Moses (Big Mo, as we all call him).  We were thrilled.  But in Uganda, that is not the end of the road.  In addition to the ruling, one needs to get a written order signed by the court, which can then be taken to the Ugandan passport office to get a passport for the orphan child.  With the written order and passport in hand, one then makes an appointment for a visa interview with the US Embassy.  Only after receiving the visa can one leave with the child.

Well, between the ruling being announced in open court and the order being prepared and signed, the judge got sick.  To recover from his illness, the judge went to another town about three hours away.  The Browns were stuck.  Their enterprising lawyer, however, was able to hire a court official to track the judge down and got the order signed, more than a week later.  If all goes according to plan, they will get the passport tomorrow and then have a visa interview on Wednesday, allowing them to fly out by the end of the week.  More prayer would be welcome.

This weekend has also brought some excitement.  The water tank on the roof of our apartment building overflowed all night on Friday night, which caused water to seep into our ceiling in our living room.  This, in turn, caused a cave-in of a portion of our ceiling.  We were attempting to move many of our valuables out of the way when the plaster, electric fixtures, and metal supports tumbled down.  Joline narrowly escaped serious injury, and is posting it about it shortly.

Today, we got to see Henry at his school during the last visitation day occurring while we are here.  We are hoping to be able to get special permission to say goodbye to him next month.  He is doing quite well and is in excellent spirits.  Also there today was George Kakuru, who graduated two years ago from the secondary school Henry is currently attending.  George has just completed his sophomore year at Pepperdine University.

Finally, I learned late last week that the appeal I will be arguing in Henry’s case will most likely be scheduled for argument in August – after we head home.  This means that I will be making a return visit to Uganda sooner than I anticipated.  This bad news was added to the fact that I got two flat tires this weekend, one on the car I drive and one when I stumbled on a footpath and grew an instant golfball on my right ankle.

The juvenile criminal court session associated with the Pilot Program we are running in Kampala officially opened on Monday.  All sixteen cases involving children imprisoned in the Naguru Remand Home were given a trial date over the course of the next three weeks.  The first is scheduled to start on Wednesday.  If things go according to plan, we will resolve via plea bargaining a substantial portion of these cases on Wednesday.

Since nothing was scheduled to happen in court today, I took the opportunity to drive up to Masindi in an effort to finalize the arrangements for Round Two of the Pilot Program that will focus on more than twenty juveniles imprisoned in the Ihungu Remand Home.  A little over a month ago, Joline, Henry, and I journeyed to Ihungu to visit the prison where my relationship with Henry began and to scout out the possibility of a return trip in an effort to deliver justice to these forgotten children.  I previously posted about this trip here.

Over the past month, a plan has emerged.  Two of my colleagues at Pepperdine Law – Jay Milbrandt (Global Justice Program Director) and Carol Chase (Associate Dean for Academics) – will land in Kampala on Friday, June 15^th.  They will be joined by Michael Mudgett (Associate Pastor at Malibu Presbyterian who, like me, is a recovering lawyer) and his wife, Karen.  After seeing some animals at Murchison Falls National Park, this group will arrive in Masindi on Sunday.  The ten Pepperdine law students who are currently interning for judges in Kampala will also join us in Masindi on Sunday.  Rounding out the group will be a few representatives of Children’s Justice Initiative Ministries (aka Sixty Feet), the American faith-based organization headquartered in Atlanta that is funding the Pilot Program in Kampala and providing some badly needed goods and services for imprisoned and abandoned children in Uganda.  The full group will work directly with Ugandan defense lawyers to assist in moving the children’s cases toward a just resolution.  A few of the inmates have been at Ihungu since the last time a Pepperdine group of lawyers came to help – more than two years ago.

Since my oldest daughter has been on the road doing medical missions with the Gregston family quite a bit over the past couple of months, and since today was an “off” day for the clinics, I invited Jessica to accompany me on the day trip north.  We ventured off at 6:00 a.m.  I rode in the back seat with Jessica while Michael chauffeured us for the three-hour trip.  We had some good father/daughter time on the way up.  It is simultaneously heartening and heartbreaking to see the little girl who used to climb onto my lap with a book and instruct me to “read!” now becoming a woman right before my eyes.  I am going to cry like a Sooner losing to a Longhorn when she finally leaves home.  No matter when that happens, I won’t even be close to ready for it.

The day went more like expected than planned.  We first met with the Legal Aid lawyers who will be the counsel of record for each of the juveniles.  One the two lawyers in the office had been there two years ago and remembered the briefs we had prepared back then.  She was grateful that we are coming back and has agreed to be much more directly involved in preparing the cases for trial this time around.  My next meeting was cancelled when I learned the person with whom I was scheduled to meet was still in Kampala.  This type of cancellation is not planned, but expected in Uganda.  Jessica and I then drove out to Ihungu to check in on the prisoners.  While there, we met with the probation officer, Mr. William, with whom I became close during the challenges we faced in getting Henry freed two years ago.  As always, he was eager to help and grateful for our assistance.  He informed me that since I was there with Joline and Henry over a month ago, one of the juveniles had escaped, a couple others had been released, and one had arrived.  Jessica and I, with the help of Michael’s interpreting skills, conducted a quick interview to ascertain the vital statistics of the new prisoner and took his picture.  The lone remaining female prisoner showed Jessica where she slept and gave her a quick tour of the prison.

From there, we headed back to town for my 11:30 meeting with a court official.  That meeting was then postponed and didn’t happen until nearly 2:00 p.m.  While we waited, Jessica and I got a soda and pulled out our computers in the courtyard of The Masindi Hotel.  Vivid memories of early mornings and tense nights in this same courtyard tumbled back from two years ago as if made two weeks ago.  I strongly suspect a garden full of unforgettable memories will bloom in this same courtyard two weeks from now.

Eventually, we were able to meet two DPP officers (prosecutors) and the court official before setting off for Kampala again.  Both meetings went quite well and everyone seems to understand and appreciate their tasks in making the project work.  As always, the execution remains the unknown.

Tonight, Jessica sets off again for six days with the Gregstons on another medical mission trip.  Though we miss her dearly when she is gone, we know that she is right where God wants her, as He prepares her for a life of service in the medical field.

The phrase “You are what you eat” apparently dates back to a French doctor who, in 1826, said “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.”  If this is true, then I am a Chick’N’potle Bell. When I got off the 25-hour flight to the United States three weeks ago for a one-week whirlwind trip home, I immediately satiated my desire for American food.  I drove straight to Chipotle.  It was so good that I craved a cigarette after it was over.  (That’s a joke, mom, I haven’t taken up smoking).  Over the course of the week, I hit Chick-Fil-A, In-N-Out, and Taco Bell – “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things.”

The admixture of emotions this week delivered made it one to remember.  Seeing my newest nephew for the first time and catching up with two of my sibs would have alone justified the trip.  The focus of the trip, however, revolved around fond farewells.  I attended at least three send-off gatherings for Tim and Lucy Perrin, as they traded Malibu for Lubbock.  Tim was recently appointed President of Lubbock Christian University.  For Joline and me, losing our closest friends was bad enough.  But losing them to West Texas caused us to question whether our fondness for the Perrins was reciprocated.

At the end of the week, graduation marked the transition date not only for 200 of Pepperdine Law’s finest, but marked the official end of my seven-year stint as a law school administrator.  As I read the names of each student and watched them cross the stage into the next chapter of their lives, I wondered what the next chapter of mine would include.  I never anticipated coming to Africa; I pray that God has some new surprises in store for my family as the page turns.

I landed back in Kampala late Sunday night, now two weeks ago, eager to greet the ten Pepperdine law students who had arrived two days earlier for their summer internships with members of the Ugandan judiciary.  The plan was to connect up with the students first thing on Monday morning and then take them to meet each of the judges for whom they would be working for the next eight weeks. But this is Africa where things seldom go as planned.  I have lost about twenty pounds since coming to Uganda, so I was swimming in the two business suits I had brought with me.  During my trip to Malibu, I swapped out my “fat suits” for two normal ones in my closet.  As I watched the luggage carousel empty out on Sunday night and looked down at my empty luggage trolley, any empty feeling overtook me as I realized that my closet was empty of any clothing remotely appropriate to meet with Ugandan judges because my luggage was still in purgatory.

Fortunately, Shane Michael, one of my former students who is here with me in Kampala, was able to manage the students’ first work day while I waited for a call from the airline.  I did arrange, however, to have dinner with the students before I headed to the airport to pick up (i) my tardy suitcases, and (ii) some old and dear friends from my law school days in the early 1990s.  Fortunately, all three of my suitcases made it (including the one with lots of chocolate chips and other items requested by my family, the Gregston family, and two Ugandan judges).  Additionally, the Alan and Holly Brown family also arrived on time.  Alan and I overlapped both at Abilene Christian and at Pepperdine Law, and Joline and I attended a Bible study with them during Alan’s first year of law school.  Alan’s father, Dale, recently joined Pepperdine University’s governing Board of Regents, and had connected with Tim Perrin at a baseball game a few months ago.  Dale (and Alan’s mom Rita) mentioned to Tim that Alan and Holly were in the process of adopting a Ugandan child and would hopefully be traveling to Uganda to pick him up later in the year.  Tim told them about my family being in Uganda.  Shortly thereafter, Joline and I reconnected with Alan and Holly.  And then the world got smaller.

Within minutes of our Skype call starting, we realized that not only did I know the Browns’ lawyer quite well, but I also knew the Registrar who would be scheduling their hearing date.  She had been the Registrar in Masindi during Henry’s earlier trials and tribulations.  (This allowed us to quickly move forward with scheduling a hearing that often takes quite a while).  We also soon realized that Joline and the kids actually knew the orphan the Browns were adopting.  There are reportedly 2.6 million orphans in Uganda, 40,000 of whom are in orphanages.  And not only did they know this 2 year-old boy, but they had pictures of him that we sent to Alan and Holly.  The orphanage where Moses (Big Mo) was living is run by Africa Renewal Ministries, which is the organization the Gregstons are working with for their medical mission work.  As a result, Joline and the kids had accompanied the Gregstons on a prior visit to the orphanage for medical checkups for each of the kids.  Since the Browns were new to Uganda, and since the Gregstons had vacated the apartment immediately below us after being burglarized, the Browns decided to move into the vacant apartment.

The Browns’ four kids (Allison – 17, Annie – 14, and AJ and Abby Claire – 12) became fast friends with our three kids.  After arriving late Monday night, the Browns spend Tuesday and Wednesday loving on Moses in advance of Thursday’s hearing to determine whether they would be granted legal guardianship of Moses.  Even though I have worked quite a bit with a quite a few families, I had never attended a court hearing.

While stressful and tense at times, the hearing went exceedingly well.  In addition to the lady who found Moses abandoned near her home and the social worker for the orphanage, the judge called Holly to the stand to testify.  He peppered her for about forty minutes about her family, her home, and her motives for seeking to add Moses to the Brown family.  At one point, the judge pointedly declared, “so you have come to Africa to visit and you want to bring home a souvenir.”  Holly shot back, “We will bring back souvenirs from Africa, but that boy (pointing to Moses) is not a souvenir.  He is a precious child of God in need of a family and we will be his family.”  She was crying, the rest of the Browns were crying, and I was crying.  Almost imperceptibly, the judge nodded and flashed an ever-so-brief-but-completely-satisfied smile.  That was the right answer and it was clear he would grant the application.  As is the practice in Uganda, the judge scheduled a hearing the following Thursday to announce his ruling.

As we left, the social worker from the orphanage told the Browns that since the hearing had gone so well, he would permit them to pick up Moses the following morning.  After dropping Moses off at the orphanage, the Browns decided to have a celebratory dinner on the way home.  From the beginning, Alan had decided (with my encouragement) to drive himself while in Uganda.  Because Ugandans are allergic to street signs, directions can be tricky and Alan found this out the hard way.  A U-turn caught the unwanted attention of a local police officer.  After some back and forth and profuse apologies on Alan’s part, the nice man in the police uniform instructed Alan to accompany him to the police station.  That’s when Alan called me.  I had a nice chat with the nice police officer and did everything I could to convince him to let them go.  I told him who I was, what I did, who I knew, and even complimented his excellent police work.  He was, indeed, quite nice and seemed to recognize the names I dropped, but gave no indication of whether the call had made any difference.

Joline and I chatted for a second and then decided to drive to where they were to see if we could be helpful.  Just as we were pulling out of the driveway, Holly called back and let us know that they had been let go with just a warning.  The Italian food the Browns ate that night was extra tasty because it wasn’t the beans and posho they would have been given in jail.

On Friday afternoon (nine days ago), two lawyers (McLane and Christine) from Virginia arrived in Kampala.  These two lawyers have represented close to a dozen American families whose legal guardianship cases had gotten tangled in the spokes of the American visa process after the families had been granted legal guardianship over Ugandan orphans.  Over the course of the past three months, we have had countless phone calls and exchanged innumerable e-mails as I tried to assist them in navigating the political and legal processes in Uganda in these cases.  I had previously hosted a Skype call to introduce them to the Ugandan lawyers who handled the Ugandan side of these legal guardianship cases.  At one point, I suggested they come out to Uganda so they could meet directly with the people I was liaising with on their behalf.  Soon thereafter, a plan was hatched, tickets were purchased, and meetings were arranged.

On Friday evening, Joline and I had our first Game Night at the Gashes in Kampala.  We had a houseful, including eleven Pepperdine law students, one future Pepperdine law student, the Browns, the Gashes, and McLane and Christine.  Joline previously posted about this gathering here.  Over the course of the next week, McLane and Christine met with the key members of the judiciary, the Ugandan lawyers who handle legal guardianship cases, the head officer at the US Embassy in charge of issuing visas, an important member of the Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development, the former Ambassador to the United States from Uganda, the lead drafter of the proposed amendments to the law governing legal guardianships and adoptions, the personal assistant to the First Lady of Uganda (who is very involved in adoption issues), and seven families who are currently in Uganda in various stages of their efforts to adopt a Ugandan orphan.  I joined them for most, but not all, of these meetings.  It was a very busy and successful week.

This same week has been a critical week for the juvenile justice pilot program Shane and I have initiated.  Much of what is happening in this regard is happening behind closed doors, so I am unable to provide much detail.  I will say, however, that we are exceedingly pleased with how things have gone so far, and I should be able to provide a full summary in the next week to ten days.

As I write this, I am in the passenger seat of a safari van on a dusty, bumpy road in Northern Uganda.  Joline, Joshua, Jennifer, and the Browns’ twins (AJ and Abby Claire) are out cold on the seats behind me, having taken Dramamine about an hour ago.  Directly in front of me in another van are Alan and Holly, Alan’s parents (Dale and Rita), and Allison, Annie, and Moses Brown.  Two days ago, a safari company picked us all up at 6:00 a.m. and we set off for Paraa Lodge in Murchison Falls National Park for two “game drives” and a Nile River Cruise.  A couple weeks ago, Dale and Rita invited the Gashes to join the Browns on this trip and have generously covered our expenses!  (Jessica and the Gregstons came up separately to go on the same adventure).

Joline will be posting shortly with pictures and a full description of the animals we saw and the things we did, so I won’t extend this already overlong post.

I promise to resume posting on a regular basis, and thanks for reading all the way to this point.

After reading my post about my cooking disaster with g-nuts, many of you offered encouragement and said it would take time for me to learn how to cook beans and other Ugandan foods.  So I thought you would be pleased to know that I successfully cooked beans and rice for dinner on Friday night for 27 people!  I cooked two big pots of beans and one big pot of rice.  According to my guests, the beans were really good.  Our guests included ten Pepperdine law students (working for two months for the Ugandan judiciary), one Pepperdine law student (working with a foundation for street kids), two American adoption lawyers (visiting Kampala this week), and the Alan & Holly Brown family of Texas (Alan, who is a Pepperdine law grad, and his family are adopting a little boy), and one future Pepperdine law student (former in-country director for Restore Leadership Academy).  The highest compliment I received was from Moses, the little boy the Browns are adopting.  He actually didn’t say a word about the beans, he just kept eating until he had finished two bowls full.  If I can make beans that a true Ugandan likes, I must have done it right.

Thanks to the law students bringing me chocolate chips from America, we made chocolate chip cookies for dessert.  The cookies were the best I have had in Uganda!  As the cookies baked, the games began – card games, board games, and group games like mafia and signs (not sure how to play it but the students and the kids had a great time).  We also had some delicious fresh pineapple – you can’t get better even in Hawaii.  We followed the cookies and pineapple with our other “dessert” Doxycycline (anit-malarial drug we take daily).  Some of the students are also taking doxy, so we passed around our Costco-sized bottle of pills and shared.

During the evening, one student told me that it was nice just to be in an “American feeling” home.  It did feel like America – dinner, baking cookies, and playing games.  For a few hours, we felt like we were home.  It sort of makes me miss home more, but also makes me look forward to future game nights in Malibu with the law students and others in our Pepperdine family.  It gave me a reminder of why I am so blessed to be in the Pepperdine community.  When we are back at home, I will appreciate these special people even more.