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.

Hugely valuable logistics helper Avery Wood and her souvenir pangas

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.

Catherine Price, Missy Griffin, Andrew Khaukha, Saba Ahmed, Judge Mike DiReda, Brad Siegel, and Will Lathrop

Jim and Andrew — brothers from other mothers

Will and Jenna re-enacting the victim interview

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.

Certificate Ceremony end of appellate mediation training program (Deputy Chief Justice Kavuma, Justice Wangutusi, Peter Sherwood, Justice K)

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.

Tricked out motorcycles and flowing beards littered the music video of one of my favorite songs when I was just waking up to rock and roll.  Unfortunately, adherence to ZZ Top’s lingering directive to “Hold on Loosely” transformed my iPhone into a “bye-Phone” last Thursday night on the way home from a pizza dinner with our student interns here in Uganda.

Allow me to explain (and stay with me here).

I can’t fully articulate the philosophical underpinnings of the solution to Bart Simpson’s timeless Zen-infused riddle of, “How is it possible for something to suck and blow at the same time?”  I can, however, provide an irrefutable example — Kampala traffic.

As my colleague Jenna and I were steeping in the suck/blow phenomenon in a circa-1980 Toyota Corolla, I lowered my window to half-mast to compensate for the taxi’s comatose air conditioner.  We were dead still, and had been for about ten minutes, so I pulled out my iPhone 6 Plus and started thumbing away at my e-mail backlog.  Because the phone is so big, and because I generally type with the phone in the vertical position, I hold it near the bottom as I type.  And because I am a huge ZZ Top fan, I hold on loosely to the phone while typing.

As I did so, I acquired a new friend who spontaneously materialized from the darkness and reached through the window to generously relieve me of the burden of responding to my pile of e-mails.  He then darted through and around the coil of traffic and vanished almost as quickly as he had appeared.  I was so momentarily befuddled by my unhanding, I fumbled with the door lock and latch long enough to permit myself only a fleeting glance at the back of his head.

This most unpleasant turn of events presented me with the singular pleasure of discovering how to locate and erase my “lost” iPhone.  Hint: substantial delays inject themselves into the process when one forgets the answer to the two supposedly simple security questions necessary to log into iTunes from another continent.  Apparently, I don’t remember EITHER my best friend in high school OR my first car, though apparently these answers were supplied by me when I was in more lucid state.  This bout with early-onset Alzheimer’s earned me the opportunity to enjoy Apple’s “hold music” for the better part of an hour.  Surprisingly, the Easy Listening selection failed to temper my rising frustration.  Ultimately, the Genius who brought an unceremonious halt to my impromptu sing-along session with Simon and Garfunkel was able to assist me with (i) locating a signal from my erstwhile prodigal phone, and (ii) triggering the “erase” feature on said phone.  I briefly contemplated hiring another taxi so I could locate and assist my new friend as he answered my e-mails (at least that’s what I assume he was doing), but as I zoomed in with the GPS locator, I realized that it could only mark out a 100-yard radius in a neighborhood with, shall we say, lots of room for improvement in the safety category.  And no, I didn’t call the police.  If you have ever been to Uganda, you know precisely how effective that would have been . . .

The next evening, after the closing ceremony of a spectacular week-long mediation training program delivered by Mitch and Selina, I had the opportunity to demonstrate just how mentally gifted I really am.  The forum for my display of intellectual prowess was on the way to the airport to pick up my wife and about ten others flying in from all over the United States and from Rwanda.  Because so many Uganda rookies were coming in at the same time, I decided to accompany the driver in the court’s thirty-passenger mini-bus to go and fetch them.  I also invited along one of our students interning in Uganda who is a bit sweet on one of our other student interns currently based in neighboring Rwanda working for the Chief Justice of that country.  Let’s pretend her name is “Shelby.”

Shelby and I decided not to tell her boyfriend “Ricky” that she was coming to the airport with me so it would be a surprise.  In fact, we affirmatively lied to him.  (Lying is OK if it is done in the name of love, right?).  Luckily for Shelby and me, we got to experience the suck/blow traffic again.  This time, however, I didn’t roll the window down, but opted instead to slide the windows open as buses are designed to do.  As Shelby and I were talking and looking at her computer, a shady looking dude approached the motionless bus from my side and peered into the window from his tippy toes.  As I slid the window shut, the dude’s buddy lurch-reached into the bus on Shelby’s side and swiped her purse.  Like his compadre from the night before, he disappeared into the darkness as I yelled out the window, “Stop the thief, he stole a purse!”  The onlookers stared at me quizzically, likely confused by the claim that my purse was stolen.

Guess what was in Shelby’s purse, besides credit cards, a debit card, cash, and her driver’s license?  Yep, her iPhone.  She quickly activated the tracking software and erased her phone.  The moral of this story?  Jim is a pee-brained idiot.  (And yes, I know I spelled pea-brained wrong, but I was being ironic).

I added an exclamation point to this truism just moments later when Ricky e-mailed me as he boarded his one-hour flight from Rwanda to Uganda to let me know all was well.  My inner Einstein typed back (on my internet-connected computer BECAUSE MY iPHONE HAD BEEN STOLEN) that Shelby and I would see him soon.

“Wait, you just told him I was coming with you to the airport?” she sadly asked.

See?  I am an idiot.

I am also unspeakably cruel.

In an effort to make up for my spoiling the surprise, I had Shelby hide while I greeted Ricky and the other intern from Rwanda after they landed.  Ricky gave me a hug, even as his eyes skipped and darted around and among the other airport greeters.

“Did you get my e-mail about Shelby coming?” I asked.

“Yes, just now,” he said with a blossoming smile.  “Where is she?”

“Sorry, Ricky, I was just kidding,” I said with an even bigger smile.  “She’s back at the hotel waiting for you.  That was mean, wasn’t it?”

“Are you serious?  She’s not really here?” He looked like a kid whose puppy had just been snatched up by an owl.

“Actually, she is here, but she is hiding,” I said, as I pointed to where she had been earlier.  Only she wasn’t there, she had moved a bit and was still not visible.

“Where?” he asked frantically.

When I didn’t see her, I plumbed the depths of depravity even deeper by saying, “Just kidding, she’s not really here.  Got you!”

I thought he was going to hit me, but Shelby thankfully jumped out and hugged him, thus saving me what would have been a well-earned bloody nose.

A few minutes later, Joline arrived with lawyers Aaron Echols (Dallas-based Pepperdine Law grad whose wedding I was honored to perform), Austin Watkins (Nashville-based Pepperdine Law grad who lived in my house when I lived in Uganda in 2012), Mike DiReda (Utah judge with whom I graduated from Pepperdine in 1993), Brad Siegel (Los Angeles Public Defender who has helped host several delegations of Ugandan and Guatemalan judicial officials on SoCal study tours), Darren Gardner (DC-based Kirkland & Ellis associate I met during the Divine Collision and REMAND tour earlier this year when we showed REMAND at Kirkland’s DC office), Brian Serr (Baylor Criminal Law Professor I also met on the Divine Collision tour), Jon Wood (Ohio-based corporate lawyer who roomed with one of my Pepperdine colleagues while in law school), and Avery Wood (Jon’s daughter who just finished her freshman year at U of Alabama).

Shockingly, nothing was stolen on our ride back to town.

Saturday was a day of shopping and sightseeing by the group.  Joline and I ducked out twice – first to catch up with good friends from Baylor with whom we are exploring and implementing joint global justice projects (more on that in later posts), and second to spend some time with my God son and his family – the Kiryabwires, with whom Joline and I have become quite close over the past six years.

The K Kids

On Sunday morning, thirty-three of us (including four drivers and two armed body guards) piled into a mini-bus, a van, a truck, and an SUV.  The destination was Fort Portal where our one-week prison project would launch the following morning.  For lunch, we stopped at what should be considered one of the eight wonders of the world – a sprawling resort constructed from logs on a ridge overlooking a breathtaking crater lake and valley.  Lunch was great, but the views from Kyaninga Lodge are other-worldly.

Jim and Joline at Kyaninga Lodge

Prison Project Team

That evening, we were joined by 13 Uganda Christian University law students and then broke our group into seven teams to review thirty-one sets of photocopied police and court files we had just received.

The next post will begin with our entry into the Katojo high security adult prison, which was built for 318, but currently houses 1247.  Just over 1,000 of them have no lawyer, no court date, and dwindling hope as the months and years have dripped away.

The African prison rookies sported wide eyes and a tight hold on their computers.  As they soon learned, however, the roller coaster they were boarding required them to hold on more tightly to their emotions and to their conception of reality.

More soon.

I can’t help but recognize the metaphor in the rising sun peeking over the seven hills of Kampala this Sunday morning.  I have no memory of ever taking the time on any of my prior visits to Uganda to sit still and appreciate the beauty and simplicity and constancy of the equatorial sunrise – 6:45 a.m. every single day.  I need to do better.  I need to daily draw a connection between the faithfulness of this sun rise and the infinitely more sustaining son rise that gives all of this meaning.

I find myself feeling less anxious about the soon-to-unfold events of this trip than perhaps any other of the prior eighteen.  I’m not exactly sure why, but I suspect it is because this one is starting out less frenetic than the others.  And that’s not an accident.  I am often a slow learner, but I eventually tend to figure things out.  My modus operandi has heretofore been flying in the night before the launch of a series of fast-paced programs.  This has too often led difficult sleep adjustments (ten-hour time difference), not to mention awkward wardrobe malfunctions due to the dilly-dallying of my suitcases on one or more of the layovers.

As the details of this three-week trip began to crystalize, my hyper-organized Global Justice Program colleague, Jenna DeWalt, gently suggested that we build into the schedule some leeway to allow those traveling with us (most for the first time) to get their feet under them before we ask them to run.  Good advice well taken.

So we set off on Thursday afternoon – Jenna, Judge Mitchel Goldberg, and I from Los Angeles, and Selina Shultz from Pittsburgh.  We hooked up with Selina in Amsterdam, ultimately landing in Entebbe a little before midnight, and settled in at our Kampala Hotel at around 1:00 a.m.  Fortunately, there was nothing eventful about the flights, other than the fact that all of our suitcases made the journey with us – I am now 13 wins and 6 losses in this department, but who’s keeping score.  (I guess I am).

This three-week trip is conveniently divided into three substantially equal parts.  The first week is mediation training, the second is the prison project, and the third is conferences.  Those who know me even moderately well know than I am incapable of training anyone in mediation.  I know my limitations, but I also have friends, who themselves have friends.  Which leads me back to the all-star mediation trainers, Mitch and Selina.  Which, in turn leads me back to John Napier.

In 2009, Pepperdine launched its Nootbaar Fellows program, pursuant to which a Pepperdine Law alum serves the Uganda Judiciary for entire year.  John was our first, and became the first-ever court-annexed mediator in the country.  Since then, the fellowship program has helped launch a movement to expand mediation to the entire country in an effort to reduce court congestion and case backlog.  Since Pepperdine’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution is the world-leader in dispute resolution training, it only made sense to invite Straus to partner with our Global Justice Program.  This partnership led to the first-ever national mediation training workshop in 2014, and its follow-on workshop that begins tomorrow.

Mitch was one of the trainers in 2014 and has been itching to return for round two.  Having received an advanced legal degree in dispute resolution from Pepperdine, Selina has become one of the mediation trainers for Straus and jumped at the opportunity to join this trip.  So Monday morning will kick off a week-long training workshop for fifty Ugandan judges who will soon become the core of Uganda’s mediation corps.

But all work and no play makes Jimmy a dull boy, so we spent Saturday in one of my favorite places in Uganda – Jinja.  Before heading out of Kampala for the two-hour drive, we stopped to say hello to our Pepperdine summer interns who are serving eight-week internships with Ugandan judges.  One of them, Emily, jumped in the car with us (along with Nicole, our current Nootbaar Fellow, who is serving as a year-long mediator in the Family Court); four of them had gone ahead to Jinja for a day of white water rafting and bungee jumping.

Our first stop was the Source Café, which was started by a team of missionaries nearly twenty years ago.

First Stop in Jinja

From there, we dropped Mitch, Selina, Emily, and Nicole off in a fishing village on the banks of the Nile River for a two-hour tour of the Nile and Lake Victoria, which is the source of the Nile.  While they were touring, Jenna and I went to visit an American friend and her husband of about two years.  It was a joy to catch up with her, a few of her many adopted Ugandan girls, and to meet their adorable new son.

Before returning to Kampala, our group met up with four of our student interns and watched them climb a rickety platform, strap their feet to a rubber band, and then hurl themselves a couple hundred feet toward the Nile.  There is nothing like bungee jumping in the developing world if one wants to tempt fate.

What could possibly go wrong?

Having done this twice in 2012 (once each with my two youngest kids), I passed on the opportunity to become a recidivist.

Strapped to Joshua on my first plunge in 2012

Today is final preparation day for the mediation training.  While Selina and Mitch are training their hearts out the rest of the week, Jenna and I will be preparing for the arrival of a team of American lawyers on Friday who will work alongside our student interns, Ugandan lawyers, and Ugandan law students on our annual prison project.  This year, we will work in three prisons (Fort Portal, Mbarara, and Bushenyi), the first of which was the site of our first-ever pilot plea bargaining program in adult prisons in 2013.

Day One of 2013 Prison Project in Fort Portal’s Katojo Prison

Stay tuned for regular updates over the next three weeks.

For those wondering about the title of this post, it derives from 1980s novelty song that raced to #1 on music charts around the world.  I will let you decide whether this was or was not a clever way of indicating that this my nineteenth trip to Uganda.

One of my favorite songs when I was in college was “18 and Life to Go” by Skid Row.  That pop-metal song crashed back into my life as I traveled to Uganda this weekend for the 18^th time.  My commitment to my beloved second country ensures that while this is trip 18, I do have “life to go” in my travels here.  But before discussing this upcoming week’s activities, here is a quick recap.

The Divine Collision book tour Henry and I started in late January ended in early March after a whirlwind spin through Texas involving three chapel talks at Baylor, a national radio interview, and three screenings of REMAND in Waco, Dallas, and Houston.  It was so good to catch up with dear friends along the way.

Breakfast in Dallas with Echols and Delaneys

Prior to Henry’s departure, the BBC broadcast the radio interview Henry and I did with them and published an extensive feature on our story.  The Washington Post also published a nice article.  Following the BBC story, I received calls and e-mails from Nigeria, Ghana, the UK, and Uganda, some of which have raised intriguing new possible projects.

On March 3^rd, Henry traveled back home to resume his medical school studies.  We loaded him up (down?) with lots of first-world “essentials” (developing world “luxuries”) for his family – frying pan, Tupperware, chocolates, etc.

We stopped at the beach in Malibu on the way to the airport for one last photo and said our emotional goodbyes as Henry boarded the plane for his 21^st flight during the trip.  Memories to last a lifetime.

Farewell to Malibu

I also sent Henry home with the near-final cut of REMAND – the documentary about how his case led to substantial reform in Uganda’s criminal justice system.  (Incidentally, the final cut will be shown on April 12^th at the Historic Egyptian Theater for the first and only time prior to going on the film festival circuit – tickets available here.  Please pass along this invite to others).  Henry showed the documentary in his local village to a crowd assembled the night before he returned to medical school.

Prior to returning to Uganda, Henry had learned that he was among a list of approximately 200 of the then-remaining 360 students in his medical school class (which had started with 500 eighteen months ago) who had to re-take one or more of his examinations from the prior semester in order to advance to the second semester of his second year.  Henry was quite surprised that he had to retake Immunology, which he had believed was one of strongest subjects.

Upon returning to school, though, he discovered that he had not performed poorly on the exam, but instead that his was one of eighty students’ exams that had been lost by the professor.  All eighty had to take it again.  Soon thereafter, Henry was notified that he passed the retake and advanced to his fourth semester.

When all the dust settled on the third semester, only 280 of the original 500 students remained.  The “sifting” process will continue for a few more semesters, with the expectation being that around 200 will graduate at the end of six years.  Henry is quite confident he will be among them.

During this 18^th trip, I will be nailing down the details of the upcoming summer prison project (June 17-27), finalizing a couple national conferences we will be hosting in late June/early July, arranging everything for this summer’s student intern class, and exploring new projects and expanding existing ones.

Before I left Malibu, I had my second call with a government official in Nigeria about potentially working with them on judicial reforms, and hosted a delegation of Guatemalan lawyers who are exploring possible criminal justice reform along the lines of those undertaken by Uganda.

Divine Collision continues to be received and reviewed well – thanks to those of you who have shared your thoughts on Amazon.  If you have had a chance to read the book, please let your voice be heard.  My publisher tells me that getting to 100 reviews on Amazon is an important benchmark.  As of today, we are nearly halfway there:)