Work Begins

To begin, my apologies for the delay in blogging for a second time.

I'll break this blog down into three pieces. The first will discuss our work thus far, the second will discuss our weekend excursion to Jinja to raft the Nile, and the last will briefly discuss other random observations I've made in the last 10 days or so.

Work:
The 10 Pepperdine students that are working in Kampala for the summer have collectively worked on quite a variety of issues thus far. Here's a summary:

Stevie and Sean got to sit in on a meeting with their judges and the President of the ICC last week. With Ryan's help, they've both written memos for their respective justice's on the ICC Conference, which is currently in session here in Kampala.

Meghan and David are writing a memo on the administration of juvenile justice in Uganda. All of us visited the remand home here in Kampala. More on that later.

Jen and Peter are both writing judgments and opinions at the Court of Appeal and are apparently swamped with work on a wide variety of issues.

Michael and Ryan are helping review the Ugandan Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to help make some of the timing mechanisms more efficient. Ryan met his judge at the Supreme Court late last week and I'm not entirely sure what all he's worked on for the Court since then. Michael has also sat in on some mediations here at the Commercial Court.

Lisa and I are working on a case file for our judge, Justice Kiryabwire, in regards to a pretty nasty property dispute. We haven't met Justice K yet because he's in Paris, so we've been slogging through a huge case file of documents, transcripts, and hand-written notes trying to determine factually what happened in our case. Once that's all knocked out, we'll turn to determining what existing Ugandan law says on each issue of the case. Uganda has a website that purports to search through opinions and cases in country, but its search function is not very useful. More often than not, I end up on this site searching year to year, month to month, case by case, using Ctrl + F to determine if a particular term or terms are in the document. It makes research pretty slow.

More interestingly, Michael, Lisa, and I spent last Thursday and this Monday taking a certification class on Mediation here in the Commercial Court with 60 Ugandan law clerks. The topic and information learned was likely no different than that covered in any American law school - mediation, negotiation, arbitration, etc. - but the obvious difference was that we were three white American faces in a sea of Ugandans. Needless to say, the cultural interactions were incredibly interesting.

First, Ugandans speak very softly and with an aforementioned accent, making them fairly difficult to understand. Even when speaking in front of a crowded, noisy room of 65, they speak very softly, making them hard to understand.

Second, they often look to Muzungus for our opinion and assume that we'll take leadership whenever leadership is needed. We broke into small groups of 15 on two or three occasions for discussions or role play activities and each time I tried to limit the amount that I participated. I did so because I hoped to hear more of their opinions on whatever issue came up and because I didn't want to come across as an imposing American while on their soil. During the first group activity we chose a spokesperson who would later report back to the large group of 60. I was not chosen as the spokesperson and in fact said very, very little while our group met, yet once we got back with the larger group of 60 and the facilitator asked who the spokesperson for our group was, our entire group pointed to me. Shocked, I stood up, gave an unprepared summary of what our group discussed, and sat back down. This is also an example of just how deferential the people I've met here seem to be. The Ugandans that I have met are so polite and deferential that it becomes inefficient and frustrating because everyone seems to sit waiting for someone else to say or do something. For example, to start the mediation clinic, the facilitator asked the group to propose ground rules under which we would operate. It took no fewer than five minutes for the first rule to be proposed because all 65 of us were staring at each other waiting for someone else to speak up.

Third, and related, the formality in which everyone conducts their day to day business is striking. Every time a speaker came into speak to the group, they would politely, and very slowly, greet every "distinguished" guest in the room and speak to their character in some way.

Details and logical steps are never left out of conversation, either. The analogy I've come up with is as follows - if I was to describe to someone how to drive from my house to Pepperdine, I'd tell them to take a left from Marine to Lincoln, a left off of Lincoln onto PCH, and go up PCH about 13 miles until they saw Pepperdine on their right. A Ugandan would probably explain that you first have to walk out of the front door of the house, turn around, lock the door, walk to the car, open the car door, start the car by putting the key in the ignition and turning, put the car in reverse, back up, etc. They speak in such a formulaic, step by step way in nearly every single interaction in which I have been involved and at times it has been frustrating because it seems so unnecessary. That's the nature of their culture, though, so I'll have to get used to it.

We also did two direct mediation talks in which I worked with three or four Ugandan clerks to come to an agreement over a particular fact pattern that we read. Interestingly, in one instance we role played as if we were lawyers for Tiger and Elin Woods over their divorce settlement. Of the eleven groups of five that undertook this exercise, seemingly every group came back from mediation in agreement that the two parties should stay married despite Tiger's repeated infidelity. Most explained that they thought Tiger and Elin should stay together for the sake of the kids.

On Tuesday we visited the Remand Home in Kampala (a bit about Pepperdine's previous work in remand homes in Uganda can be found here), which is their version of juvenile detention. I'll have to post pictures at some point in time, but it was basically four or five large rooms on about two acres of land stuffed full of 12-18 year olds. In short, children that are accused of a crime are thrown into a remand home until their trial. More often than not, it seems, they never get their day in court because the state can't get witnesses and the children's parents to the trial because it's too expensive to get them to travel to the court from their hometowns. We'd like to have a relationship with the home that allows us to interview the children, write up court appeals, and submit them to the court. The children are supposed to only be in the remand home for 3 or 6 months depending on the nature of the crime, but it doesn't seem that this rule is followed. As you might imagine, seeing these children living in such close quarters without their parents, neighbors, or friends in such dire poverty was pretty tough. I'm not a good enough writer to explain what I saw or how it made me feel in more detail, but it was tough.

Wednesday led us to a happier occasion at the American Embassy. There, the Embassy hosted a ceremony for three Ugandan students who had received scholarships from US Aid to attend MIT, College of Wooster, and Pepperdine, respectively. After receiving certificates, laptops, and additional scholarship money from a variety of American corporations, each boy stood up and said a few words in appreciation. Hearing each boy thank their teachers, principals, coaches, and parents was a real tear jerker. None of them have ever left Uganda before, and now thanks to the taxpayers of the United States of America, these boys get to attend some of the finest institutions the world has to offer. I have no doubt that these three young men will return to Uganda and East Africa as leaders soon. It felt damn good to walk under the Stars and Stripes after that ceremony, knowing that our great nation had just helped do something that will permanently change the lives of those three young men forever.

Rafting the Nile River:
On Sunday, the ten of us rode a bus to Jinja, which is about an hour and a half away or so, to whitewater raft the Nile River. The rafting itself was pretty great - with 6 or 7 class 5 rapids, this stretch of the Nile is on most short lists of best places to raft in the world. More impressive was the sheer feeling of seeing and rafting one of the most important rivers in the world. Our guide, Camo, was a thirty year old guy from New Zealand who provided a remarkable amount of humor throughout the day. Equally interesting was having my Torts Professor, Professor Cochran, in the boat with us. He wasn't quite as thrilled as I was when our raft flipped and we all went swimming down one of the Class 5's. We had lunch on an island in the Nile, a small sliver of wooded land which seemed like something Robinson Crusoe would appreciate. On the second half of the raft we saw a cobra swimming down the river and a few African Fish Eagle, as well as native Ugandans standing along the river. At one point in time, we floated past a child that couldn't have been any older than 4 or 5 paddling solo in a wooden canoe. Shortly thereafter, Camo got a big kick out of pointing out the topless woman to Prof Cochran.

On about a 45 minute stretch without rapids, our conversation turned towards the law. Camo listened intently as Prof. Cochran and I discussed various theories of constitutional and statutory interpretation. After a few minutes of listening, Camo piped up, "Mates, let me make sure I understand this. Conservatives read and apply the law and liberals just make it up as they see fit, eh?" It was comforting to know that Camo was as baffled at liberal constitutional interpretation as I am.

More on the Ugandan Experience thus far:
- Just saw Robin Hood at the Kampala Movie Theater. For a couple of hours, I had totally forgotten that I was in Africa. The theater is slightly nicer than those in Charlottesville, plus it had a bar in it. Why don't our theaters have bars in them?
- It took our van/taxi about an hour and a half to go the three miles from the Embassy to our apartment yesterday. LA traffic is NOTHING compared to traffic in Kampala. I've never seen so many cars completely halted, unnecessarily honking at one another for hours at a time.
- This city is unbelievably noisy and crowded. There are always people absolutely everywhere at all hours of the day and night. Today's an exception, though - today was a federal holiday for Martyr's Day and the streets were dead silent. We saw six or seven prostitutes on the walk home from the movie around 10 PM tonight. That was a bit odd seeing that, as far as I know, I had never seen a prostitute before.
- Walking across the street is like real life Frogger. Nearly every intersection here is a traffic circle and cars fly around the corners with no regard for life or limb. Further, bota-botas fly around the streets and sidewalks every which way, cutting in-between cars, going the wrong way down the street, and frequently running into one another. Bota-botas (random Google picture) are the most popular means of transportation in Kampala. They are 100 cc motorcycle taxis that cost about .10-.25 to ride. I refuse to ride one when there is traffic because they're so incredibly unsafe, but after a few drinks over dinner and bowling last night, a friend of mine and I hopped on one to get home. It was fun, but I'll only ride them at night when I don't have to worry about us zipping aimlessly through traffic.
- Every single meal I've had here thus far has been delicious. The Indian food restaurants are particularly good, as are samosas, a fried delicious treat that we have for breakfast.
- I can't wait to take a hot shower with real water pressure, enjoy air conditioning, or eat at In-n-Out/Whataburger/Five Guys.
- Most of the Ugandans are rooting for Brazil, England, or Spain in the World Cup. They all think the US is an absolute joke of a team. Most of them don't believe me when I tell them that the US beat then #1 in the world Spain in the Confederations Cup last summer. I sure hope we beat the Brits and prove to the world that America is knocking on the doorstep of international soccer greatness. We're not there yet, but I think we'll prove we're better than most think in South Africa.

That's all I've got for now. For pictures and another perspective, check out fellow Pepperdiner in Uganda Meghan Milloy's blog here.