In my last post about Uganda, I got up to the point where we'd just arrived in Kampala after a very long, uncomfortable journey. I'll pick up from there!
Our time in Uganda was mainly spent in meetings with various commissions, finding out about the work they do and gaining a deeper understanding of how Uganda is working towards improving their legal system and their country. Tuesday was our first day in Kampala. In the morning we visited the chief magistrate's court, and observed a number of cases, including one very interesting one where they offender was being prosecuted for making and distributing a pornographic video. I'm amazed that Uganda has anti-pornography laws, and I think this is a really positive thing that the UK could definitely learn from. We had a meeting with the magistrate afterwards where we were able to aso various questions. One of the most interesting answers was his greatest challenges: the first was security - judges very often feel threatened, and they've started to provide bodyguards for them to keep them safe. The second was the difficulty of handling cases where one party is represented (has a lawyer) and the other isn't, and the judge wants to help the party without a lawyer present their case, or needs to ask questions to find out more but can't be seen to be taking sides. In Kampala, this was about 20% of cases, but in more rural courts its about 80%. Although I'd thought about this challenge from the parties' point of view, I hadn't considered it from the judge's point of view, and I can see how it makes the job so much harder.
That afternoon we went to the Equal Opportunities Commission, who work to tackle discrimination through education and litigation of cased where discrimination has occurred. It had a slightly odd feel to the meeting - they'd forgotten we were coming and so the guy who was told to come and talk to us didn't really want to be there (and didn't really hide that!) and just told us to read some leaflets and that'd tell us all we needed to know. But as we started asking questions, he warmed up and realised we actually wanted to know more about them, and by the end of the meeting it was a much friendlier feel!
The next day was Eid, which meant a public holiday, so we had a much needed day off to recover from all the travelling! We went to a craft market, where we met a lady called Rose who was fascinated by the fact that two of us were called Rachel, and kept telling everyone about 'the Rachels'! It was quite entertaining, and I have to admit she did get a bit more business out of us than she might have done otherwise!!
The next day, we had a meeting with the Inspectorate General in the morning. They work to fight corruption, and although it's very much an uphill struggle, their passion and dedication to the work was really inspiring. They were so hospitable, providing us with tea and coffee, and samosas and sausages (a standard morning snack here!). They have a lot of hope from how Rwanda has managed to significantly reduce its corruption, and they're working hard but in a culture where corruption and bribes are so ingrained (e.g. if you get stopped by the police your first thought would be 'how cheaply can I get out of this') it's going to take a while I think before a significant impact is made.
That afternoon we went to a secondary school on the more rural outskirts of Kampala to do a child rights training session. It was another one of those occasions where more preparation and warning would have been nice (we had a whole 5 minutes to work out what we were doing...!) But God was faithful and gave us the words to say. The kids were really engaged and it was so cool to see them really taking in and remembering the things we were teaching. Chatting to them afterwards, so many of them have a dream to come and study at university in the UK. Sadly, I think none of them will ever be able to, due to the cost being so expensive. It really did make me stop and think just how fortunate and privileged I am to be able to be educated in the UK, and I realised that I really had been taking this for granted. I pray that I won't take it for granted during my final year at uni!
Friday morning entailed a visit to the Ugandan Human Rights Commission, which was extremely interesting, finding out more about how Uganda is working to address the worst human rights abuses. They were saying that the most common things they come across in their litigation department is unfair deprivation of liberty (false imprisonment effectively), torture and parents refusing to pay maintenance payments to support their children after separation. It's now compulsory for soldiers to pass a human rights module before they are fully part of the military, to try and reduce abuses perpetrated by the armed forces, which seems like an excellent idea! It was also quite interesting reading their report to parliament, but I think mainly from a legal point of view so I won't go into the ins and outs of that here! (I've got a copy, so just ask me if you'd like a read...!!)
After the Human Rights Commission, we went to the Ugandan Parliament for a tour round and an explanation of Uganda's political history and how the current process works. In many ways the parliament chamber is pretty similar to the house of commons, but quite a lot smaller. The number of MPs is increasing and so the number of seats in the parliament has long been less than needed. Since independence, Uganda has gone through periods of elected leaders, dictators and military coups. Although the speaker in Parliament has changed fairly regularly over the last few decades, there's been the same president since the late 60s, and I believe the constitution has just changed to allow him to stay longer. This is certainly not democracy at it's finest, but the other side to that is there have been no military coups as there was throughout the history of Uganda. I'm not going to pretend I have an easy answer to this! Another interesting difference to Westminster is that the military get a number of seats in Parliament - there are not many countries in the world that do this, but the thinking behind this is that if the military have a voice in parliament, when they're unhappy with something they can voice their grievances and views within the system, rather than resorting to overthrowing the system.
After Parliament, we went to the UCLF office where we met the whole team - they're a big group! It was a really fun afternoon, worshipping and praying together, reading the bible and I felt really encouraged by their friendliness and the feeling of community within the office. In some ways it was a shame we weren't able to meet the group earlier in the week, but it was a really lovely way to end the week, and we felt very welcome there.
Our time in Uganda ended with a trip to Entebbe, on the shores of Lake Victoria. We were going to visit the zoo there, but in true Ugandan style, the bus journey there took 3x as long as it should have done, so we ended up just having lunch and chilling by the lake for a bit, before going to dinner at another UCLF board member's house (also in Entebbe). Lake Victoria is so beautiful - I was quite surprised that in many ways the Ugandan side looked really quite different to the Tanzanian part of the Lake, where I spent 10 weeks of my gap year.
Uganda was really very different to Rwanda - both in terms of the country and the work we were doing. You can tell that Uganda is so, so much bigger than Rwanda! The traffic in Kampala is crazy, in a way that Kigali never was, even in rush hour. Driving through the country, there are many fewer hills than in Rwanda, and instead there are a lot of open plains, and big tea plantations (which really smell...!) I understand more of how the Ugandan system works that I do of Rwanda, but less about the work of UCLF than I learnt about Lawyers of Hope. I can't really pick a favourite - they're just different!
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