Greetings from Uganda! I arrived safely minus one bag. The fiasco that followed was interesting. On Monday, it was arranged that I would pick up my luggage from the airport, however the luggage had been moved to the headquarters for the airline in town. A long story short is that as we were heading back to the hostel (closing in on 4.5 hours in the cab), Ashley and I were bracing ourselves for a heck of a cab fare. When we asked how much it was we were told 85000 shillings which is less than $45.00!

Much of the first few days at work were spent getting oriented to the organization and the wonderful people we are working with. Aside from that, I spent a fair amount of time reading the relevant laws such as the Penal Code, the Children’s Act, and the Ugandan Constitution. Wednesday I visited the Luzira prison to observe a session put on by the Paralegal Advisory Service (PAS). PAS is a service funded by the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (where we work). PAS works out of the prisons and helps inform the prisoners of their rights and the general court proceedings because many of the prisoners have misconceptions which affect their access to justice. PAS does important work in helping the prisoners advocate for themselves. Prisoners are routinely kept in remand longer than the maximum prescribed by law. Often prisoners do not know what they are charged with, police have lost their file, and/or their relatives have not been informed of their arrest. I had to laugh because the difference in the importance of time, which was discussed during training, seems to be at play here. The meeting that Ashley and I were supposed to have at the start our first week has not happened yet.
We have done some really interesting work interviewing children on remand and “in need of care and protection” who are housed in the remand homes. Right now I am doing many interviews and visits to different facilities.

People are very friendly and we are perpetually waved at and greeted. While most of the attention is easy to handle, dealing with the children who do not have enough food to eat is difficult. It is very hard when we are getting food (our 3rd meal of the day) and there are children begging us for food. Unfortunately, Ashley and I cannot independently fund a feed the children campaign in Uganda. We are walking to work instead of taking transportation now that we have moved. Coming home, uphill in the blazing heat is wonderful! Our new apartment is beautiful: Thank you Meghan!

This past weekend we went to Jinja. Jinja is the source of the Nile River and has “probably the best rapids in the world”. I went rafting on Saturday and it was so much fun (I swam through most of the rapids though as our raft flipped several times). Uganda is great, and the project is very interesting. I am glad to be back at work after the weekend!