Ladies and Gentlemen, children of all ages; I believe it is time for me to recap my daily occurrences at the First Review Conference of the Rome Statute in beautiful Kampala, Uganda. While technically I am writing this on day two, I felt it necessary to split up each day's activities, so day two's post will be forthcoming.
I began my first ever trek to the "mother land," as they say, at Schiphol Airport, where I boarded this classy KLM branded Airbus A330, headed to Entebbe Airport, Uganda.
I arrived in Uganda after dark, to a beautiful night sky, with more stars than I have seen in ages, as Amsterdam is severely lacking in that respect. Severely. From there, I took a taxi to my hotel, thoughtfully provided by the ICC. This resulted in one of the most exciting taxi rides I ever took part in. I realize I said this many moons ago about Roman taxis, but Uganda takes it to an entirely new level. In addition to driving on the wrong side of the road, as a policy (thanks to the filthy English), there appears to be no real traffic regulations in this country. Everything seems to be dictated by the size of the vehicle. If there is a string of cars ahead of you, you apparently just jump in the other lane and honk at oncoming traffic until they get out of your way. All later bus rides have proven to be carried out with the same methods. I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed this aspect of the trip, although some of my colleagues might feel differently.
Anyways, I arrived at my hotel, all safe and sound and checked in to this nice little room,
with this equally nice patio, just outside my door. I'm reasonably certain we will be required to have some sort of drunken lawyer party, with many foolish shenanigans at some point this week. It's almost a requirement on any business trip, or so I've been lead to believe.
After a lovely dinner with a few of my Legal Tools colleagues at the hotel's Indian restaurant, it was time to retire to bed, as it would be an early morning.
Day One
Day one started out with our nice little breakfast at the hotel (side note: bananas in the country are freaking outstanding. They taste much different than those in the US or Holland). After which, we boarded a crazy little bus/van type thing, provided graciously by the ICC. I'm told that they were bought up by the bus company from China after they were done with them. I'm not sure what that says about this place, taking second hand Chinese buses, but it got the job done, with aplomb. I've grown to love the little things. Below you can see the quaint little fella from the inside. I'll try to get an exterior shot later on.
From there was about a thirty minute ride to the Speke Resort and Conference Center on the shores of beautiful Lake Victoria, the second or third largest fresh water lake in the world, depending on how one measures a lake (apparently there is some debate regarding Lake Michigan and Huron being one lake or two, but that's neither here nor there, as they say). Anyways, here's a shot of the lake from the entrance of the resort. It seems way too classy for laid back country folk such as myself, but I'm willing to adapt.
After getting all registered and receiving my misspelled badge (apparently my name only has one "t," according to the good people at the ICC, but I'm willing to let that slide) we were got the LTOP table all setup ready to promote the shit out of Legal Tools.
The day was quite nice, although I was unable to sit in on most of the Plenary sessions, due mostly to a miscalculation by the Ugandan Government regarding the size of the main hall and the fact that we needed to man the LTOP table most of the time, but the first two day's Plenary sessions weren't all that exciting anyways. No big loss there. I got to meet lots of people from all over this crazy planet, which was nice, and I even ran into my former supervisor from my first go around at the ICTY, which was a great treat. I even got a compliment from a nice Ugandan fellow from some NGO who "likes my attire." He even took my business card, although that was due to an interest on legal tools. However, I like to believe he just wanted to know the name of my suit guy (jokes on him, it was a cheap department store suit). Who knew I had some sense of style? Thanks Manda and Ka.
The rest of the day was full of promoting legal tools with one short period were I very nearly made quite the media blunder. As it turns out, it's not a good idea to be completely honest when being asked questions about the ICC at such an event. Especially when you have a tenuous official connection to said court. Luckily, I recalled that you can tell reporters not to quote you, and they can't really do anything about it, so long as they don't know your name to begin with. Thankfully I had my badge hidden under my jacket.
We ended day one with a nice meal outside, right near the lake. The sound of the bugs outside and the warmth and humidity made me miss south Louisiana terribly. A lot of little things about this place reminds me of home, mostly the climate and the nice, friendly people.
That is all from day one, but I guarantee there will be more very soon, perhaps tomorrow morning, if I can drag my ass out of bed in time to write something.
As always, I will leave you with a bit of a photo essay from the first day. Enjoy.
Our table is guarded by these two fellas, which is comforting.
This is just a shot of the sky that I thought was nice. I don't really have anything clever to say about it. Apologies.
Really, what's better than lunch outside under a tent?
Perhaps some freaking delicious west African Ginger Brew to go along with it. Sadly, there was not actual beer there, but this will do. I assume they didn't want a bunch of drunk, rowdy diplomats on their hands, which is understandable.
Various shots at the resort and of the trip there from the city. Again, I got nothing clever...perhaps I'm not as clever as I once thought.
Finally, there was a stampede of diplomats coming right for us.
Thankfully the Ugandan military was there. (in the truck in the background)
With that, I shall leave you. But rest assured, there will be more. Oh yes, there will be more, whether you like it or not.
Matt
