I Came Back Home

After seven months and more than 27 countries, I'm retiring the blog.  Thanks to those who followed along.

If you are visiting for the first time, have a look around.  You'll find photos and stories from, among other things:

• a 5500-mile trek across the USA, 
• an overland journey across southern Africa (Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Congo DRC, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania), 
• travels throughout Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. 

Plus, there's a whirlwind tour of the Balkans, photos from Qatar, Malta, Italy, Germany, and Spain, a chimpanzee orphanage, graffiti from Belgrade and Rome, Congolese medical clinics, three trips to the Sahara, an unusual school in Zimbabwe, and lots more.

Enjoy.  

Milano

Looks like a spaceship.

What's hot right now in Milan?  Puffy, shiny coats -- either black, purple, or navy blue.  And romance.

Bye-Bye Rome

Castel Sant' Angelo just before sunset.

The same sculpture I showed you in my first Rome post, but at a different angle and with different light.

How I felt in almost every church.

One of my personal favorites.

Sant'Ignazio

Standing on the special yellow circle on the ground, you look up and see this.

Not that different from many other churches around town.  Except this dome is perfectly flat -- it's an illusion. Here's how it looks from directly underneath.

The Birds

Over the Tiber at dusk.

1

And Number 1 in the Modern Roman Art Countdown goes to "Here is Photo Opportunity."

2...

3...

4...

OK, 4's actually a tie.  Here's the other number 4.

5...

6...

7...

8...

9...

Modern Roman Art Countdown: 10...

Seen Around Town

It was actually raining when I took this shot.

A man plays violin behind the Pantheon on a wet street.

Tourists taking it in.

In a Park

A tree, that picture, and a fountain.

Puddles

Rome

Later This Week

A few shots of Rome and Milan.  Until then, take a look at some of the links on the right.

Justice in the Congo, Part 9

Near-Riot in a Congolese Prison

The prosecutor now returns to the front of the courtyard before the still-seated inmates and convenes an impromptu question-and-answer session.  One prisoner raises his hand and stands to speak.  “We are fed up,” he says.  The prosecutor begins to respond, but the prisoner continues:  “I have been here for a long time, suffering.”  The prosecutor interrupts the man and speaks to the whole audience, saying that he will see if he can fix some of their problems.

More hands are raised.  More inmates stand up.  One shouts:  “We are fed up -- staying here in these conditions!”  “We need also to get outside,” says another.    

The crowd becomes unruly.  Still more inmates leave the formation and stand up. They shake their fists and point.  Some talk; many shout.  My interpreter is overwhelmed and doesn’t know whom to translate.  

Amidst the growing unrest, I notice a young-looking boy standing near the center of the courtyard.  Shoeless and visibly dirty, he wears a tattered tight blue shirt with English writing.  His baggy tan pants have been torn haphazardly into shorts at mid-thigh.  The boy stands with his elbows near his ribcage, hands extended outward, palms up.  He is silent amidst the sea of bodies as the voices around him grow louder.  His expression conveys more than the shouts do.  I have seen it often in children and adults in this country:  he is hungry and miserable.  

“How old are you?” I ask through my translator.  “Fourteen,” he responds.  He says that he has been here for two years, but we cannot communicate further through the chaos.  

The prosecutor repeats that he will be back to talk to everyone, and then we are ushered out -- fast.    

The UN has supplied money for a new, separate women’s wing of the prison.  We walk through it quickly.  It is still under construction.  When will the women move in?  “Next week.”  “Or next month.”  Listening to the litany of things that must be done before the wing is inhabitable -- there are no doors or toilets, for example -- these estimates seem ambitious, if not impossible.  

Walking toward our car, I ask the prison nurse if there has been any violence in the prison.  He says that a girl under the age of 12 was raped.  The nurse is not sure what happened to her.  The second-in-command later verified that the rape occurred, but said that the prosecutor was still “trying to analyze the case.”  The girl has not been returned to the general prison population.  No one has been charged.  

Thanks to his recent promotion, the chief prosecutor is on his way to the big city to enjoy more resources and to confront a new set of problems.  These people and these problems will remain right here in Kamina.  

Justice in the Congo, Part 8

Life in a Congolese Prison

Toward the rear of the lobby stands -- or rather leans -- an ominous-looking set of doors.  They are metal and painted green, but the paint has long since blistered and peeled back.  Swahili words are written (perhaps scraped, or painted) above a large latch.  Below the latch is a large gap where the doors have been bent (or pulled, or kicked) apart.  Some sunlight floods through the crack, but most of it is obscured by a head peering through.  A set of eyes, open wide, darts this way and that, staring out at me and surveying the rest of the scene in the lobby.  

We walk through the door furthest from the entrance and into an open-air courtyard.  Clothes lines hug the walls and crisscross the open space; I see brick walls, a dirt floor, the sky above, and the inmates.  There is little else to take in.  

As we enter, someone utters a command, and the prisoners respond with a deafening shout.  Before my eyes, 168 inmates materialize and rapidly assemble in the courtyard into neat rows, leaving a space in the middle to walk.  In less than a minute, all are seated and absolute silence envelops the courtyard.  

The inmate at the front of each row sits with his feet on the cement floor, knees bent, and legs spread.  The next person assumes the same position and then scoots flush against the first  -- his chest against the front-man’s back, his legs hugging the front-man’s legs.  The rows resemble a human version of stacked chairs.  The result is a condensed mass of humanity in a courtyard 10 meters long by 5 meters wide.  (All measurements were provided to me two days after the tour by the prison’s second-in-command, in response to my request.)  

All the inmates are black.  Most are men.  At first glance, they are no more malnourished than many of the unincarcerated Congolese I have encountered.  Lacking uniforms, they seem to be dressed in the clothes they were wearing when they were arrested -- mostly pants and short-sleeved shirts.  Nearly everyone wears sandals or is barefoot.    

I notice a group of women in the back right of the courtyard.  Two hold small children.  One of the children is three years old and has been in the prison for seven months.  The other, a year and a half, has been here for two months.  With nobody else willing to care for them when their mothers were arrested, our guide explains, the children “have accompanied their mothers” to prison.  

We tour six rooms that house a total of 156 men.  “Belgium,” the largest of the dormitories at 8 meters by 7, sleeps 33.  There are no beds, mattresses, or pillows; everyone sleeps side by side on blankets, heads near the walls, feet toward the middle of the room.  Typically, we are told, two men must share one blanket.  The floor is concrete.  (“Skin disease is a problem here,” the prison nurse later says.  He speculates that sleeping on the ground may be a cause.)  The ceiling is the underside of the roof.  Tiny windows, no more than 8 centimeters by 25 centimeters, admit slivers of natural light through the thick brick walls.  A large drawing of Christ on the cross is the only decoration.    

I notice a small pile of bowls to one side and no other cooking equipment.  (The prison nurse says that some inmates have diarrhea; he believes it may come from the food they cook, so he is making an effort to monitor what they eat.)  Shirts hang from nails above many of the blankets; few nails hold more than a single shirt.  The smell of human bodies is thick in the air.  

The tour moves on.  “Soweto,” the same dimensions as Belgium, sleeps 31.  “USSR,” though smaller at 8 meters by 5, sleeps 30.  “Iraq,” the same size as USSR, also sleeps 30.  Around December of this past year, the prison population swelled to 245 inmates.  Nearly 50 inmates were forced to sleep in some of these rooms.  

The men use two bathroom facilities, which contain a total of seven toilets and two showers.  One houses a tank of water with a tap (another gift to the prison).  I notice something odd:  These bathrooms, used by over 150 prisoners day in and day out, smell cleaner than any bathroom I can recall in Africa, certainly in the Congo.  They look, feel, and smell wet -- and that’s it.  I do not know what these rooms smell like on a day when U.N. officials are not visiting.  

Judging by the blankets lying within the entrance to one bathroom, two (or perhaps four, or more) inmates may sleep here.  The tour guide later says that these men don’t sleep here; they just provide “security” during the day.  

China, the fifth men’s dormitory, is 6 meters by 5 -- but it houses only seven inmates.  This must be the low-security wing of the prison.  A television sits on a chair, playing one of the two TV stations available in this part of the Congo.  “The prisoner brought it with him,” our guide says.  

We walk past the prison “market” -- some tiny dried fish and a few dried peppers on a towel near the rear of the courtyard -- and arrive in “Ethiopia.”  Like China, this room is 6 meters by 5, but it sleeps 25 inmates.  We learn that as many as 35 slept here less than a year ago.  

We walk into a dark, dank, narrow room -- it is 9 meters long and only 3 meters wide.  “Chicago” is currently home to 12 women, plus the two young children.  Here, I see the first and only heating implement along our tour of the prison:  a small device designed to heat food over a coal fire.  Aside from this, the only visible food-related items in the other rooms were bowls and cups.  Nearby, we briefly look in the women’s bathroom:  one shower and one toilet; the strong smell here is more what one would expect from a Congolese prison bathroom.  

And that is it:  seven dormitories, three bathrooms, and a tiny courtyard for between 150 and 245 inmates.  The total living space for all 168 of the current inmates is 25 meters by 16 meters.  There is no place to exercise; there is scarcely a place to walk.  As our guide put it during the tour, “there is no place to relax.”  

Justice in the Congo, Part 7

Congolese Prison

I tag along as the chief prosecutor brings us on a tour of Kamina’s prison.  This is no drop-in.  Several United Nations officials are among the 12 or so people visiting today.  

There is nothing remarkable about the outside of the prison; it is a medium-sized brick building with high walls.  Most of the structure has no traditional windows -- just small slots three or four meters off the ground.  A few windows illuminate offices near the entrance.  Several people -- perhaps family members of inmates -- loiter near the bars that function as the front door.  

Our group walks into a lobby of sorts with several closed doors.  The man in charge of the prison is not present, but I am introduced to the second in command and escorted to his office.  I ask two questions, and when the prosecutor sees that this might take a while, he says we should do the tour first.  I can ask my questions when we finish, he says.  (The opportunity does not arise.  But I am able to follow up two days later, on a second visit.)  
The second-in-command leads the tour and provides most of the narrative.  The prosecutor offers commentary along the way, and the prison nurse occasionally chimes in as well.  We learn that the prison was originally a depot for the railroad that runs through Kamina, so it is more suited to housing sacks of grain than hundreds of human beings.  The prison has existed here in this form for over half a century, the guide says.   

There used to be a dispensary behind one of the doors in the lobby; it was a gift from an NGO.  But now, there is nothing inside -- no equipment and no medicine.  It has been this way since 2006.  The prison nurse tells us that the prison has no place to isolate the infected; they stay in prison until they are sent to hospital.  

If a prisoner is in need of drugs, someone must come up with money and go to town to buy them.  (The lone exception is tuberculosis drugs, which are free thanks to another NGO.)  

The prison spends about $67 per month on drugs -- an average of less than 40 cents per person, per month.  An NGO doctor who has worked in remote areas of the Congo for the past three years tells me that many drugs, such as antibiotics or anti-malarial agents, can cost three or four times as much as in the United States.  

The prison feeds the inmates once per day, usually around noon.  The fare most days is beans and cassava leaves, a common leafy vegetable in this part of the Congo.  Sometimes there is fish.  Churches or NGOs can supply additional food, and about a third of the current inmates have their diets supplemented by visiting family members.  

Four security guards are on the prison payroll; they live here while on duty.  During those periods, they have no means of communication with the outside world other than their personal cell phones.  

Justice in the Congo, Part 6

Civil Court

On Wednesdays, the courtroom is used for civil cases.  My translator and I sit with a few others in the gallery as the Chief Judge walks in and takes his seat behind the bench, flanked by the Minister of Justice (a sort of head administrator) and the Clerk of Court (who doubles as the court reporter).  The Chief Judge hand-rings a bell to signal that court is now in session.  Three cases are slated for today.  

The only item on the courtroom wall is a piece of paper at the front of the room telling people to silence their cell phones.  This is asking a lot in the Congo, where cell phones are omnipresent and cherished.  Within seconds of the bell, a lawyer’s cell phone rings.  A moment later, the Minister of Justice answers a call and abruptly walks out of the courtroom mid-conversation.  

One of the parties in the first case is not here, so the case is postponed until both parties can attend.  In the United States, failure to show up in court or file documents on time often results in a loss.  But travel in America is not like travel in the Congo, where it can take over a day to drive 100 kilometers.  The train south to the major city of Lubumbashi -- which takes about a day when everything works -- tends to take two or more (no doubt in part because many railway employees, I am told, have not been paid in years). 

The second case is over just as quickly.  The parties are present, but they are merely continuing a hearing that began a week earlier.  Everyone decides that the matter is best resolved in private, in the judge’s chambers.  

I never receive a straight answer about the third case.  Court adjourns within four minutes.  

Criminal Court

On the following day, reserved for the criminal docket, the atmosphere is different.  The gallery is packed with more than 40 people -- all crammed onto the narrow wooden benches.  Six lawyers clad in black robes occupy the quadruple-wide podium in front.  

Three judges walk in and take their seats behind the bench.  They are joined by the Minister of Justice (who, among other things, announces the judgment of the court for each case) and the Clerk of Court, who writes the only records of the proceedings -- longhand.  

The gallery is remarkably well behaved during the four hours I sit in court.  Occasionally, a comment by a lawyer or a party causes the gallery to grumble a bit, but a harsh shout of “Silence!” from a judge restores order immediately.  

The first case, as my translator puts it, is a “dispute over soil.”  It ends quickly, as one of the lawyers says he had no time to prepare.  The panel agrees to postpone the case.  It seems that delay -- a prominent feature of daily life in the Congo -- is every bit as common in court.  

Everyone is present and prepared for the second case, and it goes forward -- for hours.  A farmer from a village named Kalumdwe, about 200 km east of Kamina, has been evicted from his farm by three men.  These men, the prosecutor says, have threatened to kill the farmer.  His crops, including bananas, maize, sugarcane, beans, and manioc, have been destroyed, and he and his family have been forced to sleep outside.  

The prosecutor produces a sheaf of documents establishing that, as far as the state is concerned, the farmer has had title to the land for nearly 50 years.  

The three defendants stand in front of the wide podium, facing the judges.  Dressed in jeans and short-sleeved collared shirts, they mostly plead their case themselves, as their lawyer stands by.  

The defendants furnish their own documents, from their own authority.  They explain that the old chief in their village has died, and that the new chief, their father, has authorized them to take the farmer’s land.  They present letters from the new chief ordering them to harvest the farmer’s crop.  According to tribal custom, they argue, authorization to harvest a crop implies the further power to kick the farmer out altogether. 

The oldest defendant, who speaks forcefully and with passion, sums up:  “The old chief has died.  This is our moment!”  

When either lawyer wishes to speak, he raises his hand.  As in grammar school, a lawyer’s desire to speak can be gauged by the angle of his extended arm and how fast his raised hand wiggles.   

A judge asks whether the defendants accept that the land belongs to the farmer.  They do not.  “It belongs to the chief,” says one.  

The prosecutor, who speaks eloquently throughout, finishes his argument by stating that the Congolese government rejects the new chief’s decision.  “The soil belongs to the government, not the chief.”  And the government is clear that the farmer owns the land.  “They must be condemned!” he shouts.  

One of the judges states the view of the panel:  “Everything belongs to the state,” he says.  “The state has the last word.  Even the chief is not above the law.  If he were, he could take everything for himself.”  

Case closed -- almost.  The court wants to know the extent of the damages to the farmer’s crop.  The prosecutor cannot establish the damages, and the defendants vigorously dispute that they caused any harm at all.  

The judges make a surprising decision:  They will travel over 200 kilometers to visit the farm themselves and assess the extent of the harm to the farmer’s crop, the journey to commence in just over a week.  But the judges have no money for the expedition.  Costs are estimated in advance, and the parties must pay before the journey begins.  

Justice in the Congo, Part 5

The Courtroom



The sad set of double doors opens to the middle of the courtroom.  Straight ahead are four spare wooden benches,  capable of uncomfortably seating seven adults apiece.  The gallery sits here, as do the parties, witnesses, and armed security guards.  

The space behind these benches resembles the furniture section of a pawn shop.  A table with a missing leg lies on its side.  It is joined by two or three massive bureaus, some shelving, an extra bench, and a bicycle.  

Ahead of the four benches and toward the front of the courtroom stands a mega-podium.  Imagine a standard wooden podium, then quadruple its width.  The lawyers sit on a bench before the podium and stand when their case is argued.  A few paces ahead of the podium, up two steps, sits a bench inhabited by the judges; it resembles those in courtrooms across the United States.  

Little else in the room even suggests the First World.  

The walls are mostly a drab shade of yellow, and the paint-job looks like modern art.  Layer upon layer of paint has been slapped on (or peeled off), revealing multiple shades, textures, and brushstrokes of yellow, brown, and white.  A deep fissure zigzags from floor to ceiling, revealing the wall’s beige-colored innards.  Most of the chips, dents and scuffs on these walls have no obvious explanation, but two deep rectangular gashes in the walls are plainly the former homes of light switches or electrical outlets.  

The ceiling is a shade of sea green.  Several panels are missing, offering the gallery a view of the metal roof if they missed it on their way in.  Flaps of ceiling droop toward the ground, the product of age, water damage, or both.  Near the front of the room, a beam meant to support a ceiling panels hangs precipitously.  Should it give way while court is in session, it seems likely to land on the “Greffier” -- the Clerk of the Court

With doors and windows open, it’s room temperature in the courtroom.  The air stays fresh thanks to a gentle breeze, and sun floods through the large windows on the far wall of the courtroom.  

But the sunlight makes it easier to examine the floor.  Once smooth concrete, it now looks like a topographical map.  Cracks run this way and that; dents, ravines, and pockmarks dominate the landscape.  The legs of many gallery benches have found their way into one crater or another; they seesaw back and forth when sat upon.  The concrete has completely worn away from two sections near the entrance, revealing bricks beneath.  Even these bricks are wasting away; some are missing, and the ones that remain have begun to disintegrate.  

Justice in the Congo, Part 4

The Problem of Execution

I meet a private lawyer in his two-room office -- his cabinet, as it is called.  He has practiced in Kamina for several years and works on as many as 100 cases per year; his annual salary is about $3000.  Most of his cases are land disputes; the bulk of the rest involves fraud or deception.  Few cases from this rural region involve violence, he says.  

The lawyer describes a typical case.  A man buys property for $600.  He settles in, but members of the Congolese military pay him a visit and tell him that $600 is too cheap.  Three thousand dollars is a fair price, they tell him -- and the balance is payable to the military.  If he does not pay, he must leave or face eviction.  The man is still clinging to his property and the case is pending.  The lawyer believes he will prevail.  

But winning a lawsuit in the Congo, I discover, is only part of the battle.  

The lawyer faces many of the same resource-related problems that plague the prosecutors and judges in Kamina.  Unfettered by the suffocating Congolese bureaucracy, he has better luck furnishing his office.  His secretary already uses an ancient desktop computer, and the lawyer discusses plans to buy a laptop in the future.  

He focuses instead on a different concern:  “Here, generally, execution is still a problem.”

One of his clients had a dispute over the rights to a lake.  The lawyer took the case and won.  A celebration followed, the client took over the lake, and the lawyer returned to Kamina.  He soon received word that instead of appealing, the losing party took a different route.  It enlisted the military to reclaim the lake and got the District Commissioner to “cancel” the judgment.  Despite winning the case, the lawyer’s client has been kicked off the property with no effective recourse.  The lawyer has written the relevant authorities, but he doubts that his client will soon return to his lake.  

For the lawyer, this called to mind another water-rights dispute that began in 2001.  By 2004, the lawyer’s client had prevailed and gained control of the property.  Six months later, the losing party arrived at the property with weapons and chased the winner away.  “We tried to fix it,” the lawyer said, “but we could not get them out.”  A high-ranking administrator gave them 22 policemen to solve the problem -- to no avail.  The occupants are still there to this day.  

I ask whether he thinks the justice system is fair, and after a pause, he says that in rural areas, it generally is.  “But we have problems at the Palais de Justice,” he quickly adds.    

He says that in Kamina, someone can commit murder and be put in prison -- only to be released if he can pay enough money to the magistrate.  

Or, he says, it is possible to pay the police to arrest someone, even if that person has done nothing wrong.  

“But it is done in secret.  People are afraid because the law is tough on corruption.”  These days, he says, the government is trying hard to stop corruption.  “You see Kabila on TV.”  But, he adds, “it is difficult to stop.”

I ask whether poverty is a cause of this corruption.  “Even the rich are corrupt,” he responds.    

I ask whether anyone within the justice system is not corrupt.  Three men in the room brainstorm and come up with four names:  one prosecutor, two judges, and a military judge.  Two of those named -- including the Chief Judge and Chief Prosecutor -- were recently promoted, and will soon be leaving Kamina for the provincial capital, Lubumbashi.  

Administrators' Offices

I stop by some administrative offices in the Palais de Justice.  In the prosecutor’s administrative office, the only chair for visitors is metal, with no back.  Two hollow metal poles protrude from what has now become a stool.  A few bundles of yellowed papers are visible in an open cabinet.  Few other trappings of a modern office are visible.  

In the Clerk’s Office, the only chair for visitors is wooden, with one arm.  There is almost no paper in the room.  The few stacks of paper on the shelves have yellowed, and thick cobwebs over some of them suggest that they haven’t been touched in some time.  

I peek into a room in the Clerk’s Office reserved for civil cases.  Along the back wall sits a shelf with twenty-four cubbies.  Most are filled with tall stacks of more yellowed paper; one is filled with old rags.  This is the court’s system of civil records, in its entirety.  A desk sits in the middle of the room, and near the front is a hulking piece of machinery, covered with dust and spider webs.  I am told it is a machine for processing maize.  

Justice in the Congo, Part 3

The Chief Judge

Five or ten years older than the prosecutor, the Chief Judge dresses like a man who doesn’t need to impress.  Fit but carrying a large belly, he looks wizened.  His natural expression is stoic calm, occasionally broken by a huge, captivating grin.

The Chief Judge uses the same type of official desk the prosecutor banished to a corner of his office.  It is covered by yet another plastic food-themed tablecloth.  The papers on his desk and the shelves behind him are carefully arranged.

Two cords hang from the ceiling.  One dangles above the desk, terminating in an empty light socket.  The other is covered in cobwebs and debris, its intended use unclear.  There is no source of artificial light in the Chief Judge’s office; indeed, nothing in the office operates on electricity.
 
Compared to the prosecutor, the Chief Judge is a wealthy man, earning $600 per month.  He chuckles when I mention the prosecutor’s salary, wryly observing that the prosecutor has his own car.  (No one I ask, including the Chief Judge, can explain exactly how he can afford it.)  Officially, prosecutors are not allowed to accept money from parties and cannot run businesses, but they often participate in and benefit from businesses owned by spouses and family members.  Whatever means the prosecutor has to earn some extra money, they are unavailable to the Chief Judge, who cannot afford his own car.

I mention the Palais’ lack of resources, and the Chief Judge nods.  “If you want to get a computer,” I ask, “how would you go about getting one?”  Officially, he explains, there was once an office for that in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, nearly 2000 kilometers away.  But it has not existed for 10 years, so there is no official way to procure a computer.  “Unofficially?” I ask.  You buy it with your own money.  

The Palais de Justice has seven “official” employees -- that is, employees paid by the state.  I ask how the Chief Judge would one go about getting another paid position.  The Chief Judge laughs.  The short answer is that it’s basically impossible.  The longer answer:  The candidate must have numerous documents in order.  (In the Congo, nearly everything requires myriad official papers.)  The Chief Judge must submit an application for the position to the provincial officer; then to the general secretary of justice; then to a state officer.  Approval is unlikely at any step, but delay is guaranteed.

I ask to see a judgment -- a court document explaining the facts of the case, the court’s decision, and the reasoning behind that decision.  The Chief Judge opens a ragged folder and pulls out a few pieces of paper.

The judgment is handwritten.  The uneven blue writing could be a child’s.  The paper doesn’t even have lines; the words slant northward as they wander across the page.  There are no computers at the Palais de Justice -- and apparently no typewriters either.

Justice in the Congo, Part 2

The Problem of Resources

Compared to the hallway, the office of Kamina’s chief prosecutor seems well appointed and respectable.  It has a ceiling, and the walls are painted a lively shade of blue.  Four pictures of Congolese President Joseph Kabila adorn the wall, and a snapshot of Kabila sits on the desk.  

The prosecutor greets me with a warm handshake.  Dressed in slacks with a vest and tie, he is young and well-built, with a round face, glasses, and very dark skin.  I am given the chair of honor -- a high-backed, cushioned chair in front of the desk -- and my interpreter settles into one of the smaller plastic chairs to my right.  

During our conversation, I ask what frustrates the prosecutor about his job.   “There is,” he says, “the problem of resources.”  

The Palais is not connected to the Internet.  There isn’t a computer in building, nor is there an office phone.  (There are supposedly no working land lines -- or ATMs, for that matter -- in the entire Congo.)  “We don’t even have a Ham radio,” he says wistfully.  The prosecutor points to two cell phones on his desk and explains that he must conduct business on these, his own cell phones.  The government does not reimburse him for the minutes; he pays about 20 cents per minute during business hours for outgoing calls.  

Other than a diminutive official desk sitting unused in a corner, the prosecutor has purchased everything in the office -- including the blue paint I admired when I walked in.  

I reevaluate the office.  The desk looks to be a kitchen table covered by a plastic tablecloth in a food pattern:  berries and bananas peek out between piles of folders labeled “Urgent” and “Visas.”  The bookshelf behind the desk contains a random assortment of books.  “It is almost impossible to get books, and when we get them they are always out of date.”  

“At one time,” he says, “the government said it would provide us with a car.  We waited and waited.  Then they told us that the money for the car was gone.”  He laughed.  

“What can I do if someone is murdered 300 kilometers away?  It would take days to drive there, and petrol is too expensive.”  One of the prosecutor’s main functions, I discover, is to approve paperwork drafted by the police after justice has been administered -- if paperwork is ever filed at all.  

For the most part, he says, the people have learned to get on without the aid of the justice system.  Disputes are resolved privately, or by local police -- and that is usually the end of the matter.  

“How much is a prosecutor paid in the United States?” he asks.  I say that one might earn $50,000 -- perhaps much more.  

“I earn $200 per month,” he says.  

Justice in the Congo, Part 1

July 12-22, 2009

This week, I pay several visits to the Palais de Justice in Kamina, a sleepy city of about 300,000 in the southern Democratic Republic of Congo.  The Palais de Justice is the nerve center of the judicial branch in Haut-Lomami District of Katanga Province, in the southern Congo near the Zambia border.

Spanning 108,204 square kilometers, the Haut-Lomami District is larger than Pennsylvania or Portugal, and its population of 2.5 million people is larger than that of Namibia or Botswana.  The Palais alone handles the judicial business of the entire District.

The fence surrounding the Palais is a mangled arrangement of upright railroad ties.  On a day when court is in session, one can peer through gaps in the fence to see people huddled in the shade, loitering on the sparse grass, or sitting on the concrete steps near the entrance; the front yard is the court’s de facto waiting room.  I count twenty-five people loitering outside one day, and twenty-seven the next.  A goat grazes on the side lawn next to a brick building without doors or windows.

Constructed under Belgian rule in 1958, the Palais de Justice is about 40 meters across and painted white.  The metal roof is rusty and in need of repair.  A crack snakes down one side of the building, leaving the impression that a portion may soon detach from the rest and slump to the ground.  A rusted machine for processing maize stands near the building’s entrance.

I step over the roots of the overgrown tree that dominates the front driveway -- which, like almost all the roads in Kamina, is made of dirt -- up four stairs, and through two double-doors with broken and missing panes of glass.  I find myself in a dark hallway with a cement floor and a solitary dim light bulb a few paces ahead.  To my left are wooden shelves lined with dust, cobwebs, and some discarded peanut shells; to my right, an old bicycle and a motorbike.  I look up to the tall ceiling -- and discover that for the most part, there is no ceiling.  The rusted roof is visible through the building’s skeleton.  Dangling from part of the building’s frame near the light bulb is a long, curved strip of metal cloaked in spider webs.

At the end of the hall is a set of double doors.  Both have five rectangular panes of glass -- or, rather, had them.  Nine of the ten panes have been broken; shards of glass, softened by time, jut from many of the frames.  Through these doors lies the one and only courtroom serving the 2.5 million inhabitants of Haut-Lomami.

The courtroom looks like it has been through an earthquake, or a riot, or both.

* * *

A missionary I met on my journey told me to beware of any absolute statements about the Congo.  Even if they accurately describe one part of this enormous country -- roughly the size of western Europe -- they are surely wrong with respect to other parts.  And even if they are accurate now, things change in a hurry here.  Kamina, for example, is a peaceful town now, but bullet holes in buildings around town are a reminder that this has been a dangerous place at times over the past two decades.

I spent ten days studying the justice system in one Congolese town, sitting in court, touring a prison, and interviewing judges, lawyers, a prosecutor, and prison officials.  What I will post over the next week accurately describes what I saw and heard.  But when reading it, take that missionary’s advice.  This is just a snapshot of one town in a huge, rapidly changing country.  Nevertheless, it provides a glimpse of a legal system vastly different from the one in the United States, and it helped me appreciate aspects of the American legal system I had taken for granted.  I hope you enjoy the story.

The Giza Pyramids

I made it from Morocco all the way across north Africa to here (with the big exception of Algeria).  The most exciting part was seeing these beasts from the city of Giza itself.  Giza looks like a regular Egyptian city -- cafes, stores, lots of dust -- but looming in the background are these enormous pyramids.  It's surreal.