Hot, Dark, and Steamy (but not in the way that you may be thinking)

While our trip to Mbarara got off to a shaky start, our trip to Soroti got off to a steamy one. About four hours into the six hour drive, the fan belt on our Judicial Studies vehicle broke, resulting in steam spewing from the engine . Unfortunately, the timing could not have been worse. We were, once again, quite literally in the middle of nowhere, and within a few minutes the skies became dark, and we were engulfed in torrential rains. Although the battery on the driver’s phone was dead and the secretary's phone was out of minutes, luckily our phone worked, and we were able to call the judge who heads the Judicial Studies Institute, who was in another vehicle ahead of us. To make a long story short, we were able to purchase two ropes and, using the judge’s car, tow our car about 20 miles to a police station.

Now for the hot and dark: While the morning of the first day of our training session went off without a hitch, things went downhill after lunch. First, the room was like a sauna, which made it difficult to keep people awake during a presentation on small-scale organization. To compound the matter, as we moved to Plain Language vs. Legalese, the power went out, making us realize why the word “power” is in ‘PowerPoint.” We were able to re-organize our afternoon sessions, but we were in the dark until about 10:00 that night. Finally, when room service knocked on the door with the fruit salad that Laurel had order several hours earlier, the lights came on. Needless to say, had we known that you could get power from room service, we would have placed an order much earlier.