We Built It and They Came

One day last year, shortly after we had decided to spend the semester in Africa, Laurel stopped me (Mimi) in the hall at school and said: “I think we should have a conference. We should invite some people from the U.S. and some people from East Africa and bring them together to talk about ways to teach legal writing.” I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical. How were we going to finance this conference? How would we find potential participants? And, even if we found them, would they really come? But those of you who know Laurel know that once she makes up her mind to do something, it gets done – one way or another. So we got some money; we (with the able help of SU 2L Lyn Arnold) made some brochures; we sent out emails to embassies, law schools, and law societies all over eastern Africa . . . and we waited, hoping that someone would want to come to our party. And, lo and behold, people started to respond and actually wanted to come, which meant, of course, that we had to organize a conference for them to come to.

While it is easy to announce that you are going to hold a legal writing conference in Nairobi, making that conference happen is much more difficult. You have to pick a conference site based on pictures on websites and postings on Trip Advisor; many of the people that you want to invite do not have reliable email access; and setting a budget using foreign currencies that change from day to day is, if nothing else, frustrating.

The good news is that Mimi is, by both day and by night, a wannabe travel agent and was able to find a hotel, purchase airline tickets for 20 of our African participants, and book rooms for more than 40. (Despite a small crisis two weeks before the conference when we were told that the conference hotel was short about a half-dozen rooms.) She is now on a first-name basis with all the agents at the Kenya Airways office in Kampala and can, if you ask her, tell you the flight schedules for all of the flights going from not only the U.S. to Nairobi but also from Entebbe, Dar Es Salaam, Addis Ababa, among others. The bad news is that just one month before the conference, after most of the tickets had been purchased and the hotel had been paid, the United States government issued a travel warning for Kenya, suggesting that Americans “seriously consider the risks involved in traveling in Kenya” based on a series of recent carjackings. (Yes, we intentionally waited until after the conference to mention the travel warning to our friends and families. We did tell the conference participants.)

It is, therefore, an understatement to say that, a week before the conference, we were nervous. On the plane ride from Uganda to Nairobi, we made a list of all of the things that could go wrong: the hotel would be a dump; we would not have enough rooms; we would have scheduled the flights for the wrong day or city; we would have done the math wrong and not have enough money; or one of the conference participants would be mugged.

Our fears were for naught. We were met at the airport by Daniel, who was, until a few years ago, one of the President of Kenya’s bodyguards. He took us to the hotel, the Fairview, which resembles a British manor house set in a tropical garden, and our fears were set to rest. Later that afternoon, Daniel took us on a quick tour of the city, which on a Sunday afternoon is as nice (or nicer) than most U.S. cities (during the week, it is still nice, but the “jam” makes getting around quite difficult). In recent years, the government has rebuilt the roads, replanted the gardens, and, it appears, picked up every scrap of litter. Thus, from the downtown area, you would not know that Nairobi is frequently referred to as “Nairobbery” or that it is the home to Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, housing close to three-quarters of a million people in 2.5 square miles.

Things got even better when we returned to The Fairview a week later for the start of the conference and met with Anita, a Kenyan who graduated from Seattle University School of Law last year, who we had hired as our conference assistant. Despite an unscheduled 30-hour layover in Detroit on a non-stop from Seattle to Amsterdam, Anita was full of energy and had finalized the arrangements for the field trips for the U.S. participants. (Later in the week, we held a contest for worst travel experience. Anita’s travel nightmare was rivaled by Adam’s – he was supposed to transit through Dubai, but had an unplanned diversion to Kuwait – and Benga’s – on his flight from Lagos, Nigeria, the airline lost his luggage, including his laptop, and as far as we know, it has never been found.)

Most of the U.S. participants arrived a few days before the official start of the conference to go on “field trips” that Anita had organized for us. On Monday, Anita and her aunt, Kate, took a group of about six of us to woman’s hospital, which has established the only Rape Crisis Center in East Africa, and to a women’s law clinic where Kate, a fourth-year law student (and high-school teacher and mother of two small children), volunteers. (On Monday morning, Laurel had a field trip of her own, visiting almost every bank in Nairobi trying to get enough cash to reimburse the African participants for their airfare. Unfortunately, she was not successful, and while the hotel finally agreed to let us take cash out on our credit card, it came with a hefty fee.)

Then, on Tuesday, when almost all of the U.S. participants had arrived, we had “tourist day.” We started with a visit to the Maasai market where many of us overspent our budgets on local crafts. Next, we visited the Karen Blixen house, where we took turns standing on the lawn and saying, “I had a farm in Africa.” Then, at the Langata Giraffe Centre, we not only hand-fed endangered Rothschild giraffes, but the more adventurous in our group (see Jana McCreary below) put the pullets between their lips for a big wet giraffe kiss.



For lunch, we headed to Carnivores, a Nairobi landmark, where the all-you-can eat meatfest escalated from chicken, beef, lamb, and pork to crocodile, ostrich meatballs, impala, and zebra. And to wash it all down, the dawa, a tasty and potent mixture of vodka, lime juice, honey, and sugar. After lunch, we waddled back to the bus for our last stop of the day, the Bomas of Kenya, a cultural center where we watched a variety of dances from different ethic groups and toured displays of bomas, or homesteads, from different regions in Kenya.

On Wednesday, we went back to being law professors, and dressed up to visit the courts, the Kenya School of Law, and the University of Nairobi Law Faculty. A highlight was lunch at a typical Nairobi restaurant where we tasted local favorites, including a variety of stews (chicken, beef, and innards, among others) accompanied by rice, ugali (maize porridge) or chapatti (flatbread), and chatted with Nairobians on their lunch breaks.

The conference officially started on Wednesday evening with a pool-side reception sponsored by the Legal Writing Institute and the Association of Legal Writing Directors. Several of our U.S. participants, however, showed up a little late. They had gone with our bus driver, Maurice, to the Kenyan version of Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. On the way there, the bus was pulled over, the police took Maurice’s license, and they told him to drop everyone off and return to pay the police off. Apparently, according to Maurice, that is one of the dangers of “driving while white” (or “driving with whites”) in Nairobi.

Within minutes after the reception started, the Americans and Africans were deep in conversation and the reception, which was scheduled to end at 7:00 p.m., ended well past 10:00 p.m. Among other things, we learned each others' traditional greetings. (See below for Lisa Hatlen practicing a traditional Ethiopian greeting.)



The next three days were packed with presentations by participants from the U.S., Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nigeria on topics ranging from how to teach various aspects of legal writing to the relationship between legal writing and clinical education to the role of effective legal writing in the enhancement of human rights and the rule of law. We were also treated to dinner speeches by Camille deJorna, a consultant for the American Bar Association (and, we learned, first cousin to Lani Guinier), and Okech Owiti, the Dean of the Nairobi University Faculty of Law. At dinner on Friday night, Anita and Kate treated us to an elegant fashion show in traditional long dresses and matching hats. (Mimi, however, could not pull off this look.)




Although the presentations and speeches were all excellent, the informal conversations among the participants at tea breaks and over meals; in the lobby and by the pool; about students, teaching, and the successes and frustrations of the profession are what will be the lasting impression for most of those who attended. In fact, the conference went so well that at the last session, the group decided to form a new organization. Although as of yet this organization does not have a name, it does have a logo (thanks to Lyn) and a mission: to advance the teaching of legal writing in Africa and to promote to further exchange of ideas between U.S. and African academics teaching in the area of legal writing. High on the list of the organization’s goals are book exchanges, additional training sessions and conferences, and faculty and student exchanges. More information to come.