Along with partner in all things Pulitzer Center, Jina Moore, I’ve got a story up on the Foreign Policy website about the “copyrighted” law in Liberia. It’s just as crazy as it sounds:

[Philip] Banks [the former Minister of Justice and current head of Law Reform] led a team of lawyers, a group called the Liberia Law Experts, to codify the country’s newest laws. The project, which picked up where an earlier pro bono effort by late Cornell University professor Milton Konvitz had left off, won just over $400,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ), according to e-mail exchanges between Banks and key legal players, obtained by Foreign Policy. Konvitz had codified laws up to 1978, just before Liberia plunged into 20 years of sporadic conflict. Those volumes list the copyright as belonging to the government of Liberia.

Defending himself in an interview with FP on Oct.27, Banks says he numbered, bound, and indexed the newer laws — intellectual work that he claims as his original property. Without his efforts, he claims, Liberia’s laws would exist only in loose-leaf pamphlets and would likely be lost. Banks says the DoJ funding wasn’t enough to cover his costs. So when DoJ declined to give him more, he asserted a claim of copyright on the work, according to an explanation of the issue he sent by e-mail to a justice sector consultant in 2006. It’s a claim he has appeared willing to relinquish several times for sums between $150,000 and $360,000, according to the e-mail exchanges, which were obtained by FP.

But Banks sees the copyright as an altogether different tool. “These are resources that you’ve had to expend in putting all of this together, and the question is, should you be compensated? I hold the view that you should,” he asserted in his interview with FP. “And for folks that have said, no you shouldn’t, I’ve said to them, go and get your loose-leaf.” DoJ, meanwhile, couldn’t find records of its agreement with Banks, but a spokesperson says it would be “highly unusual” for the department to have agreed to let Banks retain the copyright.

Read the whole thing here.

When I first started working as a journalist, I really hoped my stories would change something. After being disappointed again and again when things didn’t change, I simply stopped hoping for that as a result and instead focused on the importance of reporting – regardless of any kind of outcome.

And now I find myself, several years later, hoping that a story might change something. Fingers crossed that sometime next year, Liberian lawyers might actually argue, you know, law.

What just happened:
Someone from MTN just called me. He wanted to know if he could put my name on the media accreditation list to cover the upcoming MTN marathon for the Associated Press.

I told him I didn’t think the AP would be interested in this. Can I put your name on the list anyway? he asked. I replied, sure, if you want, but this isn’t quite international news.

It’s getting there, he assured me.
I said to call me back when it’s there.

What I think:

Transparency International said recently that Uganda is becoming more corrupt, not less corrupt.

1. My mom sent me a package via FedEx. They want to charge me taxes on it that would be 80 percent of the declared value of the package. Eighty percent! The officially published rates on package imports are about 40 percent, with certain items excluded from taxes. I asked them to get some paper work for me and verify this, and they haven’t. I asked them to call me back, and they haven’t.
2. We gave a guy who works in our compound some money to get plants and pots and put them on our balcony. The first time we did this, he got us nice plants and terra cotta pots. This time, when we gave him more money to bring big plants, he brought us plastic buckets with partially dead vines.
3. A local NGO that I did some work for, helping them with their media strategy and online presence, hasn’t paid me. I did the work months ago. Given that they don’t even bother replying to my emails, I’m guessing they don’t plan on paying me.
4. I bought a phone from MTN that was supposed to be enabled for web access so I could check my emails while out and about. It wasn’t. I took the phone back to the store and asked for a different kind, complaining that it didn’t do what the sales person had said it would. The manager told me “Do you expect all of our sales people to be familiar with all of our products?” I told him yes, yes in fact I did.

I could draw some big fancy conclusions here about corruption trickling down into every interaction, blah blah blah. But I won’t. This isn’t a news analysis – it’s just me venting.

I will say, however, that there are no repercussion or consequences for anyone on this list for their less than stellar conduct. The only consequences here are those felt by me and my pocketbook.

With 1,400 members and 645 wall posts, few things ring as true as some of the comments on the Facebook group You know you’ve been in Uganda for too long when…

-You argue with the police officer over the bribe whilst driving yourself to the station
-When Al’s Bar is a form of Speed Dating
-You start referring to people as “this one” and “that one”
-It’s 32 degrees Celsius and you still see people dressed in sweaters and winter parkas
-When you point with your lips and say yes with your eyebrows
-When going to Garden City is even more special because the escalator is on

You go through a period of adjustment at the beginning, where everything is new and different and exciting. Where it’s hilarious that someone’s wearing a sweater when it’s so warm! Where every what? Every sentence can make you what? Can make you laugh.

But really, you know you’ve been in Uganda too long when all those things aren’t even that funny anymore. After awhile, you won’t tell a boda to turn left because he will go up to the right because you didn’t tell him which way to “slope.” You don’t ask for your change, you ask for your “balance.” When bargaining takes less than a minute because you’re so accustomed to it.

So yes, I’m feeling a little too accustomed to Uganda right now. I never get lost in the city because I know where I’m going. I never have crazy phone call encounters where I try to explain who I am and what I’m doing because I already know how to do that in a way that makes sense to people.

I’m going on a vacation soon, thankfully, since it’s much needed. (Anyone been to Addis Ababa before? I have a few days of layover there en route to the final destination.)

Before then, and also for when I return, I’m going to try to get lost. Not literally – but to just walk to places I don’t know, talk to people I don’t need to speak to for a story or a photo or a purpose, and generally try and find new perspective.

Suggestions welcomed.

You know you’ve been in Uganda too long when…

-The pentecostal church in the compound next door keeping you awake until 4 in the morning is cause to spend time googling David Matsanga.