Mattress in the Courtroom: The Muddy Path to Court

On a fresh, cool early morning, we left the capital, Lusaka, in a big USAID SUV with a driver and the Mission’s democracy officer, a Zambian attorney, to see how the court system in a small town operates. As we drove away from the hotel, the government buildings with their tended grounds, the shopping mall, the big old trees and the neatly stucco-walled compounds of upper- and middle -class housing complexes gave way to dozens of one-story storefronts lining the road, with litter blowing on the bare packed red earth. There were no trees. Women with lengths of brightly-patterned cloth wrapped around them for skirts carried large flat round baskets of fruit or vegetables on their heads, and men pushed wooden gurneys loaded with enormous burlap bags of produce or grain. Along the railroad tracks, people spread cloths on the red muddy ground on which to display all kinds of goods: clothes, cell phones, shoes, bars of soap, CDs and CD players, coat hangers, baskets of straw and plastic containers. There were women cooking over open fires, offering hot food for sale.

In less than an hour, we came to Kafue (ka-few-ee), and turned off the main road where a white metal sign announced “Kafue Subordinate Court”. We drove, very slowly, over a deeply rutted road, and parked on marshy land in front of three small white stucco buildings – the courtroom, the jail, and the court offices. There were no other cars in sight. People walk here – the state of the roads demand it, among many other reasons.

We picked our way over the wet ground, stepping a small stream on the way to the court administration building, where the chief judge awaited us. His office held statute books from 1995; he had never received any supplements. When he needs to know if the law has changed in the last 14 years, he calls lawyer friends in Lusaka who can help him. His court mainly hears criminal cases, primarily rape and incest, with some robbery and theft.

Once a week, he hears civil cases: debts, inheritance, and defamation. He showed us the record of appeal from the local (customary law) court decision that he was deciding that day: it was handwritten by the local court judge and held that the divorced woman in the case could not share in the property from the marriage because she had not worked outside the home. It’s a wrong decision, the judge said; we had a Supreme Court case years ago that said women are entitled to half of all property acquired during the marriage, but the local court judges don’t know it. I try to train them, but there are so many other things to take care of. He had a kind face and a gentle manner; he was humble too, about his role deciding the fate of thousands of people every year. I would have wanted him to judge me, were I in the dock in Zambia.

After we met with the chief judge, we walked to another building, the courtroom, to see a trial in progress. There was a double-size foam mattress in the very middle of the courtroom, on the floor. It was covered with a tattered, torn, and very dirty sheet, and a big blue carpet was heaped on it. There were three prisoners in the dock, the judge at the bench, and a police prosecutor at the counsel table. There are no state prosecutors for local and subordinate courts, which hear at least 95% of the country’s criminal cases. People were seated on the benches for the public; we quietly walked in and took seats at the back. Of course, we stood out, and the whole room, including the judge, stopped and looked at us before the judge continued.

The accused, two women and a man, were charged with stealing the mattress, the carpet, and some documents from a house. The man was in jail, but the women were out on bail. There were no bailiffs in sight, no handcuffs, no shackles. The accused were not represented by counsel, which is the case in nearly all criminal cases here. The judge asked if the accused were ready to go forward in their own defense; no, the prisoner said; the case was continued until March 25. He’ll stay in jail for another week, until then.

There’s so many problems in administration of justice in Zambia that donors (or as we say, “international cooperation”) have stayed away in droves from it, mostly because the leaders themselves don’t seem to want change or think it’s possible. Everyone in the justice system here is aware of the grave deficiencies but throw up their hands about leading for change.

So I wasn’t prepared for this courtroom trial. I thought I’d see grave miscarriages of justice, and put one more stroke down in my notebook against Zambian judges and police, with notes about police brutality, forced confessions, overcrowded court systems, untrained and unprofessional judges, lengthy pre-trial detentions, unconscionable delays, and on and on. Yes, all that may be true, but I didn’t see it here. The continuance was for a short time; the proceedings were translated into the local language, Nanja; the judge read the accused their rights; and the evidence was hauled into court. There was no sense, at least to me, of us-versus-them, we the good people, you the despised prisoner. It did seem to be a judgment of peers, a gathering of the people. At least what I saw that day fits with the traditional goal of justice here – to restore harmonious relationships, not to break them beyond repair. After the judge left the courtroom, the prisoner did too. He walked on his own back to the jail, tailed by a policeman.

Home Alone: Part Two

When the agent handcuffed Marta, she said, “Please help me! My dog is in my trailer by herself. It’s just a few doors down. Please let me go there and give her to someone to take care of her. I’ll go with you, I promise. Just let me take my dog to my neighbor. She’s home alone.” But either the agent didn’t understand Spanish, wasn’t listening, or didn’t care, because he hustled her out the front door and into the van without a word. Marta began speaking more and more loudly, then shouting, until the agent gagged her with a strip of cloth across her mouth. Then she stomped her feet against the floor of the van until he shackled her feet together. After that, she sat still, arms twisted behind her back, tears coursing down her face.

When the van got the detention center, two big guards took Marta out, shuffling with her shackles, to the women’s processing area. The guards stood by while she was freed from the handcuffs, gag, and shackles, in case she tried to hurt someone. But Marta stood still, and asked, “Do any of you speak Spanish?” Some of the inmate processing staff did speak Spanish, and Marta began speaking urgently. “It’s my dog. She’s in my trailer alone. I have to call someone to come and take her. Can I use a phone now?” All in good time, one of the processors said, first you have to be checked in. After that, there will be no phone calls until tomorrow. What if everyone wanted to make a phone call tonight? The whole system would be thrown out of whack. Marta started to protest, but saw one of the guards shake the handcuffs at her. After that, she followed all orders, crying silently. It took six hours, until four in the morning, for the “processing.” She was led to a bunk in a large room with dozens of women sleeping in double stacked rows, and fell into bed exhausted.

Guards called all the women out of bed at 6 a.m. With breakfast and shower, and many hours sitting on her bunk with nowhere to go, it was 11 a.m. before a guard led her into a room where Marta met with a harassed-looking man who said he was her deportation officer. He began by asking her for her full name and place of birth, but she interrupted. “Please listen,” she said, “I have an emergency. My dog has been locked up in my trailer since 6 o’clock last night, without getting out, and without food, and her water will be long gone by now. Will you let me call my sister now so she can go get her?” The officer looked at her blankly for a moment, then pushed a phone to her. “Dial 9 for an outside line,” he said. Marta dialed. When her sister answered, Marta said, “I’m in immigration detention, Rocio. They took me last night. Jennifer has been home alone all this time. Can you go over there now and take her home with you?” Rocio had many questions, but Marta said, “I’ll call you later with details. Just get Jennifer. You still have the key, right?” Rocio promised to get her.

Only later, after Marta had been released on bond from detention, did she learn what happened to Jennifer. Rocio had been in eastern Washington visiting her daughter at Washington State University when Marta called. Rocio called her son to go get the key and get Jennifer, but her son didn’t answer his cell phone until that evening. Meanwhile, Rocio left Pullman, and drove straight for six hours, but didn’t arrive until after 9 p.m. She grabbed the key to Marta’s trailer, drove the 15 miles from her house to Marta’s, and finally liberated Jennifer at 10:30 that night, more than 28 hours after Jennifer had been left alone. She took Jennifer home with her that night.

The next day, at 9 a.m. when the bond window opened, Rocio went to detention and paid Marta’s $7500 bond. By 3 p.m., Marta was released, and Rocio picked her up. “Jennifer’s fine,” Rocio said as soon as she saw her sister. “She’s with Tyler.” When Marta and Jennifer were reunited that day, even Tyler, Marta’s stoic nephew, was moved to tears.

Rocio had petitioned for Marta’s legal residence many years before, and the visa was now available. She was eligible to get her permanent residence, and she did get it within a year of being arrested for being in the country undocumented. She and Rocio hired an immigration attorney to handle the case, and represent Marta in deportation proceedings, to terminate the process. She was one of the few lucky ones. She had been in the US before 2001, when Congress decreed that those whose family members petitioned for them before May 2001 could get their residence. Residence however, would only be possible when the long wait for the visa – from three to 18 years, depending on the country and family relationship -- was over. No one who entered the US undocumented after that time could get residence based on a family petition, not even spouses of US citizens.

What Marta could never understand was why the officers had arrested her. It was a huge waste of taxpayer money, when she was not a criminal and posed no threat to anyone. She paid taxes, and offered a good service to the community with her tailoring business. She had a permanent residence visa immediately available to her. What a waste! And what cruelty! But two things it had done for her, she told Jennifer. The arrest made her decide to make friends for herself and Jennifer with her neighbors, give two of them keys to her trailer, and make sure that she had their phone numbers with her always. And the second thing? It politicized her. She took Jennifer to every single protest march in Seattle and Tacoma that she could find against inhumane immigration laws and practices. Jennifer always wore the sign: “ICE left me home alone. Bark out against injustice!”

Home Alone: Part One

Marta loved to design clothes and she loved to sew them. She taught herself, using scraps of fabric to make clothes for dolls, and later made clothes for herself and for her mother and sisters. She filled notebooks with her designs, but the family couldn’t afford the fine fabrics she craved. She made do with coarse materials, but the family was still by far the best dressed in their lower middle class neighborhood. When she was fifteen in 1965, she begged her parents to send her to Tegucigalpa, Honduras’s capital, so she could apprentice with a dressmaker and designer known throughout the country for dressing for the elite and wealthy. Her father was a tailor in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second largest city, and while he wanted to make Marta happy, he doubted that she could get into the great man’s workshop. He was touched by her brave spirit though, and so he took her to the capital on the bus, with her notebooks and a trunk full of her designs, and sat in the waiting room while Marta asked for a meeting with Mr. Alvarez, the famous designer. She got the interview that very day, and as her father later said in confidence to her mother, it wasn’t because of her looks either. It must have been talent and determination, since Marta was the plainest in the family, and had little time for social graces.

Marta stayed in the capital and worked for the designer for almost a year, learning to cut fabric. She would have gone on in her apprenticeship, but her father died suddenly, and she had to return to San Pedro Sula to help her mother run the tailor shop. Her sisters were still in high school, and had no interest in tailoring. Her mother did the business side, and Marta made the clothes: suits and shirts for men, as her father had done for thirty years. She hired a young man to do the measuring and fitting since it was completely unacceptable for a woman to measure a man, and she began making clothes for women too. Her sisters grew up and married, and Marta and her mother kept the shop going. It wasn’t the life of high fashion that Marta had dreamed of, but it did allow her artistic scope, particularly when her customers gave her a free hand. The business did well until the early 1990s when rival criminal gangs warred over who owned San Pedro Sula, and the middle class customers who had been loyal to Tito’s Tailoring for generations fled the city for safer suburbs, or the capital, or the US.

One of Marta’s sisters, Rocio, had gone to the US on a visitor’s visa, and then met and married an American. When she became a citizen in 1995, she offered to bring her mother to the US as a resident, but Marta’s mother was hesitant to leave Marta. Under US visa laws, permanent residence is immediate for parents of US citizens, but brothers and sisters of US citizens have to wait in line. The line might take years; the US Congress determines the number of visas available every year, and there are never enough for all those who want them. The tailoring business had fallen away to nearly nothing by 1995, and their old neighborhood was now ugly with burnt-out buildings and ankle-deep trash. It was dangerous to go out even during the day. Marta urged her mother to go to the States, and told her that she herself would get a visitor’s visa and come to visit. Marta’s mother made her promise that she would move from the neighborhood and live with a sister and her family in the capital, where she would be safer and could try to get work. Then when Rocio’s visa petition for Marta became available, Marta could get her permanent resident card and come to the US.

After her mother left, Marta sold the sewing machines for what little she could, and she did try to live with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their four children in their small apartment in the capital. But she felt that she was in the way, and she could not find a job, no matter how many tailoring shops she visited to show her portfolio. She knew what they said when she left each shop: she was too old. She had thought it herself when she had her own business; she wanted young people who she could train in the way she wanted, not those who already had their ways set.

She applied for a US visitor’s visa twice, and was turned down each time. Each visa appointment cost $50 US dollars, money she had to borrow from her sister. She was 45 years old and felt that she had come to the end of her options in Honduras. She borrowed money from another sister, and flew to Tijuana, Mexico. There she found a coyote, a smuggler of human beings, and paid to be taken across the border as part of a group of young men and a few young women. She was older by 20 years than the oldest in the group, and she struggled to keep up. She made it to San Diego, and she got a bus to Seattle where her sister and mother lived. She lived in her sister’s mother-in-law apartment with her mother, and got a job in the clothing alterations department in a big department store in downtown Seattle. After a few years, she had saved enough money to open a little alterations shop of her own in Burien, a town south of Seattle where many Hispanic people lived, and she designed and sewed dresses for recent immigrants for weddings and other special occasions.

Her mother died in 2001, and her sister was divorced shortly afterwards. Her sister had to sell the house, and Marta went out on her own to look for a place to live. She found a trailer park in Burien that she liked, and bought her own trailer to set on her rented plot. She was surprised by the sense of freedom she felt, living alone for the first time in her life. She thought she might be lonely, and she considered what she would do if she did. She could join a church, or try one of the new internet dating services, or join a singles group. But she wasn’t lonely. She worked most days from 9-7 p.m., except Sundays when she worked in her tiny garden, cooked for the week, cleaned, did her errands, and read fashion magazines for new ideas.

She didn’t know most of her neighbors, except for a friendly Mexican family that invited her to their many gatherings. Their trailer was no larger than hers, but they had three children and various other family that stayed for periods of time. She turned them down most of the time, but went for an hour or so sometimes, bringing her special dish, pan de coco – coconut bread rolls, or sometimes fried sweet plantains with sour cream. One night, one of the children brought home a puppy, of some indeterminate mixed heritage that he had found walking alone along a main road, but his parents refused to let him keep it. Marta surprised herself and them by saying that she would take it. She had never had a dog in her life, or ever thought she wanted one.

The first few weeks were confusing, both for Marta and the puppy, but they both persevered by some grace, and by the time three months had gone by, they were inseparable. She named the puppy Jennifer, an American name she had heard and liked, and took her to the shop every day. Jennifer didn’t shed hair, which was fortunate, and she was of a peaceful and friendly disposition. Customers mostly liked her, and Jennifer knew how to stay out of the way if someone didn’t like dogs. Marta started taking long walks with Jennifer at midday, which was good for both of them, and going to a dog park on the weekends so Jennifer could play with other dogs. By the time six months had gone by and Jennifer was no longer a puppy, Marta could not imagine life without her. Jennifer slept at Marta’s feet, ate when Marta ate, and learned to chase balls and return them for treats, which made Marta laugh.

A year after Jennifer came to live with her, Marta went one summer evening to the Mexican family’s trailer for a birthday party for one of the children. She left Jennifer at home since she thought she was better off away from the noise and confusion of the party, with so many people in such a small space. Right before Marta got up to leave the party, four agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement knocked on the door, pushed it open, and arrested every one of the adults, including Marta, after demanding that everyone show them “papers.” No one had papers to show, and they were all handcuffed with their hands behind their backs, put into a van, and after a two hours’ wait while the agents loaded more handcuffed people into the van, driven to the immigration detention center in Tacoma. The agents took the children to a neighbor’s trailer, a neighbor that the family didn’t know well, but who said they’d take them when ICE asked.

To be continued...

Ed In Chile: Part Two

It did not occur to Ed to protest, or to file a lawsuit, or to build a movement of students to lobby for him. That would be distasteful to him. Lilia had the skills to do it for Ed, but he would not ask her or allow her to fight for him. He knew, in a vague way, that he was out of step with the rest of the department, with the rest of the university, but he had never spent time thinking about it. The university wasn’t the place for him anymore. He strongly doubted that there was a place for him in Chile.

At first Lilia couldn’t believe that Ed was just going to leave his job, walk away from his salary, and reduce his pension to a pittance. She urged him to at least try to do what Sergio wanted him to do, and she pledged to find people to help Ed develop research ideas that would appeal to corporate funders. She herself would help him rewrite his curriculum to come up to Ministry guidelines. She could not understand Ed’s point that he would never be happy prostituting his talent and skills, as he labeled it, in hope of keeping his job. She told him that he could still do his own research on the side, and teach first-year university students who weren’t yet locked into state-mandated practical curriculum.

But Ed did walk away, and he didn’t have another job. His children were disapproving, Lilia was angry, and his wife’s family took to whispering about the state of his mental health. He had never given himself time to develop friendships, so he had no one to talk with. He spent the first months after he cleaned out his office going twice a day to the pool in his condo building. It had been thirty-plus years since he had swum at all, and he was stiff and awkward in the water. But slowly, slowly he began to be more comfortable and to move more easily. While he was swimming he didn’t think about anything. The pool was on the 25th floor of the building; it was surrounded on three sides by glass walls, and the high roof had large skylights. In a month he was swimming a mile during each workout, and he had lost 20 pounds.

When he wasn’t swimming, he lay in a deck chair by the side of the pool and watched clouds. Sometimes he re-read the science fiction novels he’d loved as a boy and as a young man, before he went to graduate school and his life was too busy to read anything but the scientific literature on yeast. The science fiction comforted him. Reading them, those early sci-fi novels of the 1950s and 60s, where science solved all problems and the future was lustrous, he forgot the last 40 years of his life. Perhaps because of this, it seemed natural that he would return to Seattle. After two months, he was sure of it. Lilia was still angry and the children didn’t need him. Lilia spent at least half her time in Europe anyway. He would live with his parents and share the burden of their care with Nancy, his sister. She had been taking care of them alone for the last five or so years, as their strength failed. He could be useful again.

Besides, Chile wasn’t his country. Ed thought back over the last 30 years and told himself that it had never been his country. He had Lilia and the kids, and his job in Chile, but now all that was over. His true country had been his family and his work. He knew nothing about the politics, and little about the country’s history. The kids could visit him when they wanted to; Lilia, too, if she ever wanted to. He was going home. When he told Lilia that he was going, she predicted he’d be back in months. She reminded him that he always found his parents difficult to be around for more than a few days. But she didn’t beg him to stay. Ed was mildly surprised at that, at how lightly their 30 years together could float away, at how they could let it do that.

When Ed called Nancy to tell her he was coming home, he didn’t say it was for good. He told her he had retired early and could spend time now helping out with their parents. Nancy said he was welcome, of course. It would be good for their parents to have Ed around for company. They now had a housekeeper who also cooked and did personal care, but errands, groceries, house maintenance, arranging for doctors’ visits and outings, and general oversight were Nancy’s purview. She would be glad to share these tasks with Ed. She had two teenagers and a husband, and worked full time as a gardener at the University of Washington.

Ed packed light. He was surprised at that too, that he needed to take so little with him. He found his goodbyes easy to do; his children, his wife’s family, the doorman of their condo building, a couple of his former colleagues, a few of his students who had kept in touch over the years. There wasn’t anyone else. He said that he was going to spend some time with his parents and sister, help out for a while. Lilia took him to the airport, and their goodbyes were short. On the long flight, as he tried to sleep in his tiny seat – Ed was a big man -- he had a sudden memory of his first plane ride to Chile, when he was coming to meet Lilia’s family, interview at the university, find an apartment, and make wedding plans. He was 26, with a new doctorate in biology, a swimmer’s strength and physique, and a loving fiancée waiting for him when he landed.

He had been sitting next to a Chilean, a slight, grey man in his 60s who spoke English well. The Chilean, Julio, said he was going home to live after 43 years in Seattle. He emphasized the 43 years as if he himself could hardly believe how much time it had been. He had worked for a big parking garage company as a bookkeeper for most of those years. He was a US citizen, had Social Security and a pension, and had already bought a house, as yet unseen, in the small town 50 miles north of Santiago where he had grown up. He said he had no family left there, but friends from his youth still lived in the town. He thought he’d finally have time to write poetry. He loved to read poetry, he said, but had never had time to write while he was working.

Ed asked about his wife and children, and he remembered the look on Julio’s face: a grimace. Julio said he was divorced and his children grown and out on their own. They would be staying in the States, he said. Ed asked if he would miss the States. Julio paused a long time, and then said, “I don’t know what I miss. I don’t think I can find what I’m missing. It’s not in the States, and not in Chile. Maybe I lost my place.”

Julio said no more about himself, and began asking Ed about his reasons for traveling to Chile. Ed talked of Lilia, his job prospects, and his happiness. He was normally more reserved, but he was brimming with joy and was delighted to share it. He said goodbye to Julio and went out to meet Lilia and all her family who were standing at the gate with welcome posters and flowers for him. Lilia was nearly jumping in her excitement to see him. The happy group swept him up with them, and he didn’t see Julio again until they were standing at the baggage claim carousel. Julio was by himself. He caught Ed’s eye, and gave him a small wave. Julio mouthed something before he turned back to the carousel to look for his baggage, but Ed could not tell what he said. He lost sight of him after that.

When the plane landed in Seattle, Ed walked alone to the baggage claim.