How to Purchase Land in Uganda

Due to Western influence, there are two systems for purchasing land that coexist in Uganda. There is the traditional Kibanja way, where the village chairman approves the land transfer and it is considered official. Then there is the new Western system that involves lawyers and land titles. When the Western system was first implemented, there was only one land title office in the capital city of Kampala. They quickly realized that it would be more efficient to have district offices, so they completely closed down the land office in Kampala while they computerized and zoned 6 new land office. A closure that was only supposed to be one month lasted an entire year.
Yet it seemed like each system was pretty straight forward, until I met with our lawyer and I realized that both systems are deeply intertwined with one another. Before you can obtain the land title in your name, you not only have to pay the Kibanja fee, which apparently only gives you ownership over development on the land, you have to also pay "mailo" (or the land owner's interest in the land), which is essentially where you buy out the owner's interest in the land so that land title can be passed over to you.
All of this matters because I am supposed to be buying a parcel of land next to where we are constructing a middle school to increase the size of the property. However I have been working on finalizing this purchase all week and this afternoon when we had planned to go to the lawyer's office to make the purchase official, we got word that the land owner himself had left town for a funeral and won't be back until Monday. I'm just glad I left enough time in my itinerary so I can be flexible when things like this come up.
So instead of meeting with the lawyer, I spent my afternoon playing with the village kids, which is where I'd much rather be anyway.