Ja A. Jahannes: Uganda in The Time Of Idi Amin

The first time I saw President Idi Amin he was driving a jeep with the top back as casual as he pleased down one of the wide streets of Kampala, Uganda’s capitol. I waved; he waved back. That image has forever remained with me. I had been in many situations were heads of state and ranking persons were escorted by soldiers and had large protective entourages. My most constant worry on first arriving in Uganda was that my three children, used to running free, would destroy the very chic Nile Hotel suite. Their mother remained behind fulfilling the last two months in her contract at Haile Selassie University in Ethiopia. I was on my way to the U. S., coming from a teaching assignment in Ethiopia, to accept an offered university position in the U. S. One of my friends in the Ethiopia who was in the Ugandan diplomatic corps had said to me, “You cannot go home without visiting Uganda. It is unthinkable.” That made sense to me. The Ugandans in Ethiopia had been extraordinarily kind to my family; they were like family. I had heard so much of the beauty of Uganda and already had friends there so it made sense to visit, feeling my children and I might never come back to East Africa. So, I also included Nairobi, Kenya in this tour on the way home. I had gone to Lincoln University (PA), with a Kenyan, James Njoroge Karioki, who by then was a member of Parliament.

On the way to Uganda, my former classmate arranged for us to be lodged at the New Stanley Hotel, where Ernest Hemingway lived and wrote in Nairobi. He took us on a tour of Parliament, sight-seeing throughout the city, and arranged an unforgettable tour of the Serengeti in a barred open-top tourist van. Then one day he took us to McDonald’s. That surprise he saved to spring on us; it was, then, the only McDonald’s in Kenya; but for me it was a sign of the continuing decline from the Hemingway and great white hunter and landowner days. The three days in Nairobi were educating and enjoyable. From a few visits to the marketplaces, I could easily see that the real entrepreneurs and owners were not Kenyan but Indian or Kenyan born Indians. I couldn’t begin to wrap my mind around this fact, historically or economically, then.

I was impressed in Nairobi, though, that the artwork at the schools, paintings and sculptures in open quadrangles, were the work of the Kenyan students. Always being a proponent of the importance of seeing yourself in your environment as well as creating the images of yourself is foundational to self concept building, this observation delighted me.

On to Entebbe, Uganda. My Ugandan host, who was home on leave and soon to be posted to China, had put us up at the Nile Hotel in Kampala, the nation’s capital, and I was told that the government would pick up the expense. That was really a good deal. The hotel was full of Ugandan culture, though Western accoutrements. I was most impressed that families brought their children to the evenings activities in an open air bar and dance place. I observed that the children were respectful and the children never danced with the adults. The adults never drank too much. It makes sense to have adults and children in the same environment because we often learn incidentally how best to behave by seeing our elders behave.

My second day at the Nile Hotel – I had only planned to stay three days; we had reservations to fly back to the U. S. – I was contacted by the Ministry of Education and requested to meet at the ministry. I got a babysitter and went off to the Ministry of Education at the appointed time. We met in the conference room of the minister, which had a large window with a beautiful view of the city. I sat facing three men who sat in front of the window view of Kampala. One of them, sitting in the center of the threesome was the minister of education. To this day, I am not sure if the man to his left was President Idi Amin; it always played back in my mind that there was a striking resemblance. Only the Minister of Education spoke. The question the Minister of Education raised was would I remain in Uganda. The country was in turmoil, they explained, because the Asian teachers at the universities and some of the British professors were abandoning the country rapidly. They made their case in a straightforward way, and effectively capitalized on my love of Africa and espousal of African unity and consciousness. They said I was needed, desperately needed. Nothing appealed to me more than the cogency of the Minister of Education’s plea. And, to be desperately needed.

I told them I had a commitment but I would call the dean who had made me the offer, and incidentally had been my mentor to see if I could delay my arrival that evening, I’d let the ministry know the situation in the morning. I called the university and explained the situation. My mentor said, “Of course, you’re needed. Stay as long as necessary. I’ll hold your position for you.” Both she and I thought that would be a semester, at least not more than a year. My children and I stayed at the Nile hotel for two weeks while a house on the campus of the National Teachers College was being remodeled and painted for us. My contract showed that I was appointed acting Head of Liberal Studies. I contacted the Minister of Education and informed him that I had never been “acting” anything in my life. I’d either be Head of Liberal Studies or I would leave. My final contract read “Head of Liberal Studies.” We enjoyed those two weeks at the Nile Hotel. It was a sweet introduction to a different and rich culture. We enjoyed the traditional Ugandan music and food, being able to stay outside at night in the evenings with whole families. And the white bustled skirts of the Ugandan women, who moved their feet in remarkable patterns as they danced. It was a time of great peace.

My first significant cultural lesson came at the very, very small, barbershop near the Nile Hotel. I decided by now I should have a haircut, my Afro trimmed. I stood outside the barbershop, next to get a haircut. The brother of the young barber asked me in a language I did not recognize how I wanted my haircut, I surmised. I didn’t understand him and tried to tell him through gestures. Then the young man tried another language. I still didn’t understand. Finally he spoke in broken French. I had studied French in high school. But didn’t learn anything about haircuts. Finally, he said to me in English. “You only learned one language?” I managed to get a haircut, more Ugandan urban, than Afro from the states. But, I began to realize that there almost everyone spoke more than one or two languages. Soon my wife joined us. She looked Ugandan, and was readily accepted. Amusingly, she was a petite size four, and looked like a model, but it was thought in Uganda if a man had a skinny wife he wasn’t being paid very well.

One evening, when my wife and I were at dinner with a Ugandan couple, I was confronted with a question that awakened me again. Both he and she were native Ugandans who had been university educated in Russia. They spoke fluent Russian, French, their native Ugandan languages and British English. She leaned over to me at dinner and asked “What language do you speak at home?” I said “English.” She looked at me indulgently, and softly said, “I mean when you’re at home. Alone with your family.” Again I said “English.” She said, “You are a strange people. You call yourselves Americans. You call your country the United States, you speak English. And you Africans there have no language of your own.” As I contemplated the enormous implications of this discourse, President Amin drove up to the hotel, alone, in his top back jeep, got out, saw us on the veranda, waved and we waved back; he then went into one of the hotel entrances. Just like that. The president moved freely. I didn’t even have my own language.

At the National Teachers College, Kyambogo, I was to learn as many lessons as I taught. The first surprise came when less than a week on the job, the principal (or president) of the college called me in and asked if I would serve as the Head of Professional Studies as well. It seemed that the fellow, British I believe, had left the country. One who knows this period in Ugandan history know that Uganda was full of British in high ranking and white collar jobs; Asians, mostly Indians controlled the major part of the country’s economic sector. Now they were packing up their material things and fleeing the country. Some were leaving so clandestinely that they left their homes or apartments intact not to arouse suspicion of the government.

Some explanations have been given for this exodus. As far as I could see, President Amin, with the equivalent of a ninth grade U. S. education, determined that the country was headed towards financial crisis: the British were banking in British banks and the Asians were sending all their monies to India or Britain. Neither group was re-invested in the country. Both groups helped to keep Uganda poor. No matter how long they had been there they were interlopers. He defied them to send their monies to foreign banks. And when President Amin discovered that the British salaries were universally higher than the Ugandans salaries across all professional areas, he asked that all salaries be made equal. As an American, as an outsider, I can testify to how my British colleagues damned him for suggesting that they become equal to the Africans who were the true sons and daughters of Uganda. The saddest part of this whole exit business was for me to witness the large number of half-caste Indian children, who were left by their fathers; outright, with no thought for their future survival. I saw some of them, grown men and women crying.

It was predicted worldwide that Uganda would not survive. It is amazing that people would think that some of the oldest civilized people on the planet will not survive when Europeans stop telling them how to tie their shoes. Some said the businesses would not survive without the Indians. President Amin called all of his ministers to Kampala and had them set up interview panels for Ugandans who wanted to own and run businesses. Someone asked him, how will these inexperienced people learn to run businesses? He told them just like the other inexperienced people who had come to Uganda to colonize her, through effort. Some will fail, he said, and some will succeed. And so it is. Kampala survived. Uganda survived. And in the hearts of many Ugandans, Idi Amin Dada survives.

There were also amusing times in Uganda. Television went off around 9 pm in Uganda as it did in much of Africa, and I think there were only three channels. Most of the programming was cultural or propaganda. Often, President Amin would make pronouncements as the tv went off the air. One night he announced that the following night he would address the country in French. I waited night after night but I never heard him address the country in French. Since he grew up in the Nubian border of Uganda and went off to military school under the British, he might very well have been able to speak in French. But I never heard him.

I loved teaching at Kyambogo. I never had a student late for class, or a student who missed an assignment. And there is something powerfully engaging when your class is already in place before class time, and stands when you enter the room. My Ugandan students made me a better teacher, a more passionately dedicated teacher. My wife, who got a position at Makerere University almost upon her arrival, and I were treated with respect and kindness in Uganda. We were both seasoned international survivors and not meddlers.

One of the discoveries I made in Uganda was that they mostly played country western and popular white music on the radio and in the night clubs. I could not get even my friends to appreciate my very hip record collection. Then I figured it out. Record companies in the U. S. and Britain played only what they wanted to play and except for James Brown and Otis Redding, the Ugandan’s had heard no other American music. They liked only that which they knew. This was also done throughout the world to some extent before television and the Internet. Still I loved music and dancing, and one evening, after a few drinks, my partner and I won the National Liberation day contest in the upper ballroom in downtown Kampala. I do not think my partner, a woman I selected randomly out of the crowd, had the slightest idea what dance I was doing; and neither did I.

Fortunately, in my teaching role I got to see a lot of the country. I was the supervisor of TP, Teaching Practice, which we call student teaching here in the states. In Uganda, then, teacher education was an intensive three year program. In the second year the students were sent for a time into the field to actually teach. They learned firsthand the difficulties they were going to face. When they came back to school they redoubled their efforts to be good teachers. They tried to learn everything they thought they would need. They even learned how to make their own blackboards from scratch and erasers. When they graduated they were skilled teachers. Unfortunately, I went to a lot of home economic classes where the student teachers demonstrated how to make an omelet. Omelet making is showy, quick and easily visible to the classroom students. After many, many demonstrations, I became a good omelet maker.

My youngest daughter, Naftal, went to the nursery school in Banda Village, right off the Kyambogo campus. After we walked her there the first time, she went on her own thereafter. I often went to watch from afar how she was interacting. Because she didn’t speak the language at first, she was always a half step behind the other children. But she quickly caught on to the activities and the language. It was during these observations and others of Ugandan children that I discerned that African children don’t walk into things, they are intuitively in touch with their environments. They don’t run into things or stumble. It is a far more reasonable way to negotiate life than mere intellect, which is limiting. I have observed this phenomenon over a long enough time and varying populations to be able to make this assertion.

Because of various machinations by individuals and governments to destroy the Amin regime, the supplies of food and goods became more and more scarce. I was amused once though when my British faculty neighbors complained that there was a sugar shortage at the large supermarket where the Europeans shopped. I went to the supermarket and sure enough there was no sugar to be found. A few aisles over there was a long row of Karo syrup. I picked up six bottles, put them in my basket and checked them out at the register along with a number of other items that were said to be in short supply. My kids had syrup on their corn flakes and their oatmeal, and they never complain, and my wife and I had syrup in our tea.

We did have an awfully frightening time which involved our fourteen year old daughter, Tina. She took the bus to school in downtown Kampala. One day she came home from school, and in her usual quiet, calm way, said there had been gunfire very close to the bus stop. We asked. “What did you do?” She said, “I waited for the bus, then got on and came home.” We were speechless. Today she is an ER physician with that same calm demeanor.

One night, not long after my wife and I had been to a luncheon at Entebbe with President Amin, government officials, and visiting dignitaries, a bunch of goons in uniform showed up at my house on the campus. I brazenly told them that they were at the wrong place. They left. Another time, a group showed up like that I was a little more fearful that I could stand my ground as before. They said they had brought me something from the president. It was a case of fine Scotch whiskey. While at the luncheon with Amin, he had asked me if I had everything I needed at Kyambogo. I told him no. I would love to have a closed circuit television system so I could teach micro-teaching. And, for good measure, I said it would also be nice to have some great whisky. I was getting tired of drinking the national native drink, Waragi (wish I had some now). President Amin remembered and sent me a case of expensive whiskey. Later, he sent the closed circuit television system.

When the economy got so bad that we could no longer be paid in U. S. dollars, it prevented us from continuing to pay our bills in the States. We had no choice but to leave. It was a scary time. I believe that President Amin lost control of the military forces that began doing terrible things for which he was blamed. Faculty were fleeing the country clandestinely. Someone would invite us for dinner one night, acting as though everything was normal, and the next day we would learn they had stolen out of the country. Things were getting increasingly out of control and it was more than President Amin could handle. There were many outside forces trying to destroy Uganda. The British was relentless in damning Amin, and their ally, the U. S., repeated every word as though it was the gospel truth.

The real story of Uganda is yet unfolding. That horrid movie, The Last King Of Scotland, says more about European decadence than it does Ugandan life. In the movie, the young inexperienced white man beds the first beautiful Ugandan woman he meets. He becomes the hero in a movie were Africans are portrayed as dishonest, corrupt, incompetent, and mad. Actors ought to be careful of the grave psychological travesties they impose on an unlearned audience. I have maintained friendships with Ugandans relating all the way back to Idi Amin. Some of them were especially close to Idi Amin and they have said that in the last days of his regime he was responsible for some cruelties, while much went on that he had nothing to do with. I trust these friends and I value their perspectives, but I can only write about a man and a time as I knew it. There are already too many propagandistic historians in the Western world. I don’t want to be one of them.

The departure from Uganda was as dramatic as our arrival. We knew by now that anyone planning to leave the country was a threat to the survival of the regime. We could not risk even our closest friends knowing we were thinking of leaving. I had brought with me an incredible collection of LPs from the sixties that could not be replaced. We had closets filled with clothes, which ordinarily we would have given to our servants along with a severance pay. We could not take those risks. We could not close our accounts at the Bank of Uganda; too suspicious. We could only leave in a way that looked like we were not leaving permanently. Interestingly, the Minister of Education who had so convincingly persuaded me to stay in the country, had also fled to Tanzania in the dark of night.

We hatched a plan; even still fearful of whatever consequences if it did not work. My wife and I did not even tell the children. We booked round trip tickets from Kampala to Cairo, Egypt. Still, we did not tell the children who enjoyed their schools in Kampala and Kyambogo that we were not returning to Uganda. We spent three days in Cairo and then used an American Express card, paying full last minute travel prices, to travel to the U. S. It was a very expensive departure and the end to a rich adventure.

© 2010 by Ja A. Jahannes.

Dr. Ja A. Jahannes is a poet, a writer of fiction and nonfiction, psychologist, educator, and a social critic. He is a frequent columnist and his work has appeared in diverse publications and anthologies. Dr. Jahannes has lectured throughout the U. S., in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America, the Middle East and Europe. His forthcoming poetry anthology/memoir is entitled Fire and Lightning – The Lincoln Poets: Langston Hughes, Larry Neal, Ron Welburn, Everett Hoagland, Ja Jahannes, Keorapetse William Kgositsile, Gil Scott-Heron.  Contact: ja.jahannes@toonarimedia.com | twitter.com/jajahannes