Correspondents' Correspondence
ABRAMS, ARNOLD & HOWE, RUSSELL WARREN
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. African Dada Kampala-There is a little of General Idi...
...Back in the headlines again last month when he forcibly detained 112 Peace Corps volunteers for three days, Amin appears to set government policy by whatever idea happens to come to mind...
...Most of the 130 corpsmen here are either serving as secondary school teachers or showing farmers how to increase productivity...
...And that price is not a junket in the Peace Corps or something like that," Typical of the response to the White House remarks is that of Shirley Albers, a 22-year-old school teacher from Grinnell, Kansas...
...The President's statement was a real kick in the teeth for us," says Ms...
...Why didn't you tell me you were a correspondent...
...And the students learn plenty, according to L. N. Bahadur, the school's principal...
...In 1970, again for tribal reasons, Obote decided to dismiss Amin...
...The legality of the affair was confirmed by the presence of a police guard to keep order among the enthusiastic villagers...
...Such problems, though, do not overshadow Ms...
...Soon the British tabloids, which are taken very seriously in ex-British colonies, were calling him a Hitler, and not unnaturally, Amin concluded that der Fiihrer must have had something...
...Uganda's 19th-century King Mwanga, to name one, was undoubtedly worse...
...Like Ghana's late president Kwame Nkrumah, he began to seek advice in dreams, claiming God as his adviser...
...A historian might say that Amin has not behaved much differently from many traditional chiefs...
...These kids are more practical...
...Confronted, on the one hand, with rising internal problems and, on the other, with plots against his regime directed by the exiled Obote and supported by neighboring president Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Amin started playing it by ear...
...We could use more like her," he says...
...Government officials are requesting more people than we can provide," says Martin, who has served here since 1970, when he gave up a successful furniture business in Albany, New York, to see something of the world...
...And as the continent's senior journalist, Peter Enahoro of Africa magazine, presciently noted early in Amin's Presidential career, the fellow decides what he is going to say only after he is standing in front of his audience...
...African Dada Kampala-There is a little of General Idi Amin Dada in all of us, just as there is a little of Lewis Carroll's Mad Queen in all of us...
...Who has not, at some time, wanted to cry "Off with his head"-And get prompt results...
...He became a lieutenant merely as the result of an Africanization program instituted just before British rule was terminated: It was felt that Amin might make a good, no-nonsense instructor for the officer cadets due to come out of the universities...
...News about Washington wafts into this Himalayan Kingdom like smoke from a far-off fire...
...Albers lives in a tiny apartment with no plumbing and scant protection against the weather...
...In a sense, therefore, one can fairly say that Idi Amin Dada is not Uganda.-Russell Warren Howe...
...Teaching is a two-way process here," she explains...
...Those who deserted must pay their price...
...Assigned to a secondary school on the outskirts of Katmandu, the Nepalese capital, Ms...
...This is another generation," remarks James Martin, a 42-year-old director of the Peace Corps contingent here...
...Amin served in the King's African Rifles during World War II and rose to top sergeant in the colonial ranks...
...Amin roared back: "You're so bloody right...
...If he lived and worked here the way we do, he wouldn't talk so sarcastically about a junket...
...it has little direct impact on the lives of young Americans intimately involved with a more innocent, less privileged society...
...Albers, who came to Nepal last August...
...Yet Amin, obviously, is a guilty man, and to excuse him would be patronizing to the nation he rules, one of the most sophisticated in Africa...
...Unfortunately, the general was informed of Obote's intentions, and since, in Africa, ex-officials of any importance tend to end up either murdered or in prison for life, Amin was faced with the decision of seizing power or courting disaster...
...Ironically, Amin-whose tribe lives almost exclusively in the Sudan-is a Ugandan citizen simply through an accident of frontier-drawing...
...The projects center around education and agriculture, critical areas in an underdeveloped nation whose 12 million inhabitants are largely illiterate and plagued by recurrent food shortages...
...Arnold Abrams...
...Those who served paid their price," the President declared...
...The extent of that help can be measured by the response of the Nepalese government, which not only continues to welcome the Americans, but also would like additional volunteers...
...If assisting this society to solve some of its basic problems is still a source of great satisfaction for these corpsmen, perhaps that is because their sense of achievement is not burdened by the illusions of their predecessors...
...An unscrupulous politician, former president Milton Obote, must bear the blame for Amin's having become the commander-in-chief of Uganda's Army and Air Force...
...Amin's trouble, however, is that he is the leader of Uganda, and Alice in Wonderland is not the best guidebook for running a nation...
...Following the granting of independence, Obote skyrocketed Amin to the rank of major general for tribal reasons-both men come from the underdeveloped North-And because he wanted an unambitious goon in charge of the military...
...While Obote was at a Commonwealth Conference in Singapore, he made the obvious choice...
...This in part explains the volunteers' bitter reaction to President Nixon's comment earlier this year about amnesty for Vietnam draft evaders or deserters...
...Despite numerous precautions, she has been plagued by stomach trouble-The most common affliction among corps members in this country-And also suffers from occasional dizzy spells caused by the malaria pills she must take regularly...
...More may not be immediately available because of a Peace Corps shortage of trained personnel...
...Nevertheless," observes Director Martin, "those we have are good, and they arrive ready to work...
...They think in terms of helping a few people make small improvements in their lives...
...An American can best understand the situation in Uganda by imagining a Marine drill sergeant suddenly finding himself thrust into the White House...
...I learn as much from my students as they do from me...
...In many areas, Africa's warlord period lasted until colonial rule, and produced kingdoms larger than those in Europe...
...Himalayan High Katmandu-The idealism that spawned their program has long since dissipated back home, but the morale of Peace Corps volunteers remains high in Nepal...
...Albers' satisfaction with her work...
...In the middle of a press conference, spotting someone who had once paced him at the local hotel swimming pool, he exclaimed: "Hell...
...These Americans usually live among the people they are aiding, an arrangement that can be as detrimental to health as it is useful in cementing personal relationships...
...They know this is no junket...
...In power, his initial act was to bring King Freddie's body back for a huge royal funeral...
...They don't come to change the course of this or any other country...
...Where Obote, the survivor of an assassination attempt, led a life behind bulletproof screens, Amin went all over in an open jeep, buoyed by cheers...
...He then allowed Mutesa's son to be crowned at a secret ceremony in a remote bush-spot, attended only by Baganda elders and this correspondent...
...Although employing illiterates from the interior to attack city sophisticates has occurred elsewhere in Africa-in Togo and Nigeria, for example?Amin distinguished himself by the pleasure he seemed to take in the adverse publicity...
...If only I'd known...
...At first, he was superb...
...For the $70-per-month volunteers, who most often subsist on a meager native diet in flimsy housing amid sanitary conditions that would appal most Westerners, are highly susceptible to disease...
...Extremes of climate, commonplace in this country, compound the situation...
...Under Obote, Amin had driven the country's most popular politician, Kabaka (King) Mutesa (Freddie) out of his palace to a lonely death in London...
...This put him beyond the pale of world opinion, with nowhere to go but down...
...the death toll probably reached 100,000...
...When the journalist retorted "Why didn't you you tell me you were going to stage a coup d'etat...
...But the honeymoon didn't last...
...After southern Ugandan troops threatened to overthrow him, Amin set his northern followers on them with a vengeance...
...When Libya's Muam-mar el-Qaddafi offered him huge sums of money if he would expel the Israeli Embassy and aid mission, Amin went the whole hog, declaring that "Hitler was right" about the Jews...
...In contrast to other countries, where Peace Corps personnel operate in relative isolation, Nepal takes an active part in planning projects and requesting trained workers...
Vol. 56 • August 1973 • No. 16
