Chronicles of an African Wanderer

To live in Idi Amin’s Uganda was to walk an extremely tight rope. Seemingly inconsequential matters like driving a sleek car, or dating a gorgeous woman, might sooner or later, most likely sooner, land you six feet under. But Uganda’s violence neither began with Amin, nor did it end with him. But, despite all the buffoonery, Amin’s name remains an enigma to this day, nearly four decades after his rule, and a decade after his death. His character still looms larger than life. To westerners and outsiders in general, Amin personified the ultimate African dictator, violent and abrasive to a fault, with a flair for flashy bling bling. But to the Ugandan businessman, long dominated by the Asian trader, he was the deliverer who gave them that needed breathing room when he summarily expelled the Asian business class, creating a new breed of businessmen out of indigenous Africans, which has endured long after his reign. The author navigates you through an early childhood guided by the steady hand of his father, Mzee Tobi Ngazoire. For a man who never had formal education, he taught himself enough to a point where he home-schooled his children, only sending them to grade school once he was sure that they could read and write. He once tied up his eldest son who had run away from school, threatening to set him on fire if he didn’t go back to school. The author escaped the mayhem after witnessing firsthand, in February 1977, an incident from his office window, a gathering of dignitaries at the International Conference Center during which Amin’s voice boomed over the mike, searching for two Ministers, who later turned up dead, along with the country’s Anglican Archbishop. Arriving in the United States after a few close calls of his own, he had hoped to return following the ouster of Idi Amin, but the turmoil that followed the regime after rigged elections, did not augur well with stability. Regime after regime since Amin, has left some section of the population maligned in one way or another. The book also shines a light on the Yoweri Museveni regime, in power for 27 years, one which initially enjoyed the goodwill of the people, only to lose it after the leaders, having ascended into power, cared more about its trappings than the long-suffering people they had waged a protracted guerilla war to rescue.