Uganda

Population: 30 odd million.
Located: Land locked North East Africa.
Known for: Idi.

I met a Ugandan, once. I may have met others, but they have blurred into the same man, a black African man at university. I have met many black African men at university and they were always pretty strange, pretty rich, pretty opinionated and pretty keen to sell me on the idea of Africa being misunderstood. One even tried to sell me on his parents safari lodge. I assured him it was out of my price range.

The Ugandan I remember meeting was white. He was made even more white by his being afflicted by alopecia. There was no hair shading anywhere. At first I thought he was an albino but he didn't have red eyes. Albinos have red eyes.

He was a big bastard, a rugby player. He was a river guide in Uganda, a river guide on the river Nile. I thought the Nile was only in Egypt, but I'm ignorant. The Nile runs through Uganda also, and is volatile enough to extreme sport on, though when it gets to Egypt it is mellow and the population relies on it for water.

I wonder if Kiwis more readily associate the Nile with Uganda, given their hard-on for extreme sports. Most Kiwis bleed Red Bull, wankers.

The first time I came across Uganda, however, was as a child. My parents, in their infinite wisdom, had hired a movie called "Idi Amin: Rise and Fall" and allowed me to watch it with them. The movie was made in 1981 as was Mad Max 2 and Superman 2 and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I am sure we didn't watch it in 1981 as I wouldn't have remembered it.

I remember it. I remember a black man eating people. I remember a black man killing people. I remember a black man raping people. I remember a white man being a hero of some sort. The film was graphic, little more than violent pornography. It was scarred into my developing mind along with the main character's name - Idi Amin.

Idi Amin was the military dictator of Uganda between 1970 something and 1970 something. He was in power for around six years, more or less. He killed somewhere between 80 000 and 500 000 people. Hippies say 500 000 and nazis say 80 000. The world is that easily defined. Hippies and Nazis.

Of course I don't mean actual hippies and nazis. Actual hippies lived around the same time as Idi was in power, they had a much better time due to all the acid and free love. Actual Nazis killed many more people than Idi, but they never ate anyone, as far as I know. Idi Amin, who admired Adolph Hitler, once said that Hitler was, "right to burn six million Jews". Now come on Idi.

Hippies are left wingers and nazis are right wingers. These are terms I am going to use to make our lives easier from now on. There is also a third type of hippy. These are my least favourite type of people. They come from rich families and for a short part of their lives, usually while in university (which their parents pay for), present themselves as paupers. In Europe they drive in shit vans with mongrel dogs. They have dreadlocks and smoke dope and wear rubbish colourful clothes. They pretend to be poor because they don't want to do anything. They have enough of that lifestyle and go home and stay with their parents again. They sport bare feet and tread in dog poo and hate it.

Here in Barcelona many European kids arrive to reinvent themselves. Their reinvention ends with their hair in knots and with them flicking around sticks and giving me the shits.

But I digress.

Idi was eventually deposed and there was never any concrete proof that he ate anyone. He moved to Saudi Arabia and died there. He was a Muslim, though I don't want to insinuate that this is why he was a cunt. It was because he was an African. His way of thinking was shaped by the fact that his immediate ancestors were villagers. If you couple that with his desire for the trappings of the western world, a world he knew through Uganda's colonial history - the big man was in the British Army for a while and achieved the highest ranking possible for a non-white soldier.

He wanted the opulence but didn't know how to handle it.

In 2007 a movie was released called "The Last King of Scotland". It stars Forrest Whitaker as Idi and is pretty historically correct. There are some discrepancies, the main character never existed, for example, but otherwise it's pretty good. At the end the fictitious Scottish doctor escapes and Idi is furious and executes someone and then there is some archival footage of him yelling and then some text which reads:

"Forty-eight hours after some hostages were released, Israeli forces stormed Entebbe and liberated all but one of the remaining hostages. International public opinion turned against Amin for good. When he was finally overthrown in 1979, jubilant crowds poured onto the streets. His regime had killed more than 300,000 Ugandans and expelled tens of thousands of Asians who had made Uganda their home for years. Amin died in exile in Saudi Arabia on 16 August 2003. Nobody knows if that was the day he dreamed about.

These days in Uganda children are forced to work for the Lord's Resistance Army. The boys are given guns and sent to the frontline. The girls are made into wives. The leader, one Joseph Kony, has over 60. There is another conflict in the north of Uganda which has resulted in thousands of deaths and displacements. The people are desperately poor and live in fear of being raided, raped, murdered, stolen.

In the picture Idi is being carried by some white businessmen, with some prominent Swede shading him from the sun with an umbrella, blind eyes firmly turned.