After - hopefully - having secured my dhow with private guard Robert I flew to Europe for six weeks of visiting family and friends in my Renault Kangoo micro-camper. I planned my European jobs and visits between a meeting of relatives and a student's reunion six weeks later. I met a lot of friends and gained several kilos:
A bird's eye view of my chief activity in Europe (apologies to all those hospitable friends whose tables space does not permit me to display)
At my last visit to The Netherlands some two years ago I saw
for the first time an improvised signpost at a road reconstruction site:
. It clearly was made by the road workers
themselves. They got too many trucks on lanes under construction. Now the thing
has been professionalized: 
and
. Dutch road building activity now is totally
impressive to someone who is used to drive the main traffic artery of East
Africa: Mombassa-Nairobi-Kampala, one lane for each direction, littered with
tears and potholes, no clear road marking, no street lights, vehicle lights
broken 40%, bicycles, pedestrians, dogs, pigs and elephants: no lights.
On arrival at September 15 is seemed summer, but that was for short. The last night I slept in my car in frost.
I had a check of my hut in the French mountains, enjoying the advancement of my French due to my extensive French history reading, but, remembering my fear experiences on my last visit, decided, after long doubts, not to go for the two or three paraglider-flights I had the time for to make. All doubts in vain: on the way back to Holland I found I had forgotten my wing there in the first place.
Seeing back some old friends from academic circles was a
revelation. First I met some people from my former philosophy department. My departure to Africa from the University of Tilburg
in 2001 had been a bit
of a fight, irregular assaults and dirty tricks, mostly, but not only from the
enemy side, I should admit, included [details for lovers of rows - in Dutch]. Most of the main
actors in the battle have by now retired, including Ton Derksen, one of the
protagonists in that history. I was told that this professor in philosophy of
science - of embarrassingly modest scientific standing - made it to national Dutch hero by publicly,
and apparently convincingly, denouncing a court conviction for multiple murder.
An elegantly printed Dutch
book he wrote on the subject became a bestseller and he is now among the most famous
national champions of judicial integrity. An amazing career, but I would not be
surprised if he acquired some points, because, as everybody
knows, it takes shady guys to uncover shady cases. There is some laughter
among his colleagues about this Don Quixote-emeritus, but others even take it
serious. Amazing. (Ton Derksen, Lucia de B., Reconstructie van
een gerechterlijke dwaling, Uitgeverij Veen
Magazines BV, in Dutch).
For some other old colleagues
whom I spotted walking over the
corridors I prepared a "...but don't you know I am appointed the new president
of the University board?...", but it was not necessary: they did not see
me. My philosophy of science section is now run by a highly capable and renowned German
professor, so well that I could even start admitting I once worked there.
I watched some Dutch parliament meetings (sound off). They all seem to go to the same hair dresser and the same clothing shops. There was a man with bleached hair that I noticed without sound all the others were afraid of, I did not see why: he clearly frequented the same barber and clothing shops. I was told of panic reactions by Dutch whites when seeing head scarfs. In Uganda, muslims arrived at least 200 years before the christians came in the late 19th century. In the meantime most people even forgot that the Christians are the newcomers. They are totally integrated in society. And when we are in a queue we have entertaining conversations with everybody, wearers of head scarfs and even black closed burkas with eye holes participate lively.
Near Nijmegen I found this village, African, but without
working women, drunken adult males, dirt, little naked children, goats, chicken
or pigs
in an open air museum. It is amazing for someone from Africa to see these
thatched roofs without any hole! The signpost
on the autumn leaves says: do not step on the grass.
At the end of my stay I joined a reunion my Groningen (North in the Netherlands) university student's group. We all started studying in 1969, and now are all around 58). We had been invited with partner, and Emily, 18, daughter of my sister had proposed to join me and tell my friends she was 26 and: "his previous 5 wives did not understand him". So we went to Groningen and prepared a camp site at the sea dike to come back to after dark.
With Emily at our camp site on North Groningen outer dike, the creek actually holds sea water and points roughly North, no more land between here and Norway's South Cape.
Emily shone in her role, was, unlike me, bombarded with specific questions on our partnership. On the way to the party we had reduced her virtual age from 26 to 21, so she could truly tell her stories about the recent start of he studies in Amsterdam, and the number of my previous wives was reduced from 5 to 3 (actually the true number). At the end of the party she told me mistakenly to have talked about my mother as her grandmother but it went unnoticed.
My partner in lively conversation with my fellow former students (year 1969) of Groningen University
One of my fellows shot all friends, with partner, through a painting's frame.
We planned to confess the truth if by the time of the dessert we would not have been uncovered, and actually had to do it, despite Emily's lively involvement in many party conversations. Just gotten at ease with making speeches during her recent Amsterdam student's introduction period she took the floor and eloquently revealed our true relationship.
Uganda again. Driving back to Jinja the road police force
seemed again to have grown. How can such a poor country have money for groups of
car stopping police every five, sometimes every two kilometers? Who is paying
all those uniforms, those salaries? Not every road side team stops every car,
but to my estimate, every car in Uganda gets halted for check (papers, load,
technical state) every 40 kilometers or so (compare to rich countries: surely
less than once
a year). In Uganda at night however, there is almost no police at the
road sides, I stop for nobody, let alone for people dressed in uniform, and I
drive with sand wedge and open stiletto standby.
But this is daytime and I drive uncomfortably, tight behind big trucks, slightly right side, to be invisible
from the road side until late, along my 120 km guard of honour. To no
avail. I get stopped, and I knew that this time my third party insurance extension
was 9 days over due.
"I was in Europe, I am on my way home and will extend immediately."
"Can I see you driving license?" I give the woman officer my fancy
colourful copy.
"I will keep this and you will get it back when you come and pay the 40 000
fine". I gladly agree: printing a new copy is not a big deal. But she shows
herself disappointed with that. In the meantime she had sat down in my car next
to me.
"You could also give me tea and I could let you go"
"How much is tea?"
"20 000" (tea is 500).
I could have saved myself the 20 000 by just insisting on receiving the fine ticket, hand
over my worthless driving license copy and never come back for it. But she was
nice, showed no awareness whatsoever that she was doing anything wrong and
probably had many children to feed. So I gave her the 20 000 and continued.
The
incident with my guard Robert at my departure made me nervous to see the
dhow again, But arriving at a distance it looked properly afloat. Robert greeted me cordially. He had
missed me. His phone had broken. Could I buy a new one for him in town?
Do you have the money?
No.
Against explicit orders he had started to use the gas stove and finished my food
stocks. One gas tap malfunctioned, but fortunately had not started to leak. That
was all. A very satisfactory result! I repaired the tap.
Robert climbs on deck. "You have visitors!".
"Which visitors?". I see some wazungu on the beach but do not recognize any of
them.
"They are Dutch. They heard you are also Dutch. They want to see your boat."
"Give them my phone number and let them ring me."
I prepared to explain them on the phone that I my boat is not open to the
public. For some time I thought my preparation had not been necessary. But then the phone
rang. what follows is an
English transcription of the conversation. I answer:
"Hello?"
"Hello?"
"Hello?"
"You are at home I understand?"
"Why would you like to know that, who are you?"
"Well we are also Dutch and we would like to see your boat"
"Well Miss, you see, I moved quite far from the Netherlands
because with a few exceptions Dutch people, unlike people from many other
countries all over the world are not particularly to my liking, moreover, this
boat is my house and not open to the public generally, because, to mention just one
reason, as I am talking to you now I am sitting here stark naked masturbating
with my tongue out of my mouth, saliva dropping on the floor".
"Never mind, have a nice day"
"Have a nice day".
On return after my first night out in Jinja I found Robert
with a Kingfisher security man in pitch dark at the shore, pointing their
torches everywhere. He had gone to the shore in our canoe for dinner, which he
shares with the Kingfisher security squad but on return our canoe had
disappeared. I told them there was not much we could do now, and had better
sleep first. In the morning, after a bad sleep haunted with anger and adrenaline I went up to the Kingfisher entrance guards who
had already been informed that the canoe had been spotted at the very grid of
the Jinja Nile electricity dam generators, that is, at far downstream as it
could possibly get. After some money negotiation (not by me in person, off
course, that would lead to disastrous charges) the water hyacinth removal team
of the dam agreed to rescue the canoe and we towed it back to where it belongs.
Clearly no theft. Sabotage, as Kingfisher security wants me to believe? Or just
badly tied? Of course, just forget about it!
For some mysterious reason, my guard lost the canoe. It was found at the grid in front of the electricity dam generators