On 25/10 New Vision reported Dom �wanted� [see New Vision Article]. I called him yesterday night. He is as usual on his camp site compound on Banda Island (part of the Sese Islands archipelago, Lake Victoria). The day before he had visited the police office of Kalangala, Sese Islands (so we can be sure New Vision blew it).
Wanted.....
I called a bit late, at a
time on which his rich prose acquires real stamina and the best you can achieve
is to have some single words of yours turn his flow of thoughts into rapids
(going their own jolly way...). I did not get
much more than an Dom-ish persiflage of the story now going round: �I jumped out of a flying plane with zillion
kilos of heroine�, (�Parachute?�, �No parachute!�) so we�ll have to redo that
interview on a morning early. [More
about Dom].
The Hornbill Camp guys (to which the hand cuffed man pictured in the New Vision Article
is told to belong, so that is probably wrong too) are on the record for
refusing, not long ago, bar access to local Kalangala (Sese Islands) officials holding that
free drinking in all bars is in line with their political
importance...an irreproachable measure but likely to cause you trouble...
Hornbill Camp was run by Loek for
a long time. Loek has prevented several attempts of Kalangala police to arrest
him, one time for "marrying and divorcing" an island girl (in traditional
fashion, that is no papers) who was encouraged by local leaders to tell this
story and charge Loek a lot of money. He had to travel many times to Masaka
court before the issue was settled. Loek now has no passport because it was lost
at (probably sold by) Uganda Immigration during a paper procedure and used by
someone, if I recall, for travel to a Latin American country. We keep you in
touch as this banana republic story unfolds�
Six days after: Oct 31, 2009, SMS to Dom: "Things under control there?". Reply: "All gr8! 2 young nubile paying guests for ease on the eyeballs."
Sunday Nov 1 afternoon I got Dom on the phone, sober! He told me he was given to read the New Vision article during a accidental visit the police station of Kalangala. He had a good laugh. Dom has not been off the Sese Islands all the time, let alone he could, as New Vision claims, have escaped at Entebbe Airport. Sam Omara, quoted in the New Vision as having declared Dom "wanted", is indeed the district police commander. But Dom's accidental visit to the station had been friendly. Only after that visit was there a general search (weapons, drugs etc.) by police on Dom's compound, and nothing was found. The hand cuffed Hornbill guy photo-reported in New Vision to be "remanded at Masaka Prison until November 5.", was home at Hornbill at the time his hand cuff picture appeared in New Vision and Dom read the article at the Kalangala police station. Dom thinks police put hand cuffs because the New Vision photographer paid them to get a picture of a hand cuffed white for the paper. The southern region officer in charge of criminal investigations, Willy Panuha, was quoted as having told New Vision that "the internal affairs state minister, Matia Kasaija, had earlier instructed the Police to monitor Whitman and his British colleague only identified as Dominic." This prompted Dom to suspect there might be a connection with the legal owner of his island, an influential high ranking millionaire, real estate owner and politician who recently fled after having cheated banks by bubbling values of securities for his mortgages. Dom's island, for example had been valued $5,000,000 where $5000 would probably be too much. The sub prime crisis brought his fraud to light. Dom ended up saying he suspected it was mainly a "build up for Christmas", the season when Ugandans need party money and are desperately short of it. Around Christmas there is always is a short lived sharp price rice in Uganda, in anticipation of which government officers of all sorts go around in the general public threatening to report irregularities, offences and crime if they are not given a little something. Dom reports Kalangala police is now after a missionary woman who has an orphanage there. "They plan to do something with paedophilia". [More about African Christmas, even more but in Dutch]