Crtd 12-07-09 Lastedit 20-11-24

I did not see it coming. I really didn't! But it came. In two or three days. Three seemingly totally independent years long story lines came together and changed, in a second, my perspective on myself and Africa.

Almost two years ago I decided to sell the dhow. I planned an Africa trip with my little refurbished camper-truck. But, despite a sales display trip, nobody even came to look at it.  My final bid was have it on display for sale in the harbour of Lake Rescue. But the West half was owned by Roland, and his sympathetic company and the charming harbour near Kampala centre turned me around and made me consider to make the dhow more comfortable and may be sail some tourists, more for the fun than the money. A U-turn. What followed was time of relaxed philosophy study alternated with some serious dhow refurbishment, Kampala parties and the occasional trips to Nairobi. <dhow story continued below>

I quickly became very good friends with Roland. After a week or two he even came to bring me the key of his house, so I could go there and use his laundry machine or anything else. At night having a beer at his home bar, his thirty years' African business partner Eunice, in her fifties, already sleeping in her room, became a routine, he simply called me to come. Again a few weeks later he came to ask back, with a slight sigh, looking down, his house key. Eunice had asked him to. She considered that key on my dhow as a security threat. She recently got attacked with knife in her shop by one of her own guards. She bit off the thumb of the attacker, now rotting, with only one thumb, in Luzira prison, but was still traumatized, Roland said.
So, initially with admiration and pity for her suffering, I started to observe and analyze Eunice, though from an impressive distance since she would never come to talk to me, never accept my consistent invitations to come to any of my dinners and parties, and when Roland was out for longer time she would not seek any contact or consider deliberations with me about anything, not even the harbour where she once send a truck of stones to be offloaded which discharged by simply tipping its platform obviously breaking the new sheeting.

... Eunice ... they simply tipped the platform ...

I discontinued the harbour sheeting operation to wait for Roland's return.
A similar incident: I had made a shed for Roland's steel sailing yacht to be refurbished and had some of my stuff in another corner. One day, Roland absent, I came back and the shed was filled three meter high with waste wood, my stuff under it.

.... Eunice ... under it somewhere my rudder and other dhow equipment ...

My line in these issues was to ignore it, stay friendly and solve problems through Roland. The road from the gate to the harbour got covered with a thick layer of small stones. Difficult to drive at start but once they had sunk in  the earth things got workable again. One day I saw one of Eunice's workers starting, with a big pickaxe, to loosen the stones again and called Roland. Eunice had seen some grass popping out between the stones, had thought that such is not how a road in her garden should look from her balcony (that is as close as she ever gets to that road). She ordered to loosen all stones again and weed the grass, a two weeks job for the man, in the middle of which Roland, his son Alex and me used the harbour ramp, the end point of the road, to launch a boat and pull out another. The ramp's stones had been carefully pickaxed so the Mercedes jeep we used slipped and blocked already going downward! We needed three hours and the heavy harbour winch to get the jeep off the ramp again.

...The ramp's stones had been carefully pickaxed by Eunice's aesthetical maintenance manager, so the Mercedes jeep we used slipped and blocked already going downward! We needed three hours and the heavy harbour winch to get the jeep up and off the ramp again ...

I thought now things would be clear and the pickaxing, now half way, aborted, but the next day that worker came back.
I called Roland: "Roland! The pickaxe continues!".
Roland: "Let him, I do not want to go against Eunice".
I told the pickaxer: "Sorry, I just thought there was a problem but there is none, you can continue".
Roland is a former Uganda boxing champion. During his 50 years in Africa had to face quite some attackers perfectly ready to take his life, some of whom did not survive. A real man. No jokes. He is certainly not fearing Eunice. His excellent, well balanced and independent brains must come to such decisions on sound thoughts pursuing his own best interests. I heard some stories that give me a rough idea: his former Ugandan business partner some twenty years ago tried to apply the familiar trick of letting Uganda Immigration deport the Mzungu, take over the business and share some of the booty with the immigration officers involved. Uganda only allows foreigners to run businesses when they have a Ugandan partner, precisely to allow for this often used trick. African politicians promote the trick because it yields them loyal thankful black supporters with newly acquired money to win the next election. In Tanzania it is the same, I heard first hand when building the dhow there, and the attacks on me by immigration once the dhow was ready and shiny, and their order for me to leave Tanzania in five days strongly suggest an attempt to get hold of the dhow. In 1972 in Uganda, Amin used the trick in the large by expelling all Indians (forming the core of Uganda business) and distributing their property over his voters. Within a few months all shops in Uganda were empty. Starting in 2000, Mugabe seized white farm land for his own family and cronies, the total loss off national income of Zimbabwe since is now estimated 7 billion dollars. Recently, influential South African ANC members have proposed in parliament to seize white owned land without compensation. The black mind is genetically too limited to understand that looting profit-earning businesses will make you feel rich for a month or three and then be more poor than ever, instead is endowed with a jungle-predator instinct technically (I am not insulting anyone) not unlike  that of a chimpanzee, that is: pretty sophisticated and requiring serious attention when getting near. Now in the case of Roland's Stahlco 20 years ago, young Eunice saw it coming, hid all important papers and warned Roland. Roland's business partner got jailed (that costs the victim some money as well but was understandably worth it). The man is still alive and seen begging on the Kampala streets. Of course none of his immigration office accomplices were charged with anything. Uganda law requires the imprisoned business partner to be replaced with the next so there was a vacancy. Young Eunice. She bet on the right horse. And not for once only: Eunice packed every thug entering Stahlco, from imposter to government officer and sent them where they came from. Recently customs held an imported vintage Mercedes hostage for a ransom several months. They got nothing: Eunice. Last year an officer of the Uganda Revenue mafia put the screws on Stahlco to pay 2 million dollars. He got nothing: Eunice.
A few months ago Roland came to me and head down told me he had lost another stand off with Eunice: I should mount an electric power meter and pay for my power (I had extended the entire grid - with my own labour and money - along the harbour). I told him I hoped he had not unnecessarily prolonged the stand off, since I use solar power and switch to the grid only after the rare more than two sunless days or using heavy electrical equipment, which is for a few seconds only. We talk 5 dollars a month. With a smile we planned to mount, in the new shed, deep behind Eunice's heap of rubbish-wood, an electricity meter for the entire harbour, which I did.
Roland: "but I pay!"
I: "Roland all the time we have dealings so as to be up to 1000 dollars in debt or credit with each other, I keep that list, do not worry". From that day a lonely electricity meter behind an impressive heap of rubbish-wood every now and then makes a slow slow turn. End of incident. But I told Roland this had not been about those 5 dollars. This was a message from Eunice to me, forcing Roland in the role of messenger, that I should NOT consider myself part of the family. I advised Roland to say something nasty about me to Eunice every week. <Eunice story continued below>

At almost the time on which I entered Roland's harbour, the Jinja diocese, where I had an official appointment as consultant cultural research, got a new bishop, Ugandan. The old Dutch bishop Willigers requested to stay around to enjoy his old age with his old friends. His alternative, modern Netherlands, is not a place to get accustomed to when you have been here from well before independence, when you have seen all the bloodshed, hundreds of thousands of corpses made by the men of Obote, Amin, the invading Tanzanian army, Obote again, Museveni, and every year attending Martyrs Day, commemorating the cruel death of 14 christian boys who had been advised by their christian mentors to refuse sex with Buganda King Mwanga in the autumn of 1886. The new bishop refused Williger's request to stay around where he felt home, and, there is no other word for it, expelled him. For a while Willigers lived disheartened on the Kampala compound of the Mill Hill congregation, once full of Dutch, Irish and English missionaries, now empty and smelling of the past. Then he acquired and unidentified disease, went to the Netherlands, were they also could not identify it, and kept him there. He wanted to help the Africans who had nothing in return, and like all experienced whites, perfectly knows that the African totally lacks the urge to help another who has nothing in return. But still, when I visited him, he talked sarcastically and disappointed about his ban from Jinja. I invoked the scientific literature which says that among other primates the old leader also routinely is expelled. He got the point but somehow seemed having been unable to abandon the hope he would have changed something in the 60 years he had been here.
Bishop Willigers had been my main contact in the diocese of Jinja after missionary Piet Korse returned to the Netherlands. When I came for my second work permit extension letter, I knew this probably would go wrong. What was left of my contacts were only the Africans who used to walk short behind us whites to see if any money was falling from our pockets. But now things were different! Pleasing their fresh top gorilla by refusing my letter was so much better to boost their position than submitting a draft letter of extension to the new black representative of God in Jinja that Korse's African succeeding director in the Cultural Research Centre of the Jinja diocese bluntly refused my request with a clear undertone of pleasure to finally have the power to put off the mzungu. We rose, and we show you! O yes, we are top apes now. But no more whites around to apply for those nice foreign subsidies on which  the diocese was largely running ...
So far for the men of God. Fortunately, Roland knew a Ugandan called Tony who knew how to apply for Uganda dual citizenship and gave me his phone number: for $500 you get a Ugandan passport alongside your main passport. Tony submitted the application and put me on a three months temporary permit. It would last 30 working days for the passport to be handed over.
But one and a half years, later I was on my 6^th temporary extension ($250 each, 5 times the price of a tourist visum). And no Uganda passport. Moreover Tony's assistant Blo needed more and more time to get the stamp at every extension and my passport could be in Immigration for weeks. Two months ago, I had already been asked to sign a blank new application form with a new date. So, at Immigration, somebody wanted to hide my true application date for somebody else. The case clearly stank and meanwhile I had paid almost ten times what I was told I would, close to $5000. That was five weeks ago. Again my temporary permit expired and my passport went to Immigration for an extension stamp and stayed there. When it was not back after four weeks, a record, I decided to tighten the screws, pretended air travel in four days and agreed to meet assistant-agent Blo at nine the next morning to fetch the temporary extension. I got a text message from her with "sincere apology" and texted back that I did not need apologies but she should not be late as usual but be standing ready at nine at Immigration when I would arrive there next morning.
Nine. No Blo. I told the guard I was going to meet "Mr. Marshal", as I knew Blo's contact was called. Somehow the guard sent another man to me looking so much like Marshal that I was already in my story before I discovered it, and decided to continue since the man was friendly and full of attention. He took me to his office, the only one on the entire Immigration compound that has a security port with soldiers standing up saluting him, introduced me to his assistant who marched away with me in speed past some officers for consultation and finally put me in the waiting room of the Commissioner of passports "a friend of the president". Arrival of officers seems to be nine to half past nine, and the waiting room was still empty.
The Commissioner heard my story, jokingly said he should have had my application on his desk long ago and suspected "PPP" (Public Private Partnership, a funny name for petty corruption). He called Marshal for my file 1400 hrs. latest. I should come back an hour later.
So I did. But no Commissioner. And no file. The latter was a big disappointment since it showed that Marshal, a Master in Law in his late forties, was not fearing the Commissioner. The Commissioner came two hours later, and in the absence of my file had his staff hunt for Marshall, who was not at his desk. Marshall came in with the file.
Grabbing the file, before even opening it he asked: "What the problem".
Marshall: "Its the days".
I: "Days? What days?"
The Commissioner explained to me: "You should be here 10 years from the start of your work permit"
I (looking angry-surprised to Marshal): "Why did you not tell us before"
Marshall, severely irritated: "I am reporting to my Commissioner not to you".
One point for me: I knew for long I did not meet the 10 years condition, but Marshall had always pretended he could "do something about it". Now he fell out, I decided to fall out as well and he had no answer to my way of doing it in the presence of the Commissioner whose frowns got deeper indeed.
The Commissioner: "You can't be granted dual citizenship".
I: "That is obvious, but how could they have gone on giving me temporary extension during one and a half year?". I perfectly knew the answer, but Marshal had no means whatsoever to hit me back. 
The Commissioner: "You can challenge me on that but I am the Commissioner of Passports and this was not going on in my department. Besides, your original application is not here". Indeed: it had been replaced in my file by the application I had been requested to sign blank last April, but I had told the Commissioner about it and shown the copies - that of the blank one was a stealth picture with my phone-camera but just readable - that is why he knew there really had been, now disappeared, an original application from January 2011.
So Marshal got covered by the Commissioner in my presence, was sent out to get me another temporary extension, and start the application for another work permit. Since the previous one was Diocese of Jinja they immediately assumed I would come with a new endorsement from the Diocese. I left them in that idea for the moment.
The next day Marshall marched me with great speed along the desks needed to settle in two hours what normally lasts half a year, calling me "boss" and "brother" alternatingly. He clearly had been badly blasted by the Commissioner after my departure. I was easily believed in my statement not to have been able to fetch the Diocesan letter in the single night that had passed, and bought some more time claiming by boss wanted me back but the vicar was out until Monday.

At that moment the Eunice and Passport story lines joined: back home I report to Roland. I suggested Stahlco could appoint me harbour master and gave him a draft Stahlco letter. Roland at several times tried to have me pursue other options. I did not really understand why he was so reluctant to write me an appointment letter. There was a clear reason. He should have told me. But above all, I should have guessed without him telling me.
Roland called me the same afternoon that I would have an appointment at another business: Interio Construct of Franz, an Austrian, one of his best friends. What caused my main shock was this: technically Roland could have given me Stahlco appointment letters without informing Eunice. Or, he could have decided to forward me to Interio Construct  without ever talking to Eunice. But I suspected the worst: he had asked her and she had refused. And so it was.
The following day Roland came to warn me I should greet Eunice when I see here in the shop.
"I always greet".
"Are you sure"
"Totally".
The sent messenger backed down.
Two days later Roland would leave to Europe for three months. Franz would bring him at six. I walked up to say goodbye. We were sitting on the balcony. I passed Eunice in the living room. She was lying seemingly deep asleep on the couch. I passed on my toes to the balcony. A bit later Franz and Roland went inside, I thought to leave, but it was to talk some business to Eunice. Before I understood and decided to leave the room, I stood for 30 seconds behind the couch on which she had been sleeping, my friends sitting at the other side talking to her. She pretended to be too weak to be able to even change to upright sitting and took lying flat, uttering heart breaking sighs of agony, some documents. I went out quickly, and waited down at the car, were Franz soon joined me. We had packed Roland's stuff, then waited long for him to come down. Eunice clearly had hung on him like a wholesale bag of potatoes. Roland warned me again had not greeted Eunice properly and really should do it, "that is the custom in Africa".
"That is the custom everywhere, Roland, but not to wake people up for it"
"She did not sleep."
"No, meanwhile I am also sure she did not sleep. But she pretended, with her eyes closed, and I realized the pretense only later".
"Eyes closed?"
"Eyes closed. I am working on my proper handling of Eunice but I am not yet as good as you", I smile.
Roland still feels the potato bag on his shoulders and cannot smile about it. "I also make a lot of mistakes, but she forgives me ...", he tries, with a serious mimic. Then he realizes this is goodbye. He works his smile back on his face and shakes my hand.

I will see Roland for an East Sea sailing trip from Heiligenhafen North Germany, in four weeks. Eunice does not know. That one he did keep a secret. Lucky for him, too late for me.

This made all lines come together: at the next morning's coffee I suddenly realized that the best outcome would be a refusal on second thought by Interio Construct to endorse me at Uganda Immigration, the second best would be a refusal of Uganda Immigration to accept Interio Construct's endorsement. It would now be bad luck if Uganda Immigration grants the permit: It would start retroactively from the expiry of my previous work permit, a waste of 2000 dollars to the immigration thugs. If Immigration refuses I can simply leave, occasionally return on tourist visa (20% of the price of a work permit) for the Dutch bureaucrats stay registered living in Uganda, I sell all my stuff, including the dhow. Nasty and Mlawatu? Roland, the monkeys, the geese, chicken, guinea fowls and ducks all have bonded with my cats who came in as puppies. They will surely want to keep them helping chase rats. Eunice can fill her harbour shed to the ceiling with my dhow's wood. And new vistas full of options before me. An ending in style of 14 marvellous Africa years.

Ending: Franz, faithful to his friend Roland, came with Interio Construct appointment and endorsement letters. Without those papers I went to Uganda Immigration and told there that the diocese had refused and I would leave the country. I gave the contract my agent Tony had failed to meet to his corrupt immigration contact Mr. Marshall, a lawyer, writing him that it was now worth a few thousand dollars and if he would acquire Tony's East Ugandan land on my behalf he could buy it half price. My last special pass would expire in three weeks, more time than I would need to launch the sale of my modest property and ...

... free! ...

_____________________
On Wednesday morning July 11 I left Uganda with all my property on sale. Marshall did not react, Tony apparently is more profitable to him as "agent" than as prey for a land grab.