“One day I was wandering around the market in Kampala. It wassomewhat empty, many stalls were broken and abandoned. Amin hadstripped and ruined the country. There was no traffic in the streets,and the shops, which Amin had earlier confiscated from their Indianowners, gaped with musty emptiness or were simply boarded up withwooden planks, plywood or sheets of tin.
“Suddenly a band of children came up the street that led up fromthe lake, calling Samaki! Samaki! People gathered, joyful at theprospect that there would be something to eat. The fishermen threwtheir catch onto a table and when the onlookers saw it, they grewstill and silent.
“The fish was fat, enormous. These waters never used to yield suchmonstrously proportioned overfed specimens. Everyone knew that for along time now Amin’s henchmen had been dumping the bodies of theirvictims into the lake and that crocodiles and meat-eating fish musthave been feasting on them.
The crowd remained quiet. Then a military vehicle happened by. Thesoldiers saw the gathering, as well as the fish on the table, andstopped. They spoke for a moment among themselves, then backed up tothe table, jumped down and opened the tailgate. Those of us who werestanding nearby could see the corpse of a man lying on the truck bed.We saw the soldiers heave the fish onto the truck, throw the deadbarefoot man onto the table for us and quickly drive away. And weheard their coarse lunatic laughter.”
From the book ‘The Shadow of the Sun – My African Life’, acollection of thoughts and reports about Africa by RyszardKapuscinski, a Polish newsman.
