{UAH} This day in history......

It was about now, this time EXACTLY 30 years ago....

"Are you from Makerere?" No. "Is it your brother?" No. Panting but, with controlled rage, he tried to remove his jacket but held. Came back to his senses and realised that his body guard (kadogo) - hardly 13 years old - was standing at attention but struggling with a weighty brief case while containing his AK47 at the same time. With a glance, the little boy saluted, handed him the brief case and went. He removed his jacket and together with the briefcase, placed them onto the overhead bin but with a tremble. "Are you from Makerere?" No. "Is it your brother?" No. "Is there any problem?", came a firm interjection from a man to my immediate left in a window seat. A well groomed gentleman, we had briefly chatted earlier and he had told me that he was from Kabale....."No". He answered....He sat quietly to my right and within minutes, the plane took off.

It was a hot, very hot November 22nd 1987 Sunday afternoon in a delayed Uganda Airlines flight from Entebbe to London via Cairo. This military officer had held back the plane for more than an hour and no one had explained or said anything to the passengers. Immediately the man entered the aircraft with his body guard, people started jeering. They now knew why their flight had been delayed without a courteous explanation. The jeer had disabled him. By the time he arrived at the seat next to me, it was clear he was now as powerless as the many citizens whose country they had forcefully occupied 18 months earlier. But I was dead. I had died several times before the previous evening and since this saga began but I was still hanging on, somehow. I had died at least 7 times on my way to the airpot. That's the number of roadblocks I had managed to subdue. How I went passed check-in (with only my hand luggage), security and onto the aircraft, is still concealed as my memory works on retrieval.

But imagine, of import, I had just beaten the last death; a narrow escape via Entebbe airport, on Uganda Airlines plane and yes, that man was one of the senior military officers who had severally intorogated me, tortured and hurled abuses at me and in his case I recall, location was presidents office - parliamentary buildings.....