You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [60]
Today, over twenty years after the end of Idi Amin’s genocidal dictatorship, this island still bears the scars of his lazy afternoons there. You might stop by it sometime: a great little fixer-upper, with cattle prods, chains, and crocodiles included. (Idi called it Paradise Island — perhaps because of the many people he and the crocs dispatched to Paradise while he was there.)
Amin had some other little problems in the area of civilized behavior. It’s said on good authority that he ate at least one of his infant sons. He declared that Adolf Hitler was his hero and erected a statue of him in the capital city of Kampala. Math was never his strong suit, and he simply never understood why he couldn’t just print more money when he needed it. So print it he did — and there came a day when a loaf of bread cost in excess of a million Ugandan shillings.
He remained convinced (deluded is probably a more accurate word) that his people wanted him back, and he left his Saudi reservation a few years ago, certain they were ready to roll out a red, if not bloodstained, carpet for him. He got as far as the Zaire-Uganda border when he was recognized and refused entry.
You Killed All the What?
REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO, 1960S
There were problems even before Idi Amin….
Ruling Uganda stupidly didn’t begin with Idi Amin, who took over in 1969. A few years earlier, the country was having a problem with tsetse flies.
Now, the tsetse fly tends to live on herbivores, usually wild ones — but if you bring enough cattle into an area, the tsetse isn’t all that selective and will just as happily live, breed and dine on domestic cattle. The problem is, wild game has a built-in immunity to the tsetse fly, and domestic animals don’t.
Now, in any reasonable society, if your cattle were infested with tsetse flies, you’d spray heavily with DDT or something similar, and of course you’d begin dipping your livestock regularly.
But this was Uganda. Let us, they reasoned, get rid of the wildlife, and then the tsetse flies will have nowhere to go.
So they declared an unlimited open season on their game. Hunters came from all over. It’s estimated that half a million animals were killed.
The result?
Well, some of the wounded game animals ran a thousand miles before dying, thus introducing their tsetse flies to areas that had never known them before. As for the bulk of the tsetse population, it moved lock, stock and barrel to the domestic livestock without losing a beat.
You Helped How?
IVORY COAST, 2002
Sports Medicine
Being slow to pay your witch doctor is just about as stupid as living anyplace that Idi Amin would call Paradise Island. But a government minister in the Ivory Coast did just that. (Well, let’s be fair. Maybe his Blue Cross didn’t cover it.)
It seems that more than a decade after the Ivory Coast’s soccer team managed its only African Nations Cup win, the local witch doctors were finally paid. Why? Because they are convinced they helped win the trophy by means of their professional services.
Back in 1992 the minister of sport decided to provide the national team with a bit of an edge and hired the witch doctors as spiritual consultants. Named the Elephants, the team managed a narrow win during a penalty shootout in Senegal.
Fine so far — but then the sports minister kinda sorta forgot to pay the bill. The witch doctors, who live in the village of Akradio, took this oversight rather poorly. They immediately put a hex on the team. And their magic worked again — no wins for the next ten years!
Finally bowing to pressure from disappointed fans, the minister, one Moise Lida Kouassi, decided it was time to pay up. He offered humble apologies, a bottle of liquor, and two thousand dollars to the witch doctors.
There will be two signs by which we’ll know if Kouassi’s capitulation worked: the first will be that the Elephants win again; the second will be that his head