Note from Kampala

Another email from Dawn about the situation there:


Holy crap, who the hell knows!  This place is falling apart.  I hadn’t heard about this yet, but I’m sure we will see the story in the paper tomorrow.  Where did you see it? 
 
Did you tell Ian about Kampala yesterday?  Ian, I have never seen Kampala like this before.  A Tuesday evening at 5pm and it was a ghost town!  It was really eerie.  I went walking down towards Kampala road looking for an MTN store and to just check out the city.  There was no one and nothing open.  I swear in my walk from Speke down past Standard Charter to Kla road, towards Nando’s and back up to Speke I saw maybe 5 taxi’s total and 15 people.  It was freaky, and then I saw trucks and trucks of military and that is when I decided to go back to the hotel. 
 
Today is better, it is calmer downtown.  I guess there are still a lot of people around the courthouse and police station, but people have mellowed since the large numbers of military has shown up.  And we all know how disciplined the military here is.  It is still tense.  Lots of people bent over papers, whispering and discussing. 
 
Besigye is in jail now.  Refusing to eat for fear of being poisoned, so he’ll just die of starvation instead.  Then people will really be pissed.   Museveni has threatened the other leaders of FDC.  People are convinced this can only get worse.  I was talking to a few people about it today and they all believe there will be another coup soon. 
 
I had dinner with Richard and Dora this evening.  That was so nice!  It was great to see them.  I got all the new gossip on the new PC (ed: Peace Corps) groups.  I guess the 2 new groups, especially the latest ones, like to ET (ed: early termination, i.e. quitting and going home).  I think Richard said a 30% ET rate.  What the hell?  But he did confirm that no other group has ever been like ours!  We of course were the best! 
 
Well…I will keep you updated on the happenings!
 
Dawn