Abyssinian Chronicles

Author:Moses Isegawa [Isegawa, Moses]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78780-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

Like a good husband and a sensible man, Serenity kept everything secret. Padlock, stung by his apparent indifference to her anxiety, was pressuring him to listen to her and do something before it was too late.

“You have not even registered!” he countered as he wondered whether the next morning State Research boys were going to drag him out of his office, jam him into the trunk of a waiting car and take him to a forest, or a river, or a filthy cell.

“Do something.”

“We will see,” he said.

“ ‘We will see’ is not good enough. You know that.”

“We will see,” he reiterated for the umpteenth time. “I said, we will see.”

General Amin played his cards well. He knew that if he allowed Catholics total access to subsidized government-priced dollars from the Bank of Uganda, he would lose vital political capital. He wanted Catholics, for once, to acknowledge his importance in their life, and especially in this pilgrimage. He devised three quotas. In the first quota, he placed five thousand people, who received the necessary travel documents and dollars and were made to understand that they were the country’s official representatives. Unofficial government sources gradually let it be known that there were extra places for those who could secure foreign currency on their own; this was the second quota, composed of the elite, people with both money and connections.

The government sources warned that if any pilgrims sold government-priced dollars on the black market, they would be arrested and their passports torn to pieces. Catholics felt insulted that the government could suspect them of doing something so base. Serenity was exhilarated, Padlock dejected. The chosen five thousand were going without having to sell the clothes on their backs to pay for foreign currency! Being among the chosen ones, Serenity was in seventh heaven. The deal had paid off: he had sold the delivery note and secured the cash, and the buyers had neither pointed guns at him nor pushed him into the trunk of a car! It had been a revelation. In gratitude, he had bought Hajj Gimbi a very large goat with teats hanging almost to the ground. He also spent a weekend with Nakibuka. He bought her clothes and gifts for her children, but he did not tell her how he had made the money.

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