Over Lake & Turf With Big Daddy

John Osman, the British Broadcasting Corporation's East African staff correspondent, was one of the few Western newsmen in Kampala last week. Returning to Nairobi, Osman cabled this report to TIME:

It was a quiet Friday afternoon at Entebbe airport, near Kampala. A couple of dozen Americans who work for Uganda Airlines either were enjoying an afternoon nap on a hot and humid day, or were out on the golf course. Two of them--Bob Coder, from Florida, and his wife Virginia--strolled out the front door of the Lake Victoria Hotel and there, to their surprise, was President Field Marshal Dr. Idi Amin Dada. Two British newspaper colleagues were with the President, who was plainly keen to show both us and President Jimmy Carter that Americans living in Uganda are in no danger.

"Are you happy here?" President Amin asked Mr. and Mrs. Coder. They beamed in reply and said they were.

"It's a beautiful, lovely country," both of them assured him. Then a question was put to them by a British-born Ugandan citizen who is the President's adviser on British affairs, Mr. Bob Astles, known in Uganda as "Mr. Bob." He asked: "What do you think about President Carter's criticisms of Uganda and our President?"

The American couple scoffingly laughed in reply and dismissed it all as nonsense. Clearly satisfied by the Americans' answer--and equally clearly unsurprised by it--President Amin then took us off in his British-made Range Rover for a personally conducted tour of the still bullet-and bazooka-shattered section of Entebbe airport, where Israeli troops last July staged their stunningly successful raid to rescue hijack hostages from pro-Palestinian kidnapers.

It is from Entebbe airport that the recently formed Uganda Airlines is now operating, with aircraft purchased from the U.S. Bob Coder is a ground engineer helping to keep those planes flying.

My guided tour began when I was being driven from Kampala to Entebbe in Mr. Bob's car. The President passed by on the other side of the road in his Range Rover, stopped, turned round and joined us as we also stopped. He ordered out of his vehicle his bodyguard, an Acholi, from the tribe that, it is alleged, is being massacred in northern Uganda. The bodyguard then traveled in Mr. Bob's car while our little British journalistic group drove with the President.

First he took us round the quite beautiful Entebbe Botanical Gardens, lush with great trees and sited magnificently on the biggest fresh-water lake in Africa, Lake Victoria, by itself almost as big as Scotland. He talked to us about his plans to develop old colonial buildings there. Then he drove us over the golf course, right across the seventh green. It was not just the President's car crossing the sacrosanct turf but Mr. Bob's as well, in close attendance behind. Plainly the President is not a golfer. But he pointed out to us the spot where he often plays basketball with his team. From there we went to Lake Victoria, where he made his point with the Coders and America, and following this we had the presidentially guided tour of the airport.

The control tower of the old section of the airport and its building are still very battered--smashed windows, bullet marks, blackened wood from grenades or bazookas--but it is in use. At a storage area near by, President Amin pointed out to us planes of the Uganda air force, including MiG-21s. Some of them, he told us, are armed with missiles. From the battle-scarred sector of the airport, he took us to the undamaged main building, where in the VIP lounge he made it plain to us, after receiving a phone call there from Washington, presumably from his charge d'affaires, that the Americans really should not be worried. He merely wanted to give them a party. It was hard to resist the conclusion that President Amin may have been trying to make a monkey out of President Carter. It may all be a tremendous joke, but, and it is a big but, one never quite knows.

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