Here I was standing in this great hall at the airport with more time than I needed on my hands. What was I going to be doing for the next 12 hours. I had to come up with some ingenious ways on how to waste time. If I had the money, that wouldn't be a problem but I had about 20 Euros on me by chance. My credit card was smouldering.  I had used it a lot.

Sweating like an Arab lost in the desert, I walked off with my tail between my legs. Not only was I embarrassed that I looked like I was illiterate, I mean what is the difficulty in telling between 10pm and 10Am? In airline times it is simple. They use the 24 hour clock 1000 is in the morning and 2200 is in the evening. To make matters even worse, the flight was at 2155. OK, five minutes shy of 2200 but come on! So I tried to arrive in Holland (again) as slowly as possible. 

I decided to have the cheapest day out in a major western capital ever. A tourist. I decided to look for the tourist information desk in the airport without help. It is a nightmare!!! A lovely nightmare thought because in so doing I looked around the whole bloody airport. Looked into some shops and just to waste time I started converting the prices from Euros to Pounds. And to make it just that more interesting, into Ugandan shillings as well. I knew how much a balloon cost at Bloem!......in three currencies.Albert Hejn to go another shop in the airport has the cheapest Coca Cola bottles at £1.30. Oh, they also had a basket full of free chocolate. Lovely stuff.

Eventually (and to my annoyance) I saw the tourist information office. I had wasted 40 minutes!! In my so polite English way I asked the girls behind the desk what a man like me with so much time in Amsterdam could do. I shouldn't have told them my life story I realise with hind sight because before I got the the end, she pulled out a map and circled the Red Light District in Amsterdam!!! Shock HORROR!! Do I give off that kind of impression? Do bored English men in Amsterdam head for the RED LIGHT DISTRICT? (It was good to know anyway where it was) Cheers girls.

I cant speak Dutch to save my life but I decided to find the train station, work out which train went to the city centre and from which platform.. Another way to pass time. Not in a hurry. Like all people do in these places, I nonchalantly looked at the train departures board and to my utter annoyance, it was in English. So no Dutch lesson in finding out the word for "Amsterdam Cetraal", it is written like "Amsterdam Central.

I headed into Amsterdam wishing that like the Piccadilly line in London, it would take at least an hour with a few signal failures thrown in, unexplained delays at random stations and a change on to a rail replacement service. Two hours killed? Yeah right!!!"  Twenty minutes later we were pulling into Amsterdam Central. Great. More time to waste but on the bright side I was in Amsterdam.

Twelve hours to kill in Amsterdam. What do I do?

What do you do with an extra 12 hours stuck in a foreign city? This was the dilemma that I faced a few weeks ago when I arrived at Amsterdam Schipol. I had woken up very early to get to the airport in time. My father taught me that when ever I was travelling, it was better to wait than rush. So, at 0400AM, I left Enschede in Eastern Holland for the airport. I was right on time. In fact the arrival at the airport gave me more than three hours to kill.

Confidently, I cleared airport formalities which involved being stripped near naked. In my wisdom, I was wearing steel toe capped boots. Isn't it funny watchung a queue of people in a public place all in varying states of underss? The shoes and the socks all going into these non discript boxes to go through the scanner!! And then one is asked to stand in a shower cubicle like contraption, make a star shape while standing. I knew it that someone was watching a xray like image of me naked.Next time I have it in good mind to arrive naked just to piss them off!

So made my way to the departure lounge and through to the gate when boarding was called. Can someone tell me why there is no gate 1? Some of these gates at Schipol are in the next county! As luck would have it, Easyjet opts for those and the stroll to the gate degenerates into a trot by all passengers as EasyJet doesn't do seat reservations. Bags flying (steel toe capped boots falling off) I arrived at the gate and the plane was there. All in its glory. A nice orange and white airbus A320 ready to take me back home to England! Patiently, I made my way to the front of the queue and presented my boarding pass. The lady read it through the scanner one, twice and three times. No go. So she decided t o read it instead. My flight was at 2200hours!!!! This mug face here had read 2200hours as 1000hours in the 24 hour clock. Dyslexia can do amazing things!!! I was 12 hours early for my flight.

No pleading could convice that woman to let me on that plane. I could feel the eyes in the queue behind me boring through the back of my head. I couldn't use my usual excuse of not knowing English. I had been so polite to the woman in near perfect English. I was told to wait for my flight which was 12 hours away.

People talk about "cold sweats". I felt one of them. So, I made my way back to the arrivals. I couldn't believe it! I was clearing immigration again, getting back into a country I was thinking I had just departed from. I had 12 hours ahead of me with dwindling cash reserves. What was I going to do in Amsterdam for 12 hours?

Read on later................

Kabaka Mutebi and Omuzaana Nansikombi





This week my defining story has been the Kabaka of Buganda, my ancestral tribe in Buganda having a new son, Prince Richard Semakokilo. The news was greeted with a mixed reaction on the Internet and back home in Uganda. 



A bit of background to the story. Kabaka (King) Mutebi II is the cultural leader of the Baganda, a sub national tribe in Uganda. the Baganda are by far the largest tribe in Uganda and most influential. At over 5 million people, the Kabaka therefore enjoys quite a lot of influence and his subjects revere him.

   

Mutebi and Nagginda marry.



The problem however is that in 1999, in the mother of all Anglican Cathedrals in Uganda, Namirembe Cathedral, The Kabaka got married to a thoroughly modern lady Sylvia Nagginda. She wasn't the proverbial traditional lady. She was well educated, of independent mind and had up to that point enjoyed a carrier of her own. People took to her really well. The Kabaka and Nagginda have a daughter and the Kabaka also has a son Prince Jjunju from a previous relationship.

First forward to a few days ago, an announcement came from the royal household that the Kabaka had a son, Prince Richard Semakokiro born of a one Nansikombi. The excitement was tangible because of the significance of this lad. Prince Jjunju under cultural laws can't succeed his father. Others have put the blame to the fact that allegedly his mother is not from the Baganda tribe. So, Semakokilo was to many the heir to the throne. Well, according to those in the know, it isn't as simple as that so the excitement was slightly abated in other circles.

The main slant to the story was that the Kabaka had sired a child with a lady other than the Queen. Some people found this abhorrent that he should have a child with a lady other than his wife Nagginda. However, again things aren't as simple as that. Those who are in fervent honor of the Kingdom slated off those who dared to question the morality of of having this child as insubordinate to the Kabaka. they were dully slapped down. The Kabaka, they said, was duty bound to provide a male heir regardless.



So the hunt for the mother started in Ernest. The print media in Uganda came out with a photograph of the alledged mother of Semakokilo. "Nansikombi" was pictured on the front pages and her photos emailed accross the globe. On sight, many forgave the Kabaka because "Nansikombi" came out as a rather pretty lady..



Patience Kirabo (Monitor photograph)



A day or so later, the lady in the photograph came out to deny she was the one. As it turns out, the "Nansikombi" is actually a one Barbara Patience Kirabo. So who was Nansikombi? Well another photograph has been released which on closer inspection shows a lady in wedding dress. So, is this lady married to someone else? Well, it isn't as simple as that as in traditional Ganda culture, all women are wives to the King. But..........................................



We now have another photograph of the lady purported to be the mother of Semakokilo.

The alledged Nansikombi mother to Prince Semakokilo.



The story continues..................

mwenky99@hotmail.com



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