Looking for org. metal bracelet for this 1970's All Stainless Steel, Swiss Made, Blue Bezel, 25 jewel, Automatic, Super Waterproof Divers time piece, 2307.2.
The Story:
Jan 25th, 1971 a General, by the name of Idi Amin Dada, took control of Uganda the nation once touted by Winston Churchill as the "Pearl of Africa. He did so by a successful coup, overthrowing President Milton Obote. What followed was a reign of terror. Amin declared himself president-for-life of his landlocked country of 24 million, awarded himself an array of medals and ran the country with an iron fist, killing real and imagined enemies.
Human rights groups say from 100,000 to 500,000 people were killed during his 8-year rule. Bodies were dumped into the Nile River because graves couldn't be dug fast enough. At one point, so many bodies were fed to crocodiles that the remains occasionally clogged intake ducts at Uganda's main hydroelectric plant at Jinja. "I am a man of action," he said. And words.
He said Hitler "was right to burn six million Jews," and offered to be king of Scotland if asked. He challenged his neighbor and frequent critic, Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, to a boxing match, and wrote to Richard Nixon wishing him "a speedy recovery" from Watergate.
The stories about the madness and excesses of the Amin regime are legion. Many are true, and many are not. Amin is alleged to have chopped up his wife Kay as his children watched to punish her for adultery, had her limbs sewn back the wrong way, and showed the body to the children as "a lesson". Some versions say he kept some of the limbs, as he did that of other opponents, in the deep freezer in State House. And he occasionally feasted on the remains of his victims in some bizarre ritual of immortalization.
Shortly after his coup, and before he started committing the atrocities he is remembered for, he came to the town of Jinja, where I was living with my family, to visit the local YMCA across the street from where we lived. I went and met him and shook his hand.
Little did I know that in a few short months, he would first kick out the Israelis, as he was Muslim, followed by the Asians, British and the Americans thus setting the stage for his reign of terror. Months after the 1972 order expelling the foreigners, Amin went around the streets of Kampala, Jinja, Masaka and other towns in Uganda dishing out shops and factories he had seized to his relatives and cronies in an operation dubbed "Mafuta Mingi," returning wealth ("fat") to Ugandans.
We left by edict and were not allowed to take anything out of the country but the “shirt on our backs’. In an effort to get out of the country with some value for the money we were not allowed to take, among other things, my Dad bought a Rodania, All Stainless Steel, Swiss Made, Blue Bezel, 25 jewel, Automatic, Super Waterproof Divers time piece, 2307.2.
I wore this watch on our escape, on my upper arm, under my shirt sleeve, as a boy of 11 years of age- and thankfully was not searched at the armed check points on the road to the Entebbe airport when we left under armed guards.
This watch was handed down at my Fathers passing
Any leads or info to anyone with new/old stcok would be appreciated!
Please contact me at: mjh8583112459@hotmail.com