Part 2, Chapter 16 Summary

Introducing the second part of the novel, Garrigan provides a biography of Idi Amin. He has tried to piece his research together as well as he can, but there are still areas where his life is a mystery.

His mother is a slave, perhaps named Pepsi, who may have been a witch, or a prostitute. His father is not known. Garrigan pauses here to consider Idi's conception, whether it was a financial transaction or an act of pleasure, or simply a mistake. If that conception were a mistake, do the 300,000 deaths caused by Idi Amin result from that mistake, or would another tyrant have filled that spot if Idi had never existed?

Most of his childhood is unknown. After World War II, he enlists in the 4th King's African Rifles. It seems to be here that he acquires his initial fascination...