March 2, 1966
I am sitting at my desk about to start correcting some essays for my English class. I’m listening to a little Peter Seeger on the tape recorder, that thing has certainly been a Godsend.

No news from Kampala so I guess we must assume that Obote has gotten away with it. He is now in reality if not name a dictator. But what is yet to be known are his reasons. [We had little sense of the the ethnic and regional conflicts in Uganda at this time].

Something like this might have been expected in Tanzania and perhaps even Kenya, but predictions here were not. For a coup by Obote but for his arrival. [Why I said that I don’t remember but it might have had to do with earlier attempts by the military to intervene in those countries. In any event it was dead wrong].

School is going along well; the library is going full speed. The kids are hungry for books. There are more there every day than we can handle. We are pretty well settled down into a pattern of things here, the house is pretty well organized and we’re pretty well set.

We showed some slides up at school to the kids yesterday and we were astonished at the reactions. The kids were very interested but could not really believe in the U.S. scenes. They can’t picture anything but us as teachers. Family pictures really floored them.

It’s funny how people give an impression and how others form them.

Last night about 9:30 a new boy (not new but returned) Hassan [Mugerwa] came to the door. He is living in our servants’ quarters and cooking with Felix and Stanley. He asked for some help in History but this was only an excuse. He wanted to present us with a polished bone which he found while on a trip to Tanzania. (Sponsored by Jim Wilson) It was in appreciation for what we’d done for him. Great. [The polished bone turned out to be a Rhino horn- I still had it. We had no sense of the vulnerability of Rhino of course, or even what a Rhino horn looked like].

Eve: Obote came on TV and Radio just now. The lull has been broken. The president, Edward Mutesa [the Kabaka] and his Vice President have been removed from office. No one knows where he is.

People in Masaka are very upset about the whole thing and there may be trouble of some kind.

The latest rumor is that one of the countries; as yet unnamed, involved is the U.S. After all it was the U.S.A. that was the scapegoat in the Congo and at the back of this whole thing is [not exactly] the Congo scandal. (Entire section, LAP)