SIMON KASYATE for observer.ug SUNDAY, 09 MARCH 2014: Dr Jamal Vali is a Ugandan of Asian origin, an economist who worked for the International Labour Organisation for 25 years.
He holds a BA from Cambridge, and a PhD from Stanford University, and is currently writing a book on Ugandan Asians.
Dr Vali told his story to Simon Kasyate on Capital radio’s Desert Island Discs programme.
Am I right to call you professor?
Doctor would be nice.
I introduced you as a Ugandan of Asian origin, what exactly is your life story?
I am Ugandan by association. I am actually Kenya-born but from 1946, our family lived here. My father established the first branch of what is now the DT bank in 1946, when I was six years old.
We’ve been here up to 1972 when the expulsion happened. I come back here in 2005 to do something to be back again in Uganda and then I got writing this book since 2007.
Click here to read more The Observer – Dr Jamal Vali chooses Uganda over Kenya, Canada.
Ismailimail 
I was a junior lecturer at Makerere at the time of the expulsions whilst my wife Anne taught English at the Aga Khan School just down the road from that University. Dr Vali’s sister (Gulzar) worked alongside me in the Geography Department. My neighbour, Dr Dom Pinto (of Goan descent) a surgeon at the hospital, and I spent a lot of time working with UNHCR, which atr that time was run by a single Australian (Pratley?? – a really good man), helping him run the processing/fundraising/ticket buying system he had established. Right at the end of the expulsion period I was briefly arrested taking a very poor family of Indian origin to Entebbe Airport but, fortunately, was released by one of my students who was an army officer. Within two weeks of that event, I too left Uganda to work in Papua New Guinea.
I have many vivid memories of those events: Amin insisting on visiting the last deportees at the Patel temple and wanting to shake hands with them – halfway down the line he realised they were going to Morocco and immediately ordered that such a thing could not be allowed: ‘Morocco is in Africa – no. no. they must leave Africa entirely’. I would dearly like to be put in touch with Dr Jamal and Gulzar if anyone knows their contact details
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