Imagine facing the dictator who brutalized and destroyed your family’s life – and hearing his desperate pleas to save him. This was the traumatic and surprising scenario faced by Vasanti Makwana. The Canadian nurse wanted a change of pace and decided to take a short-term job in Saudi Arabia for a professional adventure. “It seemed like a really interesting place to go and spread my wings… And it was a one-year contract. So it was pretty doable for me to do it,” he told CTV News. But one night in 2003, while on call, her past suddenly collided with her present when she was forced to face the most terrifying experiences of her life. “Around 2:00 [am]I got the call from the supervisors at the hospital, there is a VIP coming in to be treated for dialysis.” A driver picked her up from her compound – Saudi women were not allowed to drive in those days – and when she got to work, she discovered the patient’s name was ‘Amin’. But she never expected it to be Idi Amin. “When I saw him being wheeled into my unit, that’s when it sunk in, ‘Oh, my God. This is Idi Amin Dada,” he said. “I was very scared. It was like everything was rushing back… I was so scared. My heart was pounding.” “And I said, ‘Oh my God… This is my childhood monster.’ She remembers that he looked “very sick” and that they had to “draw him four liters of fluids to stabilize his condition. And that’s what we did.” Before ICU staff took him away, Makwana was left alone for a few moments with Amin who pleaded with her. “Please help me. I’m a very sick person,” she remembers him telling her. “And I said, ‘Yes, sir, we will help you.’ But she also felt she had to confront him. “I could only have a few moments, very few – maybe not even a few minutes – before I could tell him that I was one of those Ugandan Asians he had chased away. “He looked at me with really big eyes and I said, ‘Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. I will help you improve,” he said. “There was no doubt in my mind that I wasn’t going to help him.” But she felt compelled to carry a burden she had been carrying for decades. “The little girl in me had to tell him that my father never forgave you for doing this to us because my father loved Uganda. I mean – this was his home. That was our home.” Makwana’s father didn’t just experience the horror of deportation. he saw horrific acts unfold before his eyes in the months leading up to the exodus – acts that made it clear to him that he urgently needed to get his family out. One day, his car was stopped by Amin’s men and he saw a bus full of people, including a group of young girls about the same age as his daughter, Vasanti, who was 14 at the time. “What those fools did to those young girls, my father saw with his own eyes.” “They were raped and sodomized in broad daylight. And I think one of them died. It was horrific,” Makwana said. “When he came home, he was ashen.” Decades later, Makwana says being able to talk to Amin lifted a weight. “The way he looked at me, it was like a sense of recognition,” he said. “Honestly, after I said what I needed him to know, it all went away and I had the most compassion or him. I really felt sorry for him.” With reporting by producer Shelley Ayres WATCH “Expelled: My Roots in Uganda” special airing on Friday, November 4 at 9 p.m. on CTV
