cool thread, just wish I jadnt found it so late at night! goodbye goodnights sleep!

Milo’s devious plan for starting his own rafting company involved buying up all the access-points on the river. The first of these to fall under his sway was Bujagali Falls, where the rafting trips start. Prior to Milo it was a very run-down park and camp-ground. Milo spruced it up, put in Banda huts, showers and toilets, and got the bar running well. The bar was a huge, open pagoda right on the falls. A great place to sit and drink the world go by.

One night Milo and I were well on our way to getting slaughtered. We were alone, aside from the bored askari guard slouched in the corner half asleep with an AK47 across his chest. We decided that it would be a great idea to have turns shooting the gun out across the river. There was a full moon. We roused the guard and asked him for his gun.

“Oh no, Mr Milo, I cannot do that. That is very bad idea.”

We offered him a bottle of beer and he accepted. We walked down to the waters edge, slipped the catch on to single fire, and proceeded to blast off the whole clip, one shot at a time. We were hysterical with laughter. The guard was a bit worried, so we gave him another beer to shut him up. We then sat back down and got so drunk that we fell asleep where we were. The next morning I had a trip and I waited for the bus to arrive, nursing a heavy hangover. Milo was unconscious in the bar with his mouth wide open. I did the trip and got back around 4 in the afternoon. It transpired that about half an hour after I left, Milo had been woken by the local police chief poking him with a baton.

As it was a full moon, all the fishermen had been out getting the midnight catch, when some crazy person had begun shooting at them. The fishermen have long dug-out canoes which regularly sink resulting in their demise. There were about twenty canoes out there, and apparently they had all huddled in the bottom of the canoes, praying to Allah as bullets zipped over their heads. Milo pleaded ignorance to the situation but vowed to help catch the culprits.
The next day, Milo came back from Kampala with a new stereo system. This was a big find. It was very hard to get hold of electronics in Uganda at that time. We set it up in the bar and that night an overland truck with about 20 tourists arrived. We had a great time dancing in the bar to some groovy tunes. Before going to bed, Milo locked the stereo in a hut. He had about 20 locals working for him and he didn’t trust any of them, for good reason. The two tribes that lived in that area were famous in the whole of Uganda for being thieves.

A few days later Milo had to go back to Kampala for a few days. He asked me to watch the bar and camp-ground while he was gone. I was happy to hang out in Budjagali for a few days and drink free beer. The day before Milo was due back, I went to bed after locking the stereo in a banda hut. I got up next morning to an unpleasant surprise. Someone had broken into the hut and stolen the stereo. Milo was going to be very pissed. It had to have been an inside job. One of the 20 locals who worked around the campsite. I narrowed it down to a few possibilities based on freedom of access at the time of the theft. I then interviewed the suspects. Every single one of them looked guilty as hell, but I had no way of pinning down the culprit. I decided to go and report the theft to the local police station.

The local police station consisted of three mud dwellings on the side of the main dirt road. The chief knew who I was. He gave me to one of his ‘top detectives’ to get the facts down. I was taken into the third hut, of which the back wall had collapsed, and he proceeded to file his ‘report’.

“Mazungu, what is your name?”

I told him my name.

“And tell me, in your own words, what has it that happened?”

I started off with the explanation of locking the stereo away in the banda hut. I spoke for about five minutes. The whole time he was busy scribbling on his piece of paper. Then, I stopped to have a look at what he had written.

‘I, Mr Adams, did put one streo in hut banda, because I go to bed, by myselfs, it is dark night and maybe a little cold…’

That was it.

“Oh, come on, dude,” I said. “You can’t write for sh*t. Give it to me. I’ll write it.”

“No, no, mazungu! I am very good writer! You stay there and you tell me. I am the writer!”

“You couldn’t write to save your life. Give me that ******g pencil!”

“Mazungu! I warning you! You no stop me writing! I know how to write better than you!”

“What!? You must be ******g joking!”

And back and forth we went, until at one point he stopped, leaned back on his chair, and fixed me with a shrewd eye. “Ah, mazungu,” he said in a very calm voice. “Now I know the truth. You think you are a very clever mazungu. But you do not deceive me. I am a detective. And I know the truth of this situation.”

I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I just looked at him in a puzzled way until he leapt up off his chair, pointed his finger at me and loudly proclaimed; “You are the thief!”

Something clicked in my head. I grabbed him by the throat and threw him up against the wall. I then proceeded to start screaming in his face while giving him the distinct impression that his life was about to end. The chief and a couple of his deputies came rushing in and pried us apart. The detective began yelling accusations at me, but the chief told him to shut up and get out of his sight. He then apologized to me and said that he had only just been made detective and was perhaps lacking some experience. Did I want to keep making the report? I declined, as I had already been away from the campground too long. I jumped on the back of a bicycle boda-boda and the dude pedaled me the three kilometers back to the camp.

When I got there, an air of quiet desperation hung over the camp. All 20 employees knew how Milo worked. They knew that he would just fire all of them. They were desperate not to lose their jobs. The camp manager, a nice chap named Paul, came to me and explained that they had all put some money together to get a famous witchdoctor to come and find the culprit. A witchdoctor? This I had to see. They had sent a mutatu out to get this dude, who lived near the Kenyan border, about two hours drive away.

Then I heard a car, looked up and saw Milo pulling into the camp. I looked at Paul and said, “You guys are all dead meat.” He nodded at the truth of my words.

Milo came over and immediately asked what was up. I told him. He took a steely look around the group of nervous employees and then demanded to be shown the hut. We walked over and I pointed out where the thief had broken in. He was furious, and rightly so. He had been warned about hiring people from the local villages, but he had done so anyway as he wanted to support them. They had repaid his kindness with this.

We marched back to the group of waiting villagers. “Milo, don’t be too hard on them,” I said.

“I’m going to ******g kill them,” he replied as he popped his boot and pulled out a crowbar. “Who is your prime suspect?” he asked me.

“Godfrey,” I replied. He was the teenage boy who cleaned the camp first thing in the morning. Interestingly enough, Godfrey was nowhere to be seen. Milo grabbed some poor random dude, instructed the askari to hold everyone else there under guard, and dragged the unfortunate into the storage shed. There began a cacophony of banging, yelling and terrified screaming. I don’t know if it was just show, but it sure had an effect on the employees outside. They all took off in different directions, apart from Paul and a couple of older ones. The guard began to lift his AK47 and I dove behind a large rock. This was not looking good.

good stuff, did you do any of the shooting across the river?

Yeah, Mick and I shot the whole clip. We took turns, one bullet for you, one bullet for me.

It usually takes a good book to keep me as riveted as I am right now, this tale is amazing.

holy [censored], just found this thread today. ads, not only are your experiences awesome, but damn you can write too.

I would buy your book in a heartbeat, and I dont read very much at all.

"Something clicked in my head. I grabbed him by the throat and threw him up against the wall. I then proceeded to start screaming in his face while giving him the distinct impression that his life was about to end. The chief and a couple of his deputies came rushing in and pried us apart. "

No wonder you are so into meditation nowadays.

WTF a cliffhanger? You do that on purpose don't you?

Adsman i see you got the mazungu title you earned it

I have on/off periods.

Guys,

Speaking for everyone, this is awesome stuff and we all want TONS more, but I think that's been said enough times now and is starting to clutter up the thread a bit, so please don't respond just to write "awesome stuff, want more!" - I think by now we can all agree on that. Of course, feel free to make comments/questions and whatever else about the posts.

cliffhangers are weak and contrived devices.

I humbly apologize.

Guys, I'm flat out this morning, so I don't have time to write anything up. I'll try to get something done this afternoon. Apologies.

ads.

adsman,

i just have to say that i wasn't the biggest fan at first, but each new post is like 5x better than the last and i am now a huge fan.

also to keep this constructive, what special qualities do you think seperated you from other whites or tourists in africa? do you think anyone can go there and survive, or do you need some special qualities to make it?

Adsman,

I was working at the University - Makerere.

Keep it up!!

ps what are you doing now?

Smurf,

I'm not really sure. Some guides turned up that we were sure would fit in well, but only lasted a month at most. Others whom we were dubious of caught on immediately. I suppose the only way you can know for sure is to go there yourself. I will note though, that often it's the bigger guys who are 'tough' back in the first world who don't go well in these situations.


Milo came striding out of the shed and looked at the askari holding the gun. “What do you think you’re doing, you idiot?” he said to me. “We used all his bullets the other night.”

I sheepishly stood up. “Did you find out who did it?” I asked.

“Of course not. I said, ‘Was it Juma?’, and he said that it was indeed Juma. I then asked him if it was Charles, and he said that he was sure that Charles is guilty.”

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

Milo shrugged. “Fire the lot of them and start over.”

I was very reluctant to bring it up, but I decided that I had nothing to lose. Besides, he should have been arriving at any moment. “There is the witchdoctor,” I said with some caution.

Milo just stared at me. “The witchdoctor?” he finally said. “What the hell are you on about?”

I explained how his employees had pooled their money to get this dude over. We asked Paul how much they had paid, and the answer came to about $40. Impressive stuff, considering the average monthly wage was about $25. They assured us that this guy was the best witchdoctor money could buy. “What the hell,” Milo said. “Might as well give it a shot. Stranger crap has happened.”

Some time later, the matatu bearing the witchdoctor arrived. We kept the group back, apart from Paul, as we didn’t want anyone telling the witchdoctor who they thought had done it. At this point most of the staff had returned from wherever it was they had run to. Milo and I had no illusions about getting the stereo back, it was gone. We wanted to see if this guy was for real. We walked over to the matatu and met the witchdoctor.

He was a tiny little old man, dressed in a three piece brown suit, carrying an old-fashioned suitcase. He had a huge smile that was perpetually on his face. I liked him immediately. There was now a crowd of about thirty people gathered around and we selected a few to hold the others back. Word was apparently flying around the area that a famous witchdoctor had shown up to help the mazungu’s.

He asked us where the crime had been committed and we took him over to the banda hut. He instructed us to wait outside. The huts consisted of just one room with two front windows and a door. We peered into the gloom to see what he was doing. He set his suitcase down on the ground, unfastened a belt that was tied around the middle, and opened the lid. Out scrambled a live chicken. He immediately grabbed the chicken, and with one swift movement cut off its head with a knife. Holding the twitching body with one hand, he began spreading blood around the hut. Milo gave me a look that seemed to indicate, ‘this had better bloody work’.

The witchdoctor then began throwing all sorts of sh*t around the hut. Spices, leaves, bark, roots, berries, all were flung into far corners while he chanted in some weird dialect. There was a continual low murmur from the growing crowd. The witchdoctor then began to dance. He jerked around and around, the chicken still grasped in his wiry hand. Blood continued to fly as he flung himself around the room. His voice rose with every passing moment. The crowds voice began to rise in unison.

“Gonna have to wash those mattresses,” Milo whispered to me. I told him to shut the feck up. I was getting a little bit worried. What if this kindly old man pronounced that the mazungu’s were the bad dudes? I had no doubt that the crowd would tear us to pieces.

Then he stopped dead still. His hands hung in the air above his head. He was perched like a hawk about to strike. The dead chicken fell from his fingers and hit the ground. At once he flung himself down with his face on the ground studying the chicken. He moved his body in a complete circle around the chicken while holding one eye to the floor. We were hanging on his every action. And then he stood up, brushed down his suit, and asked if he could have a cup of tea. Milo sent one of the young boys flying down to the bar to get the great man some tea.

He motioned to Milo and I and we went into a huddle. “The one you seek,” he began in his high pitched, giggly voice. “He is young, maybe 15 years. Tall, very tall. But very slim. Maybe he should eat more. Perhaps he steals as he is hungry. He lives very close, in the village at the crossroads. He likes to wear the color blue.”

Milo and I looked at each other as we both said the same name. “Godfrey.”

We marched up the road together with the witchdoctor and the now sizeable crowd. The village was about a mile down the entrance road to Bujagali where it met the main dirt road. On the way we met the local police chief. He had heard what was going on and had rushed over to see. On seeing me he smiled and said, “Ah, the lunatic. And how is everything now?” We filled him in on the developments. He was deeply impressed at our wisdom at obtaining a qualified witchdoctor. Normally mazungu’s were not that smart.

We reached the village. They were waiting for us. It was obvious that we wouldn’t find Godfrey. We entered his home where he lived with his mother and his siblings. We asked which bed was Godfrey’s. Milo turned it over and a black cobra shot out from under the mattress. We all jumped back and the crowd went, oooooooohh. The cobra slithered outside where the crowd quickly beat it to death. Under Godfrey’s mattress we found an interesting history of petty thievery. There was a small treasure of mostly worthless items pilfered from guides and customers. We recognized Colin’s waist-bag that had gone missing some time earlier. We collected this booty while the police chief grilled Godfrey’s mother. Apparently the accused had cleared out only fifteen minutes before we arrived with the stereo under his arm.

We declined the offer of a boda-boda bicycle chase, tempting as it was. Paul shambled over nervously and told us that the witchdoctor performed other services as well. Really? Such as?

“If the mazungu’s would like, I can put a curse on the boy and he will suffer a horrible disease.”

We liked the sound of that one. “Any others?” asked Milo, as he guided the witchdoctor out of earshot of the thief’s mother.

“I can perform one where he will drop dead in three days,” said the witchdoctor.

“That’ll do,” said Milo. “We’ll have one death in three days, thanks.” Milo leaned over to me and explained that he didn’t believe in this crap, but the locals believed in it. He wanted them to know that if they stole from him, they were going to deal with a mazungu who played by their rules.

A couple of weeks later, we located the stolen stereo in a pawn-brokers. Godfrey was never seen again. I spoke to Milo about this situation a few months ago. He said that we had been incredibly foolish marching into the village like that. It could have quite easily turned nasty, and if it had, we wouldn’t have had a chance. At the time it had seemed like a good idea.

This is similar to some things I went through when I finished my undergrad studies. I went out and saw the USA, going coast-to-coast using my thumb (hitching rides). I did this for about a year. I'd never do it again and I can't believe I did now. A little hint about life and changes, it always does and you always will.

"It could have quite easily turned nasty, and if it had, we wouldn’t have had a chance. At the time it had seemed like a good idea. "

how so?

Dude, what right did we have to go into that womans home? We were being the fully aggressive, white colonialists. At any moment that crowd could have turned on us and beaten us to death, which happens by the way. I consider it to be the most dangerous thing that I've ever done.

I think maybe that doing it under the "authority" of the witchdoctor gave you street cred you wouldn't otherwise have.

If the witchdoctor sends someone to your house, you don't tell them to feck off.

How many cobras were in the room you slept in? Seeing one under a random bed would likely scar me for life.

@adsman

i am european and most people i know who visited middle and southern africa haven't seen much more than their hotels and some guided tours of the sourounding regions. what they told sounded more or less fake and made for tourists, so my question is: do you have any tips for an africa vacation aside of the default tourists spots? like must do's and places to visit where you can still get a small insight of the real deal?

I will assume that you are not talking about a family vacation. I can highly recommend Uganda, as the people are extremely welcoming to whites. You can stay in a 5 star hotel if you want - you can stay in backpackers, it really makes no difference. You just have to get out there and explore. Walk around. Go where you want. Uganda is so accessible due to the large variety of features in its small size. I recommend the South-West corner of the country. Be aware, don't take the silly 'romantic' view, where all Africans are intrinsically good people. They are just like us - some of them are dirtbags, some of them are extremely good, most fall somewhere in between. Travel light, carry a thick roll of $1 bills that you can hand over if you are robbed. I always carried my valuables in one of those elastic knee braces. Wear long clothes at night and sleep under a net. Malaria is not fun. Wear wrap-around sunglasses. Be prepared for the fact that African food is bloody awful. Haggle over everything. Don't put up with any crap. I recommend not hiring a car. If you have an accident and kill somebody you will be beaten to death on the spot. Stay away from the North of the country. I wouldn't go higher than Murchison Falls National Park.

I started playing poker in high school. For some reason it always interested me. I was the one that organized the games. We played stud mostly, as I disliked draw. By the time I got to Uganda I was familiar with hold em. I discovered an expat game and introduced hold em to them. We played no limit. I practiced on the free money tables on planet poker during the day. The game was good and it kept me solvent, as Uganda’s tourism industry had been hit hard by the Biwindi massacre.

I was playing in a few bands around town, but the money wasn’t good and we were expected to give our share to the local musicians in the band. The locals couldn’t believe that a mazungu could be hard up. The owner came out a second time to see why we weren’t making more money. He was building a luxury house in New Zealand and needed every cent he could get. There was a local Indian businessman who ran the main photo shop in Kampala. They had a nice earner on the rafting photo’s, but they also stocked our T-shirts as well, which were big sellers. He was eager to increase his margin on the shirts, so he went to the owner with a business plan under the umbrella of marketing. He came up with a bunch of ridiculous ideas that he hoped would land him the position of marketing manager. The owner fell for his plan in a big way. He didn’t make him the marketing manager – he made him the general manager. Overnight we had a guy in charge who knew nothing about the business, and whose primary motive for being involved was to line his own pocket. The owner flew back to New Zealand.

This all happened at the end of 1999. The guides had decided to organize a two-day rafting trip for the millennium new year. The trip consisted of continuing on a mile or so after the normal take-out and spending the night on an island in the middle of the river. We organized with local villages to supply us with cooks and helpers, as well as local musicians. The two-day trip was usually run once every couple of months. We wanted this one to be special. A lot of the British Airways crews requested runs to Uganda after hanging out with us, and we had built up a few friendships with the pilots, as well as some more intimate friendships with the hosties. We contacted our favorite crews and told them to request the new year in Uganda so as to go on the two day trip. We also hand picked a few more punters, including three young American lads from Seattle who were making a documentary in Africa. They were stand-up guys, plus they had great liquid acid.

All up there were about 25 customers on the trip. We organized four rafts, with myself, Eddie, Corey and Noah guiding. Scott was to be the support. He was going to drive out from Kampala directly to the island with all the important supplies. We did the first day of the trip and arrived at the island a few hours before sunset. The camp was already set up and we divided up the tents and started drinking. Eddie placed two cakes that he had prepared on the table; a dark and a white chocolate cake. What he didn’t tell us was that these were dope cakes, and the white one was extra potent. Eddie smoked around 20 joints a day, so for him to call it potent meant that it was deadly. The first thing I knew about it was when a BA stewardess came rushing up to me and asked me to come and have a look at her friend.

I walked up the hill to their tent. This absolutely stunning blonde English girl was completely out of it. She had eaten a whole piece of cake. She kept moaning and saying that she had smoked dope before and it had never had an effect on her. Noah made the wisecrack that you had to inhale to feel the effects. She was sure feeling the effects now.

I rushed down to the table and immediately confiscated the cakes. It was too late. About ten of our punters had already partaken. I called the group together and told them what was up. I said that if they had eaten any of these cakes, the best thing to do would be to stick their fingers down their throats immediately. As I was saying this, a big guy who must have weighed close to a hundred kilo’s gave me a funny look and fell over. His wife was furious, and rightly so. They were going to spend the millennium new year looking after their friends and loved ones.

Eddie was relaxing by the fire having a beer. I was absolutely furious with him, but I couldn’t dress him down in front of the punters. I couldn’t dress him down anyway – he just didn’t give a sh*t. He had also brought his hooker-girlfriend on the trip, something which was strictly forbidden. She was a most unlikable person, and she was presently busy bullying all the hired help. I told her to shut the feck up and keep out of our way. She went to Eddie and complained, and he confronted me, calling me a racist. I asked him what I had to do to prove I wasn’t a racist. Start sleeping with black hookers? Corey stepped in and calmed things down, but it wasn’t the start to the evening we had been hoping for.

We watched the sun set over The Nile, as we ate and enjoyed the show put on by the local musicians and dancers. Most of the guests had recovered from the effects of the cake, and I dropped some acid and partied away the night. The next day we all crawled out of the tents and tried to face the next thousand years. It was then that I realized that Scott and Susan hadn’t turned up. They had dropped off the supplies and then gone off to make a quick run to get some extra beer. We were worried but there was nothing we could do. We rafted down through the second days rapids until we came to the take-out. Scott wasn’t there either. We got back to Kampala were we found Susan and Scott safe. They told us what had happened.

They had had to hire a taxi, as the adrift car was being used for other purposes. Driving through a small town, a man had suddenly stepped directly into their passing car. Scott knew the score. You kill somebody with a car, even if they have decided to end their own life by throwing themselves under your wheels, you better get the hell out of there. The taxi driver went to put his foot down. Scott stopped him, jumped out of the car and dragged the badly injured man into their taxi. When a mob forms in Africa it happens fast. Everyone joins a mob. A top Ugandan judge was once found to have been in a mob that hacked a supposed thief to death in the center of Kampala outside the main post office.

The crowd surged around them. Scott was outside the car arguing. This was the only car in the village. If they wanted the man to be taken to hospital, they would have to let them go. A terrified Susan and the taxi driver stayed locked inside the vehicle, while the injured man bled over the rear seats. Scott said that it was a very close thing. Finally, after about twenty minutes of heated argument, they were let go. They drove straight to the hospital in Kampala where they left the man. By that time it was too late to come back out, and they weren’t in the mood for it anyway. Eddie wasn’t speaking to me anymore. It wasn’t a great start to the new year.

Did you, or have you ever considered carrying a gun in case you are somehow the victim of an angry mob? I mean, if they are not the party directly wronged, do they still want to risk their lives to get somebody?