People You Meet

You meet a lot of characters on the road while in Africa. Here's some stories from a few of the folks I've encountered:

Ben

Ben is a 38 year old Kenyan with at least three kids. He's been driving or guiding tours in Africa for at least 10 years, and has shared some of his stories from driving across Kenya during the civil unrest from last year's elections. He was in Uganda when trouble started, and decided immediately that traveling through Kenya was probably not a good idea. He was a little unclear on what finally spurred him on to enter Kenya, but I think the people on his tour were unable or unwilling to wait, so off they left Uganda and crossed into Kenya.

Once over the border, they quickly decided it was necessary to hire a police escort. And so, for a few hundred US dollars, the tour truck had two police vehicles escort them from town to town, usually demanding more money at each town, telling them this was as far as they'd be willing to go. During the election unrest, Ben said there was rioting outside the major cities, and so even with a police escort their tour bus still had people throwing things at the truck, climbing up on the doors and windows and causing as much havoc as they could. Ben described his driving as a mixture of dodging rioters in the streets, tossing coins out the window to distract people climbing on the bus, and swatting others from the door as he drove.

Ben, not known for his patience or understanding at even the best of times, described his state of mind as being a extremely stressed and perhaps a little neurotic. One of the passengers even had the nerve (or perhaps stupidity) to even poke their head into the driver's cab at one point asking Ben when they would be stopping for lunch. Ben said it was the last tour he worked for that company, mentioned a few tourist profiles that he would no longer work as a guide for.

Blessed

Blessed is one outlandish character. He was probably the handsomest looking dude I met in Africa, was rather indifferent to meeting new people and had a strong stubborn streak. He was certainly friendly, but he never took even the slightest bit of bull-shit from anyone, including - or perhaps especially - police officers. I asked him about driving in Africa and if police or robbers ever gave him grief, and he said cops were the only ones who ever gave him trouble.

"Police always want to give you shit for anything," he said. "No seatbelt, no shoes on, not enough emergency flares. Who the fuck in Africa ever even uses emergency flares?" I asked him what he does whenever the cops give him a hard time for something or if he ever got into trouble.

"Are you kidding? I tell the cops they can just fuck off. And if they don't, then I just drive the fuck away."

Blessed comes from Zimbabwe, which meant things were always a little more interesting and challenging for him. In South Africa he picked up a month's worth of food to smuggle into Zimbabwe for his family. I asked him if he ever faced violence while at home, and he told me more than once he had to go houseboating for a week or two.

"Some guys just wanted to beat us up (Blessed and some friends), so we went out on the lake for a while. It was cool, we drank beers, went fishing. That kind of stuff just happens."

Right now, our tour is camped on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. It's an incredibly safe campground, where wildly aggressive monkeys are the only cause for concern, but outside the campgrounds, it's a different story, with tourists told not to walk into town after a traveler on a recent trip was mugged not far from the front gate. The Zambezi river divides Zambia from Zimbabwe, and is a great spot for white water rafting, which some of the people on our tour did. The rapids were a highlight I'm sure, but it was the Zimbabweans smuggling food across the river that got the most attention. Apparently it's not uncommon at all for people to do this, nor is it uncommon for them to be killed in the process. The rafters stopped their trip and transported the two food smugglers across the river before continuing on their trip.

Dion

Where to begin with Dion. Two nights was enough to know this guy had more loose screws than a Home Hardware store. At 18 he was bitten by a puff adder snake, losing three fingers from his left hand. At 19, as a white South African, he had to make the choice between joining the army or the police, and so he became a police sniper, shooting members of the ANC (now the current ruling party in SA). After Apartheid ended, he spent a year on drugs, dealing with insomnia and an array of emotional issues (at least, that's what I interpreted his stories and musing to mean), followed by at least a year or two in therapy. When I met him, he was running a campground next to Kruger National Park. Obviously the snake bite did little to scare him off of animals, as he regularly made his way into the park to "interact" with the animals. His stomach had a large puncture wound from a recent lion attack, which came about while Dion was picking tics off the lion's face. While picking tics (perhaps the same time or perhaps on a different tic-picking episode; Dion was rather unclear), Dion also decided to take some photos. He showed me some fantastic close-up photos of a lion, a sequence which follows his hand reaching onto the lion's face, picking a tic, and the lion reacting by rolling forward, biting at Dion. Dion then produced the now-mangled camera lens, and displayed some of the strangest "inside a lion's mouth" photos I've ever seen.

Oh, and then there was the time he let a lion out of the park. Dion, leaving the park after another personal adventure, left the gate open too long and a lion trotted out. So, Dion used himself as bait, teasing the lion until it chased him back into the park.

Dion's plan was to run and leap onto a nearby tree branch, not remembering that lion's are much better at leaping onto trees than humans are. And so, Dion jumped into the tree, followed by the lion, but rather than being pounced on by the lion, Dion hits the branch and falls awkwardly and the lion went clear over top of him. Still not out of the woods, Dion's dog finally saves him, barking from the truck and distracting the big cat long enough for Dion to scurry around to the far side of his vehicle.

There were more stories about Dion, some rather sadistic and all very bizarre. All of them seem too outlandish to be true, but they were all verified by others who knew Dion and were around to see the outcome and evidence from these stories themselves.

The Anti-Poacher

Most big parks in Africa employ anti-poaching agents, guys with big guns who scare off (or shoot) poachers in the park. This one poor fellow I guess was getting a little bored with his job. He'd been in the park for a while, and never got around to moving his camp - a big no-no since the predators get used to you if you stay to long in one spot. One night he gets drunk and passes out - with his head outside the tent. And so, that night turned out to be his last, since it was also the night when a lion felt comfortable enough to come up and take a swat at his head, killing him. It then dragged him out of the tent and ate him. Poor lion too - the policy is to kill any animal that eats humans to prevent them from getting comfortable with the idea that humans are a good way to get dinner.

Dion's Landlord

Birds of a feather right? So Dion is a little nuts (to be fair, his wife does keep him grounded when she's around), so it seems natural that he'd end up in business with other crazies. He was having some troubles with his landlord and negotiating a new lease on his campground property while we were at his place, and he told us about it. It seems his landlord was getting out of jail soon and thought maybe he could do something more with the land. And what was the landlord in jail for? Seems there was a murder some years back, and while the landlord didn't have anything to do with the actual killing, owning land next to Kruger Park put him in a nice position to help dispose of the body, which he fed it to the lions.


So yeah, that's some of the folks I've met while in Africa. I think it's pretty hard to spend much time there and not have a good (or scary) story or two, and even just being a tourist here means ending up with a few horrific stories of your own. Just wait till I write about Shannon's worm story next entry.