Changing your life

So Glad wrote:

Probably.......made up?

A number of participants in this forum seem to fall into that slightly tricky age-group just after leaving school. Where you want to make changes but aren’t sure how. Where you want to make changes but don’t know what to change. I thought that maybe a few of us slightly older posters could share our own experiences with the younger set. Maybe they can learn from our mistakes, or see how easy it can be to effect change. It can be difficult when you aren’t sure and you receive conflicting advice as well as pressure to conform to the social norms. So here is how I changed my life.

I grew up in Perth, Western Australia. I breezed through school without doing any work and dropped out of college early on as I couldn’t see the point of getting a degree just for the sake of having a degree. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I figured that I would do a degree when I was 100% interested and committed to it. I still don’t know what to do by the way.

I worked in bars and clubs, played in bands, acted and a bunch of other stuff. But I wasn't really doing anything that I found worthwhile. And I hadn't experienced anything new or different. Along the way I found a very cool inner-city pad and I started decking it out. I was 22. At one point I ordered a $2500 couch. Now this is 14 years ago. That was an expensive couch. I didn’t really have the money to pay for it but I wanted to get something that would last. At one point I remember being in my apartment and suddenly thinking, ‘what the feck am I doing? I’m ordering a $2500 couch? I’m 22. Why do I want to set myself up here to trap myself? I haven’t even seen another city in my life.’

A bit of a panic attack. Two days later I got a phone call from the couch store. The fabric that I ordered wasn’t available. What did I want to do? I told them to cancel the order. I took it as a sign from the universe. ‘You want to back out kid? OK. Here’s your chance. Now what are you going to do?’

I had a girlfriend. We had been together for a few months. She was older than me and incredibly hot. Way above my station. She decided to move to Sydney to pursue a modeling career. She left. I decided to follow her. I figured that if you’re going to make a change, do it big time. I gave notice on my job and immediately told my parents. No point in hiding it. Things would be challenging enough without that complication thrown in. They were supportive. Do what you have to do, is what they told me. My friends all thought that I was mad. Before I left I had a weird phone conversation with my girlfriend that did not bode well for the future. Whereas before she had been ecstatic that I was coming, now she seemed remote.

I loaded up my motorbike and drove away. At the top of the hills surrounding Perth I stopped and looked back. It was a bit daunting. Behind me was everything I knew. It took my 12 days to reach Sydney. I took the scenic route. On the way I met a French-Canadian dude called Yve who was traveling around on a bike as well. We hooked up and rode together. Adam and Yve traveling around Australia. At night we found a place to pitch our tents and then we drank wine and smoked joints and spoke about life in general. The closer I was getting to Sydney the further I was drifting apart from my girlfriend. The last few days I was an emotional basketcase. I knew when I turned up that things would not be good. But I had to keep going.

I got to Sydney and eventually found my girlfriends house. I had just ridden all the way across Australia and her greeting was a tad on the cold side. She didn’t have the guts to tell me that it was over or that she had found someone else. She just let me share her bed and gave me the cold shoulder. I was young and stupid but I still had a sense of pride. The third morning she left for work. I packed up all my kit and left without leaving a note or saying goodbye. I was alone in the city. I knew nobody. I had under a grand in my pocket. I had nowhere to stay.

So what do you do in this situation? The simple stuff. You find a place to live. You find a job. You make some friends. Ultimately change is about taking the steps. You always have two decisions available to you. Yes and no. Shall I do this? Yes or no. The girl was the catalyst that got me out of my comfort zone. Since then I’ve never looked back. It wasn’t easy. It was tough. But you try not to worry and keep your attention focused on what is in front of you. The decisions that need a yes or a no.


I suppose that finding a place to live, getting a job and making friends aren’t really that simple. But they are the basic stuff that you need to do. I got myself a room in a dive of a hostel in Kings Cross, which is the red-light bar district of Sydney. Doing it in style. Finding a room was my first concern. Sydney is huge and I wanted to experience the inner-city life, so I narrowed my area down to the Eastern Suburbs. After a lot of calling I made an appointment with this dude who had his own apartment in Potts Point. Potts Point is right on the harbor. Beautiful location. It was a gothic-style apartment block out of the late twenties. The lift had a sliding door and a sliding cage with purple carpet on the walls. It was rad.

I had the interview with him and his girlfriend. I really wanted that place. Apparently about 50 other people wanted the room as well. Whenever I need something I act in my life like I already have it. Strangely enough this usually results in me getting what I need. I immediately went out to the flashiest department store in town and bought an expensive purple towel for my hoped-to-be room. Four days later I called him up. The room was mine. An empty room. With no bed. So I bought a bed, and some sheets and a blanket and pillow and paid the first two months rent and I had about $50 left in my pocket. But I had a place to stay. One step at a time. I also had two new friends – Jeremy and his girlfriend Kate.

I went out and walked from bar to bar until I had a job. It took me about three hours. I started that night. So I had the basics sorted out. Pity that I was emotionally crushed. But I had a new city to explore. I did a lot of walking. I love walking in new cities. Especially if they are pedestrian friendly as Sydney is. I wanted to make some more friends so I signed up to a little writing course. The course was crap, I ended up arguing with the teacher who was just absolutely crap. But I made a new friend. She was in her late forties and was also from Perth. She had also recently made the move across. She was reinventing herself after her kids moved out of home and she ditched her husband. She got me another job as well.

It was a job as a telemarketer for a new-age help guru who ran seminars on mind power and meditation. It was only for ten days and I absolutely hated it. But I resolved myself to do my best and I ended up selling something like 40 courses at $350 a pop over the phone. The guru dude offered me a full time job. I took it with one eye open for something better. The Friday after I started full time the flightly girl who took care of the desktop publishing quit in a huff. I found my boss in a bit of a panic and he explained the problem to me. I immediately told him that I knew heaps about desktop publishing and that I could do the job. Anything to get off those horrible phones. He was ecstatic. I got the job. I had until Monday to learn everything I could about desktop publishing on an Apple Powermac circa 1994.

Just about every job I’ve ever got I’ve lied in some way to get. Tell them what they want to hear. Figure it out as you go along. If you don’t know something, ask. If they quiz you on why you don’t know say that in the other job it was slightly different, blah blah blah. I read the manual back to front over the weekend and on Monday I waltzed in and hoped to hell that I could pull it off. There were some tight moments but I got the job done. I also had some new friends in the small office. We went out for drinks after work. I hoped I wouldn’t bump into my ex.
I play the guitar pretty well and I wanted to meet some muso’s, so I signed up for some advanced jazz guitar lessons at a little guitar shop. The teacher was good, I learnt some new stuff and I met a few cool musicians and we got a little jazz-funk band going. At the same time my boss asked me to help him on his tours. I became his personal assistant. We did weekends in Sydney, then one up in Newcastle. Then we did a week in Brisbane. Flying up, staying in a 5 star hotel, getting paid for it. It was all good. Then we did a two week trip to Cairns. Way up in the tropics. I fell in love with the town. I remember sitting at an outside cafè on the esplanade. I was drinking a coffee. A guy sat down and started talking to me. Just like that. Then a girl. Then another girl. Nobody knew each other. It was just so laid back and natural. I knew that this would have to be my next stop. We went back to Sydney and a few months later we did another trip to Cairns. That sealed it for me. We got back to Sydney and I put in my resignation. My boss wasn’t surprised. He said, “I knew I’d lose you sooner or later.” He gave me a bonus. I packed up my bike, gave away my bed and other stuff I’d collected and set off on the 4500km trip up to Cairns.

I replaced the chain on the bike before I left but not the chain ring. Very silly thing to do. In the middle of fecking nowhere the chain tore itself to pieces. And ripped the chain ring to shreds into the bargain. I hitched 800km back to Sydney. The bike was a write-off as I crashed it when the chain tore up. I was OK. Just a little shaken. A very good mate from Perth called me up two days after I got back to Sydney. He was in town. He had driven across to surprise me. Decided to do what I had done. I told him what had happened and that I was set on going to Cairns. That was cool with him, he’d come to Cairns too. So off we went in his little Suzuki Vitara.

When we got into Cairns around a week later we weren’t talking. Something about him not letting me choose any music on the stereo for the whole trip. He wanted to stay in a campsite out of town which meant that I would have been dependant on him for getting around. I told him to drop me off in the town and catcha later dude. I needed some time by myself. So here we go again. Checked into a nice little boarding house right on the beach. And proceeded to do it all over again. House, job and friends.

It was important to me at this stage not to take any backwards steps. So I was determined that I wouldn’t get a job in a bar. There was a large yoga school in town and I went there the next day to talk to the owner. I wanted to see if he would be interested in me running a meditation course. He was cool with the idea. On the way out I saw a notice board. There was a flyer there with details about some share house accommodation. I took the number and gave it a call. A guy with a Canadian accent told me to come down. It was a very large queenslander-style house. These are built specifically for the tropics. A square wooden box on stilts to let the floods come and go underneath. This one was old, ramshackle, falling to bits and absolutely beautiful. It had a little corner covered balcony at the back which was the hang out area. There were six bedrooms. Downstairs was the local offices for The Wilderness Society, which is the Aussie version of Greenpeace.

I moved in the next day. It was a strange place. There was a fruitarian living there. Fruitarians only eat fruit. He had his own fridge which was full of foul smelling fruit. He was also very thin. And a tad neurotic. He was a high school teacher as well. Takes all sorts. There was a pudgy girl who was the over-volenteering kind. And there was a Kiwi rafting guide called Josh. I’d spent most of my teenage years doing whitewater kayaking. How much different could it be? The meditation idea went out the window, I was going to become a rafting guide. I did my usual trick – I walked into the office and lied. The next day I was going down to the Tully river on a commercial trip to ‘check out the river’. To say I was in over my head is a severe understatement. There is a vast difference between kayaking for pleasure and taking customers down a dangerous river in a 14 foot long rubber raft. Night and day. Three things saved me. At the time there was a training course going on and I immediately told the office that I thought the river was a little above my abilities, so would it be ok if I tagged onto the training course? That was fine. The second thing that saved me was my willingness to admit when I didn’t know something. There’s nothing worse than maintaining that you know something when it’s obvious that you don’t. It’s an insult to the intelligence of those who know what they are doing. I’ve actually fired a would-be guide for this. I gave him a chance and told him that I knew he was winging it and that was fine but he had to come clean and admit that he had a lot to learn. He tried to maintain the charade and I told him to take a hike.

The last thing that saved me was my guitar playing. I am killer on the guitar. One night there was a party and the guides had got an impromptu band together. There were about 100 people there. I got up at one point and let rip and they wouldn’t let me stop. I later heard that the general consensus was, ‘Adam sucks balls as a rafter but man can he play a mean guitar. Got to keep him here.’

It took me 8 weeks to get commercial. I did my shotgun three times. A shotgun is a driving test in the boat. One mistake and you’re toast. The last attempt I got passed reluctantly by the head guide. ‘Don’t let me down,’ he told me. Four years later when I left for Africa he told me that I had done a good job but it had been a big risk on his part to pass me. Sometimes someone has to take a chance on you. Because it’s the tropics rafting is a year-round concern. There are 50 guides who work for the company. Cairns is backpacker heaven. If you can’t get laid in Cairns just give up. As rafting guides we had our pick of the town. It was a nice period. My mate that I had driven up with moved into the house with me. His name was Mark. He got a job in the new casino that had just opened in town and ended up running the hotel section. I formed an acid jazz-funk band called Purple Ghetto. We started out with me and a double base. Ended up being eight musicians. We were the musicians musicians band. We played very late so the other muso’s around town could stop and listen.

In this period of my life I made the best group of friends that I have ever had. There were about seven of us and we were a completely eclectic mix. There was the dude who ran the Cairns art gallery, Mark, myself, the hippy Canadian called John, Greg, an older dude who ran the local unemployment office, Steve, another musician and Uncle Mick who was a crazy rafting guide. We started organizing huge parties at our house. Mark would make up cool posters and put them up in all the hotel staff rooms. For two weeks before the parties all the guides from all three companies in town had to invite any hot girl that came onto his raft. Only girls. The biggest one we had about 300 people turned up. The girl-guy ratio was about 4-1. My band played, we had DJ’s, smoke machines, laser lights, fire twirlers, you name it. One party I got talking to this English couple, slightly older than us. I asked them how they had heard about the party. They had finished eating in a restaurant in town and they asked a cabbie to take them to a club that was happening. He told them that everyone in town was going to this party at a house up the road and took them to our place. I looked out the front of the house and there was a line of about 10 taxi’s parked out the front. That’s a sign of a good party.

About a year after moving to Cairns I met a way cool Canadian girl and fell in love. She stopped her round Australia trip in Cairns and moved in with me. It was a great time. Then after about five months she found out that her grandmother was dying. Back to Vancouver she went. Rafting is big in BC. I figured that I’d give it a shot, at least for a summer. I organized a visa and a job and in April 1997 I left Cairns for Vancouver.


Next installment. If this is starting to get boring someone please tell me so that I won't make a dick of myself.

I landed in Vancouver after my first international flight. I had seen so many of my friends off at airports in the past, now finally it was my turn. My girlfriend Elsa met me at the airport. We had about four or five days together in Van before I had to head up to the rafting base. On the second day I got a phone call at Elsa’s house. It was from another rafting company owner up in Clearwater. He had called Australia to get my number and then called me in Van. He was extremely keen for me to work for him. I had had to choose between his company and another smaller outfit and I had gone for the other one. The reason being that another guide from Cairns was going to be working there. I wanted some familiarity around me. Although I had heard some faint whisperings of the company that I was going to work for having a slightly bad reputation on how they treated their guides. But I had shrugged it off. I had also signed up to an Advanced Wilderness for Leaders first aid course with the company as well as a Rescue 3 course, all of which were requirements for me to get my BC trip leader cert. I felt committed.

I headed up there and over the next two months proceeded to do the courses and check the rivers out. The rivers were balling. There was so much spring run off that we could only run The Coquihalla, a normally simple class III run. This is the river where they shot Rambo. It was a screaming express ride. Monsters holes with monster flips. When the water started to drop a little we were able to run The Nahatlatch. We also ran huge motor powered J-rigs on the Fraser which was running at over 600,000cfs. And oh my god was it cold. I was used to rafting in the tropics in shorts. Guides here were wearing dry-suits. I had purchased some gear in Van but it wasn’t enough. I was freezing my butt off.

The company was a small family owned affair. I had been hired as the 2nd guide. Your priority in the guide list seriously effects your earning potential. Just after I arrived another local company went bust and suddenly there were a bunch of experienced guides available. The owner hired two of them and I was bumped down to 4th on the list. I got shafted and I wasn’t impressed. I was also getting sick of being treated like a [censored] by the owner. The rumors had been not only true but downplayed. We did a trip and an Aussie guide that lived in the area came in to help out. He was much older than me. We got talking on the way back and he told me that he got his money upfront before doing the trip. I told him my situation and asked him what I should do. He told me to wait until I was really needed and then demand that I be reinstated as 2nd guide.

A week later the boss and two other guides were to set out on a 10 day trip from the mouth of the Fraser River. I was definitely required to hold the fort while they were gone. I confronted the owner. We went back and forth for hours. It was the night before they were to leave. We all lived in the same area as their family – they had the house, we had the big shed. So it was a very close affair. The kids were all crying, the wife was hysterical. I was determined to hold my ground. It was the first time in my life that I stood up to a boss in a clearly defined way. We got nowhere. After hours of back and forth I told him that I was leaving the next morning. I got paid out and jumped a bus to Vancouver. I had no job, and not much money but at least I had a place to stay.

When I got to Van my girlfriend was supportive. Two days after I got there she broke down and confessed that she had slept with another guy while I had been back in Australia. The whole trip was going pear shaped. I called a mate I knew and told him to find me a job guiding. I’d work for anyone. He had a contact out on Vancouver Island. It was a sea kayaking company that ran 2-5 day trips in the islands off Nanaimo. I headed out there with my kit. The owner met me at the ferry. He told me that the punters for the next days trip were in a little campground. Was it OK if I camped out with them for the night? I said sure. He looked at me. He was in his late forties, a big bear of a guy with a soft attitude. He reached into his pocket and took out $50. ‘Take that,’ he said. ‘There’s a shop up the road that do good burgers. Tell them I sent you.’

There was a week of work but then his regular guides got back and there wasn’t anymore for me. I made a contact in the same area with another small sea kayaking company that desperately needed a guide. They took me on for the summer. It was the sweetest job that I’ve ever had. We were backed up by motorboat, so in the morning of a trip we would get up, I’d cook, and then we’d leave. The support crew would come in and take down the tents then take them on to the next island where we were stopping for the night. When we arrived there would be a cooler with cold beer ready and all the tents set up. The scenery was breath-taking. I can’t do justice to the place. It is extraordinary. If you ever get the chance to go there, go. At one point Elsa came out to see me. She was desperately sorry. I was enjoying my work so much that I didn’t really want to have conflict in my life. We made up.

Around the end of August the work started to dry up. I was spending more money than I was earning. One morning I woke up in Vancouver and just decided to head home. I’d had enough. Elsa was distraught. I called the airline company and scheduled my flight for the following day. My Canadian adventure was at an end. There was a stopover in Tokyo. I extended it to two weeks and caught up with some friends who were rafting in Japan. I blew all my remaining money partying it on in Japan. I stayed faithful to my girlfriend, although I had a hard time trying to work out why. I just figured that there was no point in doing the same thing myself. I felt that would be a fast track to relationship destruction. I arrived back in Cairns with no money at all. My credit card got eaten by a teller machine they day after I got back. They must have had a major red flag on me. I dropped by my old house. There was a room available. They’d kept it for me. I got my old job back and started the next day.

I flew my girlfriend out for Christmas. She arrived at the airport and when I went to kiss her she turned her head away. WTF?? We drove home and she admitted that she was seeing someone else. Like you couldn’t have told me over the phone and saved me paying for your ticket out?? She left after a couple of weeks and I never heard from her again. I got a letter from Uncle Mick. He was rafting in Uganda of all places. Apparently the river was insane. He sent us a video. The river was insane. The White Nile. 5 meter standing waves. 6 meter holes that just ate boats and spat them out in pieces. I was determined to go. At the end of 1998 Mick told me that I had a job. I had to be there by the end of February. I didn’t have enough time to get the money together. I decided to sell my vintage Gibson Les Paul. I figured that I could always buy another Les Paul, I would never have another chance at an experience like this. A little under two weeks before I was due to leave, 9 tourists were hacked to pieces in the Bwindi National Park in Uganda. What the hell was I getting myself in for?


My friends saw me off at the Cairns airport. They were the best group of friends that I’ve ever had and it was hard to leave. I’d spent almost four years in Cairns and it had been a wonderful time. Some of those guys I’ve never seen again, although we stay in touch. One of them died of cancer. It’s the price you pay for moving around. It makes reunions tricky and expensive. I flew into Perth to stay with my family for a few days. Almost everyone thought I was mad to go. My father was very supportive. Also a good friend of my father. He is one of the top lawyers in Perth and he took me aside and told me that this trip would make or break me, but he thought it was a wonderful test.

I flew out of Perth on the midnight flight to Johannesburg. I landed at about 8 in the morning. We flew over Africa and it was simply surreal. This is Africa. And I was staying. Really staying. I hadn’t let my family in on a little secret. I only had a one way ticket. I couldn’t afford a return. At the airport I kept saying to myself, ‘Wow, I’m in Africa. This is what a third world country looks like.’ Boy was I in for a rude shock. A few hours later I got my connecting flight to Nairobi. We landed in the early afternoon. If I thought South Africa was third world then what the hell was Nairobi? The airport looked like it had been built and designed to be a car-park and then they had changed their mind at the last minute. I had an 8 hour wait for my connection to Entebbe. The waiting room was daunting. It was filled with all types of Africans. There were the really black ones from the Congo zones. Arabic ones in flowing robes and scarves. Businessmen from Nairobi in cheap suits. They were all watching American basketball. I was the only white guy there. They ignored me and I did my best to ignore them. The room was very hot. There was a little counter where a scowling woman sold bottles of warm coke. Now I was really in Africa. The flight to Entebbe lasted about an hour. We flew in at dusk. There was a burnt out 747 sitting on the tarmac, the same plane that had been stormed by Israeli commandos in 1978. Whoa. The plane taxied to a halt and we walked across the tarmac to the airport buildings. They were absolutely riddled with bullet holes. They were just shot to pieces. Okay, now I was in Africa.

I had my laptop with me and I was made to fire it up to prove it was mine. I did as I was asked and then a whole bunch of airport staff came over and wanted to see it. It took me almost half an hour to get away. I made it through customs and walked out to the taxi stand. It was evening now. The air was warm. A Ugandan dude came up to me with a sheepish look and handed me a note. This must be my ride into Kampala. The note said;

“Run Adam, run. It’s all gone to shiit. Get out while you still can.”

There was what appeared to be dried blood on the note. I didn’t even consider for a moment that this was real. Where was I supposed to run to? The Congo? I asked the little dude if he was a taxi driver. He was. I loaded my bags in the back of his taxi and we were all set to go when just at that moment Uncle Mick and Colin came out from behind a pillar with grins on their faces. Yeah guys, really funny. The first thing that Mick said was, “Where’s your fecking guitar?”
“I sold it to get here.”
“You sold it!? We only got you the job cause of how you play the guitar!”
We unloaded my bags from the now unhappy looking taxi drivers car and piled into the company car. It takes an hour to drive into Kampala from Entebbe. The first thing that struck me was the number of people. Between the airport and the city it’s basically scrubland and jungle, but there were people everywhere. Every 50 or so meters there was a fire on the side of the road with people standing around it. I couldn’t get my head around the situation. We were following an open-backed truck which had about 20 revelers in the back. They were drinking and shouting and carrying on and we couldn’t get past them. The state of the road was disrepair taken to lavish extremes. Suddenly the tailgate of the truck dropped open and a large box flew out of the truck. We had to swerve to avoid it. It cracked open and a body rolled out. It was a coffin. They were going to a funeral. We were stopped behind the truck as we watched the ‘revelers’ jump out to retrieve the body. They were all laughing and passing around bottles of beer. Smoke from the roadside fires drifted across the scene. Mick turned to me and with a deadpan stare said,

“Welcome to Africa.”

They drove me straight to Al’s Bar. Run by an Englishman who came to Uganda in the late seventies, he was said to have fled a murder rap in London. His bar consisted of three levels. On level one there was a bar, a stage and a lot of hookers. On level two there was a bar, a pool table and even more hookers. Level three was a backroom where you could smoke pot. There weren’t any hookers there. It was the hooker-free zone. The place was heaving. Every single girl in the place was drop-dead gorgeous. There were girls from every part of Africa. We entered and I was immediately introduced as the new Adrift guide. The girls were all over me. I was mobbed. I called out to Mick and Colin for help. Mick called out, “You have to pick one! If you pick one the rest of them will leave you alone!”

There was one who was absolutely stunning. I made to indicate her and Mick stopped me. “No, she’s got the slimming disease.”
“The slimming disease?”
“Yeah. Pick another one.”
I was close to getting my clothes torn off me. I pointed at another stunner. Mick shook his head. “Not such a good idea.”
“For fecks sake,” I said. “You pick one for me then!”
Immediately there was a chorus of, “Me Micky! Pick me, Micky! You love me Micky!” There must have been close to fifty girls there. Mick picked one for me. The rest slunk off to their preferred positions around the room. “What’s your name?” I asked the girl. She started to tell me when Colin interrupted. “Dude, you’re not supposed to talk to her. Here have a beer. She’s just to keep on your arm. She’s your body armor”
I proceeded to get very drunk. At one point I went to the ‘bathroom’. There was a bunch of Ugandans in there up against the urinals. Oh great. They better not make fun of my pee-pee. I walked over and unzipped. They made room. One of them said, “How are you, Mazungu?”
“Sorry bro, my name’s not Mazungu.”
They all laughed. “Ha ha, the mazungu says he is not a mazungu!”
A white guy who had just came in looked at me and said, “Mazungu is Ugandan for white man. You’re a mazungu.”
“Is it a nice word?” I asked.
The guy thought for a moment and then said, “You know, I’ve got no bloody idea.”

When I came back out, Colin and Mick were nowhere to be found. The truth soon became clear. They had fecked off and abandoned me for a joke. My girl was still on my arm. She was like superglue. Her name was Betty. She was from Somalia. She was very, very hot. She said, “Your friends, they leave in taxi car. They laughing very much.”
“Do you know where they live?” I asked. I was having trouble standing up.
“They live in Adrifty house.”
“Lets go,” I said. “Find me a taxi that knows the Adrift house.”
“Ok, mazungu.”

The Adrift guides house in Kampala was at the back end of Gabba Road on the Western side of the city. Our house was an old two story colonial mansion right on Lake Victoria. The top story had a large covered balcony that ran the length of the building overlooking the lake. You could see hippos and crocs from there. Upstairs was the office and four or five bedrooms with ensuites. Downstairs was a large living room which we never used and the kitchen dining room. There was a large garden and grounds. There were four Ugandan staff – the housekeeper, the cook, the garden boy and the guard who stood by the large blue metal gate. He had let me in last night and told the hooker to take a hike. There were two large dogs and a pet marabou stork, which has to be the ugliest bird in existence. The birds name was Barbara, so named due to its large beak resembling Barbara Strisends nose.

I didn’t do any housework, cooking or washing of clothes for the next 18 months. Bliss. Apart from Colin and Mick there was Piley, an Australian rafting guide. Brums, another aussie guide and Dave who was the Kiwi video dude. Apart from Piley I knew them all from Cairns. We headed straight out to the river for my first trip. We left the house at 7.30 and made two stops – the Kampala backpackers and the Kampala Sheraton for the punters. Then it was about an hours drive to the river. We reached the big dam wall and drove across it. There were two huge jets of water shooting out. “Two gates,” Mick told the bus. “That means it’s going to be a big day.” Apparently the maximum water level was 3 gates. Two gates was about 3500 cubic meters of water a second. The river was about 200 meters wide at its starting point. The Nile, the longest and most historical river in the world. Awesome stuff.

We drove a couple of kilometers downstream until we got to Bujagali Falls. This was a large rapid which was out departure point. It is also the place where they threw half of Gandhi’s ashes. When we arrived the truck with the gear was already there. Some locals were busy pumping up the boats. They then carried the boats down to the water. Bliss. I was introduced to Juma, Charles and Tutu who local boys that the company had trained up to be safety kayakers. Juma was also a guide. There were big smiles all round when they met me. I was going down with Mick. He had a reputation for big hits, big flips, big surfs and big downtime. Downtime is the length of time that the river holds you underwater if you fall out. Sometimes you pop straight up. Sometimes you come up after ten seconds. Mick’s record was 55 seconds. It was a sobering thought.

He briefed his crew while I sat beside him. I was nervous. Just writing about it now I have the same feeling I did then. The punters seemed fine. Ignorance is bliss. We were floating in a small pool as the river roared by. The rivers in Canada had nothing on this. There were three boats on the trip, Mick, Colin and Brums. We peeled out of the pool and were immediately in the class IV lead-up to Bujagali. There is a bar there by the falls. A lot of people were watching. We hugged the river-right and then dropped down into an enormous hole. A big hit and just like that we had lost half of the boat. We scrambled to get them in as the kayakers peeled off to get the paddles. The Nile is a drop-pool river so after every rapid you have time to get the punters back in. In fact, on the 20 kilometer trip there are only 12 rapids. But they are big. We ran through Easy Rider, a nice wave train and then we stopped behind a large rock for our first class V rapid, Total Gunga. Class V is the highest commercial grade you can run. I looked downstream and honestly all I saw was a mess of heaving whitewater about 400 meters wide and 500 meters long. Mick stood up and explained the line to me.

“River-right is class III, only pussies go there. River-left is class VI, if you go there you’ve got a good chance of dying. We want to run just to the right of the class VI bit. There’s a big monster hole there. If we can get the boat into that point we’ve got a good chance of flipping or surfing. It’s hard to hit it though. You’ve got 200 meters of conflicting currents at the top. After the hole is another 300 meters of big waves and holes, then the long pool at the bottom.”

Dave had kayaked to a tiny little rock in the middle of the rapid. He got out and got his video ready. We got the signal to go and Mick peeled out into the current. We were swept downstream at an incredible rate. The crew paddled forwards as we headed river-left towards that big hole. We came up over the lip and dropped into it. All I remember was seeing a huge wall of white and then, bam. One second I was there, the next I was in a world of black. I was so deep that I had to equalize. I tried to stay calm. It didn’t even feel like I was moving. At one point I hit a rock on the bottom. The water started to go green, then lighter. I could see the surface way above me. I must have been under for a good 20 seconds when I burst up. I grabbed a breath of air and then went under again. This time only for about four or five seconds. I came up the second time and I was just about in the pool. I saw some punters floating near me in shock. I swam over to them and made sure they were OK. The raft came past upside-down with Mick sitting on top, a big grin on his face.

“Welcome to The Nile, bro.”
“Man, I went so deep I hit a rock.”
“Bull. Nobodies ever hit a rock there. It’s too deep.”
“Well I fecking hit one.”

The next rapid was a huge class V called Big Brother. We flipped there as well. I was starting to feel a bit queasy. We floated downstream and stopped for lunch on a tiny island where the boys had already prepared a wonderful cold lunch. After lunch we drifted down a long pool, maybe 3 kilometers long. There were monkeys playing in the trees. The day was very hot. I slid into the luke-warm water and tried not to throw up from my dreadful hangover. At the end of the pool we pulled over to the right bank. The rapid here had a large waterfall that could be run at lower water levels but not today. It was called Overtime. It looked horrible. We walked around that, dragging the boats with us and hit another two rapids before we reached another long pool. It was now almost 2pm. At the end of this pool was the last rapid, Itunda. The main part of this huge rapid was unrunnable in rafts, though it had been kayaked a few times. We pulled over to the right bank and walked up a track followed by some more local boys carrying our rafts. Bliss. This was an evil-looking SOB. We put in two thirds of the way down and got ready to run the Bad Place. A five meter high wall of water.


We pulled into the huge current and paddled like crazy before we smashed into this hole. This time I managed to stay in the raft. The raft didn’t manage to escape the hole. We were surfing. The raft started doing violent 360’s. The inner tubes got ripped out. And then we flipped upstream into the powerful surge of water and once again I had a horrible swim. We gathered up the pieces, floated half a K downstream and pulled over on the left bank. The trip was over. The bank was very steep and the rafts had to be carried up. Some more local boys were there waiting for us. Thank God for that. We deflated the rafts in the little village and got on the bus. The cooler was packed full of beer. We drank all the way back to Kampala. The punters were a cool group. There were some nice girls as well. We took the bus straight to Al’s bar. The sun was just going down. Betty greeted me with a big smile. “Mazungu, tonight you kiss me maybe?”
I was in the mood to kiss anyone.


Kampala. What a city. A mish-mash of architectural styles – 1920’s English art deco, Indian, Arabic, 1970’s concrete bunker. Over a million people living packed in together. Huge wealth right beside abject poverty. Streets with beautifully paved, tree lined avenues. Streets with no discernable path amidst open sewerage. People, people everywhere. Complete chaos on the roads. A road built with two lanes will have four lanes of traffic in either direction. Driving became a situation of playing chicken and showing who was boss. I became very good at it. Once I came to a railway crossing and the crossing gates came down. On both sides of the crossing every car filled up a space. The gate came up and there were eight cars abreast on either side facing each other. Everybody gunned it. Amazing. Mutatu taxi’s everywhere. Toyota vans with touts leaning out the side door gathering customers. These guys were crazy. A Toyota built to hold 9 people. The most I ever counted inside was 26. That doesn’t include semi-domestic animals. Colin and I became addicted to walking around the city. Exploring it’s hidden byways and nooks. Seeing an interesting building we would just enter. If they didn’t want us in somebody would tell us to leave. It almost never happened.

Everyone on the street wanted to be your new friend. Wrap-around sunglasses were mandatory. If they couldn’t catch your eye then you could slip past. We knew every bar in town. Our favorite was perched five stories high in a tiny turret overlooking the Owino markets, the massive bus and taxi park and the soccer stadium. It had a small outside balcony. We used to sit up there drinking beer and watch the pickpockets at work on the tourists. It was like a scene out of the desert city in Star Wars. A heaving mass of humanity trying to survive from day to day. When the city became too oppressive we would retreat to the luxury of the Kampala Sheraton swimming pool, and spend the day chatting up British Airways hostesses. They flew in on a nine day stopover with a shuttle to Tanzania. If you hooked up with one of them early you had a week in the Sheraton. We had the time to do this as we weren’t working much. I was averaging 2 trips a week. The Bwindi massacre had killed off Uganda’s tourism overnight. We only got paid $50 a trip. But that was still enough to live it up in Kampala. But not nearly enough to save some money for an eventual ticket out.

I’d been there about three months when Colin came to me with a proposal. He had a contact in the Ugandan Special Forces. The plan was to go into the Congo and buy coffee directly from the Belgium coffee farmers who were still inside. They couldn’t get their goods to the markets in Nairobi due to the huge war that was in full swing in the Congo at the time. Described as the first world war of Africa, it pitted 14 African nations against each other in a mad race to rape the country of its resources. Estimates put the casualties at something like 3 million. Colin wanted to go in. We would provide the money, the Ugandans the trucks and soldiers. We could buy the coffee for $3-4 a kilo and sell it for close to 4 times that amount in Kenya. I had managed to save up about $1000 at this stage, mainly from a juicy expat poker game in the American embassy. Those marines sure were crap at poker. Nice guys though. I gave Colin $500 and told him to have fun. He looked at me strangely.
“Don’t you want to come?”
“Where?”
“Into the Congo.”
“You must be mad.”
“Dude, think of the opportunity here. We get to see a war.”
“You don’t see a war, you are in a war.”

But I was tempted. It was just two days. In and out. What the hell. We went in with two trucks. The special forces captain was this big, young, smiling Ugandan called Mututu. He loved the fact that he had two mazungu’s as buddies. He gave us each an AK47. I told him that I had no idea what to do with this thing. He told me that if we were shot at just put it up over the side of the truck and press the trigger. Right, sure, whatever you reckon. Colin had brought a crate of beer along with us. We crossed the border illegally and we were in a war. Cool. Or so I thought.

We traveled at a fast pace along dirt roads for about 6 hours. We had passed through a few villages without any problems. Until we came to this one town. It was market day. It was the dry season so the ground was like cement. They had mortared the town about half an hour before we came through. There were body parts in the trees. People screaming and dragging bodies around. The brown earth was soaked red. We didn’t even stop. Just sped through with two shocked whitey faces staring out from one of the trucks. We started drinking rather heavily.

After another 8 hours or so we pulled into the coffee farm. They knew we were coming. There was this Belgium family just going about their business of growing coffee in the middle of a huge conflict. Their property was like a little oasis of peace. If you’ve seen the movie Blood Diamond, the scene where they get taken to the Africans villa in the jungle where he looks after orphaned children, it was just like that. Husband and wife and three children. The oldest was a girl about 17 years old. This wasn’t jail bait. This was get shot bait. Colin and I kept a wide berth. We purchased 700 kilo’s of coffee and stayed the night to sleep. They organized a big meal for us all. It was a charming atmosphere. Surreal. The soldiers, apart from Mututu, ate separately outside with the help. We went to bed, studiously ignoring the darted looks from the daughter.

The next morning we rose early and bade farewell to the family. I have often wondered how they managed over the next few years of war. Mututu decided to make a detour around the town that had been shelled. It meant an extra two hours on our trip. Colin and I finished off the warm beer. At one point we heard shots close by. The soldiers tensed and the truck accelerated. That was it. Hours later we were back in Uganda. The trucks headed on to Nairobi after dropping Colin and I in Kampala. We spent the next month trying to get our share of the profits. We never saw a cent. At one point I tracked the captain down in his abode in one of the nastier parts of Kampala. He was very jovial, big smiles all round. And a big gun on the table. I realized that I was in a place where I could disappear very easily. I bade him farewell and got the hell out of there. Back to the poker game for some no limit action.

There are three types of white people in Uganda. Tourists, ex-pats who get it, and ex-pats who don’t. The ex-pats who don’t understand how to adjust stay for the most part behind their bolted gates, while making quick trips in relative luxury to the must-see locations. Tourists for the most part, are walking ATM’s. Anywhere they go they will be ripped off and extorted. But they don’t know, so they don’t mind, because they’re in Africa and “Gee, isn’t this swell?”

Then there are the ex-pats who get it. When almost everyone wants to use you for your perceived status, you have to adjust your behavior. Some find this morally difficult to do. They think they are being racist. You’re not being racist, you’re doing it to survive. The Ugandans are playing a game with you. Either step up and take it to them, or stay behind your closed doors.

An example. It was Melbourne Cup day. The Melbourne Cup is a famous Australian horse race. The Australian embassy in Nairobi was having their yearly Melbourne Cup Ball. Mick and I had been invited, due to the fact that when we’re together, unusual events take place. We decided to dress up for it. We made jackets out of baby flip-flop sandals. Sewed them all together. Green for Mick, yellow for me. The Aussie colours. They looked great. We actually made the front page of the Australian embassy times, the in-house magazine that goes to all the Aussie embassies in the world. But I digress….

Nairobi is a one hour flight, or a twelve hour drive. Mick was busy at this time setting up his own rafting company. He had split from Adrift and gone into partnership with a local Indian businessman. As he had so much to do, he only had time to fly in. I took the bus with his crazy English girlfriend, Amanda. She had lived in Uganda all her life. She was a little flighty but we got along well. The twelve hour trip is along roads that are not of the greatest quality. It is important not to sit at the back of the bus. Your head will spend most of the time hitting the roof. Halfway between the middle and the front is the best spot. We got on and headed for the border.

The border is interesting. There is a 100 meter stretch of land between Uganda and Nairobi that belongs to neither country. It is no-mans land. So legally, in that stretch of earth, there are no laws. And you’re in Africa. Kind of scary when you think about it. What’s more daunting is the fact that when the bus arrives you have to get off the bus and walk the 100 meters to Kenya while the bus trundles past empty. At the Kenyan border you go to the customs house, get your visa sorted out and get back on the bus. The 100 meter stretch is packed with people. I was traveling with a beautiful six foot English white girl with large breasts. This would have normally been a problem, if not for the fact that Amanda was not clueless. She understood how the system works.

We hightailed it off the bus. There were quite a few tourists and we didn’t want to get stuck behind them at customs and lose our bus. There were a few guys sitting there on boda-boda motorbikes. These are little bikes that have had an extra seat attached to the back. They are one of the primary means of getting around the countryside. They are also bloody dangerous. Boda means border, and this is where they originated; to run people the 100 meter stretch between the borders. We grabbed one each, I flashed them some US currency and we sped off the 100 meters. When we got to the customs house the line was quite small. We paid the boys and got in line. I ended up in front of a scowling, fat, female, Ugandan petty official. Are there any other kind? She sneered at me and demanded my documents. We were about to play the game.

My documents were all in order. It should have been a simple charge for the Kenyan visa and then bye-bye. But no. She thought she had spotted a mark. She looked me up and down and said,
“Mazungu, where is your yellow fever vaccination certificate?”

It was back in Kampala, and there was no way I was going back to get it. I didn’t even know if I needed it in this situation, in fact I seriously doubted it as you couldn’t enter the country and get a Ugandan visa in the first place without it. But I wasn’t going to try and explain myself on the route. That would be a world of pain ending in me paying a nice little bribe. All of this flashed through my brain in a nano-second as I responded instantly in an aggressive tone with,

“I don’t need my yellow fever vaccination certificate!”

She was taken back by this. She reverted to charming personality. “Oh mazungu, of course you need your certificate. You cannot leave country without that.”

I replied as soon as she had finished speaking. Do not hesitate, do not show any doubt, show 100% confidence and be a prick. If she wanted a bribe she was going to have a hard time. “Yes I can. You know I don’t need one. Here’s my visa fee. Give me the stamp. Now.”

“Eh!” This is a word in the Ugandan language. It is used to convey surprise. It translates to; “I don’t believe what this person is saying. How could this be true? I have never encountered something like this in all of my life.” When they say ‘Eh’, you’ve got them. Behind me standing in the line, was an American couple. They were looking around in wide-eyed wonder. They were talking in loud voices. They were hoping that they wouldn’t have any problems crossing the border. They were clueless. The petty official heard them. She looked at me, made up her mind and without a word stamped my passport. Why bother arguing with this guy when there are two walking bribe victims right behind him? In my year and a half in Africa I never paid a bribe. Not once.

Amanda hadn’t had any problems either. We re-boarded the bus and headed for Nairobi. Don’t go to Nairobi. It’s a very dangerous place. Kampala is wonderful, Nairobi is a nightmare. We arrived and got something to eat in a restaurant while waiting for Mick to show up. We were in the centre of the city. In less than half an hour we witnessed three muggings outside the restaurant. I hadn’t seen one in all my time in Uganda. There was a different feel in Kenya. The locals do not like whitey. In Uganda the locals think that Jesus was white, and we are white, so we must be closer to Jesus. Not here. There was a ripple of nastiness traveling just below the surface. Mick arrived and we high-tailed it to the hotel where the ball was being held.

That evening was the semi-final in the rugby world cup between Australia and South Africa. Mick and I wanted to get a beer before the ball so we wandered into the downstairs bar. It was packed with Aussies watching the game and we were wearing our green and yellow flip-flop jackets. The place went wild when they saw us. We got mobbed, everyone buying us a beer. There were some very hot girls there. We decided to stay. Feck the stupid ball. Half an hour later one of the ball organizers came in. He was looking for us. He begged us to come up. In the end we had to go. Amanda would have been very pissed if we had abandoned her up there. The ball was full of ex-pat Aussies and Kiwi’s. Embassy-types, Kenyan cowboys, businessmen, etc. It wasn’t our crowd. They were all wearing ball wear stuff. Tuxedo’s. We were wearing flip-flops. But they loved us. We got spectacularly drunk and dropped some weak acid.

Mick flew out early and the only bus going back that day was at 8.30am. We dropped Mick at the airport and in the same taxi directed the driver to take us to the Akamba bus. He kept driving and driving. It was getting closer to the departure time. He pulled into a huge bus park and our spirits sank. He had taken us to the normal, crazy African bus park. The Akamba bus was a private line. We were in trouble. If an African doesn’t know what you’re talking about he won’t tell you. He will just smile and do whatever and hope that will be cool. He doesn’t want to risk losing his mazungu meal ticket. This had been the case here. We had said Akamba repeatedly. He had never had a fecking clue where to take us. I told Amanda to get out the map of the city and I pushed the driver into the back and jumped behind the wheel. He started saying ‘Eh!’ a lot. With Amanda directing me I rally-drove that piece of crap through the middle of the city. I didn’t stop once. I broke every driving law known to man and then some. We made it, just. Then he tried to overcharge us. Amanda just looked at him and then went to town on the guy. I hauled our gear to the bus which was just about to leave. Twelve hours later we pulled into Kampala. I’d never been so glad to see the place.


A month after I arrived, Mick quit Adrift and began setting up his own company. Brums was made head guide. Brums had a Ugandan girlfriend, Joyce. See was absolutely lovely, but more importantly she came from a rich family. Thus Brums knew that she was truly interested in him as a person, not in what he represented. Piley had a live-in girlfriend as well. She however, used to be a semi-hooker. We weren’t too keen to have her in the house, as her motives and trustworthiness were extremely questionable. I never touched a Ugandan girl the whole time I was there. I was sorely tempted on occasion, but the high AID’s rate at that time, plus the fact that you could almost never be sure of their true motives led me to keep my distance. It was difficult though. So many beautiful women there.

Near our house was a little bar where some older ex-pats hung out. They looked to be in their late fifties. They always had a young girl on their arm. They spent their days drinking and watching the world go by. They looked to be completely brain-dead.

When Mick left we needed another guide and Brums had a good mate from Cairns who had just finished working a season in Norway. Jeno arrived like a blast of fresh air. I knew him from the Tully and we immediately formed a good rapport. Jeno was no-nonsense, extremely good fun, and a top guide. I took him into the city the day after he got there and he freaked out at my driving. He started yelling at me and dressing me down. I just looked at him in surprise. I wondered if he was a fish out of water. Two weeks later he drove me into town. He was worse than I was.

The owner of the company lived in New Zealand. At that time, Adrift was the premier rafting company in the world to work for. But he had started cutting corners, as well as costs, and my time there marked the beginning of Adrift’s long decline. He flew out about four months after I got there. It was the first time that I had met him. He seemed nice enough, was a good kayaker and he was enthusiastic to have me there. Our office manager was a Kiwi woman who had previously worked in the New Zealand army as an officer. She was completely incompetent. We held in thinly disguised disdain. The fact that we were doing so few trips made tensions fairly high all round as well. Added to that, our video kayaker, Dave, turned out to be slowly going insane.

In Africa, as a white man especially, you can push the boundaries. Maybe one day you do something that back home would get you into a little bit of trouble, whereas in Africa nothing comes of it. So you start doing it more often, and you push your boundaries further and further. I was driving Jeno out to the river one day on the main highway. In the distance I saw a policeman standing on the side of the road. He stepped out and indicated for us to stop. I had a quick look and then I put my foot down and shot right past him.

“Holy crap,” Jeno said. “Why the hell didn’t you stop?”

I looked at him. “No gun, no car, no radio. Why the hell would I stop?”

For some, pushing these boundaries became something of a nightmare. If you push too much you risk arriving in dark places. That was the case for Dave. He had been there for three years when I arrived. He had a dark sense of humour, and a great sense of injustice at the world that he carried with him. He had slept with every hooker at Al’s Bar without protection. Every morning a different girl would leave his room. His alcohol intake was impressive. His drug intake was disturbing. One day he went down to the Irish doctor to get an aids test. He came home with it in his hand. It was negative. He didn’t know whether to be happy or depressed. He went out that night and brought three girls home.

It got steadily worse and worse. One morning he didn’t come out of his room for work. The door was locked from the inside and we were unable to rouse him. Finally we broke down the door. He had taken two boxes of valium and drunk three bottles of rum. He had thoughtfully covered his bed in a big sheet of plastic so we wouldn’t have any problems disposing of his body. We rushed him to Doc Clark who managed to fix him up. Two days later he was back home. We located a white psyche to come out and see him. He advised us to send him straight back to New Zealand. Adrift wouldn’t pay the bill, his family didn’t want to know and we couldn’t come up with the money. He was trapped in his own nightmare. We began sleeping with our doors locked.

One morning I wandered on to the upstairs balcony and found him curled up in the fetal position moaning incoherently. His mind had gone. The English marketing girl was secretly in love with him. She was something of a head case as well. She phoned London and organized two tickets. She had had enough of Uganda as well. We drove them out to the airport. Two years later Dave finally succeeded in killing himself. I think of him as a victim of Africa.

Mick’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 Mick it was a very run-down park and camp-ground. Mick 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 Mick 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 Mick, 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. Mick 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, Mick 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. Mick pleaded ignorance to the situation but vowed to help catch the culprits.
The next day, Mick 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, Mick 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 Mick 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 Mick 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. Mick 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 fecking pencil!”

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

“What!? You must be fecking 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 th

FuzzyLogic wrote:

heres the full thing for the lazy.
Might get mod snipped, but I'd reccommend reading this before editing it out. Its not a bad read.

Deleted User wrote:

This was linked in one of the threads in the poker forum. Just thought more people should read it, its absolutely spectacular.

Changing your life......by Adsman

So Glad wrote:

Yeah, something I've been seriously thinking about. There's no way I could live in Dublin.


So Glad
Registered User

Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Dublin