Sam's Best Shot

by James Best

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’ Lenneke asked.

  ‘Jules has to go home in a week so we thought we’d just chill by the lake somewhere and she can fly out of Lilongwe. Sam and I might follow your suggestion and go to Uganda and then Kenya.’

  Sam piped up. ‘No, I don’t want to have extra countries. I don’t want to go to the country starting with U.’

  Lenneke quickly deployed a clever strategy. ‘But, Sam, there is a McDonald’s in Uganda.’

  Quick as a flash, Sam replied, ‘I want to go to Uganda. Is it as rich as Namibia?’ Well, that was easy.

  Mike and Lenneke asked Jules if she wanted to extend her trip and leave with them in two days to travel across Zambia to Victoria Falls, and then fly out of Livingstone instead. She accepted gleefully. From her point of view things had worked out for the better. She would see some seriously good wildlife in Zambia and one of the world’s great wonders in the falls, with the bonus of some nice people to escort her. I booked tickets for Sam and me to fly to Entebbe, Uganda, in a few days’ time. After all, it is a bad plan that cannot be changed.

  For now we got back into schoolwork and neuroplasticity, with Jules, Mike and Lenneke helping out. Back to boxing, maths, playing pool and swimming in the pool and playing cards. Speaking to strangers, ordering meals, filming for the university. I got him to talk to the hostel owner and practice ordering lunch over the counter. It took a while to set up the camera on a tripod and obtain the permission of the people being filmed, but I was becoming more used to it as the trip went on. I had a sense of relief about our changed plans. Not only did I now not have to worry about the language barrier in Moz—Portuguese is the official language and English speakers are rare—as well as the higher crime risk, but we were now avoiding some seriously long bus trips heading up to the north of Tanzania. We also had friends.

  Mike and Lenneke joined a long line of travellers we’d met who had raved about Uganda. And Sam would get to eat McDonald’s in Uganda’s capital.

  On our last day together, we were all at the poolside. Lenneke hopped in with Sam and Mike. Sam stared at her. ‘Are you going to take your top off?’

  ‘No!’ Lenneke exclaimed, covering her chest with her arm.

  ‘Why not?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Because that would not be appropriate,’ she stated carefully, ‘and I would be embarrassed.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ Sam said, nonchalantly.

  Yep, those hormones were definitely kicking in.

  Jules, Mike and Lenneke headed off, bound for Zambia. I suddenly felt lonely again. I suspected Sam did too. Mabuya Camp was now inundated with school groups from Britain and the United States, hoards of sixteen-year-olds who kept to themselves. There was no way Sam was going to crack that social scene.

  Unfortunately, our flight to Uganda was cancelled so our stay in Malawi was extended for two days until the next available flight. I planned to focus on school and neuroplasticity again, but then Sam developed a bad cold and I had to back off. For the first time on the trip, I didn’t have much to do.

  Paying for the flight proved to be difficult. The tickets cost around one thousand US dollars, but the maximum you could withdraw at any ATM was three hundred. You couldn’t withdraw cash from bank tellers at all. In Malawian kwacha, three hundred US dollars converted to one hundred and sixty thousand-kwacha notes, the country’s highest currency denomination. The travel agent’s credit card machine wouldn’t recognise my Visa card so over four days I had to make four separate trips to the bank and then hurry to the agent with my pockets protuberant with cash, looking like the bagman for the local mafia. It was just as well the flights were delayed.

  In town one day, I saw a woman carrying a boy of about ten on her back, his body swathed to hers. He was profoundly disabled, moaning and staring into space. His body under the wrap looked way too small for his head. One could only imagine the severe challenges they both faced and limited resources they would have to meet them.

  Then on the minibus I sat next to a woman in rags, with an infant strapped to her back. The infant had a squint, which I knew would very likely be resolved with simple eye patching, if properly managed. I also knew there was little chance this woman would ever get this advice.

  The family doctor in me wanted to reach out to her and guide her, but I couldn’t, of course. She wouldn’t have spoken English, and I would have appeared a weird mzungu trying to pry into her affairs. The child would likely have profoundly poor vision in one eye for life, an outcome that was preventable, but not here and not by me.

  Africa was full of disability. Poverty, malnutrition, threadbare health systems, poor maternal and obstetric management, high accident rates: the causes were manifest but many of them were preventable. Where disabilities existed, many of those which could be fixed, or at least managed, were simply not dealt with at all. And I saw this everywhere, particularly among the children: on the streets, on the minibuses, strapped to the backs of mothers.

  Back at Mabuya Camp, I decided to use this lull to audit myself, as we were now at the halfway point of the trip.

  What do you think you are doing well?

  Well, as a starting point, I hadn’t completely cocked up. There had been no disasters and Sam had not deteriorated, which were my two big worries before leaving. I had stuck at the task well. It had been rocky at times, but I had managed to just keep going and get things done, even on the roughest days.

  I also felt I’d been alert and imaginative in seizing unexpected opportunities that had arisen. This also fit in nicely with the whole theme of unpredictability on the trip.

  What do you think you could improve upon?

  I’d been inconsistent with my responses to Sam, particularly when he lost his temper. I needed to keep in mind that this trip was harder for him than it was for me. I also wanted to improve the language I used with him when he was struggling with a task. More positive language, less criticism, anger or disappointment. Gently nudge.

  Finally, I also needed to keep an eye on myself. I’d been really feeling emotionally fatigued at times. The recent few weeks with Juliette around had helped, but perhaps it was better we were going to Uganda rather than Mozambique for this reason too.

  I left Sam to chill on the internet in our room, and allowed myself time to put my feet up in the lounge area and watch Australia beat England in the cricket. That helped replenish my emotional reserves.

  It was our last day in Malawi. We’d been here nearly a month. It had fulfilled its reputation for being a country of amiable people and spectacular natural beauty, and then some. As our cab passed through the iron gates of Mabuya Camp for the last time, even Sam now begrudgingly admitted the first M country had been ‘okay’ after all. Then he thought for a few seconds. ‘Is Kenya poorer than Uganda?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘There isn’t a war?’

  ‘There’s no fighting in the parts we’re going to.’

  ‘There isn’t a nuclear war?’

  I reassured him. ‘No, there won’t be a nuclear war, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I don’t want to be in a nuclear war.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  At the airport, I was slightly edgy about showing our passports to the immigration official as they showed our overstay on our initial Malawian visas, but told myself it surely wouldn’t be an issue now. That is, until the Malawian immigration officer flicked a few times through my passport, and grumbled, ‘Where’s the receipt number?’

  ‘What receipt number?’ I replied nervously.

  ‘For the visa.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He looked up. ‘Did you pay for the exit visa?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much?’ he snapped.

  ‘Twenty-five US dollars each.’

  ‘I need the receipt.’ He turned the passport around and showed it to me. ‘They have not written in the receipt number.’

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  He glared a
t me. ‘Well, you will have to go back and get it.’

  ‘What?’ I shrieked. ‘To the Mozambique border?’

  ‘We have a problem here. What can we do about this? You will need to help me solve it.’

  Ah, he wanted a bribe. I now realised that we probably shouldn’t have had to pay for an exit visa back at the Mozambique border. We’d been ripped off and hadn’t even been aware of it. Now this guy saw me as a soft touch.

  ‘How about twenty US dollars,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Make it thirty.’

  Anxious to get through without fuss, I slipped him the cash. As soon as we passed the barrier, I started to get angry; I should have taken him on, refused to pay or asked to see his boss. I vowed not to let that happen so easily again.

  We changed planes in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. ‘This is Nai-robbery,’ Sam said loudly, as we strode through the large terminal. ‘Watch out for robbers!’ he added, with a big grin.

  ‘Sam, be quiet!’

  I’d noticed he was in a good mood. His confidence had lifted generally over the last few days. It occurred to me that his relief at getting past the M countries, which he’d correctly anticipated would be some tough travelling, might have eased his anxiety.

  It was like our descent from the Zomba plateau: he could now glimpse the finish line, with no insurmountable obstacles in his path. Sam now believed he could do this.

  CHAPTER 26

  Swings and roundabouts

  Idi Amin. He was the first thought that came to mind when I heard the word Uganda. I mean, I’d seen The Last King of Scotland and it had a McDonald’s, but I didn’t really know much more about the place. I hadn’t read up on it because I hadn’t known we’d be going there; until our dramas at the Mozambique border forced an abrupt itinerary change there had been only an outside chance we’d go.

  As we flew into Kampala, it immediately became apparent that Uganda was significantly more sophisticated than what we’d become used to over the previous month or so. There were well-maintained gutters, and road signs, heaps of them. Sam noticed the new font on the road signs as we headed for an overnight stay at the local backpacker hostel. Not much gets past this guy.

  Entebbe, a small, neat and wealthy city, was an hour on a minibus from the thumping, pumping capital, Kampala. As we got off the surprisingly clean and uncrowded minibus, we were besieged by drivers of the machine that rules Kampala, the boda boda, or motorbike taxi.

  The name boda boda hails from a time when smuggling into Uganda was mostly by motorbikes, which were able to avoid the border crossings more easily than larger vehicles. The bikes soon became known as boda, a mutation of border, which evolved into boda boda. Tens of thousands of them swarm the city’s streets or cluster on footpaths as their drivers languidly wait for customers. A couple of wazungu like us, looking like Tintin and the Captain, were juicy fruit waiting to be plucked.

  What the heck, it was a lot cheaper than a taxi trip to our accommodation. We were staying at Red Chilli Hideaway, a large backpacker hostel on the edge of the city, some twenty minutes’ drive away. The large packs balanced between the driver and the handle bar, while the two of us rode pillion, small packs on our backs, clinging tightly to the drivers’ waists as we swerved and weaved, dodging trucks, minibuses and cars in the maelstrom.

  As we approached Red Chilli, Sam yelled across to me, ‘Where is the DS?’

  Oh no! I’d asked him to put it into his pocket as we’d boarded the minibus. I knew straightaway it must have fallen out of his pocket on the bus, made even more likely because he often had his feet up on the seat to support his poor core muscle tone. There was no way we were going to get it back.

  After a frantic search through pockets and bags, it was confirmed as MIA. I’d have thought Sam’s head would have exploded, but he was remarkably calm. I agreed to make the futile trip back to the bus station to look for it but it was more to show Sam that I realised this was a big deal rather than from any hope we’d retrieve it. I felt partly culpable; I should have been more careful with his ‘Precious’.

  We caught a cab to the central bus station, which was around the corner from where we’d been dropped an hour or so earlier. From an elevated road beside the bus station, we could see around five hundred minibuses crammed into the square, honking and inching along.

  Sam’s face dropped. Moses, our cab driver, who was based at Red Chilli, led us through the maze of buses to the central ‘office’: a collection of eateries and squatteries and do-nothing-eries that looked like an island village in the sea of minibuses.

  It seemed it was not the sort of place you’d normally see a tall white guy with a gangly long-haired teenager because we soon attracted a crowd, all talking in the local language, Luganda. Women and girls smirked, giggled and gossiped behind their hands, and the men peered at us with curiosity.

  As Moses translated, I let the administrators of the bus station know that a reward of 100,000 shillings, about fifty US dollars, was being offered for the return of the DS. The mood changed from idle curiosity to excitement. A buzz rippled through the crowd; at least the word was getting out. It was likely the mislaid DS had been picked up by a passenger, but if a conductor or driver found it, well, you never knew. We left a contact number, just in case.

  Moses led his people back to the cab, parting the minibus sea, and we returned to Red Chilli. I watched Sam closely. He seemed calm, too calm. Did he hold out false hope? Did he not fully understand the DS was in all probability gone? He had a smaller version in reserve, but it didn’t have all the hours and hours of games he had played over recent months stored on it. I don’t really understand Nintendo DSs, but I think that’s how it works.

  I took it easy on Sam that day. The Red Chilli facilities and wi-fi were impressive; Mike and Lenneke had told us that this was the place to make our base in Uganda. I let Sam binge on the internet while I spent most of the afternoon at the reception desk organising accommodation and trips into the countryside over the next few weeks. I’d been thinking that I should be getting Sam more involved in this sort of activity, but not today, not on DS Day.

  As sunset approached, I found Sam hovering around the entrance to the hostel. ‘Are they still looking?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes, Sam, they probably are, but remember there is only a small chance of them finding it.’

  ‘But they might find it.’ I could hear the pain in his voice. He looked longingly up the driveway, hoping to see a bus approaching with his DS, a bus I knew was not going to show up. I ached on his behalf. He was like the dog listening to the gramophone in His Master’s Voice, hoping and not understanding. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Shit, shit, shit.

  Losing the DS was a setback for Sam, but also for myself. The next few days we didn’t have much to do, and I attempted to focus on school and neuroplasticity exercises, but my motivation was waning. My carelessness had crushed my boy, and I was feeling dreadful about it. Nonetheless we pushed through. Chess was the neuroplasticity exercise I enjoyed most, and I think Sam too. Sometimes we would play several games a day, and I also enlisted other people staying at the hostel to play against him. I also took the opportunity to challenge him with some crossword puzzles from a book left behind at the hostel book exchange. We recorded more video interviews with some of our fellow travellers and staff at the hostel.

  On the way into the city on the Red Chilli shuttle one day, the amiable driver struck up a conversation. I told him I was surprised how developed Uganda was compared to other African countries.

  ‘Yes, Uganda is very organised,’ he said.

  The toilet seats and the door handles weren’t loose, the shower heads had a smooth stream, the door frames were squared, the electrical outlets were actually attached to the walls and the mosquito nets generally didn’t have holes in them. If they did, they were repaired with needle and thread, not an elastic band or a bandaid.

  It was hard work talking to the driver. He and other Ugandans were having trouble with our Au
stralian accents as we were with theirs, perhaps surprising given both Uganda and Australian are former British colonies.

  As we drove, marabou storks circled above. With wingspans of two and a half metres, they expertly surfed the thermals, a posse of hang-gliders everpresent over the city.

  The heat and humidity hit us as we exited the minibus to visit a shopping centre. While elevated, Uganda is still on the equator. I tried to explain this to Sam. I was surprised he didn’t know what the equator was; obviously he hadn’t been paying attention in that geography lesson. I gave a brief explanation.

  ‘So it’s like the x axis of the world?’ he suggested.

  We had been doing linear equation graphs in maths. The way that boy’s brain works is so fascinating sometimes.

  The shopping centre security was intense. Over thirty armed guards patrolled the centre, many of them with machine guns. All cars were searched, and many people were asked to step out of their vehicles to be frisked. All glove boxes, boots and bags were checked, and under-vehicle search mirrors were used to check under chassis. I assumed this was in response to the Westgate shopping mall terrorist attack in Nairobi in 2013. I realised we weren’t far from places where some locals would love to put a few Westerners to the sword, AK-47 or grenade, and an upmarket shopping mall was an obvious target. I appreciated the machine guns.

  The loss of the DS seemed to have knocked me around even more than Sam. I was having a crisis of confidence, and of momentum. I was having a lot of trouble getting going each day. Was I just being a sook?

  A Skype with Benison went a long way to setting me right. She started organising to send a DS replacement from Australia, and I realised there were some game cards we could buy locally. Sam slowly came around to the idea that his Precious was not coming back. I gave him some space.

  Over the breakfast table, Sam looked at me keenly. ‘Maybe it will be found, Dad.’

  ‘Maybe, but it’s not very likely now, Sam,’ I said, gently.