Live by the Panga, Die by the Panga

We just went out to get some beer. And then it happened.

Max, Ralph, and I were in Tanzania, staying out in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny village near Kilimanjaro called Uswaa, for the past two nights, at the childhood home of our guide, Kakasii. He was the last-born child and so, according to Chagga tradition, the maintenance of his mother’s home/farm was his responsibility; every one of his siblings would come here for two weeks at Christmas every year and the house sure as hell better be standing and well-stocked. Last Christmas, they slaughtered some outrageous number of animals for those gathered at the house--a dozen cows, a dozen goats, chickens, etc. Call me a city boy, but it’s hard to even estimate how much meat that is; but it sounds like A LOT.

It wasn’t Christmas, but all of Kakasii’s siblings were in town because their mother was deathly ill at the local hospital. At his insistence, we went to visit her and it was one of the most prolonged awkward moments of my life. All around me, crammed into rooms, crammed into hallways, people were ill, people were dying. Loved ones were near, dedicated doctors scurried from one patient to the next, everybody stared at the three white guys strolling through, and the same thought ran through my head in a never-ending loop--

‘Hold your breath, don’t touch anything, don’t catch anything, meningitis can be transmitted through the air, along with who knows what else. Holy shit, these poor people, so many of them might die, who knows what they have, but the worst of them will infect the best of them, they’re too close together, I’m too close...holy shit, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to catch anything they have, holy shit, this is like asking to be taken to the best place to get the worst disease imaginable. Why did I let them take me here? And yet I know that Kakasii, quickly a good friend, wants us to be here, to meet his mother, to talk to her, to brighten her day, to help make things better. Best intentions. It would be rude to ask to leave. But it would be worse to get meningitis or leprosy or whatever the hell else they’re cultivating in here...’

I met his mother, held her hand, spoke to her in elementary Swahili and simple English, told her that I hoped she got better, wished for probably the first time that I had the crutch of religion to fall back onto, to resort to in this exceedingly uncomfortable situation. It would be so easy to say, “My prayers are with you...” or something like that, and yet I could not do it, could not say it, could not lie; and so my time on the hot seat was all the more blistering.

I wished I had a private audience, knowing she would not know the difference if I recited Shakespeare or read the paper, as it is with infants, but she was constantly surrounded by her daughters and the wives of her sons, who rotated shifts, one woman always by her side. The judging ears of these nearby and bilingual-enough women held me to a higher standard than the dying woman ever would have herself. Shit, what a test of faith. But I stood firm and stuck to my good-natured atheism. I have no idea what matter of useless bullshit I said, but I hope it helped.

Outside the hospital, as we waited for a few familial stragglers to say hello before visiting hours ended, we ran into one of Kakasii’s older brothers, Clemence, for the second time that day. Earlier, Kakasii had driven us by Clemence’s small chemistry shop off the main road--it was a store that, by all accounts, sold nothing but Bunsen burners, beakers, and laboratory chemicals, yet seemed to expect / rely on walk-in traffic, in the least-likely location you could ever imagine--an iPod repair shop in Antarctica would get more traffic.

You can actually research our presence there, if you wish, as the Tanzanian custom of excessive documentation was in full force at Clemence’s shop--we all had to sign a guestbook that proved we were there, even though we just popped in to say hello. The weirdest part about all the sign-in books in Tanzania was that they always asked how old you were and what your occupation was; why do these things matter? Later, on our trek up Kilimanjaro, we decided to get creative with our occupations at each camp check-in: ghost, wizard, blowhard, etc. Nobody noticed.

On our way back from the hospital--well, out of the way, really--we stopped off to trade in some of our delightfully-empty beer bottles for more-delightful full ones. The closest bar/store to the family farm happened to be right across the street from Clemence’s house, so, naturally, we had to stop in and say hello.

Well, it wasn’t his house, exactly--he and his family lived in a supposedly-enormous house in the former capital and largest city, Dar Es Salaam, an 8-hour drive away--this was his Christmas house. Like all seven of his siblings, ever since he left it, Clemence returns to his childhood home in Uswaa, for two weeks a year, in December. As a man of impressive means, it did not take long for him to outgrow crashing on the couch of his little brother’s house, so he built one of his own nearby, for comfort; it was an inarguable island of luxury in a sea of poverty.

According to local standards, the Christmas house was impressive for sure; it was not made of cow shit, it had a floor, windows, doors, multiple rooms, a garage, electricity, a houseboy we were never introduced to...and this was only his Christmas house. Evidently, as hinted at earlier in our trip, Kakasii and his family were some of the richest people around. Kakasii and Clemence are two of eight children of one of their father’s four wives; their grandfather had nine wives and pretty much ran the entire village of Uswaa; nearly everybody we met in Uswaa was related to Kakasii by blood or marriage.


After insisting we have a drink before we leave his house, as is Chagga custom, and then also insisting that he would only have dinner at his own brother’s house if we invited him, Clemence prepared to depart for dinner around the fire at Kakasii’s. As the houseboy scurried around, picking things up, Clemence grabbed his jacket and an oddly-shaped black shoulder bag of some kind.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Without answering me, he laid the bag down and opened it up; inside was a pristine, matte-black, sawed-off shotgun. My mouth hung open. I hate guns. I never want to see one in person. I never want to be around one. I think guns are the single worst invention in the history of mankind. They bring nothing but destruction.

“I won’t use it, but since I’ll be coming home alone...”

Kakasii raced over, grabbed the shotgun, emptied out what seemed to be a dozen shells, then wildly waved it around the room, pretending to be a cowboy or robber or something. Max, Ralph, and I all tried in vain to avoid having it point at us, but that wasn’t working very well, so I moved over behind Kakasii and followed him as he spun around pretending to kill imaginary bad guys, as excited as a child at Christmas. Thankfully there were no accidents.

Outside, the three of us piled into Clemence’s immaculate white Nissan SUV, along with Kakasii’s wife, Rosie. Clemence’s white car has a white leather interior, in rural Tanzania, one of the dustiest, dirtiest places on Earth.

“How do you keep it white?”
“I never roll the windows down--always A.C.”

I sat down in the back, next to Rosie, and Clemence thrust the sawed-off shotgun between my legs.

“You need to hold this for me.”

I didn’t want to touch it, so it rattled around between my legs, butt on the floor, muzzle pointed at the roof, for the entire bumpy, unnecessarily-air-conditioned ride back to the village. From the driver’s seat, Clemence talked a mile a minute, asking us about Obama, about the political situation back home in general, about what the American blacks were like, etc. It was somewhat difficult to hear what Clemence was saying, though--especially in the backseat--since he was competing with the powerful lungs of Celine Dion, whose Beauty and the Beast jams were blasting out of his stereo--by choice, on CD. About halfway through the journey, in sheer disbelief at where we were and what we were doing, my brother turned to me from the front passenger seat.

“Happy 30th birthday.”

His crooked smile said it all. I was not alone. This was what we came here for. This was an absolutely unpredictable, insane, beautiful moment we were sharing. This was the intoxicating reward adventure had to offer.

But adventure also has a price.

We just went out to check our email. And then it happened.


Our allotted four days in Uswaa village over, we said our goodbyes to fast friends young and old and headed back to Arusha, the big city near Kilimanjaro. Our climb was to begin in a couple days, and we had to prepare. The first step was meeting with our guide.

Kakasii’s friend Clemence (not his brother, also named Clemence) was an eminently-qualified guide up Kilimanjaro--he grew up on its slopes, had been climbing it since he was a young man, was the president of the climbing guide association, brought lawsuits against negligent/shady climbing companies, fought for pay raises for the porters--but he was also the biggest drag of our entire trip to Africa.

How could we have fallen so far from where we were last night? So far we had met so many warm, friendly people and Clemence was cold as an icebox. He was disappointed we didn’t prepare questions about the flora and fauna of the Mt. Kilimanjaro National Park. He was concerned that we didn’t bring sleeping bags and walking poles, even though our paperwork said those would be provided for us. He was worried that we did not understand how much water we should be drinking on our climb (we did). He tried to insinuate, calmly, that we were stupid and that we would die up there. It was not a good meeting. Our delicious African bubble had burst.


You see, we had been in the middle of nowhere for four days. How far in the middle of nowhere? It took Kakasii over five years to convince the local power company to allow him to pay for electric wires to be strung to his house. They had to run the cable for 1.5 miles. As soon as he left the farm, to return to his house in Arusha, somebody stole the power cable to sell for scrap across the border, in Kenya, for a penny on the dollar. So Kakasii had to re-string it and hire somebody to keep an eye on it--his houseboy, whom he never introduced to us, who might as well have been a ghost, who was evidently not the father of his son, a fact Kakasii brought up to me on at least two occasions, making me wonder if he was trying to tell me that he was the father. More likely, he was just proud to have the gossip at his disposal, proud that nobody could say that about him (as far as he knows), proud that he is more of a man than his houseboy.

Kakasii also revealed two other interesting tidbits during our time in Uswaa. Our first day there, while giving us a tour of the village, surprising all matter of unprepared locals with a trio of unexpected white men popping forth from the bushes, he casually mentioned that he had personally beaten a man to death for stealing a chicken from a neighbor.

“The guy who lived here in this house was a thief. Real bad thief. Real bad. So, one night, I got some peoples together, and we wait. And he sneak out and went to the neighbor’s to steal a chicken. I had a witness, and I beat him real bad. Real bad. In the morning, he was dead. Over here is the house of my brother--well, he is not my brother, but I can say he is my brother because he is very close to me...”

“Huh? Did he just tell us he’s a murderer?”
“Yes. Yes, he did.”

The other revelation hit closer to home. Our good-natured and talented cook, Moussa, hadn’t been feeling well ever since we met him. Toward the end of our time together, Kakasii told us as much.

“Moussa’s not feeling well. Probably malaria.”
“What?!”

Malaria, the omnipresent coiled cobra of whose strike we lived in constant fear, had reared its fanged head. Like a slap in the face, I suddenly realized that none of the locals were covered at all times in 100% DEET mosquito repellant; none of the locals were popping Malarone every day. I guess they just rolled the dice--and often lost.

Despite his apparent illness, Moussa continued to cook for us, load and unload the car for us, and sleep outside in a tent so we could be inside in beds. After we headed into Arusha to prepare for the Kilimanjaro climb, Kakasii dropped Moussa off at the hospital to be examined. Diagnosis: malaria. Presumably, Moussa spent the next 2-3 weeks nailed to a bed, under the vicious influence of the least-expensive, most-intense, hallucinogenic malaria medication available. I hope he survived.

But I digress.


Back in Arusha, the three of us said our temporary goodbyes to Clemence #2 and Kakasii--post-pre-climb meeting--and retreated upstairs to our hotel rooms. We all immediately agreed we hated Clemence and that we were no longer terribly excited about our climb. We yearned for the warmth and possibility of Uswaa. Max was tired and turned in for the night; Ralph and I both yearned for a little fresh air, a little physical activity, a little local brew, a little more venting, maybe even a little communication with loved ones very far away from all this.

Before I left the hotel, at my brother’s urging, I emptied my pockets of everything but about $10 in local currency. It was the best decision of the entire trip.

I met Ralph in the lobby, where he was asking our sweet-but-fairly-ignorant receptionist where we might be able to find internet access, since our hotel did not offer it, for some reason, despite the fact that it had one of the only elevators we saw in the entire country and was made almost entirely out of marble, and was therefore a luxury hotel aimed at business travelers, who like to use the internet. She had no idea where we could find it, but said we should take a taxi. Take a taxi to where? Hmmm...

We set off on foot and I immediately regretted it. We were headed for ‘the clocktower,’ which we both had seen several times before, but the exact location of which we were hardly certain. I was freshly showered, feeling good, feeling fit, and on alert, but as we walked the streets, I couldn’t help but feel like I had flashing lights mounted to my head, with a siren blaring:

“WHITE MAN! WHITE MAN! WHITE MAN! WHITE MAN!”

In the dark-as-hell, middle-of-nowhere, 7pm Arusha night, with every single ramshackle shop closed for the evening, and bug-eyed eyeballs tracking us from every shadow, it was impossible not to feel like a target for somebody, for at least the most desperate among them.

As my initial butterflies began morphing into silent screams of “Go back! Run away! Tell Ralph we shouldn’t do this!” I heard a loud whistle. I immediately thought that it might be a signal to somebody, some kind of perverted ‘dinner bell,’ communicating to the criminals-at-large the fact that there are white tourists wandering around at night, so come and get ‘em. My eyes darted around even more than before, my fists clenched, my muscles flexed--I was ready for combat, despite how futile it usually is, especially when ambushed and outnumbered.

Ralph and I agreed we would turn left, because I thought the clocktower was in that direction, but if we got to the bridge up ahead and couldn’t see it, we would turn back. All the hairs on my body (and there are a fair amount of them--sorry, ladies) stood on end. Would we make it?

Everybody I had met in this country so far was a warm and welcoming host, yet we all know there is also a dark side to Africa. There is poverty and starvation and malcontent on a grand scale, there are wars, evil dictators, pirates...but this is all beside the point. There are areas of cities in the United States where one should not walk after dark. There are just certain places you should not be, if you can help it. And that’s exactly where we were.

(photo courtesy of www.smh.com.au)

I sensed them coming before I should have; they were fast, it was dark, and we were easy prey. But I did. I don’t know how--Spideysense? I turned to see three guys running at Ralph with pangas (local version of a machete) raised above their heads. I immediately turned to run, knowing that is always the best move if you think of it in time, being a recent veteran of this situation, sadly.

“Ralph! Run! Run!”

As I ran away, I saw two guys that had been heading for me give up and change direction--they joined the others and swarmed Ralph instead. He didn’t stand a chance.

“Run! Ralph! Run! Run!”

I didn’t know what else to do. I figured he could still get away. I figured the attackers were just bluffing and all he needed to do was run and he would be okay.

It’s always easy to assume that, to say that, but when you’re actually there, in the moment, staring at some creepy, breathless dude with a blade trained on your face, it makes way more sense to just stand still and let him take what he wants. All that runs through your head is the advice you always hear from people who’ve been through it before:

“Whatever you have on you is not worth your life. Whatever you have on you is replaceable, don’t fight back, don’t be a hero, that’s how people wind up being dead for no good reason.”

And it’s true. It very well could be the case that this guy is just figuring you’ll shit your pants and let him have his way, and he never planned on using the weapon, but it’s equally as likely that he is a deranged lunatic who would just as soon slice your head off as look at you. It could be a guy on a power trip, a guy with something to prove. How does one determine how crazy somebody is by looking at them? How does one measure at a glance the desperation and fury in a man’s soul?

Now imagine there are five of them. You’re in the middle of darkest Africa. And they all have rusty machetes raised above your head, shouting in broken English to give them your money.

I stood about twenty-five feet away, ignored, watching it all happen. Ralph stood in the middle of the crowd, calmly saying “No, no. Come on. No...” as the five assailants picked at his pockets. I knew I couldn’t leave him here, I couldn’t run away, but what could I do to help? What should I do?

I walked back over toward Ralph and two machete-wielding assholes quickly converged on me. Just like Ralph, I was strangely calm. I was crossing my fingers they were not the type to actually use those machetes and glad to only have $10 on me, tucked away in a secret zipper pocket of my pants. I raised my hands like a police negotiator walking in to a bank heist.

“Give us your money!”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Give us your money!”
“I don’t have any!”

I watched over their shoulders as Ralph tumbled into the street with one of the other attackers. I was confused--why didn’t they just take what he had and run away? What was this guy going to do to him? I didn’t even want to consider the possibilities.

Traffic stopped on the somewhat congested thoroughfare--rush-hour traffic, I suppose--as this guy sat astride Ralph in the middle of the street. One of the guys accosting me at the time grew frustrated with my tack, yanked out my right pants pocket, and sliced it out with his panga. Then the guys all ran away.

I figured I might only have one shot at this guy on top of Ralph, so I’d better make it count. I ran as fast as I could, into the street, straight at the guy, leapt off the ground, raised a knee, and smashed into his ribs. I knocked him to the ground. His machete went flying.

I went over to see if Ralph was okay. He was. He got to his feet and we were both standing in the middle of the street, cars honking at us. We turned to see a crowd of people running right for us and froze in fear.

Luckily, they were not coming to finish the job; they were the good guys. Well, actually, as it turned out they were coming to finish the job--our job.

Not thirty seconds after Ralph’s attacker fell to the pavement, a total stranger was booting him in the face with abandon. Then another went after his ribs. One by one, a mob of people--regular people, the Arusha version of you and I, commuters waiting for the bus home, students, etc--ran over and stomped on this guy. He cowered from the blows, reacted to the blows, but did not avoid them, did not run from them. Was he too weak? Was he too injured from the first one? Did he simply know that at this point his fate was inevitable? Was he doing penance? Was he surrendering to death?

Several of the bystanders ran across the street, grabbed enormous railroad-tie-sized pieces of wood and beat him til they broke.

I scrambled to see what of our possessions we could recover--I found my pen, oddly the most valuable thing I owned at the time--next to my passport, and Ralph’s White Sox hat, but that was it; my brother’s Tanzania guidebook was gone. I felt really bad about that; I know how much he loved it.

Ralph turned to me with a look of despair.

“They got my passport. And my credit cards. And my license, and my cash, and my checkbook...they got everything. Everything!”
“What the fuck? Why did you have all that on you?”
“I don’t know!”

I checked the back pocket of the guy being beaten and found a wallet. I opened it. Nothing whatsoever inside. Empty.

Two guys approached Ralph and I and asked us, in English, if the attackers got our passports. We told him they got Ralph’s. They checked the beaten guy’s front pocket and found his stash--amazingly, Ralph recovered his passport, credit cards, and driver’s license. The guy with his checkbook (useless here) and cash ($50) got away.

In a surreal detachment from the scene playing out before us, from what had just happened to us, we felt strangely fine--violated, for sure, but, at the same time, lucky that things didn’t turn out as bad as they could have. I was now missing a pocket and we were down $60--could have been much worse.

And then we realized the mob was planning to beat this guy to death in the street. They were not stopping. It was not a beating to teach him a lesson, it was a beating to teach others a lesson, to teach others that if you steal they will show you no mercy, they will kill you with their hands and feet and anything else nearby.

And so our consciences thrust us into the awkward--and potentially dangerous--situation of trying to rescue our attacker. We shouted at the crowd to stop, told them it would do no good to kill him, that it would solve nothing, and tried to shoo them away. We even got between them and their victim.

It worked about as well as I could have hoped, with only the occasional strike venturing through the white-man’s invisible, waved-hand force-field.

Ralph told the two guys who knew English and helped us earlier that he wanted to talk to the cops. They told him the cops would not come, but Ralph still wanted to wait for them. Since I didn’t necessarily want to start the scary journey back to the hotel just yet, I didn’t mind sticking around for a bit, surrounded by people, waiting; but it was not like I really wanted to stay there, either. Ideally we would have been teleported back to our beds at the hotel.

At some point, a security vehicle--think Tanzanian Rent-A-Cop--pulled up. I had seen the same vehicle drive by twice before and not stop, but for some reason it did this time. Perhaps somebody flagged them down and they were bored enough to see what was the matter.

At any rate, they came over and dragged the unconscious, beaten criminal into the back of their pick-up SUV. Turns out one of the guys who spoke to us in English earlier had also been robbed by these guys, not long before us, and he wanted to take this one to the station and press charges, file a claim.

“If you want to talk to the cops, you have to come with us.”

Ralph and I looked at each other, unsure.

“Is this cool?” Ralph asked.
“Sure.”

I didn’t think it was a great idea, but I also couldn’t think of a better one and I figured it would be one more leg of the adventure, so why not? At least we were together, at least we were not injured, at least we were not alone, at least we didn’t have to walk the gauntlet back to the hotel.

As we sped through the pitch-black streets, Ralph shouted over the wind at our newfound friend, who stood up in the back, holding onto the rollbar, clutching aloft the assailant’s rusted panga, planning to submit it as evidence.

“Where’s the police station?”
“Close.”
“How far?”
“Not far.”
“How far?!”

Ralph was shouting, impatient, wanting information. I started to get freaked out--where were we going? Where would we end up? How did we know we were being taken to a police station? What would the police be like?

As an unstoppable chill cruised up my spine, I suddenly felt a hand on my knee.

I looked down to see the no-longer-unconscious attacker, covered in blood, grabbing at my knee, mumbling something in Swahili. I instantly realized I did not want this guy’s blood on me, because of what may or may not be in it and because this was my only pair of pants--and it already had a fucking pocket sliced out, thanks to his friends.

I booted him in the face.

“Get the fuck off me! Get off me!”

I booted him a few more times before he got the hint. I think he went unconscious again. We rolled into the parking lot of the police station and everybody hopped out.

The Rent-A-Cops dragged the assailant’s body inside. We followed. They deposited him underneath a flip-up counter-top, like you might see at an old coffee shop or library checkout counter. A large police officer immediately walked over, flipped up the counter, and booted the criminal in the face. He then dragged him by the collar and propped him up against the back wall, about twenty feet from where we were standing.

Another police officer passed through the area on the other side of the counter and gave our assailant a boot in the ribs, us a thumbs-up. I did not return the gesture. Where were all these guys when we needed them? A vicious brawl in the middle of the street at 7:30pm, and not a cop to be found? And yet here they were plentiful as pollen.

Another officer smiled at us as he kicked the guy.

“Good job!”

We didn’t know how to respond. We didn’t.

The police station was an insanely strange place, to say the least. It felt like the customer counter at an electronics wholesaler; you know they have a huge warehouse in back, they have everything you could ever want in stock, and plenty more you don’t want, but you are only granted access to a tiny room staffed by four or five guys that come and go as they please, bringing you only what you specifically ask for after perusing their 9000-page catalog.

This particular warehouse just happened to have jail cells behind it that looked like they belonged in the Count of Monte Cristo. The history in here was sickening to think about.

The scrawny young deskbound officer assigned to our case started asking us questions about what happened and quickly gravitated to the other victim who rode with us in the Rent-A-Cop SUV, since he spoke Swahili. This being the case, he got to tell his story first. I zoned out and watched the desk clerk at work.

Rather than pull out a form of some kind (Victim’s Report, Witness’ Account, etc), he grabbed a blank piece of paper from under the desk. Next, he grabbed a nearby book (pleasure read) and used it as a crude ruler to draw straight lines on the blank paper. Once a satisfactory grid was formed, he began writing down the facts, I assume, since I can’t read Swahili.

I laughed to myself--they can’t even afford to have a pre-made form? They have to draw lines on paper every time they need to write something down? Who is ever going to look at this form? It is just going to end up in a stack of papers in a corner somewhere, never to see the light of day.

Ralph called Kakasii on a borrowed cell phone--the guy who had retrieved his passport earlier had driven over to the police station to see if he could be of any further help to us. Talk about an all-around swell guy. Luckily, Kakasii had given us his business card that day, for no discernible reason. Luckily, we got it back from the guy who stole it from Ralph.

As Ralph stepped away to place the call, I had a look around the room.

Next to us, a guy about my age, but bigger, stronger, more incensed, local, snatched his belongings, one by one, as a shit-scared man on the other side of the counter, the criminal side, emptied his pockets of its contents. He must have dumped out seven sets of keys, all apparently belonging to this guy next to me, along with a cell phone, money, and whatever else. It seemed to go on forever. I wondered how his attacker was apprehended, but didn’t ask. Next to him, it seemed as though the same thing was happening with another guy; I was watching a regular assembly line of botched thievery.

Along the back wall, our attacker was conscious again. He was moaning at us, loudly, unintelligibly, pleading with us in Swahili. A police officer walking by looked at me.

“They’re always sorry when they get caught.”

He then booted him in the ribs and dragged him into a nearby cell.

Ralph told the desk clerk his account of the incident. The only thing the desk clerk wrote down was '60,000'--the amount of Tanzanian shillings stolen from him. The clerk had no desire to write down Ralph's name, Kakasii's name and phone number, or any information about the attack.


Kakasii arrived at the police station with Clemence #2. I guess they had gone out to dinner after our Kilimanjaro meeting, probably to catch up on their lives and talk about us. So far from home, in such a strange situation, after such a shocking predicament, it was good to see a friend.

Oddly, Kakasii insisted on seeing what our attacker looked like, in case he knew him. He wanted to go back into the cell and get a look at him. He had to ask one of the officers several times, had to persuade him and his supervisor, and finally got his way. A compromise--they would bring the guy back out into the area behind the counter. They did. Kakasii stepped behind the counter and took a good look; he did not recognize him.

One of the officers dragged the assailant back into the cell, where he would most likely die overnight from internal injuries. I mean, it certainly didn’t seem as though he would be receiving medical attention anytime soon. He was an asshole, for sure, but did he deserve to be beaten to death for his crime? No.

A man walked over with a bucket of water and a towel and began sopping up the large puddle of blood that had formed where the guy had briefly rested. I thought about what might be in that blood, about how that guy might have cuts in his hand, about how that guy is probably being paid $0.50 a day to mop up blood in the jail all day, with his bare hands. How many times can one play Russian roulette before one loses? But, then again, if it’s between gambling with AIDS and starvation from lack of employment, the choice becomes easier, I guess.

I hope I never have to make that call.

Sitting in Kakasii’s safari-modified Nissan SUV, outside the police station, he and Clemence told us an interesting fact about the police in Tanzania. They do not go out at night because they will be killed. During the day, they can be undercover, and supposedly every fifth man is a cop, and you will be informed on and arrested for such petty crimes as ‘speaking ill of a woman.’ At night, they must wear their uniforms, and so they all hide in the police station.

Kakasii and Clemence both clucked their tongues, wishing it were not so, but aware they are powerless to change things on their own.

“That is the problem with Africa,” they said for neither the first nor last time.

Kakasii drove us to check our email at some other hotel, despite the fact that neither of us wanted to at this point. Ralph and I sat at two computers, our backs to each other, and made a pact that we wouldn’t tell anybody about this until we returned safely home, so as not to worry anybody any more than they already were.

Ralph asked me why I had tackled the guy in the street and I told him I thought he was going to do something awful, because I couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t just run away once he got what he wanted.

“He was trying to run away--but when I saw him grab my passport, I locked my hands around his wrists and wouldn’t let go. He tried to run away anyway and so we fell into the street.”

Even though the incident was now safely in the past, I was relieved to know that my worst fears were not true. I was also relieved Ralph has the finger strength of a Terminator. Had his passport been stolen, we would have had to cancel our mountain climb and spend 3 days in Dar Es Salaam waiting for a new one from the embassy.



Five days later, as I stood atop Mt.Kilimanjaro--19,340-feet above sea level--towering over the rest of the continent, limp from exertion, crying for no particular reason, it was hard not to reflect on our trip, on what we had been through, what we had accomplished. We experienced first-hand the love and warmth of strangers in an impoverished but jovial rural village, snorkeled the pristine Indian Ocean off the coast of Zanzibar, watched as twelve lions tore apart a fresh zebra carcass in a national park, toured a hospital packed with lost causes, been held up by five desperate guys with machetes, and watched one of them get beaten in the street by onlookers. It was a hell of an adventure and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Except next time, I’ll take a cab to check my email.

Notes from Tanzania: Kilimanjaro

9/23/08 - Uhuru Hostel, Moshi, Tanzania

My legs still ache from the climb. Or was it the descent? Probably both. Max and I are sitting at a table in the courtyard here, watching a 4.5'-tall maribou stork strut his stuff for the other birds as we write; when he landed, it sounded like a small airplane. A crazy man rants nearby.

Kakasii (our guide) dropped us off here yesterday afternoon, after picking us up from the Marangu Gate at Mt. Kilimanjaro--with three ice-cold Kilimanjaro beers standing by, as promised. It was our first drink in over a week. Not quite as impressive as Adolpho's streak (2 years, broken when we offered him one in Uswaa village), but probably a personal record for the three of us.

As usual, we all had to cram into a small vehicle--me, Max, and Clemence, six days overdue for a shower, wedged into the backseat--but at least all the windows were down and some charming Tanzanian music was blasting. Talk delightfully impossible, we all just enjoyed the scenery and tunes as Kakasii attempted to break his own land speed record.

It was hard not to think back on our recent trek. Day 5--Summit Day--which occurred on Sep.21, was one hell of a test, a true emotional yo-yo of a day, during which we experienced both the high and low points of our six-day trek.


Kibo Hut. 4750 meters. Our day began at midnight. After a few hours of sleep and a few hours of watching time pass in the moonlit darkness, without a clock, thinking about the day to come, breakfast arrived.

The porter with a red bandana--whose name we never got, since we were not allowed to mingle with the porters--brought in a plate of cookies. That was it. That was our sustenance for the longest, most intense leg of our climb. Cookies.

We suited up for the bitter cold (-15 Celsius?), filled Ralph's daypack with our self-purified bottles of water and some trail mix I had on hand, and waited outside for our guide.

Clemence was nowhere to be found--other groups were already departing for the summit, a string of headlamps in the distance, and our guide was AWOL.

Clemence finally showed up, we took a few photos, and headed out. Spirits were high for the first couple hours. As we plodded zig-zag up the endless gravel slope, passing all the players in this comedy, one by one, each briefly illuminated in the moonlit semi-darkness, I could not shake the feeling that we were in some sort of Fellini dream sequence.

First, there was the Spanish couple. She wasn't feeling ‘well in the head’ when we woke up, and the expression on her face now implied matters had only gotten worse. I said "Hola" and we chugged past. I hoped they would make it to the top, since I actually like them--which I couldn't say for most of the other climbers--but I didn't think it likely. [He made it; she didn't - Ed]

We passed the three annoying Polish people I thought were Russian, who kept us awake our first night on the mountain until I pounded on the wall of our hut and shouted “Shut the fuck up!” with conviction, the large group of Austrians...and others I can't remember. Our methodical, 'pole, pole,' style, with only a few short breaks, was proving successful. I was getting excited about being the first ones on top, owning the fabulous view for at least a few exhilarating minutes.

Then the sickness started. Nausea, accompanied by the nearly-overwhelming need to shit, followed by alternating cold/hot sweats, dogged me the rest of the way up. When it got unbearable, I would stop for a quick rest, then press on despite my desire to shoot myself in the face.

I took off my hood and the handkerchief covering my nose/mouth, and tried to breathe in the fresh cold air in giant gusts. I worried about frostbite, especially when my toes went numb and my hands seemed irretrievably frozen in my gloves, but wasn't sure what I could really do about it. I had to press on and I just hoped everything would turn out okay. I hoped I wouldn’t become the next Beck Weathers.

The endless gravel zig-zag finally ended and we were met by a similarly-endless, nearly-vertical pile of boulders. I couldn't believe it--this, too? Clemence started up, choosing his path as he went, and we followed. Slowly.

Our breaks became more frequent, our bodies completely exhausted, barren of energy. I staggered around like a drunk, only my desire to not fail keeping me upright. How do all these old people do this? How do all these overweight people do this? How the hell did Jimmy Carter do this in 2000, at age 76? Why are we struggling so much? When will this end? Should we give up? How can we give up? How can we not do this? We can do this!


By the time we got to Gilman’s Point--5685 meters, atop the crater rim--I was ready to fall over and die. Luckily, the view saved me. An eternity of red, ethereal clouds spread in every direction. As cheesy as it sounds, it really did seem as though all of Africa lay before us, that we were gods looking down on the human comedy. We watched the sun break the horizon. A vast bowl of volcanic dust and snow, topped by the striking profile of a glacier wrapping around the other side of the mountain, awaited us in the other direction. Stunning.


All the hard work, the misery, was redeemed. We sat down for a few minutes to soak it all in, then Clemence said we had to press on--it was still an hour and a half to the actual summit, along the crater rim. Ralph asked me if I thought we should stay there to watch the sun rise, and I said we’d probably be able to see it periodically along the way. I regret not staying there.

The slog from Gilman’s Point to Uhuru (the summit) was murder. Slow, painful, roasted-on-a-spit MURDER. Barely able to breathe in the thin air at 19,000 feet, our muscles in surrender mode, our heads swimming in oxygen-deprivation, our stomachs dangerously empty, teetering precipitously over the edge of the crater rim, the 1.5 hours felt like forever.

In the distance, we saw (and heard) countless people in matching orange jackets prancing around jubilantly. They must have come up a different route, since we were the first people up ours, and, from the looks of it, their route was a lot easier. Some of them were even running up and down the outside slope, burning off excess energy. Everybody was smiling, laughing, exuberant; we were miserable and, therefore, immediately hated them. There was no way I could have smiled; no way I could have run.

In fact, ever since we hit Gilman’s Point, I had become unable to stop sobbing uncontrollably. Happy, sad, exhausted, proud, whatever--I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t speak, since my voice would immediately crack into a sob, so I remained silent as much as possible. I thought about shooting a video when I got to the top, a simple one where I would tell Melissa I loved her, and the thought made me cry again. I didn’t think I would even be able to say “I love you” without crying. 'What is wrong with me?' I wondered...and cried...

The last stretch dragged on. I could occasionally see groups of climbers in the distance and their location destroyed me all over again each time. How could it still be that much farther? When will this end? I finally saw the top from a distance; an agonizing distance. I turned to Ralph:

“Don’t fucking tell me we have to go all the way over there. What the fuck?!”

We did have to go all the way over there. Extremely slowly. The incline was minimal, but unrelenting. Ralph seemed to be dealing with it okay, but Max and I could only go 20 meters or so before we would need to rest. We didn’t understand what the hell the rush was, but Clemence kept pushing us along.

People on their way down--full of life, energy, smiles, springs in their feet--made me sick, unfairly filled me with hatred for them. How could they have done this and not be on their deathbeds, as I felt. How?!

By the time we made it to the official summit (5,895 meters)-- a circus of activity dominated by middle-aged American assholes whining about lack of cell reception--I was so pissed off that I didn’t even care. Five days of hiking, five days of eager anticipation, months of planning, much money spent...and I didn’t even care that I was standing atop the roof of Africa.


We three sat on some rocks and rested, totally spaced out. It was 7:30am. Clemence pushed us to hurry over and take our pictures by the summit sign before more people arrived. I didn’t see the point of hurrying--there were already like a hundred people on top, a steady flow on the way up, so what did it matter? There would always be a line, so why couldn’t we just chill the fuck out for twenty minutes?

But we gave into our guide-cum-slave-driver, once again, and posed for two or three photos. Max held out the Terry Plumbing flag in all of them, which annoyed me when I realized it later. In all the commotion--picture bitchy suburban parents fighting about how long somebody’s kid has been sitting on Santa’s lap at a shopping mall, actually saying lines like this: “Oh, so now we’re taking two shots? Hmmph!”--Max and I both totally forgot to pose with the leopard he had been toting around since Zanzibar, expressly for this purpose, so we could give our niece and nephew a toy leopard that had climbed Kilimanjaro with us, along with photos taken along the way to prove it.


I also would have liked a solo photo, but didn’t feel like fighting to make it happen. All I wanted to do was leave this madness behind and sit down somewhere for a while, eat some trail mix, catch my breath, rest, improve my emotional state a bit before the inevitable, grueling descent to Kibo Hut.

But Clemence would have none of it. “We need to go now--the sun is too strong here.” All I could think was: 'What the fuck does it matter? It’s so damn cold I don’t even have any skin exposed!!! Does it burn through down jackets, you asshole?!'

But, once again, we pressed on as instructed. I think we were just too beaten down to argue. The trek back to Gilman’s Point was like a Trail of Tears. We demanded to stop there for a while to rest and eat something. By this point, Ralph, who earlier complained that he was falling asleep while walking, was so devoid of energy that he fell down TWICE while trying to sit on a large boulder.

Gilman’s Point was super crowded at this point, and everybody was in high spirits. They must have had more than a handful of cookies before/during the 20,000-calorie climb/descent. After a brief rest, we continued down, hoping to simply put all this behind us.

Down-climbing the boulder wall was difficult and time-consuming. Our legs were still weak from the climb up, our stamina waning due to continued lack of sustenance. Descending the eternity of gravel beyond the boulders was agonizing.

I literally skied down on my boots, using the walking poles like ski poles, slaloming around large boulders. It easily took over an hour or two--a hell of a ski run, and hell for the knees. After a slow start, Ralph took off and flew down the mountain, passing me at some point and not stopping until he got to Kibo Hut, where we were to rest and eat lunch before continuing another 12km down to Horombo Hut for the night.

What was it that filled his sails so suddenly, so vigorously? The overwhelming need to take a shit.

By the time I got down, Ralph was in bed. I borrowed his packet of diaper wipes and raced off to the pit toilets myself, having had to shit since we started the climb 13 hours ago...

Now, I have to tell you these pit toilets were disgusting. As I dirt-skied my way around the final bend, the scent riding the robust wind could have wilted a rainforest. It's no wonder there’s an alpine desert up here...


The unthinkable--using these pit toilets, which were literally just a hole in the ground, surrounded by piss, shit, dirt, and altitude-induced vomit--became reality out of pure, unadulterated necessity.

Nothing lowers standards quite like the need to go to the bathroom. When your choice is between filling your pants or using a disgusting bathroom, it is no longer even a choice. How many days does it take before a new prisoner shits on a filthy, seat-less toilet in the middle of his cell, in full view of his creepy, violent cellmate(s)? Well...how many days can the human body hold it in? It is but a matter of time--eventually, everyone gives in and performs.

In case you were wondering, it’s not easy to squat over a hole in the ground, trying to keep your pants clean, after a grueling 12-hour ascent/descent. My legs were quivering, ready to acquiesce to gravity at any second. My lungs frantically huffed and puffed, searching the polluted air for precious oxygen.

All went well, luckily, and I crashed out in my bed after changing into some dry clothes.

A couple hours later, I think--we never had any real concept of time--the porter with the red bandana woke us up for lunch. What do you give three starved mountain climbers after a soul-destroying, energy-sapping, 12-hour climb on a nearly-empty stomach?


Easy one--a plate of cold toast, old fruit, cold fried-eggplant patties, and horrible onion soup. That’s it. That’s the lunch our crew slaved over as we climbed. That was the fuel they thought we needed. I took a few bites and walked away; Max didn’t even touch it.

Clemence walked in shortly after lunch arrived, alarmed that we weren’t ready to leave for Horombo Hut yet. I wanted to punch him in the face so badly. Not only because of the slave-driving climb and the shitty food, but because he never even told us to be ready at a specific time, yet here he was yelling at us for being late.

We took our sweet time packing up and resumed our descent. Surprisingly, I was in a pretty good mood--partly because I had slept a bit, partly because Clemence decided to carry my pack, partly because the hike was relatively flat. I had some good conversation with my brother, as well as with Ralph. It was hard to believe we had stood atop Kilimanjaro not long ago--much like the machete mugging in Arusha, I felt a surreal detachment from the reality of the moment. Was I up there? Really? What did it feel like? I don’t really know...

But what I did know was that we were heading down, down, down--and that was a good thing. Off the mountain. Finish camping, ditch Clemence, move on.


After a shitty dinner of banana stew at Horombo Hut, crammed onto the end of a table full of Japanese climbers bitching in broken English about not having any boiling water, we hit the sack hard.

The next morning, we hiked 12km to Mandara Hut, most of which I did by myself, at a breakneck pace, rocking out to 24 LCD Soundsystem tracks, dodging porters going up and down, staring out into the crazy extraterrestrial landscapes.

At Mandara, we waited easily 45 minutes for our lunch--french-fry omelettes and steamed vegetables. Huh? I wolfed it down. We pumped some water from a nearby faucet and hit the trail again.

Clemence told us he would catch up. We couldn’t tell what he was doing when he said this--it looked like he was either shitting in a ditch or washing his ass or something. As it turned out, we think he was changing his clothes, awkwardly, in semi-public, since he was wearing different clothes when we saw him later on down the trail.

We flew down the last stretch--partly to stay ahead of/away from Clemence, partly to just finish this thing already.

Clemence tried to stop us occasionally to point out things, to make us think he deserved a better tip, due to his bottomless knowledge, and it reminded me of how he had seemed super intense during our first meeting, surprised that we had not prepared any questions about the local plants, as if he was some kind of insane nature expert. I don’t think he pointed out one fucking thing on the way up. We might as well have been led up the mountain by an auto mechanic. Yet, here he was:

“See that thing on that tree?”

Where? What tree? What thing? We’re in a fucking rainforest, Clemence! You can’t be that vague! Can you give me a color? A shape? An adjective? There is a veritable smorgasbord of vegetation here, for Christ’s sake... Oh? The bee’s nest made out of a log? Yeah, already know all about it, Clemence. They’re all over the place. Thanks for filling us in on some insider-secret. There’s an extra five cents in your tip jar, now leave me alone!

Even if his intentions were more innocent, we just didn’t care. We kept going, sweating our way toward those three ice-cold Kilimanjaro beers and a one-way ticket off the mountain.

Do I regret the adventure? No. It was an irreplaceable experience and the highs, if not more abundant than the lows, made it all worthwhile. Would I have done it differently? Hell yeah. Will I ever do it again? Hell no.

Back in Action

Goodtime Charlie is once again stateside, so please set aside any worries you might have about our nation's future--it is once again in good hands.

What has happened while I've been away from the controls? Mucho.

The financial system has gone to pot, thanks to all the people not smoking it.

Do I sound like my mom when I say that people who risked their savings in the stock market should not have been gambling what they could not afford to lose? Yes.

According to Forbes, there are 946 billionaires in the world, due to the unrelentingly-bullish (til recently) global markets. What goes up must come down, right? Right.
Why can't each billionaire the shady financial system created just give $1 billion back to it? Oh, wait, I know--they're greedy. That's why we're in this problem in the first place...

Is it all as easy as I make it sound here? Nope.


My favorite living writer, David Foster Wallace, forever tortured by his own overbearing genius and armor-piercing powers of observation, gave up his struggles and hanged himself in Claremont, California.


Admittedly, the news wasn't exactly shocking--anybody who has read his writings realized how profoundly he struggled with the dark side of life--but it was certainly saddening. For those of us who actually read books (sadly, we are few), the next several decades just got much bleaker for the novels, stories, and essays that he will not create for our enjoyment.

On the other hand, as his sister Amy said (I'm paraphrasing here), rather than think about how much time we did not get from him, it is better to think about how much time he did give us, how long he held on to life in the face of a catastrophically acute depression. Imagining a life without his work, since I have now been spoiled by it, simply makes me grateful for every bit of writing he did provide.

It is hard, especially now, not to imagine Wallace as somewhat of a real-life Hal Incandenza, the main character of his masterwork, Infinite Jest-- so unbelievably intelligent that he is eventually unable to communicate with others, who hear his eloquent oratory only as unintelligible screaming. How long can a man tolerate that? Life at the top of the intellectual heap is no doubt lonely, and knowing all that is wrong with the world, but being powerless to fix it, must be paralyzingly frustrating.

Wallace hadn't written anything in over a year, which is mind-boggling to imagine, considering his output in the past. I always used to hope he was spending most of his time locked in a basement somewhere, methodically perfecting another Infinite Jest-like, 1000-page epic, and I know I wasn't the only one.

He was a literary giant and he will be missed.


Paul Newman also died recently. Not as relevant to my life as Wallace--mostly just a face on one of my favorite salad dressings--but I did enjoy his performances in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Cool Hand Luke. I'm glad he got to live a long, relatively-healthy, satisfying life, and I feel sorry for his wife of 50 years, Joanne Woodward; that has to be tough. That is all.



In other news, pirates have taken over a ship full of weapons off the coast of Somalia, and are holding it for ransom, currently surrounded by US gunboats.

How could this have happened? I mean, this was not a freighter full of Pampers--it is crammed to the gills with 33 Russian-built tanks, grenade launchers, anti-aircraft guns, ammunition, etc. Could the men onboard not have perhaps used some of their ship's cargo against the surely-outmatched Somali pirates? That might have been a good idea.

According to this article, Kenya--the purchaser of the weapons--refuses to negotiate with pirates or terrorists, and is therefore on the sidelines, waiting for other countries to solve the problem for them. Whether or not Kenya intended to give the tanks to forces in South Sudan--which would violate an agreement they have with the Sudanese government--is up for debate. The curious thing is that nobody in the Kenyan military is even trained to operate a Russian tank, since they buy theirs from us...

[Question: Should the Kenyan government be allowed to keep the cargo if it is salvaged? Or should the tanks be given to coalition forces and used to shell the pirate town of Eyl until all the pirates' SUVs and lawn ornaments are reduced to rubble? Discuss.]

That debate aside, the incident certainly begs the question that if a boatload of armaments is not safe in the water these days, what chance does anybody else have? Answer: Slim.

"Today there are thought to be ten gangs operating around Somalia with as many as 1,000 members. Two years ago there were only about a hundred pirates. Most are based in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region that angles around the Horn. Recent visitors say that the tiny fishing village of Eyl has enjoyed a huge economic boom as the pirates buy luxury 4x4s and build smart new homes. Men with laptops describing themselves as “pirate accountants” come and go and restaurants have opened to cater for more than 200 hostages. In all, 13 ships are under the control of pirates. Two more vessels – a Greek cargo ship and a Hong Kong-flagged vessel – were snatched this week and attacks are reported almost daily."
(from The Times online)

Why has the US Government not carpet-bombed this pirate village yet? They don't seem to have any problem with killing innocent people while 'valiantly' fighting to rid the world of terrorism in every other corner of the world. Maybe the pirates are more valuable as defense-contractor customers? Otherwise, you'd think they could at least stop the flow of luxury SUVs and granite counter tops, just to piss them off...


Enjoy your Tuesday, and stay tuned for tales from Tanzania...

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Bulletin!

Goodtime Charlie is on assignment in Tanzania until September 28th.
Please act accordingly.


- His Assistant

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