Having abandoned my plans to ride the Nile steamer, I walked slowly back to Juba's Hotel Africa, occasionally doubled over with dysentery cramps, carrying all of my worldly belongings. It was about 3am, so I didn't check in, but lay down on the concrete floor for a couple of hours of much needed shuteye. Since it had become apparent that it was time to leave the Sudan, I decided to hop the Sudanese flight to Uganda. Therefore as soon as the sun came up I was hustling around trying to get the grasping little bank in Juba to exchange enough money for the ticket. It was a real time stretch, as I didn't want to wait another four days for the next flight, and every transaction operated on "African time". I made it onboard only because the little 13 seat Fokker airliner was running almost empty, and the pilot had heard that I was coming.
Yep, they held the plane for me. I found my amigo Paul already on board, trying to figure out which of the guys alongside the runway was his Sudanese Government "tail". We took off about 10am for the short flight, which cost me $220, more than a month's traveling budget. But it was almost worth it. I got to see Lake Victoria from the air, and that freshwater sea is staggeringly large and truly heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Even from our altitude I could not see the southern shore. I can hardly imagine what John Speke, in the 1850s, must have felt when he viewed it. He too was very sick with dysentery when he stood on its bank, the first European ever to do so.
That stunning view completed my trip from the Mediterranean up the world's mightiest river, because Lake Victoria's northern exit is the legendary SOURCE OF THE NILE.
We landed at Entebbe, which was new and modern and slick. The empty, echoing terminal was easily the most "first world" place I had seen in a long time. (To be exact, ever since I had sneaked into the Nile Hilton two months earlier for the purpose of "appropriating" some otherwise-unobtainable toilet paper.) History buffs will remember that Entebbe is the airfield where, 10 years after I passed through, the Israelis would land commandos and rescue hostages. Paul made connections to Nairobi, but I didn't want to pay for another expensive flight, nor under any circumstances to miss seeing Uganda. I cleared customs easily and found a gear-grinding, gasping bus to the nearby capital city of Kampala.
Idi Amin's horrible rule of Uganda was peaking in 1975, and the place was, as a result, falling apart rapidly. Dictator Amin had the bright idea of blaming all of Uganda's troubles on those citizens of Asian ancestry. The Asians did seem to own almost all of the businesses, and that didn't seem fair. His solution was to throw them all out, even though many of those folks of Indian heritage had lived in Uganda for four or five generations. It was a pretty good scam for a few weeks.
Clever old Idi gave all of the shops which had been confiscated from the Asians to members of his own tribe. I went into two shops in Kampala, and then gave up on any shopping. In one large general-store-type shop the black proprietor sat behind the cash register waiting for customers. I was the only one inside, and it seemed like the place echoed emptily. All he had for sale were some bars of locally produced high-lye soap and a few Gillette razorblades in their blue paper envelopes. The shelves were bare of anything else. The guy had collected money for all of the stock which was on the shelves when he took over, and had absolutely no impulse to restock, and apparently no idea how to do so. The other shop I visited was in a similar state, but they still had the remnants of four different items for sale.
Broken down vehicles were all over the place. There were five derelicts by the side of the road for every one which was still somehow running. You guessed it. The auto mechanics had also all been citizens of Asian ancestry, and had been ejected from the country with the shop-owners.
Another bad result of Idi's misrule was the omnipresence of large numbers of VERY important soldiers strutting around haughtily, obviously above the law. They all had loaded automatic weapons, which combined poorly, in my opinion, with their inflated sense of self-worth. I have NEVER had to show my passport to so many people so often. Every soldier that I passed would scoop up his weapon, saunter across the street to confront me, and demand that I show him my papers. Part of the plan was that I was supposed to give each one a bribe, but I was not playing that game. Therefore the rapacious soldier-parasites were taking up lots of my time trying to wheedle money out of me for the privilege of getting my passport handed back to me.
I quickly realized that it was already time to get out of Uganda, and I had only been in the country for a few hours! I bargained with the driver of a truck with Kenyan tags, and purchased a ride to the border. The driver wanted me to go on with him to Nairobi, but I had realied the importance of only taking rides TO borders, then crossing alone on foot, finding transport again on the other side. Over the years this modus operandum has saved me lots of risk and hassle, and I highly recommend it to any future vagabonds.
I sat up front with the driver and his two helpers, who were going back empty to Kenya. We had to stop at "military checkpoints" at least a dozen times for the purpose of bribing the soldiers to allow the truck to pass. I was heartily glad to step over the Kenyan border just after nightfall. On the other side I caught a free ride to Nairobi in another truck. The excellent state of the road allowed me to get some sleep under a tarpaulin in the back of the truck. I awakened at dawn just as we entered the outskirts of Nairobi.
Kenya was much better off than Uganda. The city center was quite modern, and not too filthy, the weather was cool and pleasant, and everything seemed to be working. It reminded me strongly of an American city. I found my way to the then-notorious "Iqbal" hotel, the rundown central vagabond freak hangout in Nairobi. I checked into an upstairs six bed room for $1.70, finding three Japanese lone travelers, a white South African vagabond, and my buddy Paul already there ! The Japanese guys spent hours just sitting around talking Japanese to one another, and obviously enjoying it immensely. You could tell it had been a long time since any of the three loners had been able to converse in their native language.
After eating some of the incredibly heavy and greasy "deep fried semolina baseballs" downstairs at the Iqbal, and having my first HOT shower since Egypt (wonderful), my priority was to get myself healthy. Next morning I located a nearby government-run skin clinic and went inside. It was very clean, and free, and efficiently run, with lots of people there for treatment. I was of course the only white. First I was compelled to fill out papers, but I left the box marked "tribe" blank. When I handed the form over to one of the nice, English-speaking nurses, she finished filling it in for me. I discovered that I was a member of the American tribe.
Then I stood in various lines to get treatment. I soon realized that the "skin" clinic was really almost entirely devoted to treating venereal disease. All of the staff automatically assumed that I should be treated for syphilis, and I had some trouble convincing folks that I really had come for a skin ailment, and was not just being shy. I soon learned to immediately point to the open suppurating sores on my feet and toes as my communication opener. As it turned out, it probably was fortunate that I had not spent a week on the Nile Steamer. The doctor said I would likely have lost some toes. Gangrene was the diagnosis! and I was given a shot of penicillin, just like everyone else, and some ointment which nobody else received. The wonderful climate of Nairobi and the medicine did the trick, and in a week my feet were healed, and I also recovered from my dysentery.
The day after that I took care of another of my priorities. I heard that the first laundromat in Nairobi had just opened in the "European" suburb. Great, I found my way there on two busses, marched in and washed ALL of my clothes at once, with the exception of my swimsuit! It was great! The expatriate housewives were satisfactorily scandalized by my near nudity, and they turned up their noses at the horrifyingly dark grey rinse water which issued from the washing machine. I had no idea I had been doing that poor a job of sink-washing my clothes. It was great to have clean duds, and I put them back on right there in front of the dryer while they were still hot.
An under-rated feature of being a low budget traveler in Nairobi was that one met lots of confidence men. The con men in Nairobi were at that time the very best in the world, and I speak with some authority on this subject. These guys were expert at pushing EVERY psychological button of their intended victims; pity, greed, friendliness, race guilt, it was all used ruthlessly in positioning the target to cough up some money for a "loan".
Perhaps here it would be proper to divulge my personally developed method for identifying conmen. In a strange town, when a local walks up to you and starts a friendly conversation, how do you tell whether he is genuine or a confidence man? Simple. If, within the first two minutes of acquaintance, a new "friend" asks the following three distinct questions, he is certainly a tourist-preying confidence man. The questions are:
How long have you been in town?Now these seem like pretty normal and innocent questions, but what the con man is really asking you is:
Where are you staying?
When do you plan to leave?
Are you already familiar with the local confidence scams?The above system never failed me. A few true sleazeballs may not ask the questions at the very beginning, but when someone does, he is unerringly marking himself as a predator.
What part of town will I have to avoid after I cheat you?
How long will I have to stay away from that part of town?
My Californian friend Paul, whom up to that time I had considered a wise and experienced overlander, fell for a very good scam. A team of three bright, clean young men talked him into "loaning" them $22 so that they could rent handcarts at the market for a day, which they would use to strenuously lug goods around, earning enough money to pay him back and to rent the handcarts again the following day with the putative overall goal of earning enough money so that they could buy their textbooks for school. When he told me the story of his inexplicable gullibility, I just shook my head in amazement. Paul was convinced, offering to bet anyone that his conmen would return the following evening and repay him. I had to prevent the South African from taking him up on the bet. Paul didn't need to feel any more stupid than he already was going to when they stood him up.
Having taken care of the necessities, it was time for me to do some sight-seeing. Not much to see in Nairobi, but I visited the National Museum to have a look. It was interesting, mostly natural history stuff. I found the world's biggest bugs in the collection there. They were truly amazing "walking stick" insects. One of them, I swear, was 9" long !! And their "stick" camouflage was unbelievably good. One of the walking sticks had even grown lovely big thorns on its body to better blend in with its favorite bush. I really wonder how unaided natural selection could have resulted in a camouflage solution that perfect and elegant.
Leaving the museum, my unusually good peripheral vision allowed me to spot someone tall approaching me obliquely from behind. Since there were plenty of other people walking around, this direct blind-side approach already branded him "Conman" for me. A very nice looking young black Kenyan fell into step beside me, wearing a dark-colored lightweight suit, a white shirt, a narrow black tie, and inexpensive, well polished black shoes. He introduced himself in beautiful English as "Charles" and worriedly asked me if I had seen a school party leaving the museum. Seems that Charles was a teacher from Malindi, a lovely coastal town, and he had come up to the museum with the children from his school on two busses for a field trip , and each bus thought he was on the other bus when they left, and of course his wallet was on the bus, and he was stranded. Charles needed a loan to get back home to Malindi, and invited me to stay free at his house when I visited the coast, when he would pay me back, and told me how wonderful it was to talk to me about his problem, because all of the other white tourists had been quite rude and unfriendly to him.
I decided to mess with Charles' head a little bit, and pretended to believe his story completely. I commiserated deeply with him, and admitted to having lots of cash, but wouldn't loan him a single shilling. He walked alongside me for a long time, quite genuinely confused, because all of his instincts said that he had scored big, and that I SHOULD be reaching for my moneybelt. But it just wasn't happening that way. We finally parted, Charles still flummoxed, and Chick feeling that he had won a small victory for truth and justice.
Some weeks later, when I returned to Nairobi after my self-guided photo safari, you can imagine my delight when I found myself walking down the street behind good old Charles, wearing his identical conman rig. His peripheral vision was apparently not as good as mine. I slipped up beside him and clamped my arm in friendly fashion across his shoulders.
"Charles, it is SO good to see you again ! What a shame you still haven't been able to get home to Malindi ! Your students must really miss you by now."
The slimeball detached himself and scuttled away from me as quickly as possible, a smile of chagrin frozen painfully on his face. At that moment I am sure he thanked the heavens that on our previous meeting I had NOT fallen for his scam !