Sam's Best Shot

by James Best

  Petra’s house was also pleasingly dominated by books. I met her architect husband, her three dogs and an Afrikaans-speaking grey African parrot. Sam refused to talk and kept escaping to explore bookshelves in other rooms, but he was somewhat interested in the parrot. Petra and I chatted some more on the verandah while Michael sat between us and played music on his iPad. Every day he would delete all the music he’d listened to, and every evening Petra would re-sync it. Tedious, but that was the score.

  Michael had good taste in music. He was listening to a South African string quartet play traditional African music. He seemed to like that I took an interest. He pointed to the trees and said what Petra interpreted as bahn, German for train. Did the lines of the branches look like railway tracks? He didn’t mind that the message wasn’t quite getting through. He was a very accepting individual, happy in his own space.

  As we left, Michael spun some plastic pool filter covers like tops. Apparently he liked the sound they made as they wobbled to a stop. So did I, actually. Sam watched him with curiosity, while keeping a careful eye on the dogs that were eager for attention and ready to jump up on him. The visit had been illuminating, and we promised to keep in touch.

  While rather graceless, Sam at least hadn’t lost the plot. That was to come. I should have known better than to try to get him to help cook dinner. I should have read him better. Halfway through the dinner preparation, with the pasta boiling and the sauce cooking, in the middle of a large bustling kitchen, he ran off. I scrambled to get the pots off the heat and follow him.

  As I searched for Sam from room to room, a South African backpacker ran up to me. ‘James, your boy is at the gate. He’s trying to get out.’

  I ran out. There he was, trying to figure out how to unlock the gate. ‘Sam, what are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going home,’ he said.

  I was flummoxed. ‘You can’t, Sam. You can’t go home alone.’

  ‘I will swim home!’ he shouted, thumping his fist into his hip and standing on tiptoes.

  ‘Sam, it’s too far. Nobody can swim that far,’ I gently reasoned with him.

  Now Sam screamed at the top of his voice, pointing at me as he marched up and down next to the gate. ‘You! You are a bad father! You are being mean and awful! Awful father! You! You are a dick! You are a dick-head!’

  Well, that was a new one. The whole hostel would have heard, but at the gate at least we were partly out of sight. He grabbed and squeezed my head as hard as he could, and headbutted me, fortunately not too hard.

  It took a long time to talk him down. I followed him as he paced back and forth, now through the hostel. ‘Sam, do you realise it is really dangerous for you to go out in a city in Africa by yourself at night? You might get robbed.’

  ‘Or kidnapped,’ he added.

  ‘Or kidnapped, yes.’

  ‘I will escape. I will shoot them.’

  This was getting ridiculous. ‘You don’t have a gun.’

  ‘I will get one,’ he yelled. ‘I will shoot them and kill them.’

  Eventually he calmed down enough to agree to sit on his bed and play his Nintendo DS. That night we were staying in a dorm for the first time, as there had been no private rooms available. Great timing! Sam tended to make a huge mess. My plan was to just leave everything in the packs as best I could. At least he was quiet now.

  I returned to the kitchen to salvage the meal. Sam flatly refused to eat anything. The other backpackers were aware of my distress and gave me space. I ate my meal alone and then distracted myself with a game of pool.

  Eventually Sam approached me at the pool table and agreed to eat some spaghetti. He had written a note on our drawing pad. As he ate, I read:

  Take me back to Sydney and not go back to Africa. This must Happen Tomorrow. If you don’t you will be sentenced to life in gaol.

  Give me 10/10 for this

  I couldn’t help but smile. Then it dawned on me that our drawing pad had been at the bottom of one of the packs. I entered the dorm in trepidation: our stuff was scattered from one end to the other, all over other people’s bunks. I tidied up, feeling very down and fending off annoyed glances from other backpackers.

  I was full of doubt. What the hell was I thinking? He didn’t even have the insight to realise how dangerous going out that gate would be. And swimming to Australia? Imaginary guns to defeat criminals? He was so naive.

  That night, sinister thoughts crept up on me from dark spaces. They clubbed me from behind, as brutal an assault as Sam squeezing my head from the front. I wanted to go home too. I was overtired, overstretched, overwhelmed. The trip was meant to be recharging, yet I felt depleted. Tomorrow was another day, but I wouldn’t want too many more like today.

  The next day I Skyped Benison. I was relieved I could get through on the hostel’s wi-fi. I needed to talk to her. She told me to give myself some space. Afterwards, Sam seemed to accept his score for the day—four out of ten, his worst yet—and we talked about the reasons.

  The movie How to Train a Dragon was playing on the TV in the lounge. Sam had always had trouble paying attention for the duration of a movie, especially one he hadn’t seen before, so I set this as a challenge that would be easy on me. We negotiated: watching the whole movie would be equivalent to two activities. It worked; he watched it. It was a small but important victory for Sam and it revived my sagging spirits.

  For the next few days Sam’s behaviour was outstanding. Maybe his all-time low score shook him up. He was co-operative and pleasant, and also made some significant progress. He started organising his morning medications himself, had a prolonged game of checkers with a fellow backpacker, and made his breakfasts and washed up without even being told to. He did some excellent boxing and handball, and spontaneously conversed with a woman behind the bar while buying a Sprite. Mind you, she was young and pretty. I didn’t hear the conversation; goodness knows what he said.

  I gave him his second score of eight out of ten, but the next day only 7.5, marking him down for spending too much time on his Nintendo DS. This scoring system was keeping him focused and motivated, as it had been designed to do. I had begun to realise, however, that I had made a rod for my own back because I had to keep the scores and his expectations constantly in check.

  The day we would leave Namboobia, as Sam was now calling it, was fast approaching. ‘Namboobia sucks. Namboobia is poorer than South Africa. Butts-wana will be even worse.’ Wait till we get to the M countries, I thought to myself. But what I said aloud was, ‘Don’t say Butts-wana at the border, Sam.’

  That evening I met a young coloured guy from Johannesburg. With short sharp braids and a winning smile, he chatted to me about South Africa: where it was going, and where he had been and where he was going.

  ‘So where are your family from?’ I asked him.

  ‘I don’t know. I never knew my real dad, and I don’t think my mum knows where she’s from. I’m a lost sheep.’ He took a swig of beer. ‘It’s great that democracy came in 1994, but there are a lot of cut strings. I am one of those strings.’

  I wanted to know more, to understand. ‘Do you think South Africa has a good future?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe there will be a war.’ What? That hadn’t been on my radar. He smiled ruefully and said, ‘Maybe it will be necessary. Things are not yet sorted. Not in my world.’

  One of the advantages of stopping for a while in Windhoek was the Tornado cafe. I had heard on the grapevine that this place had very reliable wi-fi and good coffee, both rare and highly prized by Sam and me, respectively. We went there most days to Skype Benison and other family members. Benison was taking her aunt to the Sydney Writer’s Festival, seeing a play at the Sydney Opera House with a friend and going to the State of Origin with her sister next week. Culturally diverse, that’s my girl. It was great she was getting out and about. In many ways she had the harder job: being stuck at home, working, and looking after our older boys, Matt and Nick. She missed her darling Sam terribly—and
hopefully me a bit too. She always looked forward to seeing the top of Sam’s head on Skype: that was about all she could see, as he always looked down and had never been much of a conversationalist with her.

  Our last day in Windhoek was a busy one. In the morning I gave Sam a challenge: to write a post for our blog. I outlined the brief: it needed to be at least three hundred words and I left the topic purposely vague, just something ‘about our trip’. Sam sat at the computer and I went to get a coffee at the bar. On my return, he had come up with the following 312 words:

  We have Started off at a Australian Airport and then Fly with a Singapore Plane to Singapore and then to Johannesburg and another 2 hours to the airport and drive to Cape Town and stayed in a hotel for 6 nights and we went to the top of the rock and drive to a safari and saw lions, elephants, rhinos, hippos and zebras then we went to visit a prison where Nelson Mandela was in he was there for 18 years he was released eventually then we went to Hermanus for 2 nights and stayed in a quite big house and then we saw Erica who played a Slytherin Girl and had McDonald’s and we went to Mosel Bay for 2 nights and we went to the half top of the rock with a lighthouse then we went to Wilderness for 2 nights and we saw a cave lady and then we had to go to Port Elizabeth for 1 night and then we went to Chintsa for 3 nights and rowed a boat and walked down the beach and then we went to Coffee Bay for 4 nights and we walked on a river and then we went to Sani Pass for 3 nights and we went to a trip to Lozutu on to the top of the mountain and drove back and then we went to a city called Durban for 3 nights and we went to the aquarium and went on a bike ride and then we flight to Namibia and went to Windhoek for 5 nights and went to Etosha for 2 nights and went back to Windhoek for 1 night and went to Sossel bay for 3 nights and went to a desert place for 2 nights and celebrated dad’s 49th birthday and went back to Windhoek for the rest of Namibia and went to some restaurants.

  Apart from anything else, I was amazed at his memory. It was interesting what had stuck and what hadn’t—rowing a boat, walking on a river and riding a bike—he was retaining experiences as well as places. Surely this must be expanding his view of the world, and how he fitted into and participated in it.

  In the early afternoon, a group of us from the hostel went to a meat market on the outskirts of the city. It wasn’t as busy as the barbecue restaurant we’d visited in Cape Town, but the flies, glare and smoke still made for a challenging environment for Sam. Men and women swung axes, splitting wood for the fires. Butchers carved sides of beef and lamb into meat cuts, and smoke from the sizzling meat, oil and fat billowed into the surrounding alleyways. All I could hear were the sounds of axes on wood, of axes on bone, of haggling and banter.

  We cruised through the market, tasting small cuts. It seemed you handed over twenty Namibian dollars and got a fistful of meat sliced into small pieces, wrapped in newspaper, with a small pile of mysterious orange spice on the side of the meat. I ended up buying liver, although I had thought it was beef. The spice was agreeably hot and peppery but certainly not something Sam would like. He bought bread rounds that had been cooked on the barbecues.

  We found some unoccupied plastic chairs at a table towards the centre of the market and plonked ourselves down. Sam was freaked out by the chaos and withdrew into silence, legs up on the chair. He nibbled at a few token pieces of meat and drank lemonade. With some guilt, I realised I would have loved to have been here by myself, playing pool and maybe having a beer at the bar off to the side. But that was for another life.

  Sam turned to me with a longing expression. ‘I want to go back.’

  ‘Hold on, Sam. We won’t be long.’

  But Sam wasn’t dissuaded. He leant forward and grabbed my arm. ‘Let’s go back now. It’s too smoky.’ He was becoming increasingly agitated, smacking his hands on his thighs and the table, and humming loudly to himself. I could see things going pear-shaped quickly if I didn’t bail.

  So I hailed a cab, calling out a hurried goodbye to the others. When you hail a cab in Africa it doesn’t matter if someone is already in it. Sometimes the driver even boots out other passengers if he thinks he’s going to get more money out of you. The meek acceptance of these discarded passengers, who were frequently plonked on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, was surprising and at times embarrassing. Money talks.

  On this cab trip, we rode with a mother and her two-year-old daughter. The little girl regarded me as she nuzzled into her mother’s chest. I smiled at her and asked her mother if I could take a photo of her daughter.

  ‘Heh heh, no problem. But she is very sick. I am taking her to hospital.’

  Sam looked concerned. ‘She’s not going to die?’

  ‘Sam, shush!’

  Sam leant forward towards the mother, and said earnestly, ‘I hope she doesn’t die.’

  ‘Sam, be quiet!’ I snapped.

  The mother looked confused, and then realisation dawned. ‘She will be fine, don’t you worry,’ she reassured him.

  Sam sat back, looking more comfortable. After a minute or two, he leant forward again to talk to the mother. ‘Sorry for being inappropriate,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘No problem, Sam.’ In the rearview mirror I could see the driver was also smiling.

  CHAPTER 12

  Easy eights

  The next morning, we left Windhoek for Botswana. A cold snap had hit the city: it was going to be only 26 degrees Celsius, as distinct from every other day we had spent here, where it had been 27 degrees Celsius. We hadn’t seen a single cloud since Etosha.

  A comfortably small group of eight wayfarers shared the truck that would be our home for the next nine days: an older German couple; two young women, English and Swiss; a greying and pensive American aid worker; an elderly Chinese woman who spoke next to no English; and, in the back seat, an Australian doctor with his quirky kid, who was reading Harry Potter aloud.

  The B6 national highway took us across the semi-arid plains of central Namibia. It was quiet, flat, smooth and gun-barrel straight. The crimson Cambrian chalk dotted with desert shrubs gave way to cream grasses and dense coarse scrub, a landscape of dirty lime, mauve and grey. A warthog patrolled a fence line; a family of baboons crossed a dry riverbed; falcons hovered like Harrier jets over a potential meal far below in the grass and sand.

  We reached Gobabis, our last stopover before the border and the final chance to get personal supplies before the camping began. I was worrying about Sam’s refusal to wear long sleeves, and how his exposed arms increased the risk of contracting malaria.

  I gave it another shot. ‘Sam, how about I buy you a long-sleeved shirt that’s so light so you won’t even feel it?’

  He shook his head. ‘No!’

  ‘It would help protect you against malaria,’ I pleaded. ‘Come on!’

  But he wasn’t having a bar of it. ‘No! No long sleeves.’

  The border staff moved like they were in treacle; a triumph of torpor. The lag only added to a long day for Tuhafeni, our guide and driver, and his assistant, Alfeus. But eventually we entered our fourth African country. The dense coarse scrub now contracted to reveal the vanishing point of the horizon, wobbling in haze and glare. We were approaching another desert, a land of endless thornbush and clicking tongues, the Kalahari.

  Farm animals started to appear on the road so Tuhafeni slowed down. Sam began to fret at the prospect we’d have to sleep in a tent. We were planning to upgrade our accommodation at each destination but this would depend on availability.

  The sun set behind the truck. The tops of the olive trees were briefly lit orange before the grip of the evening shadows took hold. We were all lost in our own thoughts, Sam included. All we could see now were headlights on bitumen. Ten hours after we left Windhoek, the truck peeled onto a four-wheel drive road. After bouncing along for another half hour, we finally rolled into our destination, Dqae Qare San Lodge, Ghanzi.

  Tuhafeni negotiated with the eager-to-please South African manager. As they talked, I became anxious to get some inse
ct repellent on us—particularly Sam, with his exposed arms and legs. In the cold evening air, he lay next to the packs on sand lit gold by the lights of the truck.

  The good rooms were all booked out, however Sam and I could take a room that was empty, but had a broken toilet, for free! After settling in, the group watched a talk and dance show from the local San people who owned the farm.

  Around a large fire, we heard two traditional stories—first in the twinkling clicks of the San language, then in English, and finally in song and dance. They told of a race between an ostrich and a tortoise, and a jackal, disguised as a teacher, attempting to woo lion cubs away from their parents. The plots were reminiscent of Roald Dahl stories I read to the boys when they were little.

  The dancers wore strings of stone beads on their ankles, which rattled like tambourines with each stomp on the soft sand. The women swayed smoothly in neck beads, head scarfs and flowing robes, and the men wore loin cloths, coloured headbands and twirling wands of eland tail hairs. There were gentle melodies, soft harmonies. But I’m not sure if Sam got much out of it; the long drive had worn him out. He stroked his fingers through the soft sand around his feet, preferring to sit directly on the sand rather than on the large logs with the rest of us, and paid no attention to the performance.

  The group trundled back from the dancing to where our indefatigable guides had prepared our evening meal. As we headed back to our room after dinner, I noticed the cold and was secretly glad Sam refused to sleep in tents. The generator switched off at eleven. Lights out, power off, wait for dawn.

  The breaking light revealed a landscape full of colour, beauty and birdsong. The flora of the Kalahari featured candle thorn bush, acacia and bush willow filled with a myriad of birdsounds. A crimson-breasted gonolek flashed his striking colour; two red-billed spurfowls squabbled in the scrub nearby; three Cape starlings engaged in a dogfight in the sky above.