Sam's Best Shot

by James Best

  A small group from the hostel hopped onto a small boat to cross the river, while red-tailed and vervet monkeys leapt about the acacia and umbrella trees on the steep clay banks. A Cape clawless otter launched off some nearby rocks into the turquoise water as our launch chugged to the stables. We were given a talk on safety and put on helmets. ‘I look like an American footballer,’ Sam observed.

  As we clambered onto our mounts, the owner of the horse-riding facility, who happened to be a fellow Australian, was very particular about making sure Sam was safe. He suggested one of his instructors walk with him ‘just in case’. I wasn’t sure if this was necessary—sometimes the line between safety and overprotection can be a fuzzy one—but I went along with the safe option.

  It turned out the walking instructor wasn’t necessary, but that was easy to say in hindsight. The horses took us through the local village and farms, with subsistence plots of corn, yams, banana, coffee, jackfruit and cassava. Children ran out of mud-brick houses and yards to greet us on the side of the thin track, some naked, most not, but all smiling and waving. Girls carried babies. Teenage boys jostled each other and looked at us with half-smiles and puffed chests. A woman chopped wood. An old woman, stooped over her stick, held up her hand and said, ‘Jumbo, mzungu.’ ‘Hello, white people.’

  Our path arced back towards the steep riverbanks before looping back up to the stables. Sam was happy with his horse. He’d been told the horse’s name was Jack Daniels, but Sam had decided to rename him Bullseye. Bullseye was cowgirl Daisy’s horse in the Toy Story movies. Fortunately, Sam didn’t start riding him in the same manner as Daisy rode her steed.

  Back at the stables, we lingered for a chat with the Australian owner, T.J., who’d originally been a surfer from Newcastle. I quizzed him about where he believed Africa was heading. ‘Do you think they can ever break the cycle of corruption?’

  ‘I can’t see it happening soon.’

  I was surprised. ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s so entrenched, and so part of their culture. In the villages, they have so little that even favours are like a currency; everyone keeps a tab on who owns what, who has done favours for who and whose tribe you are in. Those that make money or get into positions where they can corruptly obtain money are expected to get what they can out of it and pay back those they owe and favour those who they’re aligned with.’

  I wanted Africa’s outlook to be better, more optimistic. ‘But there are large parts of the continent that have come a long way. Look what has happened in Uganda over the last twenty years.’

  ‘Sure, and long may it continue. But it’s still the way that if you get power you use it to your advantage, and if you don’t work or do your job properly there is no accountability, especially in government. It all comes down to education. People talk about corruption, but the corruption is there because there aren’t enough educated people who can either hold those in power accountable or offer an alternative way, an alternative employee, an alternative candidate.’

  Benison had been so concerned when I’d told her about our plans for white-water rafting. ‘Sam and white-water rafting…Are you sure that’s wise?’

  As we drifted across the still, steel-blue waters, slowly approaching the roaring rapids, now audible but not yet visible, my eyes widened and my heart thumped and I began to wonder if my wife had been right. Fortunately, I’d opted for Sam and me to go in the safety boat. There were twenty other wazungu in our group, most of whom were in rafts, and a few on kayaks, either by themselves or in tandem with a guide. We’d received thorough instructions from the guide while still on shore and I was confident that Sam understood what to do if we did fall out of the boat, but still…

  I looked at him, perched on the front rim of the raft. ‘Sam, are you nervous?’

  ‘No,’ he said, without hesitation.

  ‘I am.’

  The safety boat was steered by another Moses, this one being the head guide, using two long oars fixed on each side of the large inflatable raft. A metal frame steadied the centre of the raft, adding sturdiness. Moses alternated sitting on a raised seat or standing in the middle of the frame. Sam and I, his only passengers, sat on the inflated rim at the front, but we were instructed to sit down on the floor when things got bumpy and hang onto a safety rope on the outside of the rim. On the other rafts, six passengers and one guide each had a paddle and manned the outside of the craft.

  The safety boat would negotiate the softer parts of the rapids, while the other rafts would go where the action was greatest. Eight sets of rapids spread over twenty-five kilometres of the Nile River sat below us. As we approached the first edge, Moses told us to sit down on the floor and hang on.

  The raft tilted over the edge of the first set of falls. A dramatic set of rapids, plunging up to two metres at a single drop but over twenty metres in length, lay below us.

  ‘I don’t want to go down there!’ Sam yelled and stood up to jump over the side.

  Moses and I both screamed for him to sit down. Hanging onto the rope with one hand as we fell, I lurched and grasped at the bottom of Sam’s life jacket as he attempted to jump out of the plunging raft. Moses also grabbed Sam by the shoulder, abandoning one of his oar handles to do so, and we secured him just as we landed at the bottom of the first of half a dozen wrenching thumps and lurches. Walls of water loomed before us, smashing into our faces, before we’d leap up again, then tilt with ridiculous speed forward and plunge again. It was like, I imagined, riding a rodeo horse, a very wet rodeo horse.

  I looked across to Sam, incredulous that he’d tried to jump out.

  Sam punched the air. ‘I did it!’ What? Over the course of twenty seconds he’d gone from terrified to exhilarated.

  The second set of rapids was soon upon us. Here we go again. Plunge, thump, lurch, heave, plunge. Over the roar of the waves I heard Sam giggle. Finally we reached some still water.

  He beamed. ‘We are playing Quidditch!’

  I burst into a fit of laughter. Moses joined in, shaking his head, before asking, ‘What is Quidditch?’

  ‘He thinks it’s like riding on a broomstick,’ I explained, as best I could.

  A perplexed grin appeared on Moses’ face. ‘Heh, okay.’

  We watched the others come down the rollercoaster we’d just negotiated. After all, we were the safety boat. One raft tipped, all its passengers tumbling down the rapids before being retrieved by the very impressive guides. These guys knew their stuff. I found out several of the guides were in the Ugandan kayak team and were heading to the World Championships in Canada the following month. One of the wazungu, an Australian, was kayaking by himself and was also incredibly skilled. He was also off to the World Championships, representing Australia, and was here to get in some practice. The rest of us were in awe of their talents, and several of the women in awe of their physiques.

  On we went, gliding over the silky waters stirred by eddies and whirls and draped in the tattered remnants of lilies and reeds ripped from the shore, waiting for the rush towards the next set of rapids. The roar would build, the raft would tilt and down, down, down we’d plunge.

  On smooth water once again, it was a little embarrassing just sitting in the safety boat, not having to do the paddling expected of everyone else, but I got over it and laid back and drank in the atmosphere. The Nile was magnificent, with the silver-blue currents cutting between steeply wooded banks where children would jump and wave to us from the shore. Fishermen in dugout canoes plied the waters, and cormorants and yellow-billed storks glided above and beside us. Sam thought the cormorants, with their sinewy necks ducking in and out of the water, looked like the Loch Ness monster. I could see that, but I would just never have thought of it myself.

  There were no hippos or crocs above Murchison Falls so in this respect it was safe to be in the water, which was fortunate because every raft was upended at least once. The guides waiting in kayaks would haul them to safety. We approached the last set of rapids, Sam giggling and squeali
ng in anticipation. It was a doozy, but being in the safety boat we descended a section that was calmer than the centre of the rapid.

  He pointed to the wild water. ‘I want to go over there.’

  ‘No, Sam, we can’t. We’re in the safety boat and have to go in the easier section so we can help people if needed,’ I said.

  ‘But that’s more fun over there. I want this to be an event!’

  ‘I think it is an event, Sam, that you’ve been so brave.’

  He looked at me, thinking about what had just been said. ‘What does event mean?’

  ‘It means something special,’ I explained.

  A wide grin emerged, and he looked across the river. ‘Yes, this is an event!’ The other rafts came down, two out of three capsizing but everyone safe. Sam laughed at their tumbling exits from the craft. He turned to Moses. ‘I want there to be more rapids. Let’s round it up to ten.’

  ‘No, there is only eight. It is finished now,’ Moses replied.

  Sam wasn’t content with that. ‘No, let’s round it up to ten. Ten is a more rounded number.’

  Moses looked at me, perplexed; I waved to him to ignore it. Half of the troubadours were now in the water in their life vests, swimming or just drifting with the steady current as we approached our landing site.

  Sam was watching them closely. ‘I want to swim,’ he suddenly said.

  I was stunned. ‘Really?’ Was this the same boy who only a month or two earlier had needed the encouragement of three people for ten minutes to jump into Lake Malawi for a few seconds? Now he was all for it.

  He jumped into the river and swam alongside our raft for a few hundred metres to the bank. I was feeling pretty damn special. It had been an event.

  Sam was tired and crabby as we ate the late lunch provided by the raft company and changed out of our wet clothes. I let him be; it had been a big day. The troop piled into the truck that would take us back to the hostel, the group electrified by the experience. Heavy rain whipped the truck, making the deep gutters run with toffee-coloured water, distracting the small children who jumped and splashed in the water instead of giving the ubiquitous wave and ‘Hello!’ to the passing wazungu.

  That evening over Skype, Benison was relieved to hear we’d survived and thrilled Sam had gone swimming in the Nile. She said it was just as well I was travelling with Sam rather than her as she just wouldn’t have even considered this sort of activity, or taken this type of risk. She was guilty, in her own words, of underestimating Sam’s abilities, of being overprotective. We were both aware of the ways those attitudes, however benevolent, could limit him over his life.

  Much later, a friend in Australia alerted us to an NPR podcast called Invisibilia, and specifically an episode called ‘How to become Batman’. It recounted a famous Harvard psychology experiment from 1963, when psychology students were given rats and told they had been specifically bred for high intelligence, as measured by their ability to navigate mazes. Other students were given rats and told they had been bred for dullness in navigating mazes. The rats, however, had no such breeding; they were ordinary lab rats randomly assigned to the two groups.

  The students were asked to teach the rats a range of skills including finding their way through a maze. The result? The ‘bright’ rats markedly outperformed the ‘dull’ rats, despite the fact that they shouldn’t have. The students, who were unaware they were part of the experiment, were not influencing the rats’ performances intentionally; it was their own expectations of the rats that caused the difference between the two groups. In subtle ways—such as how they handled the rats, eye contact, the enthusiasm of their encouragement—the ‘bright’ rats responded to the higher expectations of their students. It’s called the experimenter expectancy effect, or, when observed outside the laboratory in the real world, the Pygmalion effect. This effect has been reproduced consistently in studies since the 1960s, including research showing that a teacher’s expectations can influence a student’s IQ scores.

  The Invisibilia episode then went on to describe the experiences of the blind community where a prevailing attitude that ‘blind people can’t do those things’ frequently limits the achievements of the blind by encouraging a sort of ‘learned helplessness’.

  The prevailing experience was contrasted with the story of Daniel Kish, a man about my age who lives in California. Daniel has been blind almost all his life, after his eyeballs were removed because of cancer when he was an infant, but he’s able to confidently navigate the world almost as efficiently as he could if he could see, using echolocation, a self-taught technique of making clicking noises with his tongue and listening to the sound bouncing off objects surrounding him, kind of like sonar. He’s like a real life Batman.

  Right from the word go, Daniel’s mother let her blind but adventurous little boy climb fences and trees, run around playgrounds and parks, and eventually ride a bike, all possible by using his clicking tongue. Yes, she was afraid of him getting injured or worse, and he did come to grief many times, but she was also determined to not let him be dragged down by the stultifying effect of low expectations. She banished her fears, and Daniel thrived.

  So ironically, the enemy of high expectations can be love. It is understandable, of course, for parents of children, especially children with disabilities, to be fearful of the dangers of grasping a learning moment. Benison’s love for Sam would have prevented her from allowing him to go white-water rafting, but she knew well enough the importance of letting him go, to have allowed the two of us to walk through that airport departure gate in Sydney. With high expectations, remarkable things can occur.

  CHAPTER 31

  Prayers and chickens

  Sam and I left the Nile behind and continued north towards Kenya. Taxi, minibus, minibus, boda boda; it was a full day of travel. We shared the Kindle, letting life-in-Africa-through-a-minibus-window entertain us while the other was reading. A man stood on a roundabout preaching theatrically about the coming of Jesus to indifferent motorists. A truck laden with sugar cane had tipped into a deep gutter, and twenty men with ropes were attempting to right it. A small boy waved a stick in the face of a bored donkey.

  At a minibus station, as the bus was repacked yet again to maximise occupancy, Sam stood outside being gawked at by a group of giggling young girls. I wasn’t sure whether it was curiosity or flirting, or both. With his long wavy hair and lanky white limbs he sure stood out from the crowd.

  A young blind boy got on the bus, assisted by his father. A woman sitting in front of us carried a chicken in one hand and a small crying infant in the other. The bird was being unceremoniously held upside down by its feet and protesting wildly. It was hard to tell which was making the more noise, the squawking chicken or the bawling infant, but the woman seemed completely unfazed by either.

  We had been on enough African minibuses now to understand the way they worked. There is an unspoken set of rules:

  • Rule number one: there is always room for one more paying passenger.

  • The bus never leaves until it is full.

  • The minibus driver never smiles.

  • The conductor never gets on until after the wheels start moving.

  • The door is always closed after departure, usually as the bus changes from first to second gear and momentarily loses some momentum.

  • Mzungu are highly prized. (We can be easily ripped off.)

  • The driver’s allegiances to religion and football shall be displayed on the rear-vision mirror and dashboard, and painted on the outside of the bus.

  • If the horn breaks the driver shall have an existential crisis.

  • Something on the bus must be broken.

  • There is always a chicken, and occasionally a goat.

  Our second minibus conductor for the day had agreed to an amount in advance to take us to our destination, Sipi Falls. As per usual, I didn’t understand what was going on, and the bus didn’t actually go to Sipi Falls, only to the turn-off to Sipi Falls. The cond
uctor did, however, arrange for a boda boda to take us the last twelve kilometres up the hill as part of the fare. The problem was he only paid for one.

  The driver jumped on, sitting as far forward as he could with a backpack on top of the handlebars. I climbed on behind him with one daypack in each hand, and Sam sat behind me, wearing another pack. The small bike struggled and spluttered with its load of three humans, two backpacks and two daypacks. It was a long twelve kilometres. Finally we arrived at Sipi.

  As we dismounted the boda boda driver began arguing that he had only been paid for one passenger, not two. I suspected he was scamming us, and a long discussion ensued between him, me and the ubiquitous gaggle of people that forms whenever one gets on or off any form of transportation in Africa.

  We compromised and I ended up paying for an extra half-person. Whatever. I was totally over another exhausting day on the road. Our accommodation had remarkable views of the falls, which sat at nearly two thousand metres altitude. It was nice to not have to worry so much about mosquitoes, which were uncommon at this elevation. Unfortunately, the remoteness of the location of our hotel meant no access to the internet and no power in the room, apart from the room light. Considering we had been planning to spend a few days here I knew Sam would not be happy.

  Adding to this, Heiress Films had been trying to send me some extra equipment for the new camera and I’d arranged for it to be delivered to Sipi. Then I discovered, after a twenty-minute boda boda ride to the nearest internet cafe to read my emails, that it wouldn’t arrive for another five days. This would not do. I found a hotel with wi-fi access in the nearby small city of Kapchorwa, and arranged for the delivery to be redirected there. I had already paid for another night in Sipi Falls, but we could transfer to Kapchorwa the day after that. Our new destination had nothing to offer a tourist apart from wi-fi, but at least we could focus on schoolwork and neuroplasticity exercises while we waited for our parcel to arrive.