Sam's Best Shot

by James Best

  ‘Put your seatbelt up over your shoulder,’ he snapped. ‘You are not wearing your seatbelt correctly.’

  We had a scowler.

  Naomi nodded and adjusted her seatbelt, which she’d had under her arm to allow her to manoeuvre the camera more effectively. He checked the insurance stickers on the windscreen. Then he walked towards my open window and thrust out his hand. ‘Papers!’ I handed him my international driving licence and car registration papers.

  He looked at the papers with a frown. ‘Are you a good driver?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, my voice rising a few octaves.

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re a bad driver,’ he snapped.

  Sam piped up from the back seat. ‘No, Dad! You’re a good driver.’

  ‘Sam, be quiet!’ I hissed out of the corner of my mouth.

  The soldier glared at Sam before turning back to me. ‘You did not indicate when pulling off the road, and your passenger was not wearing her seatbelt correctly. You are a bad driver.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I agreed, willing Sam to keep quiet.

  He stood for a long time reading our papers, which really didn’t have much information on them to read. Finally he looked at me. ‘Why did you not indicate?’

  ‘We don’t use indicators in Australia,’ I lied, although it did seem overkill to indicate when you’d been specifically directed by an official to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.

  He shook his finger at me. ‘This will cost you one hundred and fifty dollars. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He pulled his ticket book out of his pocket and pushed it towards me. ‘So you will have to go to court and pay this money. When do you fly home?’

  ‘In a week,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm.’ He didn’t seem happy with that. A pause, then, ‘What are we going to do about this?’

  Naomi and I both recognised the language; this was a set-up for another bribe. I was getting heartily sick of this and was reluctant to cave in too quickly. He repeated again. ‘Well, what can you do to help me solve this problem?’

  Looking back and forward to Naomi, I pretended to be confused. ‘I’m not sure. What are you suggesting? Do you want me to apologise? If I have to pay a fine, I have to pay a fine.’

  Naomi joined in. ‘I’m not sure either. I can’t think of anything that will help.’

  His frustration was rising at our apparent stupidity. If it wasn’t for the fact that I didn’t want to land Sam in a potentially dangerous situation I’d have been tempted to call his bluff. But not today. As he reached for his pen and started to write on the ticket pad, I pulled out my wallet. ‘Will some money help?’

  ‘How much?’ I opened my wallet, where the equivalent of twenty US dollars was visible. I’d learnt this was the amount you should always have in your fake wallet: enough to satisfy most extorters, but only just enough.

  He nodded. ‘That will do.’

  ‘What a dick!’ Naomi said, as soon as we had pulled away and were out of earshot.

  Sam was unhappy. ‘You’re not a bad driver. The police officer is wrong.’

  I smiled. ‘He was just trying to get money out of me, Sam. He’s a corrupt policeman.’ Sam was familiar with the word corrupt from computer programs. It’s not often a boy Sam’s age gets to witness official corruption firsthand. He talked about it for days.

  CHAPTER 38

  A boy to a person

  The next day we cruised further down the east coast. The beaches were magnificent, picture-postcard perfect. Lagoons were reticulated with swirls of seaweed that was being harvested by local women. Distant reefs were marked by breaking surf, coconut palms swayed in the breeze and time slowed, defined merely by the inclination of the sun.

  Further south the lagoons disappeared and the gentle surf splashed onto the beach. After stopping for a coffee for me and a Sprite for Sam at a particularly nice five-star hotel perched on a giant coral rock hanging over the creamed-honey shallows, Sam decided he liked Zanzibar. So did I, despite being ripped off twice.

  Sam glanced around the hotel. ‘Let’s stay here.’

  ‘No, Sam,’ I said, ‘we can’t afford to stay here.’

  Sam thought about it for a second. ‘Let’s go to the bank and get some money.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t work that way,’ I explained. ‘We only have so much money left, and it’s got to last until we get home.’

  ‘Hmm, okay,’ he grumbled.

  We looped south on our final full day on Zanzibar. After a quick tour through a monkey sanctuary in a red mahogany forest we were back to the crazy streets of the capital. The driving became challenging again. Increasingly narrow streets sometimes ran unexpectedly into dead ends, or we came face to face with another vehicle. In a tiny lane we encountered a cart piled with thirteen mattresses pulled by a lean and wiry local. I had no choice but to reverse the Suzuki.

  Sam seemed a bit off-colour through the day and hardly ate any food. I took him to Mercury’s, a pizza restaurant on the foreshore named after Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, who was born in Zanzibar before emigrating to the United Kingdom in his teens. Sam only ate half a pizza, way below par for him, and then sat for ten minutes in the toilet deciding whether he would vomit or not. Fortunately, the nausea passed and we headed for the hotel. I wondered if he was getting sick again but it didn’t return.

  The return to Dar on the ferry was uneventful and we headed for our hotel. There would be no more travel until we left.

  Naomi headed off to the airport the next day. Sam and I would be here three more days. For the first time in the heaving city we were alone. Sometimes solitude seems more profound the more people you have around you; we were surrounded by three million souls but connected to none of them. Like so often before in the trip, it was just Sam and me, lonely as two clouds. After constant probing questions from Naomi on interviews to camera, I was a kaleidoscope of emotions.

  Sam sensed the solitude too, but also the significance of the moment; the realisation we had arrived at the point where there was nothing more to do than go home. I began to again look at Africa with the eyes of an outsider. At some time during the preceding six months it had become so familiar that I’d stopped noticing it; I, and perhaps also Sam, had become immune to its chaos.

  Outside the hotel, a group of young men, all dressed in red, were jogging in time while chanting in deep sonorous tones. A political rally or a religious ceremony? No, they were just exercising. A shirtless middle-aged man stood on a street corner, furiously drumming with his neck extended and eyes closed in concentration, sweating in the equatorial sun while the rest of the street ignored him. Conductors shouted out of the open sliding doors of minibuses as they neared a bus station, crackling political slogans echoed through the streets, swirling in the auditory soup of engine noise, horns and chatter.

  Sam and I walked down the footpath, sweating and on alert in the glare, watching our feet to avoid puddles, rubbish, mud and the occasional beggar. The latter would thrust out a bored hand and mumble ‘Friend’, or ‘Mumbo’, as I scanned their body to assess their particular tragic circumstance. Deformity, amputation, paralysis or perhaps just being very old or very young—the more visible the tragedy, the more effective the plea.

  I focused on Sam. Chess, cards, writing, reading, drawing and talking.

  I was also looking at him a lot, which annoyed him. ‘Why are you looking at me?’ he asked.

  I smiled. ‘I’m just wondering if you’re different to how you were before the trip.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ he stated forthrightly.

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  He paused for a moment. ‘I’ve changed from a boy to a person.’

  Interesting. I pushed him, but he couldn’t elaborate. It suggested to me his insight into the purpose of what we were doing was profound. I was proud of my young man.

  I continued to try to step outside myself and observe him as objectively as I could, while trying to remember what he’
d been like in Cape Town, in Hermanus, in Durban. Yes, he was more self-reliant, more confident, more independent. As he crossed the road, ordered a meal, ate the meal, chatted with me, I could see he had progressed. I started to look forward to Sydney. What would Benison notice? Our family and friends? His school?

  Would he go back into his shell? A shiver went down my spine at the thought.

  We packed our bags for the last time. Given we had lost or broken half our possessions, we had plenty of room for souvenirs bought at nearby markets: Tingatinga paintings, carved ebony statues of Maasai heads, and handcrafted jewellery.

  We walked around the dirt-floored market. Sam was quiet and reflective, but then would suddenly smile to himself. ‘Stop looking at me,’ he said again.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ I asked.

  ‘Home,’ he said, beaming.

  I smiled too.

  It was time. I had given it my all, and Sam had done brilliantly. As I packed our bags, I was also packing away my emotions. My mind was swirling with anxiety, pride, regret, relief, fear, but mostly joy.

  A series of lasts: our last night, our last meal, our last walk on an African street, and finally our last cab. I was on the verge of tears as we piled into the taxi for the trip to the airport. The cabbie, oblivious, nattered about Tanzanian politics, food and the bloody Dar traffic. Thanks to a delayed flight we missed our connection to Perth and Sam kipped for a few hours of the floor of Jo’burg airport. Then, after thirty hours of travel and two nights in the air, six months to the day since we’d left, we were home.

  We spied the familiar skyline of Sydney as we arced over the emerald city, shimmering in the dawn light, and finally the exhausted ragtag travellers fell into the arms of Benison…and the Heiress film crew.

  ‘Can we just film that reunion scene again?’ the cameraman asked. Ah yes, nothing about this trip had been ordinary.

  CHAPTER 39

  Life skills

  As we emerged from our jetlag over the next couple of days, there were three occasions where Sam’s progress was evident.

  First, Benison, Sam and I went shopping. We sat down for a coffee in the local shopping centre, the glare of the artificial lights reminding me of Nancy, the lovely Ugandan in Kapchorwa; there were no live chickens for sale in Norton Plaza, Leichhardt. It seemed somewhat the poorer for it.

  Sam piped up. ‘I want a Sprite.’

  Benison rose to buy him one, but I grabbed her arm to stop her. Sam headed off to the shop by himself after requesting some money from me. She watched him as he stood at the shop counter waiting to be served.

  ‘Yep, it’s there, he’s changed,’ she said. ‘And his speech is different.’

  ‘I just hope it doesn’t go away,’ I replied.

  She frowned. ‘We just have to keep pushing.’

  The following day my mother and sisters hosted a welcome home. Sam did his usual trick of hanging out in the bedroom with my nephew’s electronic games, but he emerged when the barbecue meal was served, sat at the table and chatted about Africa. And chatted, and chatted, and chatted. I was now used to this, but my family wasn’t. My sister, Mary-Anne, turned to me and smiled; I knew what she was thinking.

  A few days later we rocked up to the school to meet the principal and Sam’s learning support teacher, to sort out Sam’s re-entry into year eight. The whole experience contrasted with previous school orientations prior to our trip. Sitting in the front office waiting for the meeting, greeting the teachers and chatting about his trip, observing the other children in the playground, waiting while Benison and I discussed some of the practicalities of his return to the school; he was, well, just different. Easier, calmer, more regulated, more of a ‘person’ perhaps.

  There were other little snippets of progress. One afternoon after school, I sent him into a local butcher shop to buy some meat for dinner while I stood back and observed. The woman behind the counter was very offhand with him. When we left the shop, he turned to me and said, ‘They weren’t very friendly, were they?’ When someone with autism comments on your lack of social skills, you know you have a problem!

  Yet for all that, Sam is still ‘autistic’—still too obsessional and lacking social graces. The thing is, I no longer mind. Benison and I have grown fond of his quirkiness, his oddity, his difference. I never want Sam to be anything or anybody other than Sam, and autism is a central part of his makeup. I don’t hate or resent autism, and I never will.

  We still need to wait to see what the Griffith University researchers will find, whether they will observe, in a clinical sense, that the intervention has ‘worked’.

  Yet in a wider context, what does it all mean? What does it mean for others? We haven’t found a cure for autism. Sam and I have, however, contributed. We were two foot soldiers in the great unremitting army of science, marching along—sometimes stumbling—but doing our bit. I feel what we have done will, in an unorthodox way, expand understanding of autism in adolescence. There will need to be further study, further exploration of these concepts, but we had made the first tentative start.

  Personally, and in a completely unscientific fashion, I believe that his experiences in Africa reduced Sam’s disability in ways that will translate to life in Australia and the developed world. We owe the continent a big whopping thank you.

  Africa, oh mother Africa. Sam’s alma mater. It had started in my mind as a mysterious, magical place and finished even more so. Six months on the road and I felt like we had barely scratched the surface of a full understanding of its quirks, its oddities and charms. Endless in scope and depth, it seemed so much more interesting than normal life. Maybe that was just because we were travelling, not working or studying, but I think it was more than that.

  As I said to Benison, staring out a bus window in Africa was the best reality TV show you could ever watch. See a bus being pulled out of a ditch by a herd of cattle roped together, a group of Maasai warriors playing bao at a bus stop, people on the sidewalks dancing and clapping in rhythm for no apparent reason.

  I was struck by reverse culture shock; I found myself continually stunned at how ‘developed world’ Australia was. Everything worked, everything was clean, everything was efficient, and everyone was just so tense. At Perth airport, I found the terminal too clean; it looked sterile. On leaving, I stepped back in surprise as the automated doors opened on my approach. While crossing the road, a car actually stopped for me as I approached the pedestrian crossing, but the driver frowned in irritation that I’d halted his progress for a few measly seconds. I would miss the smiles, the long handshakes, the ongoing greetings and blessings, the jokes, the back slaps, the laughter and the banter, the bonhomie; just the sheer craziness of the place. I wouldn’t miss the constant anxiety of not knowing what was going on, the gut-wrenching worry about Sam, the pressure of keeping everything going, the roads, the filth, the mosquitoes. Yes, it had been tough all right, but we had come through unscathed, and both Sam and I had been significantly moulded by the experience, and for the better.

  Over the first few weeks after our return, some of Sam’s old undesirable habits returned straightaway, but then seemed to evaporate again, as if he’d realised that they were not a necessary part of him anymore. Lying on the floor in a school classroom, letting someone else escort him across a road, passively waiting for the world to come to him rather than actively turning it the other way around: he had left these things behind. He had changed; I really had no doubts now.

  I will leave the last hoorah to Sam, who is now, in his parlance, more of a person.

  Hi, this is Sam and I’ll tell you about my African trip. The big fact of my African trip is I’ve been to ten countries in six months and I have just ended the trip. The reason that I had to go to Africa is to learn about Africa and lots of other things like talking to people and organising things. I have met a lot of people such as tourists and locals but unfortunately some places only had locals which is not fair. I was very unhappy when the Malawi preschool childr
en try to scare the chicken away. I think this is animal cruelty so the Malawi woman and children are sometimes cruel to animals.

  I only had been to McDonald’s two times in the whole African trip. Dad and I have been robbed once in Dar es Salaam which was very nasty. I have seen all of the animals except for gorillas. I have done white-water rafting which was crazy fun and on a helicopter which was cool.

  Bad things included getting sick in Uganda (I had to go to the hospital) and scary stuff like bad places like Zimbabwe.

  I am now a smart person because I learnt lots of stuff such as the actual noise of the hippopotamus. I’ve used the million number dollar notes in Zimbabwe. We went to the biggest African airport which is in Johannesburg which is in South Africa and it is also the last place of Africa we have seen before going back to Australia. I met lots of people and I am now a famous boy. I am now home at Sydney but we have to go to Perth first then back to Sydney so it took thirty hours to get back to Sydney.

  Overall the trip helped me because it taught me life skills. I like this.

  Cheers Sam xx

  P.S. Next time I might learn some life skills in Japan. Maybe or maybe not.

  Epilogue

  As I write this, eighteen months have elapsed since Sam and I stepped off the plane at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport as travel-hardened Africa veterans, and less than a week since we returned from our second trip to Africa, this time with Benison accompanying us for the first time.

  The recent trip was just a family holiday—two weeks in South Africa and Namibia, rather than ten countries and six months on the road.

  In some ways, however, it presented as a microcosm of the first, Sam initially anxious and counting down the days until our return to Australia, then relaxing into the vibe of Africa and becoming open again to new experiences.

  However, the anxiety and stress that he had endured in 2015, particularly in South Africa and Namibia, was far, far less evident this trip.