On Changing your Life

[redrooski24]

Awesome stories so far ads, it's really making me think about what the world has to offer and what little I have seen/done so far. And honestly, your writing style/skill is very good and with all your stories I'm sure you could turn it into one hell of a book if you choose to.

[firstyearclay]

idk if this is common knowledge or if you even want to say, but how old are you now?

FYC

[freemoney]

post more. these stories are great.

[Mayor of Miami]

My story is interesting for a number of reasons. One of the reasons it’s interesting is because I made the decision to go to Italy only weeks before the actual trip. Another reason is because I went to Italy to live for five months without speaking a word of Italian. Maybe I was crazy, but I knew it was what I wanted to do.
The dilemma for me came down to this: I was a junior in college, an involved student contemplating making a run for President of Student Government. I knew that I had support from close friends and my fraternity to run, but I had this never-ending nagging to leave it all and travel.
I made the decision in North Carolina of all places. I was traveling there with some other people from UM to watch us play NC State in football. The trip wasn’t a daunting one by any means, but my mind could not stop thinking about the decision (as a side note, I met my ex-girlfriend at the airport).
It was the first night there and my friend and I were drinking beers in the hotel room because there was NOTHING around us at all. We got to talking about how I was feeling, and one beer led to another to another, and before I knew it we were making a pro/con sheet for what I should do. After much discussion and more beers, I decided that I had to take the chance to travel. I could not turn down the chance to do something I might never get to do again.


I don't know if anyone is intersted in what happened, but let me know if you are.

[darkcore]

this is one of my favorite reads on 2p2 so far. keep the story coming, adsman. it's great!

[ImsaKidd]

Alright I want to find out the Africa > Italy journey. So awesome.

[Phat Mack]

[ QUOTE ]

I used to worry about what I posted and my posting quality was average at best. I've stopped worrying and I think that my posts have significantly improved. This is a nice community. I wouldn't be worried about being embarrassed. As for the coolness factor, that's something that I've never considered so I don't know what to tell you. Just don't post stuff for peoples reactions. Post it because you want to.


[/ QUOTE ]

ads,

I really like your posting style. It seems very straight-forward, and the sentences flow without a hitch. I also like the way you recount interesting stuff from your life without trying to "sell" something about yourself--everything seems natural. This is a great thread, keep it coming.

[ajmargarine]

This is a very good read sir.

[adsman]

[ QUOTE ]
idk if this is common knowledge or if you even want to say, but how old are you now?

FYC

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm 35. The thirties are goooood.

Kampala. What a city. A mish-mash of architectural styles – 1920’s English art deco, Indian, Arabic, 1970’s concrete bunker. Over a million people living packed in together. Huge wealth right beside abject poverty. Streets with beautifully paved, tree lined avenues. Streets with no discernable path amidst open sewerage. People, people everywhere. Complete chaos on the roads. A road built with two lanes will have four lanes of traffic in either direction. Driving became a situation of playing chicken and showing who was boss. I became very good at it. Once I came to a railway crossing and the crossing gates came down. On both sides of the crossing every car filled up a space. The gate came up and there were eight cars abreast on either side facing each other. Everybody gunned it. Amazing. Mutatu taxi’s everywhere. Toyota vans with touts leaning out the side door gathering customers. These guys were crazy. A Toyota built to hold 9 people. The most I ever counted inside was 26. That doesn’t include semi-domestic animals. Colin and I became addicted to walking around the city. Exploring it’s hidden byways and nooks. Seeing an interesting building we would just enter. If they didn’t want us in somebody would tell us to leave. It almost never happened.

Everyone on the street wanted to be your new friend. Wrap-around sunglasses were mandatory. If they couldn’t catch your eye then you could slip past. We knew every bar in town. Our favorite was perched five stories high in a tiny turret overlooking the Owino markets, the massive bus and taxi park and the soccer stadium. It had a small outside balcony. We used to sit up there drinking beer and watch the pickpockets at work on the tourists. It was like a scene out of the desert city in Star Wars. A heaving mass of humanity trying to survive from day to day. When the city became too oppressive we would retreat to the luxury of the Kampala Sheraton swimming pool, and spend the day chatting up British Airways hostesses. They flew in on a nine day stopover with a shuttle to Tanzania. If you hooked up with one of them early you had a week in the Sheraton. We had the time to do this as we weren’t working much. I was averaging 2 trips a week. The Bwindi massacre had killed off Uganda’s tourism overnight. We only got paid $50 a trip. But that was still enough to live it up in Kampala. But not nearly enough to save some money for an eventual ticket out.

I’d been there about three months when Colin came to me with a proposal. He had a contact in the Ugandan Special Forces. The plan was to go into the Congo and buy coffee directly from the Belgium coffee farmers who were still inside. They couldn’t get their goods to the markets in Nairobi due to the huge war that was in full swing in the Congo at the time. Described as the first world war of Africa, it pitted 14 African nations against each other in a mad race to rape the country of its resources. Estimates put the casualties at something like 3 million. Colin wanted to go in. We would provide the money, the Ugandans the trucks and soldiers. We could buy the coffee for $3-4 a kilo and sell it for close to 4 times that amount in Kenya. I had managed to save up about $1000 at this stage, mainly from a juicy expat poker game in the American embassy. Those marines sure were crap at poker. Nice guys though. I gave Colin $500 and told him to have fun. He looked at me strangely.
“Don’t you want to come?”
“Where?”
“Into the Congo.”
“You must be mad.”
“Dude, think of the opportunity here. We get to see a war.”
“You don’t see a war, you are in a war.”

But I was tempted. It was just two days. In and out. What the hell. We went in with two trucks. The special forces captain was this big, young, smiling Ugandan called Mututu. He loved the fact that he had two mazungu’s as buddies. He gave us each an AK47. I told him that I had no idea what to do with this thing. He told me that if we were shot at just put it up over the side of the truck and press the trigger. Right, sure, whatever you reckon. Colin had brought a crate of beer along with us. We crossed the border illegally and we were in a war. Cool. Or so I thought.

We traveled at a fast pace along dirt roads for about 6 hours. We had passed through a few villages without any problems. Until we came to this one town. It was market day. It was the dry season so the ground was like cement. They had mortared the town about half an hour before we came through. There were body parts in the trees. People screaming and dragging bodies around. The brown earth was soaked red. We didn’t even stop. Just sped through with two shocked whitey faces staring out from one of the trucks. We started drinking rather heavily.

After another 8 hours or so we pulled into the coffee farm. They knew we were coming. There was this Belgium family just going about their business of growing coffee in the middle of a huge conflict. Their property was like a little oasis of peace. If you’ve seen the movie Blood Diamond, the scene where they get taken to the Africans villa in the jungle where he looks after orphaned children, it was just like that. Husband and wife and three children. The oldest was a girl about 17 years old. This wasn’t jail bait. This was get shot bait. Colin and I kept a wide berth. We purchased 700 kilo’s of coffee and stayed the night to sleep. They organized a big meal for us all. It was a charming atmosphere. Surreal. The soldiers, apart from Mututu, ate separately outside with the help. We went to bed, studiously ignoring the darted looks from the daughter.

The next morning we rose early and bade farewell to the family. I have often wondered how they managed over the next few years of war. Mututu decided to make a detour around the town that had been shelled. It meant an extra two hours on our trip. Colin and I finished off the warm beer. At one point we heard shots close by. The soldiers tensed and the truck accelerated. That was it. Hours later we were back in Uganda. The trucks headed on to Nairobi after dropping Colin and I in Kampala. We spent the next month trying to get our share of the profits. We never saw a cent. At one point I tracked the captain down in his abode in one of the nastier parts of Kampala. He was very jovial, big smiles all round. And a big gun on the table. I realized that I was in a place where I could disappear very easily. I bade him farewell and got the hell out of there. Back to the poker game for some no limit action.

[HajiShirazu]

Holy [censored], I couldn't make up stuff this good.