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Desperation by Degree

He had emailed the head guide from Peru. Wrote that he would be arriving in a few days, wanted a job, would see him when he got there. Hadn’t waited for a reply. He’d had enough of South America. Sick of being constantly ripped off, treated like an ignorant gringo. Except when they needed him. Then he was their greatest friend. He had just enough money for the airfare, was an old mate of the guide who was running things in Uganda. He figured that if he arrived on their doorstep then they’d have to give him a job. The only thing he knew he’d miss would be the coke.

He was right about the job. The company didn’t need him but they slung him on anyway, his connections and experience giving him the go. They’d only started rafting the White Nile the previous year, but the company were predicting that things would pick up. He didn’t care what their market projections were, as long as he was paid enough to get off his dial every night of the week. He was soon sampling the many varied establishments that Kampala had to offer, learning some of the language, and sleeping with as many locals as he could.

They began the rafting trip a few kilometers downstream of the dam that held Lake Victoria in place. Before the dam was built there had been a series of natural falls that had acted nicely in that capacity, but in dry years they held water back from the turbines, so they were blown up and covered by the rising water. Fifty years later and the dam was visibly leaking. Transpired that they had used the wrong concrete and the structure was beginning to fall to pieces. Rather than repair the existing construction, there was pressure on the government to build another series of dams further downstream. A five hundred million dollar project. The American ambassador had subtly thrown his weight behind the idea. It would be a great benefit to Uganda. It would create jobs and industry. An independent study commissioned by the private company wanting to build the dam stated that less than forty families would be effected by the flooding of a fifteen kilometer stretch of river. A native witch-doctor at a sacred site that was threatened with flooding publicly reversed his opposition to the project after receiving a gift of a mobile phone.

He hated seeing rivers drown, he’d watched too many go under over the years. As he floated across the long pools that separated the rapids, the constant thought of the impending concrete wall nagged at his mind. He didn’t notice the numerous islands with their individual habitats, nor the channels that ran between them creating the impressive cataracts on either side. He saw only a large stagnant lake, the tops of skeletal trees poking sadly from the malarial waters, in whose branches red-tailed monkeys had once stared impassively as his raft floated by. He was disturbed by this, yet whenever he tried to express his thoughts the words came out disjointed. The true meaning of what he wanted to say was lost in his awkward manner and desperation to communicate. He came across as intense, hasty, unconnected. People smiled and nodded and found an excuse to be somewhere else leaving him struggling alone in an isolated world, not knowing what was needed to change about himself, incapable of any act necessary for such a change.
No matter. There was always the bar, the cheap drinks, the hashish, the desperate women who would sell their soul for the chance of a ticket out, unaware that he was more wretched than them.

He was young - mid-twenties or thereabout, but the years of drinking, smoking, drug-taking and eating only as an afterthought had taken their toll. Tall, his face gaunt, burnt out from the tropical sun, he kept his hair shaved close. It was one less thing to smell of the night before. One less reminder when he invariable woke reaching for a joint in the late afternoon. Different guides came and went leaving him a permanent part of the scene, moving from job to job within the company, not able to disappear. Blokes arrived who had known him before Uganda and were quietly shocked at the visible changes. He was constantly coming down with malaria. Three days locked in his room alternating from chills to fever, glimpsing visions that scared him more than he could admit. Then eventually rising from the mattress, shattered, wraith-like, shouting at the house girl to fix him some grub. Anything at all as long as it put some lining on his stomach so he could head back to the bar and drown out the apparitions that sat gleefully on the edges of his increasingly hazy world.

Frozen stares as he leant over the pool table. The night-fighters dotted around the room like flies on a summer wall. He despised them. They could act tough now, but if he flicked his finger in a splash of neon light, any one of them would follow him out the door. The familiar routine and their vague hope that maybe this time it would be different and they’d get something good out of it.

He was playing pool with an Australian, a guy named Hughie who was in Uganda for a break from drilling in Nigeria. He hadn’t held a cue for some time due to the lack of a decent challenge. They had played each other for the last three nights, only stopping when the sun had risen over Kampala and the rafting bus had pulled up outside, one of the lads running in to get him.
He had asked Hughie if he wanted a free trip down the river but his opponent had politely declined.

“I don’t want to give you a chance at getting back at me for whipping you so many times at pool,” he’d said.

“You’d be wearing a lifejacket. You’d be right.” He stared incredulously at the shot the Australian had just made.

Hughie leaned up from the table. “You look like an idiot wearing one of those lifejackets.”

“You’d be dead without it.”

Hughie grinned. “Mate, I get enough excitement in Nigeria. I’m here for some relaxation that won’t follow me back there. Going down that river, that don’t look like relaxation to me.”

He rubbed some chalk on his cue, blew away the excess and gave the hooker who was standing too close a threatening look. “Trust me, on this river you want a jacket.” The whore glared at him and sauntered away. “Why do you think we always see so many dead fishermen at the bottom of the rapids?”

“Bet your customers love seeing that.”

“You’ve got to point in the opposite direction and say, ‘look at the elephant!’ Even then they look the wrong way and see the floater.”

Hughie missed a shot and sipped his whiskey. “How do they die?”

“How do you think? They fall out of their little wooden canoes and drown. Even at a spot that looks like a ripple there are huge forces working.” He shook his head. “Look at what you’ve left me here. What am I supposed to do with this?”

“How long have you been in Uganda?” Hughie asked.

“A long time.”

“Thought about going home?”

“Not much.”

“Why not?” Hughie asked.

He stared at the guy for a little while. “No reason.”

“Because you can’t function back in the real world anymore?”

“I reckon,” he replied, after some deliberation. “Been here too long. Here I’m not just some deadbeat in a bar, you know? I’m still kind of above it all. Back home I’d just be another loser.”

“I’ve got this sister back in Brisbane,” Hughie said. “Worships the ground I walk on. Rest of the family are a bunch of dead-beats, but my sister is getting her act together. Studying at university and escaping form all the family nonsense. I send her money. It lets her study without her having to get a job packing groceries or something.”

“What’s the point?”

Hughie stared at him across the green felt going grey from tobacco smoke. “It keeps me sane.”

He nodded his head, bent down and violently suck the black into the far pocket.



He was slouched in the front of the bus, drinking a beer and carelessly watching the sun set in a haze if purple and red. One of the punters approached him.

“Is this the best river you’ve rafted on?” the guy asked, sitting down beside him.

“Best I’ve seen,” he answered, trying to keep it short.

“Yeah, they sure were great rapids today. I had a fantastic time.”

He knew the guy wanted to be accepted. Thought that one days rafting might qualify him for the same status that the riverguides held. He identified that standing with adventure and mystery, an absence of responsibility. An ability to sleep with desirable women.
“It’s not just the rapids, man”

The tourist appeared confused. “What do you mean?”

“The river you rafted on today. It’s the Nile, man. The White Nile. Think about it. They talked about this river in the bible. They sent expeditions to find the source. The Egyptians, the Romans, all of them. None of them could find it. The Romans lost a whole legion in the Sudd. And today you floated down the very spot they were searching for, man. A hundred years ago the world knew more about the surface of the moon than this river. There’s ten thousand years of human history connected with this spot.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean,” the tourist agreed. “I didn’t consider that.”

He drank deeply from his bottle of beer and looked at the guy with disdain. “You lot just don’t get it. It’s not the stupid rapids. It’s the environment, the history, all of it.”

The customer nodded, collected a bottle of beer and hurried back to his friends.


He was off the booze, had cut down on the hash. He’d grabbed one of the other guides and explained what needed to be done if he was seen in the bar. Drag him out of there, get him home no matter what he said or did. Stick him in his room and lock the door.
He started getting some enthusiasm back for the river. He still thought that the punters were useless morons but he made more of an effort. He pointed things out on the trip, told them some relevant stories, didn’t just sit in the back of the raft and scowl at them all day. He still smoked hash but only to get to sleep. He knew that if he went on a completely dry run his body would rebel and he wouldn’t be able to take the consequences.

They were getting the punters kitted up for a trip when the head guide got a call on the mobile. He watched him walk away for a couple of minutes and then come back looking like a bloke who had received a positive test for the slimming disease.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“The governments done a turn around. They signed the final approval for the dam this morning. The bastards finally figured out who they needed to bribe. It won’t be built for years, but now we know. It’s all gonna go.”

The two of them stood at the top of the hill, gazing in silence at the doomed river cutting a noble path between islands sagging beneath the weight of their own vegetation.
He didn’t talk much to his punters that day.


They were coming home after a day on the river, driving down the road which led to the guide-house on Lake Victoria, when he told the driver to stop. He jumped out, crossed the busy street into the bar, disappearing into the murky gloom, a glass of gin in his hand and his name scrawled on the board for his turn at the table. Next in line after the hooker that signed herself, “HIV+”.
The bus had driven off into the evening, the other guides not saying a word, not inclined to attempt the impossible after a long day on the river.

He planned it with care, didn’t want to be a nuisance. Spread a large tarpaulin over the bed so they could wrap his body up. No mess. The boys thought he had got malaria again, figured that was why he wasn’t coming out of his room. Until somebody took a look inside the first-aid kit and discovered all the valium was missing. They found him on the mattress, soiled and stinking, staring at the ceiling as if willing his soul to fly away. He vaguely heard them arguing, they didn’t know what to do, didn’t want this problem. Too much to deal with as it was. When you live and work together you’ve got to get on, got to have a bit of give and take, a degree of respect for each others moods. Now they were living with a suicidal loony and being expected to not only deal with the situation, but to somehow fix it as well. They cleaned him up and managed to get him functioning again. Sent for the only decent white doctor in town who prescribed him some drugs to keep him calm. He listened with disinterest as the doctor told the others that the best idea would be to get him out of Africa.
“Oh sure, mate”, one of the boys said. “We’ll just stick him on a plane and hope for the best.”

The little pills allowed him to cope with day to day life, but they also gave him a glimpse into his disturbed mind, something that he was not prepared to confront. His colleagues noticed that he took longer to respond to simple questions. If somebody told a joke he’d nod and laugh out loud a few minutes after the fact. Sitting on the balcony looking over the lake, a cigarette fixed between his trembling fingers as he drooled into a bowl of cereal, he couldn’t remember if he had just got up or if it was time to go to bed. His sneer went from disdainful to hostile, his contempt for those around him unparalleled in his own history. The other guides began to sleep behind locked doors, unsure of which way he was falling. Would he go quietly or would he try and take everyone with him?

Things seemed to be improving until he attacked the house-girl with a pen. One minute he was eating some food that she had prepared, and then they were having to drag him off her as she crouched whimpering in the corner with her hands over her head. He was screaming obscenities at her, about the way that she skulked around the house, about the things that she stole, how she whispered to the other house-staff behind his back. He knew that they all talked about him, he knew how much they hated him. No stupid black bitch was going to plot and scheme in his house. She was nothing, not worth crapping on, not worth the measly money that they paid her every month. If he had his way he’d fire all the house-staff every six months. Keep them on their toes, show them who was boss.
It took three of them to restrain him, tie him to a chair, while the others calmed down the help. The woman he attacked was staunch. No mad whitey was going to reduce her to tears, not after what she’d seen in her life. Got back to her work as they arranged an emergency flight, drove him out the gate, down the road past the bar with the girls arrayed around the pool table, desperate for a ticket out.