Sharing A Beer With Anonymous

“I was making deliveries and collecting money for a South African maize company. Sometimes I would cover 480 kilometres in a single day driving down washboard roads strewn with rock and mud. I had a guard with me and we would carry huge sums of money. I never put the money in the safe though. The bandits expected to find it in the safe. So I hid it on my body. I also hid a 9mm pistol. On the day that I was robbed I had it behind my back, the barrel tucked beneath my beltline and the grip exposed but under my shirt. There was a bullet in the chamber but I had the safety on.

The owner of the house had a troubled look when I arrived to secure his money. He was never outside. And he was that day. And he was quiet. It was when I was leaving and I bent down to get into the car that I felt the pistol to my temple. Another pulled a shotgun on my guard who was already seated in the passenger seat. I think there was a total of four. The one who had the pistol to my head demanded the safe key. I told him that it was under the dash. He was stricken by panic. He was sweating. I gave a look to my guard as I reached forward. I wanted him to know what I was about to do. And he did.

As I leaned forward for the safe key I slid one hand behind my back. The bandit was focused on the money. He wanted the key and he wanted to make sure that the key was, in fact, what I was reaching for under that dash. His eyes never left my left hand. My right hand was releasing the safety. When I had the key, I leaned back into my seat and I held it up in front of the bandits face. The 9mm was at my side now. He looked at the key and then reached for it. I don’t know if he saw it coming. The blast and heat of the barrel burned my stomach. And it was bruised for like two weeks. I fired two shots into his chest. The rest of them split like cockroaches. I got out of the car. Then I shot another one in the back while he was running away. Just out of frustration.”


~Anonymous

First Aid

I am a cook. And that should be grounds enough to debar me from administering first aid to anyone other than my own damned self. But somehow or another, playing the role of a cook and resort director at a remote and third-world destination auto-qualified me as the go-to person in the event of a grim emergency. Horrible ear infection? Gaping flesh wound? Your hand has quadrupled in size while you were cleaning crabs? You have an immense oozing boil? Ripped off your toe nail? You are dying from a malarial fever? No worries. The doctor is in. What’s that you say?... Never mind. I only speak broken Swahili. Just point at what is ailing you so I can dig into my first aid kit that is rich with expired Italian pharmaceuticals. And also never mind that I can’t speak Italian. There might be one with an icon of a mosquito.

All I know about my first aid kit is that it doesn’t have medicine for white people. And I don’t mean that because all the medicine is expired American and Italian pharmaceuticals. I was attacked by some horrid creature of the Mafian insect underworld one day and had an immediate allergic reaction to it that near made me pass out on my feet. While scrambling to call my boss (and my only hope for air support into the hospitals of Dar es Salaam or Nairobi), I ran into my assistant manager (below). I told him that I needed Benedryl or some sort of anti-hystemine or I was basically going to die an unspeakable hellish death in the very immediate future. He said that he didn’t know what an anti-hystemine was and, furthermore, didn’t know "what sort of medicine white people take". I did a little bit of hyper-ventilating while incubating in the shade of the African sun and then got through to my boss who gave me the name of some Italian smack that I was unable to find in the drug box.



I was left with an amazing welt on my arm and a pair of red dots which led me to believe the little bastard that got me was a malicious spider of the Genus Unpleasantus.

Oh! Ow! Damn!!! What the fuck did you..... Oh! Shit! that had to have... wow. Ow! Fuck off! That is nasty! Your fucking toenail is hanging half GONE! Do we cut it? Or wrap it up? Oh shit that is gross. Do you want a shot of scotch? An aspirin? Maybe some of this shit that says “La Costanza Medicale"?. Do you speak English? Do you have any allergies? Italian? Nevermind.

Take three deep breaths.

This will only hurt for a second...