I am on the way to Pakwach with my girlfriend (or so I thought she was) but I have decided to 'pay for one and get one free' by passing by Murchison Falls National Park.
How an encounter with a wathog in a National Park almost gave me a heart attack
Time check: 3 pm, November 2, 2013, just a day to the highly anticipated Pakwach hybrid solar eclipse slated for November 3.
Wathog
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The plan is to see the most powerful falls on earth, camp in the park for the night with my girlfriend (I am the romantic type) and set off to Pakwach on the day of the eclipse.
The back tyre of my cruiser bike has got a puncture near the Red Chilli camping site where we checked in earlier. It is always a bad idea to take a cruiser bike off-road, but hey, I was a stupid daredevil and didn't care much about dangerous risks. Not that I am any better now.
A cruiser bike with rider and pillion
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Anyway, I push the bike to a Park Ranger's garage nearby and hand it over to the mechanics.
On the way back from the garage back to the camping site, a distance of about 100 meters, I encounter a lion hiding in the bushes. It is light brown and hairy and it is crouching in the bushes by the roadside waiting for human prey to come walking down the road. Or at least that is what my imagination is telling me.
Wathog
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I scream 'LION!' 'LION!' like a little girl while running as fast as I can but to my shock, the people that I meet walking towards the 'lion' aren't taking my alarm seriously. In fact, they burst out laughing instead of running. This is the first sign that I might be wrong about the lion thing. But I go on running to be as far away from those laughing haters.
I arrive in the camping site still running and panting. A member of staff asks me what the matter is and I tell him that I just escaped from the fangs of a lion. Really, all I want at this point is for one person to believe me; for someone to redeem me by getting shocked and scared like I am.
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The man bursts out laughing and tells me that there are no lions in this side of the park, adding that the only animals common around here are wild pigs.
By now my girlfriend is watching and she couldn't be more disappointed. She gives me the eye and I know at that point that I won't 'score'. Yes, that camping tent was useless, and I still blame the wild pig that pretended to be a lion.
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