Hemingway Adventure
Murchison Falls, Uganda

We pass the time talking of our families. It's a rather one-sided conversation as Francis has twelve children to my three. When I ask him their ages his brow furrows.
'The oldest is twenty-two and the next...' His voice tails off apologetically. 'Well, there are so many.'
He has been working for the park service for over thirty years and his activities have not been confined to boat trips and bird-spotting. He has three gun-shot wounds from run-ins with poaching gangs. He pulls up his shirt and rolls up his yellow trousers to show me the scars. One bullet is still embedded in his left thigh.
We turn into a small bay about a mile down-stream from the falls, passing uncomfortably close to a rock entirely covered by the largest, most evil-looking crocodile I've ever seen. Two or three persistent kingfishers dive-bomb the frothy water around us as we pull into the shore.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Hemingway Adventure
- Chapter: Murchison Falls, Uganda
- Country/sea: Uganda
- Place: Murchison Falls
- Book page no: 185
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