Hemingway Adventure

Series: Hemingway Adventure
Chapter: Murchison Falls, Uganda
Country/sea: Uganda
Place: Murchison Falls
Book page no: 185

Murchison Falls, Uganda

Hippos cool off in the water. They can, and do, charge when they're angry, so our boat, Overtime, gives them a wide birth.

When the Hemingways passed their unscheduled night in the undergrowth beside Murchison Falls, with Mary in considerable pain, they spent it building fires and scaring off elephants whilst Roy Marsh sent out Mayday signals and desperately repeated the plane's call sign: 'Victor Love Item! Victor Love Item!'

The call didn't reach the crew of a BOAC Argonaut which flew over the scene, reported seeing wreckage and presumed whoever was down there was dead. They didn't know it was Ernest Hemingway, and he was already making survival plans.

We rationed the Carlsberg beer, which was to be consumed at the rate of one bottle each two days shared among three people. We rationed the Grand MacNish [whisky] which was to be issued one drink each evening. The water we planned to renew from the Murchison Falls where there seemed to be a plentiful supply.
(A Christmas Gift)

A local man named Francis Oyoo Okot, who works for the Uganda Wildlife Service, says he knows exactly where the Hemingways' plane came down. His father had shown it to him when he was ten years old, which must make Francis, a gentle beaming man, almost my own age. The site is a mile or two up-stream from our camp and he takes me there in a converted Lake Albert fishing-boat, called Overtime, for reasons I can't quite work out.