Unpublished, August 07
Golf courses are truly places to indulge one's eccentricities, and Freetown's Lumley golf course is no exception. In civilisation, flabby old Scottish executives dress up in tea-towel trousers and waddle about blithely between bunkers and fairways. Sooner or later, they'll creak back to the clubhouse, and spend the evening quaffing whiskey and indulging in the most smug, armchair-sinking pastime of any sportsman; trying to adapt sporting terms and phrases to suit real life. Too many people have made a living out of this sort of toilet literature.
But where Hamish might be 'in the rough' after his wife left him or Duncan might have a 'hole in one' nailing his secretary after the Rotary Club Leukemia fundraiser, Captain 48 Hours of Lumley, Freetown - the greatest links lunatic in the land - is most definitely 'in a bunker'.
Today Arwen and I were filming a group of street kids in the western area of Freetown's capital. As a white middle class public school kid who spent his formative years playing the viola and having wrestling moves practiced on him by those higher in the food-chain of high school (which is to say, everyone including violin and cello players) I draw immense pleasure in hanging out and getting bro-slapped by people called Handbrake and Supermax (a guy who boasts more lacerations than a breadboard).
Handbrake and Supermax both turned up to our interview magnificently stoned, answering almost every question 'Yeees' whilst smiling a Stephen Hawking-smile, tipping their heads to the side and allowing the gooey red lines in their eyes to fizzle about their retina. Half an hour and half a million affrimative answers later, Captain 48 hours made his timely appearance.
48 Hours told me he is a former commander of the RUF - the rebel movement that waged a bloody civil war against the Sierra Leone government in the 1990s and early 2000s, culminating in the moderate and diplomatically named 'Operation No Living Thing', amputations, etc. People struggle to think up words for some of the nasty stuff the RUF did.
In spite of this, Captain 48 hours' delusions were nothing short of hilarious. Everyone has heard about the Japanese soldier on some remote, godforsaken atoll in the Pacific who went on scouting about the island hunting Americans until 1958. Well, 48 wasn't far short of the real deal.
Promising to show us how he fought in the bush, he lead us on to the golf course, pointing to enemy positions over by the 3rd hole before lecturing his troops - Handbrake and Supermax, whose pupils were by now in indefinite hibernation - on how to go about attacking the enemy base. Supermax - wielding an invisible gun - proceeded to climb a tree to demonstrate sleeping arrangements in the bush.
48 - so called because he 'never sleeps', and is 'always ready' - offered to take us over to the 'deep bush'; a small copse of trees the other side of the fairway where a golfer and a few confused caddies looked on confused. Before I could leap at the chance, Arwen pulled her quasi-maternal 'you've had enough fun being silly for now Oliver' face, and we were on our way home.