The problem with war?

Escalation.

A tiny bit of name calling leads to a drone strike which leads to a napalm bomb and then pretty soon everyone is at a nuclear standoff, half debating pushing the button while also worrying about mutually assured destruction. 

The drone strike hit two days ago: I was sitting in the front of the truck, happily bobbing along in the seat between our driver and one of our guides, peering out the window looking for elephants. All of a sudden, I was hit with a cold burst. An ice torpedo was sliding down my back. While it was about 95F degrees and felt nice, war had been declared. There was no going back, every action begets a bigger reaction. 

A couple hours later, when the hunt for elephants was cooling down, the guide who let loose the ice torpedo turned around, reached into the truck to try and steal someone’s chocolate. Any good act of war needs a reason, and I had one in theft. I needed to defend my fellow travelers and protect their chocolate, so I opened my water bottle and poured water all over the backside of the offending guide (mainly all over his butt). 

This lead to several jovial complaints of “not fair”, “my pants were filled with sand and now it is really uncomfortable wet sand”.

I was promised there would be payback. I did try and point out that escalation is a bad thing, if I got pushed in a pool, what was going to be my next move? Ensuring their room was full of mosquitos? Flooding the room? 

Cut to today, where I fell straight into a pretty great trap. 

Mistake number one: when someone tells you, “hey, make sure you leave your phone behind because you don’t want it to fall out while you’re on the swing”, you probably shouldn’t trust them. Since when has a phone ever fallen out on a swing. However, at least I got a heads up about the phone and still own a functioning phone. 

Mistake number two: not being aware of surroundings. This is so amateur, when war has been declared, one must always be on guard. 

Mistake number three: probably don’t mess with the guy who is in charge of the cooking and knows where the big buckets are. 

There is a video, which I may post later, but in slow motion, picture me walking up to the back of the truck to put something back, everyone watching on the sidelines knowing what’s going to happen, one guide ensuring I was on the left side of the truck, me not looking up, and the other guide dumping a whole bucket of water on my head from the stairs. 

In conclusion- one epic revenge needs to be planned, and overlanding is the type of traveling perfect for big children like me, especially because the whole reason I was at the back of the truck was to get some oil to fix a creaky swing.