Backpacking Through Darfur

So I've been out of mercenary work for a bit, and this happens from time to time. Usually there's a real lull around the holidays, and then sometimes you get hiring freezes if there's some big international conflict spilling out of control or something, and then you can even get some dry spells throughout the year.

And I had been loafing around for a bit, and I decided to take a little vacation and try to make the most of my time off. I grabbed a backpack, a few light firearms, my lap top, and my Panzerschreck, and headed to Western Sudan to backpack around the bucolic Darfur region that I have read so much about.

I flew into Sudan as a passenger on my friend Ricky Beltran's cargo plane, and then parachuted out over Darfur. After landing, the first thing I noticed was the sense of anarchy- you could just feel it in every bone in your body. Sort of like the first time I got off a plane in St. Louis Missouri (USA), and I turned to my father and said, "Do you feel that Papa McStallen? ...That's racial tension."

And so the first couple days in Darfur were bliss. I walked peacefully around the ravaged countryside, taking pictures of the charred structures, burning homes, bomb craters etc. I used my metal detector in some of the ruins and came up with alot collectible Sudanese currency.
I encountered bodies here and there, and on a few occasions I would prop the body up and take a "novelty" picture of me pretending to engage the deceased in conversation- they were real hit or miss- but I think a few came out quite well, especially ones where I set it up so we were all looking in different directions.

Along the way, I met a few children that were missing limbs, and I felt badly for them, so I gave them some of my surplus grenades to play with. And I made sure to tell them that if they were just playing catch with a friend, they should not pull the pins- not even pretend to as a joke. The kids really liked the grenades and took a bunch home, and two of the kids even asked if I was Santa Clause- but then I told them that Santa Clause doesn't come to Africa.

And then I spent my nights sleeping out in the open sky, sipping vodka and using my sniper rifle with silencer and infrared scope to pick off some of the hapless local militia that had the misfortune of conducting their nighttime patrols with-in rifle range of me.

So on the third day I awoke to the sounds of a government chopper hovering above- they were probably tipped off by the local militia- and they began to pound my position with their .50 cal. So I dove into a roadside ditch and got ready to return fire with my Panzerschreck.

As everyone knows, a Panzerschreck is an anti-tank gun, and it doesn't do much on aircraft. So I fired a round and of course it veered off about 10 meters from the chopper and then crashed harmlessly into an orphanage. Fortunately though, there was a big explosion, and the chopper crew must have thought I had a Stinger or something, because they hauled ass and took off.

So I got up, cleaned my Panzershreck, and then hiked up a steep ridge because I had heard a rumor that a southern Sudanese tank column was approaching from the west and might engage some of the amateur mechanized forces of the local militia.
And I was curious to see some tank battles- fighting in the desert is very different than fighting in a triple canopy jungle- yes sir. The man in the black pajamas- a worthy adversary.

But as my luck would have it, the armored units went in opposite directions and there wasn't any fighting at all. So I threw my binoculars down with disgust, and to let out some stress, I fired a few mortar rounds at some near-by farmers trying to repair an irrigation ditch. And after the rounds hit, that was it for me- I decided to leave.

You see Darfur is one of these places that's fun to visit and stay at for a bit- but I wouldn't want to live there. Oppressive heat, almost no access to any sort of food or drinkable water, constant rocket and mortar attacks etc. I don't need that shit now.