That night
It was only the second day of running, I was really tired, had a few niggles that were bugging me, as well as just trying to mentally adjust to what I was going to be up against every day. Fighting my own internal battles, I decided best to climb into my tent and see what the morning has to offer.
Suddenly I awoke in a daze, voices everywhere my tent drenched in a bright light shining into it as if it were daylight. I didn’t really know what was going on, I heard Andy saying something, then Nick. I was still half asleep when I heard someone pulling at my tent saying “Get out! Get out!”. I unzipped my tent and stuck my head out zap, straight into a spotlight, once I had focused the next thing I saw was the barrel of an automatic weapon and then I focused on the camouflaged uniforms of a group of soldiers all shouting something. I was still totally confused as I stood up in amongst the soldiers, dust lights and mayhem that was unfolding.
“Who else is in there, get out! Get out!”, the soldier shouted.
I said “No, one, go look for yourself and secondly, the farmer said we can be here”.
Then things spun out as the officer shouted to me in broken English
“You telling me to f off, you tell me to f off.”
The group closed in on me and I could see this was just escalating out of control. Nick then emerged from his tent with a camouflaged peak cap, thank goodness this took the heat off me for a while and I could then gather my senses as they questioned him. I don’t even know what it was about. The group then focused back onto me.
Once again they asked who was in my tent (as mine is a double one) this time I politely opened up the tent and said, “No one, Sir”.
I went back to the officer and explained what we were doing and why – the rest of the soldiers had now backed off and the situation was starting to cool off. The commands and shouting had now petered away into chit-chat, eventually every one climbed into there jeeps and disappeared into the night as quick as they had arrived.
Andy then called me over and said. “Hey David you must chill out, if you climb out of your tent with such attitude you going to get us all shot!”.