Golfing Uganda Style

There is a "golf course" right next to our house and I have been meaning to play it for months now. Last Saturday two friends, Josh and JJ and I finally decided to go golfing Uganda Style.

It's a 9-hole course that is ridiculously cheap(about $2.50USD), but the balls are 4x more expensive than the greens fees and since we are all huge cheapos, we bought one box for the three of us(for those who don't know, that's one ball each). They don't provide rental clubs or bags, but they have a pile of clubs that people have left over the years free to use. All we could find in working order was a 3-iron, 6-iron, 8-iron, 3-wood, and a wooden driver. The putter was bent in half, but we found a fringe iron that worked fine. The manager assured us that we would not be able to find our own way around the course and so hooked us up with a 12 year old local kid, named Joseph, as our caddie. Joseph was a slick dude as he right away called over one of his friends and handed him all the clubs to carry(all 6 that is).

When we got to the first tee we already had six more caddies, which it turns out we really needed. It started drizzling but we teed off anyways. On my second shot with the driver, because my first shot only went 20yds, the wooden head broke off and went flying further than my ball and then it started dumping rain. We were just about to head to the clubhouse when it let up so we ventured on with our 3 balls, 6 clubs and 8 caddies. The next few holes were fine except that whoever set up the course had either never done it before or secretly hated golfers because you constantly have to hit across other fairways directly over the heads of other golfers while other peoples balls are landing around you. You also have to hit across roads about 7 times. I now refer to hole #4 as the bat-hole because the tee box is underneath a tree that is home to about 6000 bats and they never stop squeaking during your backswing...who knew bats were so rude? I almost had to quit on hole #5 because the three of us, our 8 caddies, and several locals walking around could not find my ball, but luckily Josh found another ball in the grass after a 15min search. We ran out of luck, however, on the 8th hole when Josh lost his ball on his second shot and had to disqualify himself from our super competitive Ugandan Skins Game at 100 shillings per hole. JJ and I battled on and I was sure to win a triple skin on the 8th when JJ sunk an impossible 30ft putt that bounced 9 different directions on the uneven grass on its way to the hole. Inconceivable!

We finished up with the 9th hole, paid our caddies and made definite plans to play every week. Golfing Uganda Style was another unique experience that I will not soon forget. Oh yeah, and then I got malaria later that night and thought I was going to die for about two days.....all better now.