Beast in the water.

I thought I would write up a short blog post seeing as something that got me very excited happened recently.

If you remember a few blogs back I wrote about how I went swimming in lake Victoria and felt a bit uneasy because I was thinking about crocs.
What I didn't elaborate on was that I had gone swimming by myself (except for a few kids in the shallows) and I had decided to swim out deep. I was feeling good, and reassured because many people had told me it is safe to swim.
But I remember all of a sudden getting a deep sense of danger, the feeling you get when a predator is around. I remember not feeling good in the water at all, and decided to swim to shore because I couldn't get the thought of crocodiles out of my head.
The only other times I have had those feelings, includes a few times while surfing in Australia. One particular time after a wave broke I felt that deep sense of tension, as if some predator was swimming underneath me. Well thirty minutes later a surfer spotted a shark and everyone swam to shore.
It was the same feeling I had swimming at this spot. I didn't think anything of it, and even went swimming at another spot a week or so later.

But here is the crazy part!

Just two weeks ago a fisherman got taken by a giant croc and eaten, at this very spot I had been swimming!
Then just last week, after a four day hunt, the Ugandan Wild Life Authorities captured this giant of a beast, man eating, Nile croc.
They captured this beast literally at the very spot I had been swimming and got the heeby jeebie feelings from.
Farouk was actually there when they pulled it in, as the croc was captured right near the YSU agriculture garden.
I have included some pictures I got from Ugandan news sites.
Apparently it has eaten 6 people in the local area, and one of the places it ate someone from was Wairaka beach, a place I have swam at a few times.
The croc weighed one tonne and was apparently 47 kgs shy of the worlds heaviest captured croc, and they reckon it was around 80 years old.
They got him alive, and were going to transport him to a national park up north.

No one bothered to tell me there were giant crocs in the lake here. Often I have asked if it is safe to swim and if crocodiles were a problem, only to have people respond to me that it is fine to swim.
Think I'll just stay out of the water from now on.
I find it interesting I had those feelings a few months before this man got taken, at the very spot I was swimming.
Is it all just superstition? or maybe there was some primal sixth sense kicking in and the monster was nearby.

I guess I will never know.

And to be honest, I'm kind of glad that's how it is.

Never a dull moment in Africa.