
Storage drum
March 13 – One of the town as we lived in while I was a boy in Africa was called Clonsilla, a suburb of the town of Gwelo. My parents had rented a house there and in the yard around the house was a well-built shed where Dad stored his travel supplies, canned food, bicycles, and a 40 gallon drum of petrol (gasoline) that he used to fill the containers that he took with him on his tours. One evening he sent his helper out to the shed to fill a can with gasoline.
Because it was getting dark, the boy took along a kerosene lantern to light his way. Setting the lantern down beside the drum of gasoline, he begins siphoning gas into the can he had brought along. Very shortly he became aware of the dangers of this procedure, for suddenly the can he was siphoning into caught fire! He began trying to beat out the fire but it just ran up his legs and then jumped to the drum itself and with a loud roar the fire shot to the ceiling in a powerful jet. The drum did not explode but it very shortly had reduced the whole building to charred ruins.

[ All burned up ]
The town of Gwelo got its water from Whitewater Dam, a few miles out of town, and it was a nice place to go for picnics, fishing, etc. It would have been nice to have had some of that water to put out the fire!
In Africa one should not venture into ponds or pools as a rule, because one never knows what may be lurking there. Crocodiles have a habit of wandering overland at night, sometimes far from their river home, and will often take up residence in a farm pond or damn for a while and feed on whatever fish may be living there or on whatever animals come to drink.

[ Not gonna argue with this guy! ]
As it turned out, a friend and I one day had been at the dam and wanted to get over to the other side quickly so just threw in a couple of large tree limbs and used them as supports while we paddled over in the deep water to the other side. This was before the spillway incident, so we are not acting as cautiously as we should have. I guess we were lucky! – DALE
NOTE: none of the pictures in this post are of the “actual events” described