WARNING! Don't read if sensitive!
Ironically, I was warned about the man-eating lions in the area. "Don't sleep in a tent" and "Don't be out at night".
18 years ago, I was travelling from the North Cape of Europe to Cape Town in South Africa on a bicycle. On this particular date, I was passing through the south eastern parts of Tanzania, headed for Mozambique. The area is known for man eating lions, but it was four men who tried to kill me. As I was pedalling along a gravel road, they surprised me and one of them swung a machete, full force, at my neck. I barely had any time to react, but hunkering down slightly on the bike made them miss the throat. Instead, the machete split my jawbone in two. Luckily, I didn't fall off my bicycle and managed to cycle away from them. It is too long of a story to tell here, but in the end I managed to get help and travelled home to have a surgery. The doctor said I was lucky. The wound was inflicted with such a force that he would have guessed they used an axe. He also said that if the machete would have hit me anywhere else but my chin, in the region from my neck up to the forehead, that would have been it, I wouldn't be sitting here now. That's why I consider this day my second birthday. Guess I'm turning 18 today 😉.
Having worked with lion research for five years, with wild lions in the Serengeti, often being very close to them, I never felt that I was in a life threatening situation.
I also want to point out that the vast majority of the people in Tanzania are very nice and would never do anything like this. Things like this could happen in any country. So why did they do it? I don't know, but I had six packed bags on my bicycle. I assume that they wanted what was in the bags.
This photo was taken in Serengeti, Tanzania.
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