“No, Marcel, I don’t believe sending your designer clothes here is a great idea, really. All that would accomplish is giving the customs officers a wardrobe upgrade. By next week, half of Nairobi’s airport security would be strutting around in your Armani suits like underpaid Bond villains. Meanwhile, the black market—where 95% of all donated Western apparel ends up anyway—would be absolutely thriving, selling your well-intended generosity at a tidy profit. Your wardrobe alone might trigger an economic boom, possibly even a hostile corporate takeover of the secondhand clothing industry. But would a single orphan, a single starving child, a single soul in actual need ever touch so much as a thread of your donations? Absolutely not.”

“Are you ready? Sure you want to do this?” Shlomi asked, with the casual tone of a man inviting you to brunch, not a descent into the rectal cavity of urban despair. I looked at him—unsure, unprepared, and utterly incapable of backing down. Why? Because if I did, this bastard would hang it over my head for the rest of eternity like the Sword of Damocles, except less sword and more insufferable smugness.

“Damn you, Shlomi! May you wake up stark naked at the bottom of a festering hippo pool, gargling elephant dung like it’s mouthwash, sprouting a rat’s tail from your forehead, and cursed with a baboon’s ass so blindingly red that traffic stops out of sheer confusion! May every mosquito within a hundred-mile radius see you as an all-you-can-drink buffet, and may the local witch doctor take one look at you and immediately request an exorcism!”

How One Camera, One Ghetto, and a Herd of Ungrateful Elephants Bankrupted My Wallet, My Sanity, and Any Hope of a Quiet Life. Let me take you, dear reader, on a rollercoaster ride so violently absurd that even the most masochistic thrill-seeker would rather take a cheese grater to their own kneecaps than buckle in. We love stories of meteoric ascension, don’t we? The kind where some dirt-poor underdog claws their way to fortune, clutching designer sneakers, overpriced watches, and a crippling cocaine habit along the way. We worship the Silicon Valley demigods, the rags-to-riches pop stars, the socialites who manage to monetise their own existence with the sheer force of vapid entitlement.

"No, Marcel, I don’t think it’s a good idea to get off the hood now and step into this lion pride." I could tell my wife was a bit concerned. She had a point. It was darker and quieter than a postal office after closing time, and our fragile Land Rover was perched on the edge of a valley so ominous it might as well have come with its own horror soundtrack—something with unsettling violins and distant screams. For all we knew, a colony of prehistoric carnivores was lurking in the underbrush, just waiting for us to stumble down there like an all-you-can-eat special. If a family of T-Rexes was holding a reunion in that valley, we wouldn’t know until we were on the guest list—as the main course.

“No, Will, I don’t think taking the plane to Thermopolis today is a good idea.” I was on the phone with William, proud owner of a marvellous little Super Cub. Standing in the hangar—so cold it could make a polar bear rethink its life choices—I explained:

"Yes, ma’am, I’m a German citizen, and I’m looking for some counsel because I’ve run into a few... issues. Deportation to a black hole of a facility that no one’s ever heard of—and likely doesn’t exist—is honestly the least of them." 

“I’m sorry, Marcel,” came the shaky voice over my phone’s speaker, trembling like a ghostly echo from another world. “It seems that Sylvia, the coworker responsible for your work visa process, was suddenly transferred to another department in Oregon... yesterday. Unfortunately, none of the applications or documents she was supposed to file for your visa were ever submitted. Not only have all the deadlines passed, but—” here came the dagger twist, “—your tourist visa extension has also expired. You’re now, technically, illegally in the United States. So... sorry.”

Standing in the aviation museum and staring at this exhibit—otherwise known as my next mode of training transportation—I started to seriously worry that I was going to die. Fast-forward thirty minutes, now airborne, and my worry shifted to the far more terrifying realisation: I might not.

"Art," I pointed out, attempting to sound casual while clutching the yoke like a wrestler in a death-grip bear hug, "if intergalactic travel is your plan, perhaps we should start by upgrading the life support systems in this flying laundry basket.”

“Now, here’s the problem, Nate,” I began, adopting the tone of someone explaining the solar system to a chicken. “As you may or may not be aware—living here, no offence, in the back of beyond—the U.S. immigration system has some deeply rooted problems. To sum it up: it sucks. Big time.”

Disclaimer: This short story was originally intended to serve as the introduction to my first book, aptly titled "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" Chronicles of Chaos and Courage. However, thanks to my chronic inability to resist babbling on endlessly—pausing only for catastrophes of biblical proportions (perhaps a meteor the size of Nebraska would do the trick)—this little intro ballooned far beyond its intended scope.