Getting high in the US Navy, Kenya 82

G-Dog

G-Dog

New Member
I joined the navy in 1980 to get out of town, see the world and get high in exotic locations. I went on one world tour that lasted 8 months from fall of 82 until the spring of 83. Memories that will last forever, memories that shaped who I am today. My ship, the USS Sacramento, set sail from Bremerton Washington to ports of call in Hawaii, The Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Oman Muskat, North Korea and Kenya. We hit a couple other places most of you have never heard of like the Equatorial Indian Ocean island Diego Garcia. So my original reason the join the navy was met.
 
Before going on my world tour I had thought every place would have a marijuana policy similar to California. Hell, I was 21 at the time. Before going to Kenya I had a harrowing experience in the Philippines and went from completely cavalier to paranoid. But I still wanted my weed dammit.

I had no idea that marijuana or any other drugs were prevalent in Kenya until the US Navy told me. See they set up a special security check point for all personnel coming aboard. If you bought something in Mombasa Kenya it was placed in a quarantine area for examination. That safeguard alone was my clue as to what to expect in town.
 
Mombasa is an island in the country of Kenya in Central/Equatorial Eastern Africa. It's hot there! Africa hot. My thoughts were that if there as any weed there it would be good. We all know now that there is more to it than that. The weed was dry, brown and kind of schwagish. The hash, however, was the best I had ever had (at the time). I believe most of the hash I was exposed to in the US, prior to that experience, was what the people in the UK call Soapbar. I never really got much out of it. The hash in Kenya come with a golden foil and a stamp representing quality. I could not get enough of it, but with the security on my ship the way it was, getting it onboard was a major hurdle.
 
In Mombasa my ship was anchored in the harbor. We had to ride these water taxis or use liberty boats that our ship provided. The liberty boats were run by the deck apes (Boatswain Mates). Those are the lowest on the ship, responsible for boat maintenance, painting and swabbing the deck. The key to getting contraband onboard lay in the hands of the deck apes.

Scoring in Kenya was much like most counties.. You ask a cabbie. I was out with few of my buddies and it was voted that I contact a taxi driver for some weed. I was still a nervous wreck from scoring in the Philippines, where I had to run for my life from about 20 natives. I was shaky as hell when I went to the man driving the dirty old Mercedes cab while my friends watched from what they considered a safe distance.

"You come with me and we get you what you want." Said the man.

"Well, can you just go get it for me? I will pay what you want." I said to the man.

"We are gentlemen. We smoke and then we talk about sale." He insisted.

So I waved to my friends, told them to wait for me, and I climbed into the taxi.
 
The taxi took off from the downtown area of Mombasa. It is not a modern city, not too clean, but it was okay. The driver took me out of town and soon we were on a dirt road. He took me into a shack that looked to be 100 years old. Inside was another man with a big warm smile.

I asked him, "Is it possible we get an ounce or so of pot?"

"First we smoke, then you can ask," He said with an English/African accent.

He started to roll a joint of the local schwag. He crumbled up some hash and sprinkled it in before finishing. After rolling the joint he took a bottle of black liquid and dabbed some of the liquid the length of the joint.

Now I had not smoked anything for about a month, and I was dying to get high, but I think my tolerance was extremely low. I lit the joint and it was an expanding powerful hit. The liquid on the outside of the joint bubbled. When I passed the joint to him he had to relight it. Before the joint got back to me I was stoned. He put on a record of some African music that sounded pretty good. I re-lit the joint and took another hit. I was wasted. My eyes looked around the room at old pictures and carvings, furniture made from sticks and leather. It was like a dream. In fact I passed out. I woke up laying sideways on the ground to the dealer and the taxi driver laughing and pointing at me. I bought an ounce of the weed and an ounce of the hash for $40.

The taxi driver took me to the spot where I left my friends, but they were gone. I did not have any idea how much time had passed, but it was dark now. I had all this weed and hash and no way to get it back to my ship. I did the only reasonable thing to do at the time... I went bar hopping.
 
I had an ounce of the best hash I had ever seen and an ounce of schwag and I lost my friends. I had decided to just hang out and hope that I found them. I started to hit the bars in Mombasa, outdoor affairs, drinking Tusker Lager. It was an okay beer with an elephant on the label. The bottles looked liked they must have been recycled a million times from the scratches, and the label would wash off from the cheap adhesive. It was very hot outside and locals would come to me offering paintings, carvings, sex and just about anything else you could imagine. A white boy from Seattle stands out like a lighthouse in Kenya Africa.

At some point some of the nerds from my ship joined me. They said they were trying to score some weed. Since I had more than I could smoke I made them a deal for what I had on me, although I kept enough to get me through the night. The guys I sold it to treated me like some kind of celebrity or something for helping them out. I guess they didn't know that all you had to do was connect with a cabbie.

At some point I met a group of European missionary ladies, for lack of a better term. They were all in culture shock, but making the best of it. We ended up bar hopping until he early hours and I ended up in their hotel room. There were only two beds and everyone pretty much slept everywhere. I was in a bed with 3 of them or so, I don't really remember. It was a strange night to say the least. It got really strange after I got them all high. I woke up in the morning with some African man yelling at me and telling I me I was not supposed to be there. He was pretty angry and threatening so I just got dressed and left without my stash. I was pretty hung over from that cheap beer and thought I would go out and get something to eat.
 
I ended up going to a restaurant that had some guys from my ship. I went in and seen the menu on the wall... Zebra Burgers, Elephant Burgers, things like that. Not sure if it was real or some kind of joke. I just had rice and beans with some kind of bread. I looked towards the kitchen and the area that used to be open to view was all boarded up. Flies were on the boards by the million. I looked at some English guy reading his paper and sipping his tea. I was ready to go back to my ship and see what happened to my friends.

As I get to the pier to wait for a water taxi back to the ship I seen one of my friends. He was frantic, scared, traumatized. He told me that while they were waiting for me they were approached by a prostitute. They all went back to her place with her and had sex. Before the sex they had agreed to a price, and that was 50 each. They had all thought that was 50 Shillings, about 5 dollars. But she meant 50 dollars. An old scam always played on foreigners, playing with the denomination in their favor. When they went to pay her she pulled out a gun. She told the guy I was talking to to go get more money or the other guys were history. I felt like I could not leave these guys alone. I was also surprised that they didn't have enough money for her between them already. What were they expecting to do in town without any money?
 
I asked him if he needed some more money, but he said he was cool. He had it on the ship and had to go there for another reason anyway.

One of the liberty boats come to pick us up. I talked to the driver about the weed getting on the boat. He told me that if I gave him $100 he would get anything on the ship that I needed. He said that he stashed weed in his life jacket and that the transportation people were not checked. I got his scheduled and planned to get my stuff on board in two days.

I boarded my ship. I was checked out by the guards and had to put all my carvings and other things in a quarantine area for examination.
 
G-dog,

Awesome story. I went in the Navy in '92, and feel like I really missed out on seedy foreign ports. I got to hear stories similar to yours from the older, saltier sailors, mostly about the Phillipines (PI) and other SE Asian ports. Before Mt. Pinatubo erupted, PI was the place to be!

I also missed out on a world cruise, where you really get in to some unusual ports of call. Try any of this stuff today and you'll either end up a hostage or a statistic!

For better or for worse, Reagan 'cleaned up' the Navy and transformed it into the service I entered in '92. It was hard to imagine the pervasiveness of all the kinds of drugs aboard Navy ships back then, and I always wondered how they were able to remain an effective fighting force with 1/2 the ships company high :grinjoint: on one thing or another. When I was in, there was zero tolerance. Pop positive on a urinalysis and you got a hand shake and a ham sandwich. Bye!

Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience. Memories like these are so fun to relive. Even vicariously! Stay real.


EDIT: Just saw your post about PI after I wrote this. How funny is that? Exactly what I was talking about! "This ain't no shit..." ROFL!
 
Creeper said:
G-dog,

Awesome story. I went in the Navy in '92, and feel like I really missed out on seedy foreign ports. I got to hear stories similar to yours from the older, saltier sailors, mostly about the Phillipines (PI) and other SE Asian ports. Before Mt. Pinatubo erupted, PI was the place to be!

I also missed out on a world cruise, where you really get in to some unusual ports of call. Try any of this stuff today and you'll either end up a hostage or a statistic!

For better or for worse, Reagan 'cleaned up' the Navy and transformed it into the service I entered in '92. It was hard to imagine the pervasiveness of all the kinds of drugs aboard Navy ships back then, and I always wondered how they were able to remain an effective fighting force with 1/2 the ships company high :grinjoint: on one thing or another. When I was in, there was zero tolerance. Pop positive on a urinalysis and you got a hand shake and a ham sandwich. Bye!

Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience. Memories like these are so fun to relive. Even vicariously! Stay real.
Click to expand...


Yes I was in the navy when it changed. You had everyone getting high and the management just turned a blind eye to it. I joined in 1980 and all they said was don't get high on navy property wink wink.

On 26 May 1981, an EA-6B Prowler crashed on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimits, killing 14 crewmen and injuring 45 others. Forensic testing conducted found that several members of the deceased flight deck crew tested positive for marijuana. As a result of this incident, President Ronald Reagan instituted a "Zero Tolerance" drug policy across all of the armed services, which started the mandatory drug testing of all U.S. service personnel.

When I went on my world tour (Westpac) we left in the fall of 1982 and come back in the spring of 1983.

After this event Reagan's zero tolerance policy spilled into military contractors, those that build/design the ships and airplanes. After that the insurance companies found a way to disallow insurance claims and they got on board.

I am writing about this in detail elsewhere, but this fire on the USS Nimits is the birth of the piss test that we all enjoy today.


My story in Africa is far from complete. I was just waiting to see if anyone was even reading it before finished installing it here.
 
Great story so far G',
Can't wait to hear more from yer'

I was on the cruise liners in the 80's
& had some great laughs and experience's myself...;)

good luck
& stay safe..



:nicethread:
 
G-Dog said:
Yes I was in the navy when it changed. You had everyone getting high and the management just turned a blind eye to it. I joined in 1980 and all they said was don't get high on navy property wink wink.

On 26 May 1981, an EA-6B Prowler crashed on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimits, killing 14 crewmen and injuring 45 others. Forensic testing conducted found that several members of the deceased flight deck crew tested positive for marijuana. As a result of this incident, President Ronald Reagan instituted a "Zero Tolerance" drug policy across all of the armed services, which started the mandatory drug testing of all U.S. service personnel.

When I went on my world tour (Westpac) we left in the fall of 1982 and come back in the spring of 1983.

After this event Reagan's zero tolerance policy spilled into military contractors, those that build/design the ships and airplanes. After that the insurance companies found a way to disallow insurance claims and they got on board.

I am writing about this in detail elsewhere, but this fire on the USS Nimits is the birth of the piss test that we all enjoy today.


My story in Africa is far from complete. I was just waiting to see if anyone was even reading it before finished installing it here.
Click to expand...

What is bad about the plane crash is that anyone that was ever been on a navy ship knows, they keep you really tired. You work 24 hours a day back to back. Many guys have to sleep in their clothes on the deck and use his life jacket as a pillow. I know I have. And what is this all about in peace time? Just training and conditioning for the flight crew and the pilots. Accidents happen all the time and THC metabolites stay in your body for a month. Many guys had no access to any pot for weeks at a time and the entire crew was probably Not High. In fact, the real reason for the crash was over work and fatigue, not drugs. But the government has to shift the blame on something or face civil liabilities and admit they were wrong. The government, and especially the military cannot ever admit they made a mistake for the sake of finances and general moral.
 
Back to my story about Africa....


I went back to my ship and rested for a day and did some inteligence gathering. I checked with my boys and seen what they were finding for weed in town as I was not too happy with what I had bought. This was right around the birth of the skunk bud in the US and we were all getting kind of spoiled by pampered buds that smelled like skunk. Before that everything we smoked (I was from Washington state) was imported sativas that were compressed. Sadly, everyone's report of the weed was the same... schwag.

I had decided the smartist thing to do was get a couple ounces of hash on the ship. I met with my friend the deck ape and we worked out a deal. I went back to my cabbie and since I had gotten high with him he just handed me a couple ounces of hash (no scale) from the back of his cab for another $40. My friend and I spent the next couple of days in Mombasa getting high with some of the natives and staying in a cheap hotel. One of these times we went to a city park and were getting high and laying in the grass. I seen a woman pretending to take a shower in the middle of the park in broad daylight. She was like a mime in that she stripped down naked and mimiced showering. My friend (Bob) and I were not exactly in shock as we seen so many strange things that was just one of them. But the natives started to form a circle around her. Bob and I had to get closer as the circle of people blocked our view. We were just tripping out on this and various natives would look at us and laugh, say things like the woman is crazy. She was not bad looking too, looking back. She finished her shower and got dressed. She walked right by me and Bob and took her finger and rubbed my mouth, mustache area. I had no idea what that was about at the time, but looking back I think she was a hooker or something and was doing that to attract one of the thousands of Americans that were in town with the fleet.

All we had was the hash and we wanted some weed. One of the natives we were smoking with offered to get us some. Bob gave the man a few bucks and he walked away. After some time I asked another native if he thought that man was going to come back with any. The guy just smiled and said no. It was not a lot of money, probably $5 so it was nothing to get excited about.

Bob and I met the deck ape that I had arranged my deal with at one of the local bars my final night in town. He was a guy from Los Angelas that I really didn't like, but I had to trust someone. I have him my hash and the $100 fee.

Bob and I went back to our ship to get ready to pull out of port. We were watching TV in the lounge and an alarm went off that we had someone trying to board our ship. Next thing you know all hell broke loose. Young men were running through the ship with guns and everyone was told to standfast (Stay put, stay out of the way) or risk being shot. It was serious business. After an hour or so the warning ceased and we were allowed to go about our business. I had no idea what happened, but apparently it was over, what ever it was.

The next day the rumor mill went wild about what happened. Apparently one of the boys, a fellow that was only 17 years old, had the great idea to swim to our ship at night from the dark side of it and tie a big bag of pot and hash to a string he had hung over the side earlier. Liberty boats and water taxis come to the boat from one side, a place called the quarterdeck. It is all well lit, guards, an entry station of sorts. The other side of the ship was the dark side. The dark side is where that one fellow tied that string.

Anyway, the fellow thought he would tie this string on the dark side and then swim up to the ship at night and tie the big bag of weed to it. We are talking 50 pound bag of weed and hash. You could sell pretty much any weed on the ship for $30 a gram, so this was one of his get-rich-quick schemes. One of the guards, a roving patrol seen ripples in the water from the moonlight. He called a security alert. It brought all these guys with guns out and turned on every spotlight on the ship. Unfortunately, this alert was called when the fellow was swimming back. He had already tied his bag to the ship with his name clearly stenciled on it. Between the spotlights shining on him swiming back and the stenciled name on the bag they had everything they needed to put him in a federal prison for 5 years of hard labor and a dishonorable discharge. There is more to this lads story, as he was not in jail waiting for his trial, Courts Martial. He had a loan shark business going on all along, and he had a pretty large sum of money saved up. While we were in Australia he stole one of the liberty boats off of the ship and fled. They caught him in the middle of Australia and sent him back to the ship. He went to trial before we got back to the states and the US Navy makes a special point of telling us all what happened so we won't do it ourselves.
 
The deck ape that I hired as my mule got my hash on the ship and gave it to me the same night of the security alert. It looked to by shy a couple grams, but I was not unhappy with the deal as a whole. I was not going to prison for 5 years and I got something to smoke on the ship.

As the days and weeks passed after leaving Africa a hundred drug related events happened. My friend Bob and I were always together because of our work schedule and the fact that he knew I had all that hash. It was not a big deal though, as we seemed to find pot everywhere. I was in a bathroom stall and bored one time. I just took a couple screws out of the toilet paper holder and reached my hands inside the wall and pulled out an ounce of some very good herb. Better than anything I could find on the streets there. Bob and I were in a tool area and Bob found a couple ounces of bud in the frame of the ship. We heard some complaining from people missing the weed, one of them the deck ape I hired to bring my hash on board. I felt it was sort of justifiable for me to get his weed after he stole some of my hash I hired him to bring on. One of his partner deck apes was complaining about missing weed where Bob found his. The point is, there was weed everywhere on the ship. You could not keep it on your person so you had to put it someplace in a common area.

I was called to the Master of Arms (like police) office to submit a random piss test that would have clearly come out dirty. When I was getting to the office I seen the ship's dentist and one of the cops had him screaming all this tough police talk to him. "Don't move you scum bag yadda yadda." I was tripping on this scene, this dentist was half way through a procedure on my teeth and here he was being arrested for accidently dropping a big bag of hash that was packaged in what looked like 100 individually wrapped grams of hash. This dentist got the same treatment that the fellow that swam on board with the big bag of weed... 5 years of hard labor and a dishonorable discharge.

Because the guy that was going to give me a piss test got busy I had my piss test postponed. I had a chance to get it clean before they tested me again, or at least I thought. I got a piss test a week or so later and I never heard that it was dirty. Then one of the cops got with me and told me he fixed my test somehow so I wouldn't get in trouble. I do not know what exacty he did, but he made sure I didn't get brought on charges. He said I owed him a blow job, and I thought he was joking. For the next couple of months he hassled me and said I literally owed him a blow job. Let me just say I never gave him one and he just quit asking. I will go further to say that I never had sex with any of the natives in Kenya. That is an important thing to note here, as the fellow that slept with a prostitute got AIDS and really fast. I do not know if he got it from the prostitute, but it was in it's infancy at that time and nobody knew what it was. He had to be one of the fastest guys to ever get it or he had it all along. I know the other guys that were with him and that prostitute didn't show signs while I knew them, but they all slept with the same girl at the same time. Kind of grody if you think about it too much, but that is what happened. For all I know he was the carrier and gave it to all the rest of them, including the girl.
 
After Africa was Hong Kong. I guess that one will be next. I was in Singapore and Hong Kong and the weed experiences were pretty similar.
 

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