South Africa Safari: Hey teacher, leave us kids alone!

When preparing The Shark Book, we took great care to ensure that every continent was represented except for Antarctica (although we now have our eyes on a few climate-change researchers who know how to party for the sequel). Yes, we traversed great distances via keyboard tapping and mouse clicks to bring together a collection of drunks with a truly international flavor (much like Ibiza, one would assume).

Our book featured soccer referees getting wildly drunk and directing traffic on a busy Jerusalem street, a shit-faced German who offered his friend’s identification to arresting DUI officers, forgetting one key detail—his friend had a glass eye—a tough sell to even the dimmest of cops, and a Maltese man so blotto on cheap whiskey that his flight had to be diverted because he would not be stilled in his quest to break into the cockpit so that he could tell the captain he "loved him".

We may be accused of a lot of things (libel, extremely poor taste, bad judgment, and offering our accusers hush money) but ignoring Africa isn’t one of them and like Bono, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to put the oft-ignored continent under the glaring lights of our Shark Guys roadside spot check—but unlike Bono, we’ve done it solely out of blatant self-interest and in a bid to further gas up our airplane-hangar-sized egos (read with sarcasm heavier than a fat camp welcome wagon).

We chronicled a drinking contest in Tanzania, in which a man washed down a liter (two pints) of pure vodka with a couple of beers en route to "victory" (his nickname was "Shame", which you can interpret as you may) and now, the continent is represented again by a couple of high school teachers in South Africa who made the news recently when they were arrested for being drunk on the job. (Note: This might not shock the odd reader who may, in retrospect, recall the odd whiff of something other than a Fisherman's Friend lozenge emanating from the homework-checking teacher of his or her own school days)

A police official said the school had long had a problem with the students showing up looking as if they had completed their essays on Dylan Thomas by living out one of the end stages of the man's life, but that "now it's teachers themselves that get drunk at school". The policeman then went on to ask "What is this world coming to?”

We would refer him to the "Halls of drunker learning" chapter of The Shark Book, chronicling boozing antics on both sides of the chalkboard divide, for the answer to this excellent question. [full story here]