Day 53a

More about the story I’m writing

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So, we have gotten past waking up in a strange place, the fact it is hot, and the effect of looking at the slow-moving blades of the fan swirling that hot regurgitated air, and momentarily panicking when there’s a knock on the door (yes, even I was hoping it was a genie with an air conditioner) we can move on.

Where are we? Somewhere in Africa, where there seemed to be a predominance of French, Belgian and English colonies, each speaking the language of its conqueror, and each still with a lasting reminder of those people who had been vanquished in that period after the Second World War when granting independence seemed the right thing to do.

In place of High Commissioners and District Officers, came the propped-up dictators who swore allegiance to the former coloniser in return for large sums of money and lots of guns and uniforms for their military.

Nothing much changed, the wealth was still in the few hands and the people still had nothing. Well, in those days of transition to the dictatorship they had plenty, but what could be given in abundance could quite easily be taken away. The Conlonisers army was replaced by police, and something more insidious, the secret police. The Coloniser tended to loan the police service senior officers to train and supervise.

Until of course, if the military decided it no longer liked the dictator there was a military coup.

Not yet, for this little country.

Increasingly accused of human rights abuses and secret activities against its citizens by the secret police, and negotiations for the next tranche of financial and other support, the country is, well, let’s call it what it is, blackmailed into holding a Human Rights Conference.

Let’s also throw into the mix a leader of the rebels, or no, freedom fighters, who is as slippery as an eel. He reminds me of the Scarlet Pimpernel, hiding in plain sight. Let’s add a world-class Human Rights activist as the keynote speaker, someone respected everywhere but inside this country, and dangle a red rag in front of the bull.

We have our world-weary recovering fix-it man, and now we know why he’s there.

He’s the ‘invisible’ bodyguard.

But, like the proverbial steak knives, there’s more. Twenty years and a name change, his instructions are to watch over the keynote speaker, but doesn’t realise it is the same woman he almost married, and had he, his life would be so very different.

That’s going to be some reunion.

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©  Charles Heath  2025