Chapter 11 - Mwinda
As if the Almighty Himself wished to avenge what had happened that afternoon, a violent storm breaks out at night. A storm like none I have ever seen before. Countless bolts of lightning strike the ground all around us. The thunder roars so fiercely it makes the barrack where I am lodged tremble. I hear the cries of the blacks outside, abandoned to their fate under the deluge that has turned the plain into a lake within minutes. Now I understand why all the colonial buildings here are raised on stilts. Out there it is all darkness now, the wild land illuminated only by the infernal glare of the lightning. I prefer not to look through the window without glass as it frightens me too much. Instead, I lie down on my cot to write a letter to the love of my life: Dear Marieke, if only you knew the barbarities I have already witnessed... No, I will not write that. She must never know. I will write something to say that I love her dearly… that I miss her… that I wish she were here by my side…...