The characters and events in this blog are fictitious. Any apparent similarity to real persons, countries or continents is not intended by the author and is either a coincidence or the product of your own troubled imagination.
But this blog is based on fact. Any similarity with fictitious events or characters is purely coincidental. All events described herein actually happened, though on occasion the author has taken certain, very small, liberties with chronology, because that is his right as a Gueuselambixian.
Nobody in this story, and no country or continent, thank God, is based upon an actual person or country or continent in the real world. But I can tell you this: as my journey through the diplomatic jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with reality, my stories are as tame as a holiday postcard.
You are the fourth Secretary and Consul of the Gueuselambix Embassy in the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers.
5:30 AM: You wake up to the sound of gunfire and thundering of rockets in the northern slums of the city where 12 year old soldiers fire away at each other every morning.
6:15 AM: You discover that the generator in your residence, which has been running for two weeks without interruption (there is never any electricity in the neighborhood you live in) has finally died. You try in vain to repair it under the contemptuous look of your guard (who you caught stealing your petrol just two weeks ago)
7:15 AM: In the absence of electricity to pump water into the tank installed up on your roof, you resign yourself to doing your morning toilet in the garden with the two drops of water left in the irrigation hose. Your breakfast is reduced to a lukewarm Fanta and two unripe papayas the guard didn’t steal yet.
8:00 AM: As you head towards the Embassy, the local population makes you feel welcome by greeting you with selected jeers, various insults, spitting and throwing stones at you.
A few meters from the chancery, a police officer arrests you for a breach of a traffic code that does not even exist as a local tradition, with the obvious purpose of obtaining a bribe. You wield your diplomatic passport but as it becomes obvious that the diligent officer of the law is completely illiterate and becomes threatening – point made by shoving a rusty Kalashnikov in your face – you prefer to give in and offer a 100 U$ bill.
8:30 AM: Arriving at the Embassy, you fight your way through the multicolored and vociferous crowd of visa applicants and when you reach your office, you start reading the local press, which only headline is the announcement that the “Undersecretary of Equipment visited the province of the Lower Rivers and Great Lakes to encourage the enthusiastic masses of the people to pursue the construction of the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers”
In accordance with the instructions of the Ambassador requiring that the outgoing correspondence of the Embassy increases each year by 20% in relation to the production of the previous year, you start drafting a detailed dispatch to your HQ.
9:00 AM: Your secretary hands over the collection of mails. The Department asks you to carry out, the same day and at the highest level, a démarche to ensure that the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers supports the candidature of Mr. Ig. Noramus, a Gueuselambix university academic residing in Potopoto, to The Presidency of the International Office for the Protection of Students of the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers.
Your urgent email requesting a spare part to repair the air-conditioning system of the Embassy remains, despite many reminders, unanswered.
9:30 AM: You are trying desperately to reach the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers, but realising the communication is systematically cut off after a few seconds, you decide to go there yourself with your own vehicle (the service car of the embassy being “momentarily” out of service since five weeks).
After a long wait in an overheated and dark corridor you are received by an obscure assistant of the Third Deputy Chief of Protocol, who informs you in a pedantic tone that you can not see any official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs without having made an appointment at least two months in advance.
11:30 AM: Earlier than usual, the Ambassador arrives at the Embassy and, after having emptied half a bottle of Johnny Walker, and complaining about the particularly humid climate of the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers, summons everyone to the weekly staff-meeting.
He starts by labeling you a “dangerous moron lacking any ambition”, reminds the Cultural Attaché that being posted in the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers does not exempt him from wearing a tie and starts sulking because the wife of the Commercial Attaché stayed away from the High Tea organized two days earlier by his wife.
Then he asks you to inform the ICT technician of the Embassy that he is summoned to go immediately to the Residence for a matter of the highest urgency (to repair the hi-fi system which has been out of order since that morning), before launching into a detailed description of some of the highlights of his accomplishments during a stay in Tonkin from March to September 1977, followed by a very interesting reflection on the administration of the territory of the Reguibat plunderers of Mauritania, accompanied by an eulogy of the many qualities of the girls of this tribe.
11:45 AM: The Ambassador adjourns the meeting, pensively stroking the lapel of his jacket on which is pinned a rosette obtained who knows how and to the total indifference of his fellow citizens.
Invited by his French colleague (the only one whose language he understands) to a prolonged weekend at the seaside, he abandons you to your fate for at least six days.
2:00 PM: As you prepare to leave the Embassy, Mr. L’Embrouille, a Gueuselambixian citizen, who has taken refuge in the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers, following a dispute with the Gueuselambix justice and co-owner of the night club “Le Duvel”, comes to the Consulate obviously close to an ethylic coma and demands the immediate issuing of a long stay visa in the brand new passport of Marie-Frédérique Kadeau, notorious prostitute whom he presents as his future wife.
The visa officer refusing to comply, follows an exchange of rather lively remarks between the two of them. Mr. L’Embrouille calling the visa officer a “bloody wanker, only too happy to feed off the Gueuselambix taxpayers’ money”, the visa officer referring to the bar owner as an “aids carrying nigger-loving towel-head”. The two protagonists come to blows.
Alarmed by their cries, you step in to separate the combatants and ask M. L’Embrouille to leave the Consulate. He reluctantly complies, but not without announcing that he will bring the incident to the attention of the Department of Foreign Affairs (which he will, of course, taking care to reduce the incident to a very personal version).
2:30 PM: Your generator still not being repaired, you feel brave (desperate) enough to have lunch at the restaurant ‘Chez KOKO’ close to the chancery.
You order a dish of rice and fish. Once brought to the table you consider it more prudent not to make more ample acquaintance with the fish. Back home you are preparing to eat your third papaya of the day, when the security guard comes to warn you that the young Lepaumé Albert was arrested by the local police in possession of 500 grams of hashish and 2,500 U$, the product of an illegal currency exchange with an opponent of the regime.
2:45 PM: You immediately instruct the Vice-Consul to assist the young Lepaumé (who is at risk of being sentenced to death) and to engage in negotiations (carrying substantial bribes) with the police and the Ministry of Justice of the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers. As your secretary did not manage, due to an ICT systems breakdown, to forward the official mail you wrote on the case to the Ministry, you get hold of your walkie-talkie to call the ICT technician. The latter, a highly indebted owner of a princely residence under construction, lives for economic reasons in a shantytown located about twenty kilometers from the city center. The connection being disturbed by a tropical storm – unless it is the presence of many dilapidated buildings standing between the embassy and the home of the ICT technician, you decide to go to his home.
3:35 PM: Entering into the ICT technician’s hovel, you catch him in the company of three local beauties, the oldest of whom seems to have not yet reached twelve and ask him to interrupt his siesta and join the Embassy on the double.
4:30 PM: The ICT technician gives up trying to forward your immediate mail, the satellite uplink being impossible by difficulties of propagation. A diffuse feeling of abandonment overwhelms you momentarily.
5:00 PM The Vice-Consul informs you that young Lepaumé, who is surprised not to benefit from diplomatic immunity, is likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment for drug trafficking and illegal foreign currency detention. At this point you realize that your schedule for the next three years – the time to obtain the expulsion of the person concerned – is fully booked. However you do not draw any sense of satisfaction from this.
5:25 PM You return to your residence only to discover that your stock of frozen perishable food items is completely thawed by now and therefore doomed to rapid putrefaction. The three burning hot drops of water that flow from your garden hose not allowing you to do your ablutions, you just change your shirt and you prepare to represent Gueuselambix at a cocktail offered by the Minister of Agriculture and Information of the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers in honor of the 10th anniversary of the accession of his country in the Union of the Countries of the Great Rivers and Lakes.
6:30 PM: During the reception, you try hard not to listen to your colleagues of the diplomatic corps usual whining about the hardships of daily life in the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers and their complaints about the incompetence of the local administration and the worthless local house staff. As you desperately attempt to access the buffet, your Chinese colleague – who is fluent in the five vernacular languages of the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers but hardly ever sets foot outside his embassy – inquires what information you might possibly have on the tour in the Lower Rivers and Great Lakes province by the Undersecretary of State for Equipment, an event which, as reported in the local press, and according to your Chinese colleague, would be significant of the political evolution of the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers. You get rid of him by asking him about the role of China in the process of the Korean reunification.
7:40 PM: You escape the reception after you have managed to grab a handful of grilled peanuts and you return to the Embassy. There you find the expat secretary of the Ambassador, aged fifty five, extremely depressed by the departure of her colleague of the Red Cross, to whom she was apparently very attached. Despite the consolations you give her, she leaves the embassy in tears announcing that “something could happen to her sooner rather than later”, adding that “nobody in the embassy cares about her anyway” After briefly reviewing the instructions for the repatriation of the mortal remains of Gueuselambixian citizens, you start looking for a place to dine.
8:05 PM: Sitting at a table in the “Tropicana”, you are enjoying papaya fritters apparently fried in transformator oil stolen from the neighboring construction site, with the latest hit of a very dead Michael Jackson blasting from a worn out sound system. You are approached by a creature who gratifies you with a venereal smile missing a few teeth. You tell her that you barely have enough money to pay for your meal. She withdraws reluctantly, not without questioning your manhood. Only to be succeeded by a leper, who makes you bitterly regret the papaya fritters you have just eaten. You stagger out of the “Tropicana” and are immediately assailed by a screaming pack of kids who, clinging to your clothes, claim to have guarded your car and require payment for their services. You disperse them with your fists, before entering your vehicle (of course the lock has been forced and your radio stolen) and pull away under a hail of stones.
9:20 PM: As you enter the street where you live – completely dark – as the money donated three times already by the Gueuselambixian Development Agency to provide street lighting in the whole city has been used to built yet another palace for the President – you barely miss a checkpoint that has just been installed by the valiant armed forces of the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers. Believing your last hour has come, you turn off your headlights, switch on the ceiling-light and crawl out of your car on your knees with your hands in the air. While the overexcited military are about to shoot you on the spot with their brand new P90 submachine guns courtesy of FGN (well known Gueuselambixian Arms manufacturing company), the squad leader, whose breath reeks of beer, gently presses the barrel of his gun against your temple and begins an interrogation in totally incomprehensible pidgin English. Your replies seem to be very persuasive and, as a token of goodwill, you offer him your watch, lighter, cigarettes, spare tire and all the cash you have on you. You manage to temper the murderous ardor of the squad leader and taking advantage of the fight that breaks out over the distribution of your meager offerings, you quietly sneak away.
10:05 PM: Arriving at your place, you light a few petroleum lamps and empty your last bottle of gin to recover from the emotions. Lulled by the sound of rocket fire that picks up in the northern slums and the buzzing of millions of blood-thirsty mosquitoes, you sink into a sleep filled with sweet dreams. In the distance you can see the zodiacs of the Gueuselambixian para commandos, surfing the blue waves of the infinite sea, arriving to providentially evacuate you from a posting of which you bitterly regret already the hardship allowance …
Mr. Robert Dikshit (pronounced Dixit), 4th Secretary and Consul of Gueuselambix.
Embassy of Gueuselambix to the Very Democratic Republic of Great Lakes and Rivers.
Chancery: 3, Avenue of the Popular Growth For the Democratic Rectification of the National Revolution of December 20 (former Beach Rd.) – BP 000002 – Matabish Ville.
Telephone: Out of order.
