Each year, Personnel Department required us to fill out a Post Preference Form. Having thus made a nod to consultation, they would then post you wherever they wished. To make this less embarrassing for them, and because I sweat a lot in the sun, I would put simply: “Anywhere but Africa.” One year I omitted this.

You already know what happens.

Arriving in Maputo late at night, I’m met by a colleague and left at the hotel. I switch on the bathroom light, and two startled geckos fall on my head. Next morning, all there is on the menu is a boiled egg—but there’s this view over the sparkling bay.... In my new safari suit I walk the mile to the Embassy along an avenue lined with flame trees in full bloom. Hard rain in the night has brought down vermilion blossoms along with huge black centipedes. Downhill I hear voices chanting a song from an office window. The Embassy where my office is to be is basically a house, of modest proportions, covered in bougainvillea. A plaque by the gate announces that a young Winston Churchill sought refuge there from the Boers. A gorgeous frangipani tree scents the garden.

I’m already in love. Thanks to African friends I will meet during the war, it is to be the most memorable experience of my professional life.

sudden storm
the four-inch hailstone
we keep in the icebox

Keith Evetts

is a retired British diplomat who lives in the UK. His scientific papers are published in Nature and elsewhere; his long-form poetry in The Oxford Magazine and Linnet’s Wings; his cherita in The Cherita; and his haiku and related short forms in Blithe Spirit, Cattails, Cold Moon Journal, Failed Haiku, Heliosparrow, Mambu, Presence, Prune Juice, The Asahi Shimbun, Wales Haiku Journal, World Haiku Review, and at The Haiku Foundation. His work has been anthologized in the Red Moon Anthologies of haiku and haibun, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Touchstone Awards.

Evetts is listed among the European Top 100 Haiku Authors in 2021, and hosts the weekly haiku commentary feature at The Haiku Foundation. He’s married, with five children, a grey parrot, and a sense of humour.