The sleepy colonial capital I knew is gone to wrack and ruin in a bloody civil war. The film “Apocalypse Now” felt just like home. Only black mambas, gaboon vipers, malaria, crocodiles, scorpions, river blindness, etc. menaced us then, not so deadly as two-legged vermin plaguing my formerly lovely town recently declared “the worst post in the world” by the UN.

Curiously, I hear Pierre Savorgnan De Brazza will be re-interred in Brazzaville on Wednesday the 14th of September. Maybe I’ll attend. Maybe it’s safe to come back. Might be safer to stay across the river in Kinshasa.