Frederic Hunter

The American government wanted to establish a stripped-down diplomatic post in the Equateur, the remotest part of the strife-torn Congo. No diplomatic protections. Not even diplomatic communication links. Officers assigned to staff it refuse to go. They would’t serve in that “hellhole.”

Enter Fred Hunter (me), a young US Information Service officer just arrived from training in Belgium. Why not send him? Let’s see if he’ll survive.

So I went alone into the Equateur, a typewriter my only friend. (I was already a writer.) I established an American Cultural Center there, but a rebellion was brewing in that part of the country. It chased me out of my post.

Wanting to understand what I’d experienced in the Congo, I took a master’s degree in African Studies at UCLA, became the Africa Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor and covered all of sub-Saharan Africa.

Later I became a screenwriter. A PBS project about Abraham Lincoln’s first three months in office, aired as Lincoln and the War Within, led to my writing ABE AND MOLLY: The Lincoln Courtship, an historical romance written as close to historical fact as possible.

Fascination with Africa had always stimulated my imagination. It resulted in two novels, THE GIRL RAN AWAY and JOSS The Ambassador’s Wife, and two volumes of stories, CONGO TALES and AFRICA, AFRICA! My memoir of establishing the Congo cultural center and running for my life, A YEAR AT THE EDGE OF THE JUNGLE will be published in summer 2015.