Photo at left in the public domain and hosted on Wikicommons. I'd guess it was taken about 1983. Subject is Thomas Sankara late of Burkina Faso. Very late.
They dug him up this spring. Released the findings this week. Riddled with Bullets. Shocking.
He was a Marxist revolutionary who came to power in the height of the Cold War and attempted reforms aimed at removing Imperialist influence from the African continent.
An elevator speech summary would be accurate in asserting Sankara as a pan-African Castro.
He adopted Renault's Le Car as the state vehicle of Burkina Faso.
Can't make shit like that up in fiction. No one would believe it.
He's not even a footnote in history now.
There is however black humor in the passing of even a despot. I have a gallows humor and I'm putting more and more into the WIP as they come along.
My characters have been weak. Confessional time; but, there it is.
With a little twisted humor though, our characters cross vast spaces of perspective that otherwise separates the white upper middle class female reader from the corpse on the floor of a dining room.
Ever notice how in your favorite murder books when the body count grows the focus isn't on the outrage or revulsion but on the urge to solve the puzzle both as a reader and by the principals in the story?
Why don't people leave?
Three little girls murdered in Sharp Objects for example. If you lived in Murderville, wouldn't you move?
Well. Not you. You're reading Mayhem.
What about the people in Burkina Faso. Wouldn't they have moved?
Chained to the plow and we've all got to pull.
I've got rows of ink to plow. So do you.
Mind your dogma. It isn't safe in these neighborhoods for ideologues.
Try not to stage a coup. It excites folks way on over in the next county and their dogs bite hard.
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