I translated her rather odd phrasing when I typed this report.

“When I was young I was rich and attractive enough to be part of the in crowd’. I had a carefree life and went to the best schools and in the winter holidays, enjoyed skiing at the best resorts and in summer, sailing and partying at Cannes and other playgrounds of the rich along the coast of southern France. By the time I was eighteen I’d had many boyfriends and sex with one or more of them was no big deal. In many ways I used my body to get what I wanted from them. They paid for me to stay with them in the best hotels, went sailing on grandiose yachts and got invited to private parties on a large motorboat in a secluded bay; parties that were synonyms for an orgies. I enjoyed being fucked, whether it was a lad younger than me, or someone old enough to be my grandfather. In a way I was a kind of prostitute although I never actually accepted money for sex, I was given presents and taken to places I would not otherwise had access to.”

“Would you like to come sailing with me on Lake Nyasa? Pierre asked. I won’t give their full names even though they are dead now. The invitation was to Cherie and me while we were on a luxury yacht and five other young men were taking turns to screw us. At that time I had no idea where Lake Nyasa was and Pierre just said, It’s in the middle of Africa.”

“Sounds like fun, I’ve never been to Africa but I’ve had a few black men. That shocked Cherie but she agreed to go as well. Three weeks later four of us flew to Lilongwe and hired a car and drove to Senga a small town on Lake Nyasa. Here we met Rikard and Marlen who owned the yacht. It wasn’t as big as some that I’ve sailed on but it was a goodly size and plenty big enough for the six of us especially as we planned sharing the sleeping berths. We partied that night and swapped partners a few times so it was late the next morning when we hoisted the sails and headed towards the northern end of the lake. There was a good breeze and we bowled along at a good pace for several hours but in the late afternoon the wind died and we crept along at a snails pace. It was all peaceful and I was laid out on the cabin top catching the last rays of the sun, when we heard this motor boat speeding towards us. Before we realised anything untoward was happening a burst of automatic gunfire put a row of holes through the mainsail. The motorboat cut its engine and two black men with guns stood up and pointed them at us.

“Fucking Pirates! Rikard swore. They boarded our boat and herded us all into the bow where one kept a gun trained on us while two more ransacked the cabin, a fourth stayed in their boat. Anything they thought valuable or portable was put into sacks and tossed into the motorboat. It didn’t seem to take them long and then the men were forced into the cabin and locked down there. Rikard protested and was knocked to the deck with a rifle butt before they almost threw him down into the cabin. The others went quietly after one had pointed his gun at Cherie’s chest. It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce what they planned to do with three bikini clad ladies. They made us take off what little we had on and throw them in the water. We’d have given them what they wanted without too much of a problem except that we were also afraid of contracting AIDS but no, they wanted it the rough way and forcibly grabbed our tits and arses and bent us over the railing. I felt a cock being pushed into my dry cunt and tried to accommodate him but to him it didn’t matter. He just plunged on and raped me as hard as he could.

When he pulled out, the one in the motorboat called to them and I was thrown down to him. Without being told I bent over the engine casing and readied myself. I hoped that would make him hurt me less and the sperm inside me would act as a lubricant. He didn’t take long and when he saw the men trying to break out of the cabin, he climbed on the yacht. I took the opportunity to slip quietly into the water and dive as deeply as I could. The boats glided on and it seemed a while before my absence was noticed. By then it was virtually dark but I could see the lights of the boats and I doubted if they would see me if I didn’t splash around. Slowly I swam towards the Malawi shore. It all went very quiet and then there was some shouts and screams before the motorboat’s engine roared into life and the craft headed towards the Tanzanian coast. A few minutes later there was an almighty explosion and the yacht became a ball of flame. I doubted if anyone could have survived and by then I was a good quarter of a mile from it. Within a minute the flames were gone and peace descended once more. I called and called but there was no reply. I knew I was alone, tired, naked and still a long way from the shore.

“Just take it easy Allaice, I said to myself, You’ll either make it or you won’t. Either way you are in God’s hands.”

“You obviously made it, Roger commented. We were all appalled and enthralled by her story.

“Yes but I was a long way from being safe. It was a long tiring swim but eventually I crawled on to dry land and just curled up in a tight ball on pebbly ground, shivering in the cold air until the first glimmer of dawn allowed me to see what was around me. I had indeed been fortunate in my unwitting choice of a landing place. It was a small bay surrounded by forest and steep hillsides. A hundred yards either way and I would not have found a place to climb ashore. Tired, sore and very depressed over what happened and the probable death of my friends I stumbled to my feet and tried to make my way along the shoreline. In bare feet it was a painful process and I really had no idea which way would take me to the nearest habitation. In the end I decided to head sort of northwest mainly because I hadn’t seem more than a few huts as we sailed along in the afternoon. Mind you I hadn’t been paying much attention to the landscape but I knew we were pretty close to the northern end of the lake when the pirates came and thought there might be a settlement near the entrance to the Songwe River. I had no idea how far away that was.

At the end of the little bay I came to an area of scrub, steep but walkable except that I got badly scratched from the thorn bushes. In many places they were head high and my stumbling gait caused me to brush against them. In only a few yards, I was covered with scratches that dripped blood. The sun rose and it became hot and in an hour or so I was terribly thirsty and hungry. In that time I doubted if I had walked a mile and my feet were sore and bleeding and my body looked like I had been scourged with a bramble twigs. Once more the animal track I was tentatively following led back to the shore but from there I could see no way forward. Probably it was a place where animals came to drink. I collapsed under a tree and cried at my hopeless situation. I’d almost given up any hope of survival and wished that I had died a quick death with my companions instead of a slow death by starvation. There was plenty of water but I doubted that it would be clean although I’d already swallowed a lot during my swim. I took a little in my mouth and spat it out again. I didn’t have the energy to go on especially as it meant retracing my steps through the thorny scrub. Tiredness and depression overcame me and I closed my eyes and dozed for a while but was awoken by the Putt-putt of a small motorboat engine. Standing up I waved and then wondered if I had done the right thing. In the boat a huge black man stood up too and I had visions of being raped again. For once I did the right thing. The man was JeanPaul or J’npeloe to give him his real name although no one here uses it any more. I must have passed out because I next remember being lifted carefully into the boat and sipping some flavoured water. He held me in his lap until we arrived at a landing place and I was taken in a cablecar. The next thing I remember was being in hospital with JeanPaul alongside my bed. You should have seen his face and how he looked blank when I spoke to him in French! He replied in English but he spoke kindly and told me his name and when I couldn’t get my tongue around it I gave him the French version. Gently he held my hand and I tried my school english with a few words of my own language mixed in and found he could understand it. When I asked he told me I was in Tumali. That was quite a shock. I knew a bit about the ways of the people here from talking with Marlen the night before and Rikard had jokingly suggested that I might like to be one of the women here and be fucked day and night by any man who could get an erection and be permanently pregnant. Such was the misconception he had of the place. I also knew that once in the country, it wasn’t easy to get out, as you have found Ellie.”

I nodded and smiled as I still had no idea if and when I would return to England.

“JeanPaul shocked me even more by saying I was now his woman and he would look after me. I would be his mate.”

“That’s an old tradition from tribal times, Sumala interjected, Young warriors would raid a neighbouring tribe and abduct a girl to be their mate. It helped to stop inbreeding and usually after a while the girls accepted their new home. It’s not really a law here but it is something that is accepted. JeanPaul having captured, or rather rescued, Allaice, had the right to her.”

“They kept me in the hospital for about a week, even though I was fit enough to leave well before then but they waited for the results of tests to see if I was clean especially after they knew I’d been fucked by the Tanzanians. Fortunately I was. Officials came to see me and there were many forms to fill but I wasn’t allowed to contact anyone and the only embassy was the North Korean and they weren’t very concerned with my case. It took months before I could arrange to have money sent to me from my bank in France.

At the end of the week, JeanPaul took me to his home, a one room shack not too far from the cablecar station. He was a licenced fisherman then and a little up the social ladder from the poorest workers and, unlike most of them, had his own home and didn’t live in a community house. By then I’d witnessed and learned more of the habits of Tumalian men and women. I’d seen women patients and nurses being fucked by male staff and patients but I’d been given a large pair of knickers to wear to tell everyone that I was off limits to them. That was the only clothing I had until just before leaving JeanPaul brought me a blouse and a skirt and some soft shoes. It seemed so strange to be visited by a doctor who had a visible erection and as you’ve found out, they all seemed well endowed compared to European men. JeanPaul’s is especially large and every day when I had recovered a little, he’d sit by my bed and make me hold it for him. Several times he told me he was hoping to give me a baby but I was a bit afraid then. I knew the chances of being pregnant by the pirates was small because I was on the pill and had recently had a period but there was still that possibility and the hospital had made no attempt to clean me out.”

“Was any attempt made to catch the pirates? I asked.

“At the time nothing much happened. The Malawian and French governments informed the Tanzanian but they didn’t get anywhere. A year or more later, some of the stuff from the boat turned up and was traced back to them and they were caught and later executed. Fortunately the trial was in Tanzania and I wasn’t allowed to leave Tumali.”

“So you’ve been a wife to JeanPaul ever since?”

“More or less Ellie, as you know, here there is no such thing as a wife in our sense of the word but I’ve been his main woman for eight or nine years now and having our own house keeps us together too. Of course, he has other women and I have other men but I think most of my babies have been his.”

“What did you think when you saw his home? You said it was a shack and being rich, I guess you were used to having splendid homes. I could visualise her disgust.

“Yes, it really was a downturn in my living arrangements but it was either that or prison accommodation. Like you, I was detained in the country at General Cumu’s discretion but at that time it was the present leader’s father in power. He was at least as strict. In prison I would have been kept in a cell and fucked by off-duty guards and other prisoners, with JeanPaul I was free to go anywhere in the country provided I didn’t cross the border. That meant I couldn’t go fishing with him but otherwise I was pretty much free. At first sight, the house looked almost ready to fall down but in fact it withstood the storms of the rainy season without many problems. The inside was cleaner than I expected and I gather the Bear had roped in a couple of women to do some cleaning before I arrived. It wasn’t really necessary to give me a tour of the house; I could take it in at a glance. Only one room, with a large bed at one end, stove at the other, tables and chairs between.”

“Better than a prison cell though. We know what they are like, I grimaced at the thought of spending months in one.

“And you only saw the cells of the holding prison, not the main prison itself, Sumala remarked, That was a palace compared to the crowded, several to a room main prison.”

“That’s right and I found out afterwards, there are many more male prisoners than women so they try and put one woman in a cell with several men who have nothing better to do than fuck her all day. Worse still is the fact that prison is more for repeated violent offenders who’ve probably been to the whipping post a number of times so they have little mercy of sympathy for the woman. But to get back to my story. I was amazed when JeanPaul picked me up outside the door and carried me in. I saw this on a film once, he said and barely paused on his way to dump me on the bed and undress me. For his size he’s very gentle and soon I was naked and very nervous especially when he’d undressed too and I saw clearly and up close, the size of his erect prick. I needn’t have worried. Carefully he rubbed my cunt until I was wet and then slowly inserted his penis in me. It was big and stretched my cunt but it felt nice and soon we fucked properly. He was the only one to have me for the first two weeks but then we started visiting others and they visited us and I had to service the men while he did the girls.”

“So when did you move here? Roger asked.

“After about a year, when I finally got a bank account in Chapoti and could access my money in France. By then I’d had and sold my first child. The money helped to keep us and soon after I was granted leave to return to France but I’d come to love the country, and especially my Bear man, in a way that I hadn’t with any of my other so called lovers. We’re as near to being man and wife as you can be here.”

“Have you been home to France? I expect there are things you miss? I asked.

“No. I could have but my parents disapprove of my being a commercial baby producer and they disagreed strongly with my selling of the first baby. They’re staunch Catholics and they think I should be properly married and care for each of my babies. They tried to come here but couldn’t get a visa but we met up in Lilongwe and it ended up with a big argument when I wouldn’t return to France with them. Mother still keeps in touch by letter but daddy has almost disowned me. A tear trickled down Allaice’s cheek as she said that.

“What about the food here?”

“I’ve got used to it and still tend to cook in the French way apart from the fact I need to make more to feed the Bear. Talking of food, I guess it is about time for lunch.”

I shackled Roger to Sumala and sent them off to look around the village while I helped Allaice prepare lunch. This gave me the opportunity to ask, Don’t you find it really traumatic to give up a baby as soon as it is born? After you’ve carried it for nine months?”

“The first one was the worst because I actually saw it and I could have kept him but once I had agreed to sell the child there was no going back. It still took a long while to come to terms with my loss. Being paid for it I suppose helped in some ways in that we would have been very poor if we only had JeanPaul’s irregular income. The others, well I knew I couldn’t keep them so I set my mind to that before they were born but I was determined to keep my fifth, whether it was a boy or a girl. Even knowing you’re going to give up the child doesn’t entirely lose the sense of loss especially when you’re in milk and have to feed the babies of others. I think the Tumalian women are less traumatised than I am.”

We stayed two days with them and had an enjoyable time. I slept with the Bear one night and Sumala the other. Roger even seemed more agreeable and at least he now accepted my authority. I allowed him to fuck me and so did Allaice. I know that he wasn’t looking forward to the long trip back and was delighted when, on our last evening and we’d packed everything ready for an early start, a messenger came with a note from the Major. A man from your Foreign Office has arrived, report back ASAP. One of the truck drivers will bring you.”