As a young Foreign Service officer, Frederic Hunter was assigned to the Congo in 1963. Amidst the chaos that followed independence from Belgium in 1960, Kivu was spared . and survived, a "little paradise" as strife and disorder drew ever nearer.Fred sketches local characters, both whimsical and profound, probes the inanities of US Foreign Policy, and paints the darkness gathering beyond Kivu, forces that would inevitably overwhelm this quaint, quirky realm of hope and humanity.