Dear Diary,

My name is John, a light-skinned German battalion attaché. 

We hash out at marshy waterholes on 02 October 1904 near Epako. 

“Dark-skinned natives mustn’t see the next daylight,” says the bloodthirsty commander, flicking his fingers on a telegram note. 

Soon rotted bodies about the waterholes perfume the air. 

My knee-shy boots stomp on carpets of multi-coloured wings strewed across the military camp. 

Later, the troopers squirt poison in the springs, except the one facing our horse-drawn wagon. 

Next, the troopers look on as I harvest flying insects in my leather pouch. I trap the pair-winged insects and brown them into the yellow fire. First, I pile the slender body flies and roast them on glowing embers. I crouch under a razor-thorn tree and gaze at the buzzing insects mating in mid-air. I grind my teeth on horn-winged insects after barbecuing them. 

“Are they tasty?” asks the commander. “They taste like wild nuts,” I say, nibbling the red and yellow flies. 

Then, clouds of airborne insects swarm the pools like God-send food. As the sun bakes the murky waterholes, I dish up the sizzling flies. However, the captain shakes his head. 

“These flies are God’s wrath upon the natives,” he says, pouring water on the metal tube of the gun. He fires shots at the fleeing natives who snub a swallow from the poisoned water. 

“These flies are a gift from the forefathers,” I say, chewing on a roasted dragonfly. As we chat, I peel off a sweet sticky substance from the stems and slurp it. 

There, I number throngs of dead bodies littering the ponds. Then, I press my eyes at the cup-shaped birds’ nests assembled from human hair. Soon, I spot more birds’ nests stacked from Afro-textured hair and twigs. The grisly sight sends shivers down my spine. 

Instantaneously, I poke my gun at the pile of kinky-hair nests squeezed between the y-shaped sunshade trees. Gasping noisily on my neck, the commander picked up my distress. Thereafter, tears drown my eyelashes and I snuffle. 

Soon, I spy a long-tongue fluffy bird and track it to a hollow tree. There, I sneak a look through the scraped-out woody tunnels and stumble upon an orange and yellow honeycomb. 

Shortly, I greedily shovel a tablespoonful of sweet sticky wax and masticate the syrupy beeswax.   * This is historical fiction.