We are writing it now because nearly thirty years have elapsed since these events took place. And it's not really being written now - it's just that in real time it has had a long gestation period, for reasons that will become evident when it is read.

It is about events that dramatically altered the shape of our lives, all those years ago, and which continue to influence us even now. We call it ASSIGNMENT AFRICA to draw attention to the country where these events took place. As far as we know, it means nothing else in the languages of Nigeria, be they Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, or any of the other five hundred or so separate voices of that great but troubled country's hundred and thirty million people.

It is a story - our story - of westerners at grips with the radically different approach to life of what is euphemistically called a 'developing' nation. It is a no- holds-barred and factual narrative of what living and working in such a fundamentally different environment can really mean to the expatriate.

ASSIGNMENT AFRICA goes further. It gives some insight into the trauma faced by brutalised women in an uncivilized environment The reader is taken through the difficult, painful, even near-suicidal years which follow an experience of this sort. It reveals what can happen within a business organization to the executive who is confronted with the after-effects of mindless criminality.