Once in Kisangani, I was in a friend´s car with my luggage. I must confess that after my military service I “borrowed” a few military clothes because they were good to go in the bush. And is it not that we were stopped at a military checkpoint? They opened my luggage, and found the military clothes. OK, I was a Belgian spy, and I was taken prisoner. They took me to the military base, where,whilegoing to the commandr´s office, the soldier´s wives were throwing earth at me. The commander started questioning me, I tld me I was just travelling around to know thecountry, but he didn´t seemto believe me and at a certain point he pulled his gun, made the sign of te cross and pointed his gun at my head. Then, for some reason (maybe he had never killed someone before), he changed his mind, but he placed three soldiers, each with a gun pointed at my head from a different direction so I couldn´t move, to guard me. Later on I was taken to the civilian Province Governor´s office. He looked at my notebooks, and concluded that I was really traveling and not a danger to the country, and he decided that I should go to the civilian jail. At least I was away from the military. Next day United Nations troops from Ethiopia had arrived, and itwas decided I would be expelled to Ethiopia. I was taken to the airport, ad while I waited, a Congolese military jeep arived and took me back. They said: “Today we will kill you”. But I was taken instead back to the civilian jail. A small historical interruption: a riot in which the now Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba participated had taken place in the Congo in 1959. Lumuma was imprisoned in thesame jail where I was. The Jail Director came to me and told me proudly: your cell is next to the cell where Monsieur le Premier Ministre was imprisoned. So I was there for ten days, having the right, being white and as in colonial times, to meals from the city´s restaurants. The Africans had just prison food. I was expecting all the time that the military would come back and execute me.Then on the 10th day, a surprise: I had a visit! It was a red cross representative, who had come to rescue me from jail. His name was Mr. Senn, a Swede living in what was then Rhodesia. He took me out, got me on a plane to the capital Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, flying with me, and staying with me all the time to make sure the military wouldn´t get me back,until I was on a refugee plane to Belgium. I learned later (from a Red Cross LinkedIn member, a connection of a friend of mine) that Mr. Senn had been head of the prison system in Sweden, and was now the Red Cross specialist in visiting jailed political prisoners and in taking people out of jail in troubled countries. The same person told me that Mr.Senn later visited Nelson Mandela in his jail, and that he was able to improve his prisoner´s conditions. So I was back in Belgium. But the story doesn´t end here. I read months later in a Belgian newspaper that, in the Congolese political and civil war turmoil, both the Province Governor and the military commander who nearly killed me were made prisoners by one of the fighting factions, taken to the Province of Kasai and executed, then… eaten. I got back to studying botany, which I had abandoned before my military service.