Callsign: King

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Moses Selassie ate alone.

This was not unusual. A solitary person by nature, Moses had never been one to seek out company, especially among those whom he considered intellectually inferior. There was no arrogance in this; he simply found conversation with most of his countrymen-gossip, facile complaints about the state of the economy, discussions about the latest football match-to be unbelievably tedious. By all rights, he should have been teaching at the University, shaping the young minds that were, in his estimation, the very future of Ethiopia…of all Africa, but instead his education and connections at the University had been able to secure him only this position: a common laborer. In Colonial times, he would have been called a ‘bearer.’

Colonial times, he thought darkly. Nothing had changed. The wealth and dignity of Africa was still in the hands of outsiders. Where once there had been European monarchies, now there were multi-national corporations pillaging the natural resources of the continent and leaving only scraps for her indigenous people. He had once dreamed, like his namesake, of leading the beleaguered people of his nation to freedom from their oppressive absentee landlords. Now, those dreams were as empty as the dust that blew across the Great Rift Valley.

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