African Warrior

Herman is born in a rainstorm in an African forest. His mother dies giving birth to him and he is handed over to local villagers by his father who wants nothing to do with him. Herman spends four traumatic years learning that he is white and different to his African playmates. He becomes violent and solitary. Finally his father recognises his responsibilities to Herman and arranges for him to learn to speak English and then sends him to a good school in England. He is naturally clever and he is ostracised by the more popular boys in the school. It is difficult but Herman is eventually is accepted by some of the other boys. Because he is very much a loner he spends a lot of time developing his strength and his body. He spends his holidays on the farm in Zambia where he finds acceptance by the wild and its animals. He sometimes meets his father there but otherwise the farm becomes his domain and he learns to be part of its natural environment. His father was trained as a soldier in a Special Forces unit known as ‘The Chindits’ and his talk of the way to deal with the enemy also contributes to Herman’s single minded ability to take care of himself. The message is kill or be killed, the mindless pursuit of your opponent’s destruction. Herman takes this terrible philosophy to heart and learns to give himself over to it when things go wrong for him. After his father’s death Herman goes to America where he kills a man who attacks him. Later after a strange dream and much soul searching he meets Eteluwa who is a Native American Shaman. Eteluwa gives him seven rules to live by and Herman believes that he can possibly learn to control his nature. He returns to Africa and ends up in Cape Town where he finds satisfaction in building and designing boats. But his past catches up with him and two more people die. He runs away to sea on a cargo boat working around Asia, Africa and the Far East for many years. He makes a friend aboard the boat through boxing. His new friend, Reid, is a Scottish engineer who was a welterweight Navy Boxing Champion when younger. Reid helps him with his mission to learn to control himself through the boxing and he is reasonably successful. Eventually he meets the woman he loves and leaves both the sea and boxing to start a new life in Jakarta, where he plans to marry and have a small boat building business. Although he makes new friends and everything is working out for him, it is not to be…There are powerful forces at work behind the way the world is developing and it is possible that Herman and his dark ability will become a nuisance, a nuisance that must be removed. The story of Amen/Herman explores the existence of evil and asks questions of our inner demons; demons that seek the extermination of beings that are different or threaten our security and social norms. It asks us again, “Does the end justify the means?”