At the Zoo

In September 1991, with the eruption of the looting and military mutiny across the capital of Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), 15,000 expatriates fled the country, leaving only a few hundred behind. Robert Weller, a journalist with the Associated Press wrote an article about how I repelled the rioters by painting the word AIDS in sheep's blood on the entrance wall of the compound where I worked and lived. I was shown with a bonobo clinging to my neck -- the reason that I stayed was to protect the animals.

Weller wrote, "But the soldiers who ransacked Kinshasa's stores, businesses and residences for three days in September kept clear of the center until French Foreign Legionnaires arrived to restore order and supervise the evacuations. For anyone who couldn't read her "AIDS" warning, it didn't hurt that Messinger also had a reputation locally as a handler of vipers and pythons. Indeed, when the Legionnaires saw the snakes, they left too."