Prompt
It ended with the sound of a heavy motor-boat engine smashing the silence of the night in the delta. We’d seen brilliant moonlight for the past few nights and this one too didn’t disappoint. We could see the wake from the boat as it powered its way down-stream, the waves high, white, glistening, then the slapping sound as they pounded the water’s edge, washing over the high mangrove roots, the boat moving so fast that droplets of water were thrown over the low, ruined wall to land on our hidden bodies.
We’d known they were coming, we’d had warning from the friends in the local village, so had plenty of time to escape, to get our own boat out of the river, hidden now under a drapery of branches and foliage. The oil companies hated our advocacy work on behalf of the native farmers and fishermen whose traditional lands and fishing grounds had been ruined by the oil leaching from the drilling works in the delta.
The local government officials were paid off, the central government, hundred of miles away weren’t interested in a few poor people who didn’t even make enough money to pay taxes. So, we did what we could.
