"When the world's nations join hands to banish smallpox, the author's husband is posted to West Africa, initially to Nigeria. She eagerly follows him with two young children and wide-eyed ideals. What she finds during their two-year adventure deepens her love for the Africa she encounters, while its tragedies along with tripwires of international service erode her naivete. Later in Equatorial Guinea when attached to America's smallest embassy, her husband must partner with a regime known as "the terror." The people are brutalized, and journalists are banned. The author, one of only two American women in the country, keeps cryptic notes and hides them in a sock drawer, notes now a part of this memoir."--Back cover