Joseph brings out the fish and rice and hot sauce he has been preparing for the last half hour and places it still in the cooking pots directly onto the table. It's a remarkable scene here on the ramparts of a centuries old fort looking out over the Atlantic with nothing but the crashing waves for company - and Joseph, of course, until he must go home and leave me to the bats and the swallows and mosquitoes, and the rustling banana and coconut trees standing watch over the village below.
'You wanted fish and beer. Here is your fish,' he says.
'And the beer?'
'I did not forget,' he smiles
Joseph has been caretaker of the fort for 21 years but has made me feel as though I were his first guest.
He makes for the steps down to the courtyard of the fort and checks his stride. 'I will be here in the morning. The security will come but ... don't give him money, eh?'
I am left to dream about life in Fort Gross-Friedrichsburg over the last few hundred years as the darkness descends and I sip my cold Star.
The security man idly wanders in an hour later, sits down opposite me and notices the dregs of my beer in the bottle before me.
'Will you give me money. For beer, eh?'
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