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[dakarois]

PLAYER

NAME: S. | thewriteway
TIMEZONE: CEST

CHARACTER

NAME: Claude Laurent Bérubé
AGE: Mid-50s
GENDER: Male
SPECIES: Human
BIRTH DATE: Feb 13th 1970
HOMETOWN: Marseille, France
CURRENT RESIDENCE: Paris, France
OCCUPATION: Foreign correspondent for Le Monde, covering West and Northern Africa
BASE: Dakar, Senegal
EDUCATION: Sorbonne University, Literature, Publishing and Media degree
LANGUAGES: French and English, fluent; Arabic, passable; Wolof, well enough to follow everyday conversation
POWERS: None

PERMISSIONS

BACKTAGGING: Yes, please, I rely on it
4TH WALLING: No
THREADJACKING: No
KISSING: Yes, default to M/M
HUGGING: Yes, if invited
SEX: No, though I will happily write fade to black scenarios
FIGHTING: No
INJURY: Yes, though contact me about severe injuries
ROMANCE: Yes, M/M
DEATH: No

PERSONALITY

x Intellectual
x Principled
x Good-humoured
x Untethered

HISTORY

Until Claude was 10 years old, he lived a relatively normal, carefree middle class existence in Marseille, but then his father abandoned the family, consisting of his mother, his two older sisters and himself, for a journey to the Ivory Coast from which he'd never return. The desertion of her husband left Claude's mother a bitter woman who transferred a fair amount of unhealthy expectations to Claude as 'the only man in the family' instead. Growing up, he was close with his mother, but when he as a teenager found out he was gay, their relationship would grow strained and just as bitter as his mother had become at being left behind for sunnier coasts.

Managing to hold on to his relation to his two sisters, Claude moved to Paris and made a life for himself beyond his mother's influence. He attended university and went for a publishing and media degree, so that he could come to work at Le Monde as a journalist trainee. Quickly showing skill and determination in his work, he was eventually hooked up with the Le Monde foreign correspondent to West Africa, David, and got to know the ropes of the work from him. He was naturally adept at it and when David felt ready to retire, Claude took over for him. He made Dakar, Senegal, his base of operations, living in Paris about half the year, when he wasn't travelling around West and Northern Africa.

In Dakar, he would meet the local journalist, Cheikh, and the two men were instantly attracted to each other and began a secret relationship that would last five years, until a colleague of Cheikh found out and outed the other man, which resulted in him having to flee the country and seek asylum, first trying to get into France, but after a lot of pulling strings from Claude, managing a visa to Canada and settling down in Montréal.

The experience birthed a huge guilt complex in Claude, feeling like he was responsible for Cheikh having to leave behind his whole life, and he also began questioning the ethics of having French foreign correspondents covering news from the African continent without considering their own fault in the state of the general area and without being more critical of the portrait they painted of Africa as a whole. In the end, he began taking long leaves of absence to pursue his other professional passion, to write biographies. After a relatively succesful collaboration with a French-Senegalese musician, Cheikh contacted him again and asked whether Claude would be interested in writing his biography.

How could Claude say no to that?