Seen One Slum, Seen Them All - An Operatic Libretto, Or Annals Of African Development

Bradford Perrine was an economic development consultant with a resume filled with assignments in some of the most difficult and challenging places in the world.  These were places that no one but the international banker, oil prospector, or non-profit volunteer would go - pestilential places from arrival hall to departure lounge and everywhere in between.

Perrine had a sinecure with the World Bank - first class air travel, two-day stopovers in Europe, five star hotels at his destination and a no-limit expense account.  These were compensations for having to work in desperate, malarial, crime-ridden, corrupt places. 

The Hotel Independence was his favorite, built by Joshua N'dogo, President of a central African country with vast mineral deposits and newly discovered rare earths.  N'dogo spared no expense to make the Europeans and Americans who came courting happy, and the Independence was as fine a hotel as one would find in Paris, Rome, or London.  

Pierre Gramont, formerly of Le Lion Farouche, a Paris  restaurant which had, thanks to him earned its third Michelin star, was the chef.  N'dogo's offer was too generous to refuse - far more money in hard currency than he had ever dreamed of, a penthouse apartment at the Independence, a new Mercedes, and his choice of Fulani women.  

The luxury of the hotel was a necessity after long days of visiting Bonneville, the festering slum on the river which was the home to 100,000 residents.  It was among the nastiest of Africa, long left to rot by the President whose interests lay in beryllium not the souls of the slum. His wealth was legendary, the Presidential palace magnificent, and his harem of beautiful women from the four corners of the continent was admired by Big Men everywhere. 

The World Bank, the executing agency for a United Nations project to improve environmental sanitation, had provided a multi-million dollar soft loan to N'dogo to invest in providing waste disposal in Bonneville - low cost sanitary latrines in particular.  Bank engineers assured beneficiaries that the latrines were the latest in structural design and would revolutionize slum development. 

Of course the President had no use for toilets or slums, siphoned off most of the Bank money, dug a few desultory pits and sent bulldozers on a one-time visit to move the trash from choked gutters to large, rat-infested mounds, took photos and videos of the operation and signed on for an extension to the loan. 

Perrine had found every reason to avoid visiting Bonneville, for as callous and unfeeling as it might sound, 'seen one slum, seen them all' was the meme. The factors producing abject poverty and miserable living conditions were universal; and in the case of Africa, they influenced countries as a whole. 

Rural populations tempted by the promise of big city opportunities but still tribal in outlook had neither the will, the education, nor the cultural ethos to make anything of the city except one vast, pestilential slum. 

Every city was more slum than residence. Tribal mentality, government indifference, the venal opportunism of post-colonial regimes, and some kind of animist loyalty turned one urban area after another into a stinking pit. 

N'dogo of course knew which side of his bread was buttered, and he made sure that at least one part of every major city looked modern, enclaves of faux prosperity more theatrical staging than anything, and development bankers chose to see these areas as signs of hopefulness not the charade they were. 

Bonneville was disgusting, but no more than any slum Perrine had visited in Kinshasa, Lagos, Luanda, or Maputo. Open air defecation, rutted, potholed roads, wooden huts on stilts perched over stinking, human waste-carrying, trash-clogged canals, naked children, cheap whores, indolence, and grime. 

Which was why Perrine had deferred his visit. What was the point?  He could write his report without having to set foot in the place.  He knew where the Bank money went - to offshore accounts and not to Bonneville - and N'dogo knew that he knew but the rare earth contract was all that mattered. 

A drive-through perhaps with a Bank photographer in tow - Perrine With Native Children...Perrine Observing Excavation...Perrine Beside Local Authorities - was the least he could do, so in the Presidential limousine, dark tinted windows rolled up, chilling air-conditioning on full blast, and single-malt whisky in the teak cabinet before him, Perrine did an 'on-site' visit. 

Finally back at the Independence, sitting by the pool with Emriye al-Maghrebi, Fulani princess and his Presidentially approved consort, sipping a sundowner, he lay back watched the evening swallows do their aerobatics, and smiled.  Life in Africa wasn't all that bad. 

The next morning he was invited to the Presidential palace for an audience with the President.  The entrance hall was magnificent - Carrera marble floors, Venetian sconces, Baccarat chandeliers, and caparisoned Republican Guards - and the long walk through equally well-appointed corridors only confirmed the majesty of presidential power. 

'How was the trip over?', asked the President.  Were Perrine's accommodations comfortable?  Had he tried Pierre Gramont’s pheasant-under-glass? 

The meeting was a formality of course.  The President had not an iota of interest in the project in Bonneville and was only interested in the Bank's upcoming geological mission - an evaluation of the rare earth deposits in Bolo Province, the first step to opening the area to private investment. 'Soon, Mr. President, soon'; and with that, Perrine was ushered to his waiting limousine to complete his mission. 

The First Class cabin of Emirates was offering a tasting of the best California and Bordeaux wines - a friendly competition for those Americana and European patrons of the airline.  The wine flowed, the mood was jovial, and time passed quickly. 

 

Perrine's department chief, a Dutch engineer with a commitment to low cost sanitation and a lifelong dedication to alleviating African suffering, wanted details.  Perrine, used to his boss's ardency was well- prepared, and shared with him the engineering report prepared by N'dogo's Minister of Public Works, a man known to Rietveld thanks to his many trips to Washington.  

The report was fiction, of course, but prepared in the most meticulous engineering language complete with dimensions, static head calculations, temperatures, and plumb lines. 

'Good', said Rietveld, 'very good indeed', and with that Perrine returned to his office to begin the paperwork on the new, extended loan. 

Perrine saw no irony in all this, no moral crossroads, no ethical dilemmas.  This was the way the world worked - a mutual back-scratching, quid pro quo arrangement that had taken place ever since African independence when Cold War powers did everything to win the allegiance of the new continental governments.  

Money had poured down the sluice without a second thought in those days.  Nothing had changed. It was no longer a matter of political rivalry but economic competition.  Chinese and American interests were anxious to secure African natural resources, and would look the other way when it came to accountability.

Given this larger geopolitical context, issues of moral probity or ethical posture were irrelevant. Generous loans would be given, eyes turned the other way when money showed up in Aruba or Bimini, fictious reports of 'development' taken as gospel and used as the basis for more soft loans, and the dance of consultants like Perrine perfectly choreographed in time with the music. 

So Perrine slept well and looked forward to his next trip to Africa. By now even the pro forma trips to the beneficiary slums were unnecessary, so unerringly similar they all were, and so predictable were the projects designed for them.  A sojourn at the Independence or the Internationale or the Majestic, good food and wine, a friendly camaraderie with the President's men, and lovely, languorous nights with dark-eyed lovers was all one needed to know about Africa. 

A Love Affair In The Heart Of Darkness - Without Savagery, Passion Is Pedestrian

Barton Ames, World Bank loan officer, old Africa hand, and world traveler, had had his share of affairs on the Dark Continent, some incidental, some circumstantial, and others temporary but telling. There was nothing like loosing the tethers that bind, heading off for the deepest, most remote and unexplored regions of Africa and, like Kurtz in Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, coming to grips with human savagery and engaging it. 

Of course Ames had a romantic streak, and his job as an international civil servant working at the behest of bank investors and canny loan beneficiaries offered little in the way of Mungo Park, Conrad, Rene du Chaillu, or Richard Burton; but he at least understood the nature of adventure and how it provided the context for more simple engagements.

He first experienced the strange complementarity between danger and sexual energy the last time he was in Haiti - a country disturbed, politically uncertain and calm before he arrived, but chaotic and violent a few days afterwards.  He and his lover, a Palestinian woman in Port-au-Prince for the United Nations Refugee Relief Agency, were on the balcony of their room at the Splendid, a Victorian gingerbread hotel, all mahogany, teak, and polished brass, when the shooting started.  They could hear the mortar fire by the port, and hear the rumble of tanks making their way in convoy from their barracks in Petionville to Duvalierville. 

Soon the hotel was surrounded by army troops, the first of which broke into the bar and carried out cases of Johnnie Walker, passing bottles around to their comrades in the half-tracks and armored personnel carriers stopped in the parking lot in front of the hotel.  

When  they received orders to proceed ahead and engage the rebel forces coming up from Avenue Toussaint de l'Ouverture, they were drunk and fired their old, Soviet-era single shot, bolt action rifles into the air, hollered and bellowed patriotic songs, and made their way south. 

Tires were burning everywhere, 'necklaces of fire' they were called.  Traitors were handcuffed and blindfolded while tires were put over their heads and set ablaze while irregulars hooted and hollered at the charring bodies. 

The night spent by Barton Ames and Emriye al-Mehmet was all the more uninhibited because of the intimidating, encircling violence.  Far from frightening it gave emotional cover and shared protection.  In bed, under the covers, holding each other for comfort and fear, their intimacy turned to sexual interest and then to irresolute passion. 

The coup was aborted, the President was still alive and well in the palace, and the rebels were executed by firing squad in the public square.  Barton left the next morning for Washington, and Emriye for Istanbul on the first flights available. 

One might think that such an adventure would bring them indivisibly together, but foreign affairs have a way of dissimulating. Lovers can never recreate the heady atmosphere of a dangerous tropical sexual rendezvous in their own, calm, quiet, and sedately peaceful home countries. Trysts in godawful places are things of fancy.  

At the same time Barton couldn't help but wanting to revisit the uncommon passion of that night at the Splendid.  It was unique, something out of D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller; but undaunted and a sexual partisan, he knew that if the circumstances were right, it would happen again. 

Africa is a penitential miasma on every point on the compass - venality, autocracy, civil violence and unrest, corruption, and chaos.  Somalia is but the most current example of Africa's descent into tribal, religious, and ethnic hell.  It is a country defined by international boundaries only, an unruly and unrulable place unfit for human habitation; and the Congo is no different,  Kinshasa is a sinkhole of poverty, incivility, and misrule.  

Nigeria is perhaps the worst. International development consultants have No Nigeria clauses in their contracts, Americans have lost millions to Nigerian online fraud, and the fertile delta, area of vast oil resources is a gangland shooting gallery.  South Africa, once the bright light of the continent, destined to build on Afrikaner enterprise and wealth, now is only a desperate shithole of tribal rivalry and government corruption. 

Barton was drawn to Africa not because of Conrad but not despite him either.  The continent held a special place in the adventurer's heart -  a place still so primitive, uncivilized, intemperate, violent, and untamed that it had to be experienced.  He signed up for a sojourn in a Sahelian country recently in the news for its successful fight against ISIS and the rebellious Tuaregs in the North.  It would provide just the right blend of colonial French culture, Islamic Sufism, and African tribal warfare to be the right place at the right time. 

The trip started off well.  He chose a small hotel run by ex-colonial women from la France profonde, somewhere in the Dordogne, women who still recorded guests' accounts by hand, and where old Africa hands came in from the desert for their Pernod and canapes at the bar. 

As occasion would have it, he met a young German woman ready to embark on a solo journey far to the north, beyond Mopti and Timbuktu, toward al-Alamein and the Algerian oases serving the salt trade caravans. She, like many expatriates and European travelers were drawn by Africa's mystery.  

It was indeed a mystery why after over sixty years of independence the continent was far worse off than under its colonial rulers.  In the same space of time that South Korea went from a rural peasant society to a world economic power, Africa regressed.  While China went from Maoism to America's rival if not superior in a few short decades, Africa became basket case.  

It was this desire to explore a seemingly defiant primitivism that drew both Heidi and Barton Ames to the Sahel. Like attracts like, and after pastis and capitaine, they became lovers.  Anyone but expatriate drifters might question the ease and quickness of their affair, but those who have been about and around such Sahelian places would not question it. Temporary, fortunate sexual elisions are common and expected in otherwise uninhabitable, uncivilized places. 

The night was hot, long, and stifling. The hotel lost power by 6pm and never recovered, but with the windows to the street wide open, and secure under a canopied mosquito net, the two lovers were at ease. Both would never do with cooling, insulation, and  the security of Europe a l'étranger. It had to be this way, and the disturbing gunfire from the nearby desert rebel redoubts only added to the sexual tension.  

Baron and the German girl said their goodbyes the next morning.  He back to Washington and she to the interior.  His trip was subject to delays, hers was liable to Tuareg or ISIS raids, which is why both hoped that they would meet again under similar circumstances but knew that they would not.  Such love affairs do not survive light and air, 

Infidelity, fantasy, adventurism?  All the above and more.  Barton was near retirement.  Although he looked forward to a new, less complicated, and simpler life, he wondered how he would adjust to his new celibacy, his confinement, and his ordinary ways. Thomas Wolfe:

You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing's sake, back home to aestheticism, to one's youthful idea of 'the artist' and the all-sufficiency of 'art' and 'beauty' and 'love,' back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermuda away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.

 

Back home - Barton wouldn't want to go there if he could.  He was more than satisfied with an untethering of the ties that bind, a sojourn in a nasty place, love in the palms. 

Who Do You Trust More, Men Or Women? - New Studies Reveal Startling Results

'Of course men cannot be trusted.  Just look who's in the White House...If Bill Clinton cheated on his wife, then how can we trust him with our country...Richard Nixon lied through his teeth about Watergate...Ronald Reagan deceived us about Iran-Contra...Martin Luther King cheated on his wife Coretta every chance he got...Kennedy bedded Marilyn Monroe and Russian spies...'

  

While it is unfair to pick on world leaders - Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to President Nixon, famously said that power was the greatest aphrodisiac, so it is quite natural for powerful men to have the pick of the litter - do all men share this penchant for lying, deception, and cheating?

In a new, controversial study published by the Utrecht (Louisiana) University Press (March 2025), Professor Emeritus Lionel P Smathers confirmed this universal, popular conclusion: 

In a double-blind study of over 2000 subjects across a wide range of socio-economic, racial, and cultural categories, the inescapable conclusion is that men, for reasons of birth, genetics, and cultural influence, can be trusted far less than women.  While this was the unanimous conclusion when it came to sexual vagary, it included the crimes of Bernie Madoff, Skilling, Kurniawan, and other infamous frauds. 

There is something in the male makeup, exhibited on the pre-historic African veldt, on Wall Street, and in Washington and Silicon Valley which have given men a predatory, amoral drive for survival while women have been content to sit by the home fires tending to the family. 

'See, what did I tell you', said Vicki Chalmers to her close friend, Bernadette. 'I knew it all the time.  Men are rutting pigs'. 

Her friend demurred, wife to a faithful, loving husband and wonderful father.  'Well, surely not all men, Vicki', she said knowingly. 

'Just you watch out', Vicki replied angrily. 'What goes around, comes around', confirming the suspicions that Wilbur Hanson was not the choirboy Bernadette thought.  Vicki had seen him at the Town & Country bar of the Mayflower hotel on a hot midsummer afternoon, hidden away in the shadows with someone definitely not Bernadette.  'She will have her comeuppance', thought Vicki, angry at her supercilious friend. 

Yes, Vicki  had also been deceived by a wandering husband - in Anchorage with Miss Fairbanks, 'business trips' to Port-au-Prince, weeks of 'staying late at the office'.  She hated to conflate all men based on her own unfortunate experience, but when face-to-face with a smiling, assured, deceived woman like Bernadette Hanson, she had to speak up. 

Not every academic agreed with Prof. Smathers.  In fact his article, reprinted in the New York Review of Literature was the subject of an academic tit-for-tat that went on for weeks.  In a particularly dismissive retort, Prof. Arnold Vibberts of Medford (Oregon) University had the following to say in the familiar sardonic, catty, and unctuous style characteristic of the Review:

With all due respect to my esteemed colleague from Louisiana, research from other quarters, far more disciplined, rigorous, and methodologically sound has shown just the opposite.  It is not just men who are the deceivers, the sexual truants, and untrustworthy public servants, but women who trump their misdemeanors at every turn. 

What my learned colleague conveniently overlooks is pregnancy and the fact that only women know who the father is. Women have used this proprietary information to feather their nests.  Playing on men's natural evolutionary mistrust of women (see Freud, On the Determinants of Male Jealousy, 1904), women have dismissed male patriarchy and chosen their own path to sexual freedom.  

Laura, the main character in Strindberg's seminal play, The Father drives her husband mad with doubts about his paternity, has him committed to an insane asylum, and takes over full responsibility for the considerable family finances and the sole care of their daughter.  Fiction? Hardly.  Research by Figgins et. al in 2022 in which 1500 women were queried about their 'gender potency' results were unequivocal.  Most women were aware of their innate biological and reproductive power and would use it if and when necessary. 

French Deconstructionist Lacan ventured into the argument a number of years before in an influential article on historicism and the ineluctable influences of social imperatives. 'It is not that women are inherently duplicitous', he wrote, 'only complicit, made so by their perennially inferior, subjugated status.  Using whatever power they have over men they are co-equals in sexual terms if not legal or social ones'. 

Women, because of this history and natural proclivity, can be trusted far less than men. This genetic, reproductive investment has given them 'a nuclear weapon in the armory'. 

'Men have not needed to be duplicitous or unfaithful', Prof. Vibberts went on.  Ask Suleiman the Great of Ottoman Turkey, a man whose harem numbered in the hundreds and whose many wives were cloaked, veiled, and immured in granite redoubts.  The Saudis have been on to something for generations.'

Not only academics are in this cat fight on the back pages of the New York Review. Leakage into the popular press when the subject is of such topical interest is guaranteed; and when Women Today opened the discussion to its female readers, the outcry was deafening. The reference to the legitimacy of the repressive Saudi regime in its incarceration of women alone was grounds for the beheading of the so-called academics who champion men's predatory, abusive rights. 

Vicki Chalmers, far too old for Women Today but a closet reader of girly-girl articles in it about how to get a man, read the angry retort in the magazine which opened the discussion up to its readers; and from there the debate became a cause celebre. 

Insults, vicious ad hominem attacks, vile and scurrilous contentions poured forth from both sides.  If anyone ever doubted there was a war between the sexes, this nasty exchange dispelled all doubts. Men from the deepest holler in Appalachia to Wall Street traders both reviled women for their trickery and roughshod feminism and reiterated their natural right to roam. 

Women were equally outraged, and from all quarters were heard the familiar accusations of patriarchy, misogyny, and male supremacy.  'We may not be saints', one reader wrote, 'but we are not sinners'. 

Professor Vibberts who argued  that female 'reproductive supremacy' gave women a potent weapon in their contest with men, and deployed often, was unrepentant. 'The facts speak for themselves', he said in an interview with the BBC. 

'Feminists argue that women need protection from men', Vibberts went on.  'Nothing could be further from the truth, and by ignoring their innate, inviolable reproductive power, they demean all women'. 

This irony has not been lost on social conservatives.  How can you champion women on the one hand, claiming that they are superior to men in all regards, and then demand bastions of protection for them on the other?  'Nonsense'. said Vibberts. 

Vibberts was summarily dismissed from Medford despite his tenure, for 'behavior unbefitting of the University'.  He knew it was coming, for few if any of his colleagues were speaking out against the cant and pseudo-intellectual monopoly of the Left; but he easily won his case on free speech grounds, stating that a cloture of the debate on gender differences was tantamount to gulag repression. 

'How's your marriage, Professor?', one gotcha reporter had the temerity to ask. 

'Of my five current wives', he replied, 'one of them may be telling the truth.'