The Perks Of Doing Good - A Life Of Luxury In Africa's Most Pestilential Places

In the corridors of the World Bank, the country was called 'A shithole with oil', but of course that rather belittling term never made it past Pennsylvania Avenue or the conference room on the 10th floor where senior managers and project staff met to discuss the performance of a recent loan. With great patience and reserve, economists, diplomats, and engineers met weekly to evaluate the generous gifts made to help the country make its way back from civil war to the commonwealth of African nations. 

This was no easy task, for the place was a dismal mess - crime, corruption, civil unrest and disorder, and a government knew that sitting on billions of dollars worth of energy reserves and rare earths made it untouchable.  If Bank loans were under- or non-performing, they were re-negotiated with more favorable terms.  

 

World Bank managers, like their private bank counterparts, liked to keep loans operative and interest flowing.  Even though many of the Bank loans were soft and the financial conditions far less stringent that those of the European capital markets, senior officials in Washington were obliged to at least make a show of discipline and financial order.  The money kept flowing, most of it diverted to  private offshore Aruban or Cayman bank accounts, and the country remained the shithole it had always been. 

Nevertheless, Peter Hammond, the Bank's Project Manager for the largest of the loans, loved going to the country, for as every seasoned development economist or consultant knows, a country may be poor, but its poverty is always far from the privileged life of those bringing gifts, dollars, and euros. 

The Hotel International had been built just for this purpose - the President knew that keeping the World Bank, African Development Bank, and European and American bilateral donor representatives happy was key to a smooth financial ride.  It matched the hotels of Singapore and Jakarta for luxury, service, and pleasure. 

Its floors were Carrara marble, the lobby was filled with tropical flowers from South Africa, its restaurant menu filled with delicacies from France, Japan, and Thailand.  Lobsters were flown in from Maine, oysters from Brittany, lamb from New Zealand, and beef from Argentina.  The wines were Barolo and St. Emilion, and the assortment of aperitifs and liqueurs as varied as in any hotel in Biarritz or Rimini. 

Now Peter was well aware where the money for such accommodations came from.  He and other Bank Project Managers were told to turn a blind eye to 'diversion' as long as it did not exceed a certain percentage of loans.  Endemic corruption could not be wiped out in one fell swoop, gradualism was the byword, and if such diversion of Bank funds were used for infrastructure (for that was what the Hotel International Hotel was, after all) so much the better. 

The care and attention paid to these bank representatives did not stop at the International.  The President had created a 'Pink Zone', a four-block area of the capital secured by military police and as safe as any in Stockholm.  Filled with bars, cafes, and bistros, the zone was a lively, entertaining alternative to the life of the hotel.  There were enough foreign dignitaries, bankers, and foreign aid workers both living in the country and visiting on short term missions to keep the zone alive and well. 

The project for which Peter was the envoy was designed to improve the abysmal health system in the country.  Abysmal was a euphemism for a non-existent system.  Hospitals and health centers were foul, blood-stained, mosquito- and fly-ridden places of certain death.  

People never went near them and relied on traditional medicine - a medley of witch doctors, shamans, and quacks - and on the faith of their tribal gods.  Health indicators were at the bottom of every African register - and that was saying something since the whole continent had been a sinkhole of malaria, dengue, tetanus, hepatitis, and fulminating infection since independence.  

Nevertheless, Peter's attitude was realistic.  He was an instrument of incremental change, an emissary of those who wished the people of Africa good health and well-being, but were only facilitators  They could not force governments to hew to their European ethos; and most importantly if one donor pulled out of the country, others were sure to take its place.  

Either because of Africa's vast mineral and energy wealth, or because of the large African diaspora which was gaining increasing political power in Europe and America, or because of a perennial desire to do good, development money kept flowing and the spigots were never turned off. 

Despite perennial, persistent, endemic corruption - few countries in Africa have been spared the continent's Big Men, Presidents-for-Life, dictators, autocrats, and petty thieves, foreigners and their monies keep coming, and with each step on African soil kept them in power. 

'It is so', said Peter to a woman he met at the bar of the International, the place to see and be seen, the watering hole of the country's elite, and the preferred social nexus for consultants.  She, a princess whose family traced its origins to the Ghanaian Empire, had Fulani and Mandinka heritage, was no ordinary patron.  She was the premier member of one of the country's most honored family, and assumed its privilege with grace and not a little imperiousness.  How could there not be a trace of arrogance in a princess, heir to an empire, settled in her convictions of the right of blood? 

 

They were a good match, she and Peter Hammond, for the princess, however proud of her lineage, was not one to stay in her palace and be served.  She had been educated in France, returned to her roots and the sinecure of a privileged life in the regime of the current President, and had no argument with the 'imperfections' in her native land. 

'It is so', she repeated - a very attractive stoicism, he thought, and one which aligned with his - and so it was, on this very unusual but workable beginning, they became lovers. 

Her palace  - actually only a mansion high on a hill overlooking the city - was her redoubt, her asylum from the nastiness of the city which she, like Peter, chose to ignore.  'It is so', she repeated over tea in the formal gardens built by a French architect with ideas of Versailles; and that was that.  Not a word more about the country, the President, Africa, or the continent's universal default. 

Neither Peter nor Princess Fatimata should be criticized for their attitude.  Luxury and poverty have always existed side by side, and her country was no different, major and minor keys, stasis and movement, allegro and pianissimo; and she happened to live on the pleasant side of the street, no different from Peter who chose a room overlooking the sea, not the city, from the balcony of which he and the princess never once wondered what was next.