Love In Miserable Places - How A Savvy Man Turned Poverty Into Seduction

Roland Fields was a consultant for the World Bank, international development's premier institution for the alleviation of poverty in the Third World, and it routinely made grants and soft loans to African countries in need of water, pest control, improved health and education facilities, and programs of social welfare. 

 

At its inception the Bank was the lender of last resort, the agency to which countries with legitimate needs but bad credit turned after being rejected by the capital markets. Later it expanded its reach and began funding its own infrastructure projects, capital improvements which would provide the foundation for private investment.  

Only later under the stewardship of Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson's hardline Vietnam era Secretary of Defense, a man racked with guilt over the bombing of the North and the millions of lives lost in an unnecessary, self-serving war, did the Bank start giving money away. 

It wasn't roads, bridges, and airports that African countries needed, but caring, compassionate, understanding programs to improve the general welfare. Overnight McNamara turned the Bank from a banker's institution to a social worker's welfare office. 

The Big Men of Africa salivated over the prospect of such limitless soft money over which there would be little oversight or review. Africa was to be trusted, said McNamara after his epiphany.  Brown and black people needed special consideration, a kind of universal reparation for the horrific damage and death in Vietnam. 

 

So, under the new aegis and moral philosophy, billions of dollars went missing as corrupt dictators simply siphoned the money to their offshore accounts while Bank-financed projects went nowhere. The Bank always demurred, restructuring the loans and adding more significant dates for repayment, but because the Big Men knew that the Bank wanted to lend money more than they wanted or needed it, they paid no attention to repayment schedules, continued round after round of refinancing, and became fabulously wealthy. 

The United States was no different, and poured hundred of millions of no-accountability money into the coffers of the continent's most corrupt countries.  Anything to keep them friendly and congenial to American interests, and to assure access to the vast energy and mineral resources underground. 

As part of this immense charade were cadres of young, inspired, idealistic aid workers who offered their services for very little to help the black man, to redress the wrongs of slavery, and to do the right, Christian thing.  They went willingly to the worst shitholes of the world, countries which thanks to the pillage and indifference of a succession of venal politicians, remained poor, backward, and economically retarded.

Polly Flanders was one of these enthusiastic volunteers who was hired by Children Are Precious, a Washington non-profit organization specializing in child health and welfare and favored recipient of USAID financing.  After training she was assigned to perhaps the most corrupt, miserable place on the continent for a two-year assignment. 

She welcomed the challenge, and even when installed in her mosquito-ridden, lockless, roach infested hotel room, her spirits did not flag. She was there to help, after all, not have a good time. 

Now, the President of the country knew that he had to provide sumptuous lodging for those high-level officials in the country to negotiate loans and grants and those mining companies bidding on gas and oil exploration leases.  The Independence was a five-star hotel overlooking the river with two Olympic size pools, three restaurants curated by French chefs, and marvelous, European-style service; and it was there that Roland Fields stayed. 

 

Yet he spent most of his time at the St. Louis, the awful hotel where Polly and her American colleagues stayed, for he knew that after some months in-country, the blush would be off the bloom of the rose, and she would have become if not despondent, then needy and lost.  She was a faded rose worth picking, Fields thought, and as he had in the past, would, thanks to his affection and commiseration, have any one of these young girls for the asking. 

Everything in life is a quid pro quo, Fields said, and love was no different.  His seduction of a lonely, desperate girl would benefit them both.  By the time he made his first overture, Polly had been shuffled back and forth by the Ministry of Health, posted to bloodstained, needle-strewn rural dispensaries, quartered in abandoned barracks and prisons, and left to rot in malarial dens.  

'You look unhappy', Roland said to her at the bar of the St. Louis, and for the first time in many months she looked into a handsome, untroubled, interested face - the face of a man who might take care of her. 

Of course these were adolescent fairy tale dreams - she had only just met the man - but such romantic imaginings had completely taken over her mind.  The misery of Africa had overwhelmed her - not so much the suffering of Africans, but the absolute, gross, horrific rot, filth, and refuse everywhere.  No one had told her of the unremitting awfulness of the place, the sense of desperation, isolation, and social impotence. 

 

And there was Roland Fields, fresh from his swim in the Independence pool, sitting next to her, offering to buy her a beer, a man obviously interested in her as a person, not only as a woman. The President's son had built a hunting lodge in the forest, a half-day's trip upcountry, and thanks to Roland's solicitude and promise of fair financial treatment, he was allowed to use it, and Roland invited Polly to join him there over the weekend.  

It was a simple yet well-appointed and well-managed affair with servants, fresh capitaine from the river, soft, canopied, netted beds, and the silence of the forest.  Bed tea on the verandah, a sumptuous breakfast, and hours of sitting idly and happily on the deck high in the canopy above. 

Polly immediately accepted and as he expected, they began their affair.  What could be more perfect - the 'real' Africa, not the pestilential slums of the capital, the rude and indifferent government officials.  This is what she had signed up for - the romance of the interior, the primitive simplicity, the magnificence of the jungle and the love of a wonderful man. 

It was the oldest game in the world - flowers, a box of candy, remembering her birthday, their anniversary - and the weekend at the hunting lodge changed Polly completely. She went back to the St. Louis with renewed vigor, patience, and fortitude.  After all she would see Roland often, and her life would change.  When he left to return to Washington, she suffered.  She hoped she wasn't falling in love with him, and waited anxiously for his return.

 

The affair lasted three months, although he visited the country only twice during that period. His beat included other African countries all mired in the same pestilential swamps of corruption, indifference, tribal nepotism, payback and greed.  The pickin's there would be just as congenial for romance and seduction. 

There was something about these awful places that attracted young American women - the chance to get away from routine, to take risks, to have adventure and the unknown in their lives, to be independent and forthcoming, to be taken seriously. But there was always a familiar letdown, a feeling of utter aloneness and remove.  The worse the place, the more abysmal the country, the farther the fall from idealism to moroseness; and it was in the breech that Roland was most at home. 

No one was hurt by all this.  Well, sure, the young women were disconsolate for a while after Roland left, but got over it, managed well, and went home proud of their accomplishments and their tour of duty.  As for Roland, the life suited him to a tee and he happily continued until it was time to return to wife and family and play that game for a while.