Abe turned to the others of his team who had crowded up behind him. It
had been a long time since any of them had seen other than native women.
"Isobel," he said, "I hate to do this, but let me introduce you to Homer
Crawford, my immediate boss and slave driver, late of the University of
Michigan where he must've found out where the body was--they gave him a
doctorate. Then here's Elmer Allen, late of Jamaica--British West
Indies, not Long Island--all he's got is a master's, also in sociology.
And this is Kenneth Ballalou, hails from San Francisco, I don't think
Kenny ever went to school, but he seems to speak every language ever."
Abe turned to his final companion. "And this is our sole _real_ African,
Bey-ag-Akhamouk, of Tuareg blood, so beware, they don't call the Tuareg
the Apaches of the Sahara for nothing."
Bey pretended to wince as he held out his hand. "Since Abe seems to be
an education snob, I might as well mention the University of Minnesota
and my Political Science."
Jake Armstrong and Cliff Jackson had come up behind Isobel, and were now
introduced in turn. The older man said, "A Tuareg in a Reunited Nations
team? Not that it makes any difference to me, but I thought there was
some sort of policy."
"I was taken to the States when I was three," Bey said. "I'm an American
citizen."
Isobel was chattering, in animation, with Abe Baker. It developed they'd
both been reporters on the school paper at Columbia. At least, they'd
both started as reporters, Isobel had wound up editor.
Since their introduction, Homer Crawford had been vaguely frowning at
her. Now he said, "I've been trying to place where I'd seen you before.
Now I know. Some photographs of Lena Horne, she was--"
Isobel dropped a mock curtsy. "Thank you, kind sir, you don't have to
tell me about Lena Horne, she's a favorite. I have scads of tapes of
her."
"Brother," Elmer Allen said dourly, "how's anybody going to top that?
Homer's got the inside track now. Let's get over to this meeting. By the
cars, helio-copters and hovercraft around here, you got more of a
turnout than I expected, Homer."
The meeting was held in what had once been an assembly chamber of the
officials of the former _Cercle de Tombouctou_, when this had all been
part of French Sudan. It was the only room in the vicinity which would
comfortably hold all of them.
* * * * *
Elmer Allen had been right, there was something like a hundred persons
present, almost all men but with a sprinkling of women, such as Isobel.
More than half were in native costume running the gamut from Nigeria to
Morocco and from Mauritania to Ethiopia. They were a competent looking,
confident voiced gathering.
Homer Crawford knocked with a knuckle on the table that stood at the
head of the hall and called for silence. "Sorry we're late," he said,
"Particularly in view of the fact that the idea of this meeting
originated with my team. We had some difficulty with a nomad raider, up
in Chaambra country."
Someone from halfway back in the hall said bitterly, "I suppose in
typical African Development Project style, you killed the poor man."
Crawford said dryly, "_Poor man_ isn't too accurate a description of the
gentleman involved. However, he is at present in jail awaiting trial."
He got back to the meeting. "I had originally thought of this being an
informal get-together of a score or so of us, but in view of the numbers
I suggest we appoint a temporary chairman."
"You're doing all right," Jake Armstrong said from the second row of
chairs.
"I second that," an unknown called from further back.
Crawford shrugged. His manner had a cool competence. "All right. If
there is no objection, I'll carry on until the meeting decides, if it
ever does, that there is need of elected officers."
"I object." In the third row a white haired, but Prussian-erect man had
come to his feet. "I wish to know the meaning of this meeting. I object
to it being held at all."
Abe Baker called to him, "Dad, how can you object to it being held if
you don't know what it's for?"
Homer Crawford said, "Suppose I briefly sum up our mutual situation and
if there are any motions to be made--including calling the meeting
quits--or decisions to come to, we can start from there."
There was a murmur of assent. The objector sat down in a huff.
Crawford looked out over them. "I don't know most of you. The word of
this meeting must have spread from one group or team to another. So what
I'll do is start from the beginning, saying little at first with which
you aren't already familiar, but we'll lay a foundation."
He went on. "This situation which we find in Africa is only a part of a
world-wide condition. Perhaps to some, particularly in the Western World
as they call it, Africa isn't of primary importance. But, needless to
say, it is to we here in the field. Not too many years ago, at the same
period the African colonies were bursting their bonds and achieving
independence, an international situation was developing that threatened
future peace. The rich nations were getting richer, the poor were
getting poorer, and the rate of this change was accelerating. The
reasons were various. The population growth in the backward countries,
unhampered by birth control and rocketing upward due to new sanitation,
new health measures, and the conquest of a score of diseases that have
bedeviled man down through the centuries, was fantastic. Try as they
would to increase per capita income in the have-not nations, population
grew faster than new industry and new agricultural methods could keep
up. On top of that handicap was another; the have-not nations were so
far behind economically that they couldn't get going. Why build a
bicycle factory in Morocco which might be able to turn out bikes for,
say, fifty dollars apiece, when you could buy them from automated
factories in Europe, Japan or the United States for twenty-five
dollars?"
Most of his audience were nodding agreement, some of them impatiently,
as though wanting him to get on with it.
Crawford continued. "For a time aid to these backward nations was left
in the hands of the individual nations--especially to the United States
and Russia. However, in spite of speeches of politicians to the
contrary, governments are not motivated by humanitarian purposes. The
government of a country does what it does for the benefit of the ruling
class of that country. That was the reason it was appointed the
government. Any government that doesn't live up to this dictum soon
stops being the government."
"That isn't always so," somebody called.
Homer Crawford grinned. "Bear with me a while," he said. "We can debate
till the Niger freezes over--later on."
He went on. "For instance, the United States would _aid_ Country X with
a billion dollars at, say four per cent interest, stipulating that the
money be spent in America. This is aid? It certainly is for American
business. But then our friends the Russians come along and loan the same
country a billion rubles at a very low interest rate and with supposedly
no strings attached, to build, say, a railroad. Very fine indeed, but
first of all the railroad, built Russian style and with Russian
equipment, soon needs replacements, new locomotives, more rolling stock.
Where must it come from? Russia, of course. Besides that, in order to
build and run the railroad it became necessary to send Russian
technicians to Country X and also to send students from Country X to
Moscow to study Russian technology so that they could operate the
railroad." Crawford's voice went wry. "Few countries, other than commie
ones, much desire to have their students study in Moscow."
* * * * *
There was a slight stirring in his audience and Homer Crawford grinned
slightly. "You'll pardon me if in this little summation, I step on a few
ideological toes--of both East and West.
"Needless to say, under these conditions of _aid_ in short order the
economies of various countries fell under the domination of the two
great collossi. At the same time the other have nations including Great
Britain, France, Germany and the newly awakening China, began to realize
that unless they got into the _aid_ act that they would disappear as
competitors for the tremendous markets in the newly freed former
colonial lands. Also along in here it became obvious that philanthropy
with a mercenary basis doesn't always work out to the benefit of the
receiver and the world began to take measures to administer aid more
efficiently and through world bodies rather than national ones.
"But there was still another problem, particularly here in Africa. The
newly freed former colonies were wary of the nations that had formerly
owned them and often for good reasons, always remembering that
governments are not motivated by humanitarian reasons. England did not
free India because her heart bled for the Indian people, nor did France
finally free Algeria because the French conscience was stirred with
thoughts of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity."
A voice broke in from halfway down the hall, a voice heavy with British
accent. "I say, why did you Yanks free the Philippines?"
Homer Crawford laughed, as did several other Americans present. "That's
the first time I've ever been called a Yankee," he said. "But the point
is well taken. By freeing the islands we washed our hands of the
responsibility of such expensive matters as their health and education,
and at the same time we granted freedom we made military and economic
treaties which perpetuated our fundamental control of the Philippines.
"The point is made. The distrust of the European and the white man as a
whole was prevalent, especially here in Africa. However, and
particularly in Africa, the citizens of the new countries were almost
unbelievably uneducated, untrained, incapable of engineering their own
destiny. In whole nations there was not a single lawyer or--"
"That's no handicap," somebody called.
There was laughter through the hall.
Homer Crawford laughed, too, and nodded as though in solemn agreement.
"However, there were also no doctors, engineers, scientists. There were
whole nations without a single college graduate."
He paused and his eyes swept the hall. "That's where we came in. Most of
us here this afternoon are from the States, however, also represented to
my knowledge are British West Indians, a Canadian or two, at least one
Panamanian, and possibly some Cubans. Down in the southern part of the
continent I know of teams working in the Portuguese areas who are
Brazilian in background. All of us, of course, are Africans racially,
but few if any of us know from what part of Africa his forebears came.
My own grandfather was born a slave in Mississippi and didn't know his
father; my grandmother was already a hopeless mixture of a score of
African tribes.
"That, I assume, is the story of most if not all of us. Our ancestors
were wrenched from the lands of their birth and shipped under conditions
worse than cattle to the New World." He added simply, "Now we return."
There was a murmur throughout his listeners, but no one interrupted.
"When the great powers of Europe arbitrarily split up Africa in the
Nineteenth Century they didn't bother with race, tribe, not even
geographic boundaries. Largely they seemed to draw their boundary lines
with ruler and pencil on a Mercator projection. Often, not only were
native nations split in twain but even tribes and clans, and sometimes
split not only one way but two or three. It was chaotic to the old
tribal system. Of course, when the white man left various efforts were
made from the very start to join that which had been torn apart a
century earlier. Right here in this area, Senegal and what was then
French Sudan merged to form the short-lived Mali Federation. Ghana and
French Guinea formed a shaky alliance. More successful was the
federation of Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda and Zanzibar, which of course,
has since grown.
"But there were fantastic difficulties. Many of the old tribal
institutions had been torn down, but new political institutions had been
introduced only in a half-baked way. African politicians, supposedly
'democratically' elected, had no intention of facing the possibility of
giving up their individual powers by uniting with their neighbors. Not
only had the Africans been divided tribally but now politically as well.
But obviously, so long as they continued to be Balkanized the chances of
rapid progress were minimized.
"Other difficulties were manifold. So far as socio-economics were
concerned, African society ran the scale from bottom to top. The Bushmen
of the Ermelo district of the Transvaal and the Kalahari are stone age
people still--savages. Throughout the continent we find tribes at an
ethnic level which American Anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan called
barbarism. In some places we find socio-economic systems based on
chattle slavery, elsewhere feudalism. In comparatively few areas,
Casablanca, Algiers, Dakar, Cairo and possibly the Union we find a
rapidly expanding capitalism.
"Needless to say, if Africa was to progress, to increase rapidly her per
capita income, to depart the ranks of the have-nots and become have
nations, these obstacles had to be overcome. That is why we are here."
"Speak for yourself, Mr. Crawford," the white haired objector of ten
minutes earlier, bit out.
* * * * *
Homer Crawford nodded. "You are correct, sir. I should have said that is
the reason the teams of the Reunited Nations African Development Project
are here. I note among us various members of this project besides those
belonging to my own team, by the way. However, most of you are under
other auspices. We of the Reunited Nations teams are here because as
Africans racially but not nationally, we have no affiliation with clan,
tribe or African nation. We are free to work for Africa's progress
without prejudice. Our job is to remove obstacles wherever we find them.
To break up log jams. To eliminate prejudices against the steps that
must be taken if Africa is to run down the path of progress, rather than
to crawl. We usually operate in teams of about half a dozen. There are
hundreds of such teams in North Africa alone."
He rapped his knuckle against the small table behind which he stood.
"Which brings us to the present and to the purpose of suggesting this
meeting. Most of you are operating under other auspices than the
Reunited Nations. Many of you duplicate some of our work. It occurred to
me, and my team mates, that it might be a good idea for us to get
together and see if there is ground for co-operation."