Kitabı oku: «Cast Away : For These Reasons», sayfa 3

When somebody says quixotic image, for some reason my mind centers on the city of Burma, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. My enchanting depiction was, for a long time, the result of a leaked video of the General Than Shwe's² daughter wedding in 2006. There were strings of diamonds and tons of champagne bottles on display. It was estimated that she received tens of millions of dollars' worth of gifts, including luxury cars and houses. I can remember being so envious of the groom, watching him pouring champagne over a cascade of glasses and helping his bride slice into a huge wedding cake. At the news of Aung San Suu Kyi being released from house arrest in November 2010, I took a second look at the video and did some research. In the video, the smiling guests, wrapped in the finest clothing and expensive jewels, were all part of a brutal and sanguinary military leadership who had an ironclad grip on the country. This opulent party was happening while Burma's level of poverty and military repression continued to rise.

The military junta has since then gone through a strategic renovation. The surgical changes are noticeable; these tigers have adopted formal civilian outfits. Their sincerity is questionable. The ruling elite members are still the same. I do not see them relinquishing control over the Burmese military forces, which is unmistakably the source of their control over the country and its vast resources. So far, the offensive charm appears to be working. Yangon International Airport is busy yet again rolling out a red carpet on the step of world power brokers and their squads of financial crooks' jets. No doubt in my mind that parties will go on for some time again, although in secret.

The event got me wondering, what has happened to the most exhilarating party in the United States that was no secret by any means? In 2003, getting "fresh off of the boat" as many of my American compadres would label the Caribbean and African newcomer like myself, I came across a brochure of "Mardi Gras" events in New Orleans, Louisiana, jam-packed with images of young folks partying and with delightful praises of bayou gastronomy. A couple of friends and I could not wait to cash in a bunch of coupons stacked in the booklet. Needless to say, we drove down to the "Big Easy" as fast and drunk as we could. Miraculously, we did not end up on some chain-gang in Mississippi. The food and the hospitality on Bourbon Street were outstanding. Only few party musketeers could boast that every one of their notorious Bourbon Street rituals was a triumph. Let's just say that each time we left the hotel with hundreds of beads, following the festivities' sacrosanct tradition, we stumbled back to our room with empty hands... Wink, wink!

On our way back to Florida, with our minds still floating up in the sky, we missed the ramp to the Hale Boggs Bridge over the Mississippi River. Anyone who has been to New Orleans knows that the bridge is the only way of getting out of the city. There was no need to panic until we realized why the hotel concierge instructions were to avoid, at any cost, venturing outside the touristic parameter, which is roughly around the French Quarter. Oh, Lord! For the first time on our sojourn in New Orleans, the décor was of concern. We all sobered up fast. It is not far-fetched to say, if the police had tried to pull us over, they would have had to follow us back to Bourbon Street. We were not about to make any stop in the middle of that jungle.

To get an idea of our ragtag group, we were raised watching the black family in the Cosby show series, scenes of New York City in Eddie Murphy's comedy hit "Coming to America" was too surreal to be true for us. In other words, we were from predominantly affluent families that got more than a proper share of wealth in the "à l'Africaine" Capitalism system. Even though we had a considerable number of black American acquaintances back in Tallahassee, Florida, which is a classic college town and a serene state capital, those Negroes in N'awlins and the surrounding projects scared the hell out of all of us! We should have known that something was fishy about this city. New Orleans produced one of the most prolific rap groups that we loved at the time, and the "Hot Boyz" is one of them. Their creative rap prose, raw style, and catchphrases cannot naturally come from a place of joy and kumbaya; instead, it is a sanctuary of pain and desperation. If that red flag was not visible enough, the group's initial low budget music videos gave a tour of their world, a cornucopia of poor dirt-ass people in front of poorly maintained public housing blocks.

Sadly, these days, some opt to ignore or chose to forget the fact that way before the devastating hurricane Katrina³ swept through the city, New Orleans had some of the shittiest places in the United States comparable to parts of third world countries I have traveled to. As my friends and I came to find out, those shameful pockets of the "Big Easy" were superbly tucked away, out of the view of the drunken college students and other tourists. Hurricane Katrina only flushed out the city's dirty secret, and the entire United States pretended to be surprised. Really, what else do you expect when the city sanitary sewers overflow? And now that the chocolate city, as it was called by the New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (sentenced ten years in prison for bribery, money laundering, and other corruption), is rebuilding, it probably is praying for its problems to never come back, wishing it could declare a section of its former persona non-grata residents.

"Persona non-grata" might not be stated in the city of New Orleans' Christmas wish list; but it has been Teodoro Nguema Obiang, the son of Equatorial Guinea President, status in France and most civilized nations. France got exasperated by the Negro Prince's opulence, and in 2012, it was reported that the French police suddenly decided to act on a past lawsuit brought by different activist organizations and took away a couple of Obiang Jr.'s toys. The subsequent viewing of all the baubles pictured in French magazines surpassed my imagined folie de grandeur, which included eleven luxury cars (two Bugatti Veyrons, a Maybach, an Aston Martin, a Ferrari Enzo, a Ferrari 599 GTO, a Rolls-Royce Phantom, and a Maserati MC12), some bottles of Château Pétrus (among the world's most expensive wines), and a 3.7 million dollars clock.

Not one to be outdone by the French, the Americans attempted to put a bigger dent in Obiang Jr.'s fortune. The public got blitzed with the news that the United States Justice Department filed a 70 million dollars forfeiture action against Obiang Jr. And voilà, another list that included a Gulfstream jet, Michael Jackson's infamous gloves, and a villa in Malibu, California. Wait a minute! The kid was still allowed to parade around vast amounts of money in the United States after the scandal that forced the Riggs Bank to shut down? Somehow, the United States Justice Department never troubled the bank's largest single depositor at the time, with over 700 million dollars. What is there to make of all of this juicy story? By no stretch of the imagination, the very young Teodoro Nguema Obiang has presumably amassed all of that uncovered fortune while earning a salary of less than 100,000 dollars per year as Equatorial Guinea's minister of Agriculture and Forestry.

What can be said about Equatorial Guinea to put everything in perspective? The country is among the most repressed countries in West Africa, and if we take the proportion of its people living on less than a dollar a day. This nation of just 700,000 people is at the same time poverty-stricken and oil-rich, a contrast of epic proportions. There are pictures on social media sites of glassy high rises and presidential mansions next to rusted shacks. As one visits the country's capital Malabo, there are sightings of people riding in flashy Mercedes Benzes through the slums and trying to miss the city's zillions of potholes and of the country's Chief of Police, who is related to the president, bragging that his uniforms are tailored by none other than the French celebrated designer - Yves Saint Laurent. From the fancy room's window of the brand-new hotel he stayed in, he could see families crammed in small and tin-roofed shacks.

And while I was digging out more facts, like one out five children dies before reaching the age of five years old and less than fifty percent of them have access to clean drinkable water, I was stunned to learn that the Commissioner of Police of a tiny country located right in the center of Mandela's Rainbow nation, was presenting, on behalf of his greedy and perverted absolute monarch, a sincere apology for two million Euros stolen, strangely in a briefcase, during a party in Obiang Jr.'s villa in Swaziland. If anyone is wondering, what about Teodoro Nguema Obiang's punishment for exhibiting such extravagance and tarnishing Equatorial Guinea's image? Well, let's just say that it fits with a son of one of Africa's longest-ruling dictators, a shrinking elite group. His father has since made him Second Vice President of Equatorial Guinea. The highly regarded and guarded position, shielding him from any eventual international prosecution.

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it."– Benjamin Franklin

Noah was a good man, but he is to blame for spoiling my childhood's unique way of escaping abuses at home. After a neighboring kid's dramatic incident in our home's backyard, I got terrified to play Rambo camping out by myself. I have long suspected that Noah had something to do with my tactic fiasco; the detail of his exploit brought up irrefutable evidence of his guilt. I have read different versions of Noah's Ark story, and it all boiled down to the same specifics: Noah saved himself, his family, and a remnant of all the world's animals when God decided to flood the world and destroy it, because of humanity's evil deeds. As a child, I found this so reprehensible that the unsupervised Noah chose among other animals, to also allow on board vultures, rats, crocodiles, and particularly the biblical source of Adam and Eve's demise and my childhood summer's long caging - I am talking about snakes.

Parallel to Noah's Ark story, Mandela was a good man. He ruined something so dear to me. I have dreamed of spending my golden age in the wealthiest and most inspiring African country, South Africa or "SA," a plausible way of enjoying my retirement amongst prosperous black Africans. In the past couple of years, I could not quite figure out Mandela's responsibility in my fading dream. Ultimately when I set aside the fact that he spent 27 years in a labor camp for his part in the struggle against Apartheid and then critically assessed his one term as President of South Africa, it got crystal clear.

I consider myself a member of the tiny bold group navigating through uncharted territories, and whose voices should have preferably been louder before "Madiba's" death. Do we dare denounce that the "compromised negotiations perpetuated South Africa's social, commerce and trade, and political woes?" There is no doubt in my mind that Mandela got a great deal for himself, ANC & Co., and the small affluent white society when F.W. de Klerk who, in my view, bears some resemblance to God, and is a white old man and an undertone racist, was pressed to bring an end to Apartheid by white South African middle class and big businesses burgeoning dissatisfactions in the 1990s.

I have succumbed to my grandparents' mantra that people should be judged solely by their actions; two real facts put into question Mandela's strength of character. The unchecked "Madiba" went too far to accommodate the Apartheid establishment by striking a deal with racist judges, some of the worst human rights violators, the Afrikaner squads of kidnappers and murderers and exclusively the ones who sponsored the entire cruel Apartheid system and who have become the new safeguard of the rainbow elite. I am pointing at the mining and financial corporations. And what's to say about a man who in an interview with the Australian reporter, John Pilger, expressed a total disregard toward Indonesia's three decades of brutal dictatorship and other people struggling alike, who went on to justify the rewarding in 1997 of the Butcher of Jakarta, General Suharto, with the Order of Good Hope, which is South Africa's highest honor that could be bestowed on a foreigner?

I cannot reconcile the fact that The African National Congress (ANC), South Africa's national liberation movement and their allies have won all of the South African presidential elections since the end of the Apartheid. The de facto economic Apartheid remains intact. South African blacks remain horrifically poor in absolute and relative terms. To my eyes, the ANC has abused the trust of black people who are still cramped in slums like Dimbaza and Alexandria, and these violent townships are beginning to bear the brunt of widespread frustration. In contrast, there is plenty of evidence that the ANC has been good for the whites. In exchange for including a few ANC black operatives in their glamorous closed circle (a scheme used to funnel money back into affluent party members' pockets), whites in SA have been allowed to enjoy discreetly behind massive barricades the wealth extracted and amassed from the inhumane exploitation of blacks in SA during the Apartheid. Another way to say it is when the South African Apartheid was choked, their leaders realized that all they had to do was to bring black leaders to the business of distributing wealth and welfare, and the explosive greed disintegrated the ability of Negros and Indians to collaborate across neighborhoods and ghettos.

I once asked myself how Mandela & Co. planned to lead or drive black South Africans out of poverty? One would find that the ANC set an excellent map plan to that end, stating unmistakably in a segment of the Party's Freedom Charter:

"The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people; the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; all other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the wellbeing of the people..."

This section of the ANC Freedom Charter is inconsistent with concessions that they made such as the late 1992 "sunset clauses." It paved the way for a Government of National Unity (dictators' favorite method to blend wolves and lambs and to diffuse popular demand for a change) and for the absurd job guarantees that protect all Apartheid-era civil servants.

If one wonders in the post-Apartheid era what happens when poor blacks take it upon themselves and demand an adequate share of the nation's wealth? The awful truth is that the response has been the same as it was under Apartheid: they get gunned down like rabid dogs. The footage that circulated of the Marikana Massacre of miners in 2013 was no different from the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. Only this time, the images were in color and colored police officers did the inhuman job. Adding to the insult, the world was stunned to learn that two hundred and seventy miners were arrested and charged for murder from the doctrine of "common purpose," the same doctrine set, used, and abused under the Apartheid. Due to the outcry of human rights watch groups and international pressure, the bizarre charge was dropped, and all imprisoned miners were released.

Mandela's life and ANC ascension should be a cautionary tale for aspiring freedom fighters and individuals haunted by the belief of equality around the globe; power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely as Lord Acton fittingly surmised. It pains me to see in SA that, with time, the gap between the whites and blacks "have none" has reached the highest level. Indeed in 2009, SA sidelined Brazil as the most skewed society in the world. Nonetheless, I took great pleasure in watching the SA President, Jacob Zuma, getting humiliated in front of foreign dignitaries during none other than Mandela's memorial. People's expression of their discontent with the ANC! It was so moving.

Self-made Deserts

In 2013, my wife and I moved from the sunny southern part of the United States to somewhere close to freezing Canada. The best ethnic description of this charming little town: a black ghost town. We always felt obligated to acknowledge, and at the same time, to rejoice in the presence of another black person by nodding our heads to one another. Being used to down south, where Negros populate a considerable chunk of the society's hierarchic bottom, I naively thought that any strong traceable smell of decaying poverty could not be found around here. Then came Thanksgiving Day 2013, we were on our way to New York City when there suddenly appeared a shadow in the middle of the road. There, battling the gruesome freezing temperature and slightly covered was a homeless white man branding a big sign. Gosh, senseless drivers almost ran him over. As we got closer, I pulled my window down to give him a dollar bill. Something shifted inside of me because I saw the face of a man humiliated and broken. On that day, from that point on, I kept seeing the same expression of a child, a woman, or another man on different corners.

Cities have found that changing the reflection of a word is the clever way of expressing the disdain of a particular group. Adding a cynical twist to panhandling has permitted towns to chastise the poor. Around this beautiful planet what is called "aggressive" panhandling is prohibited. Some towns have even gone so far as to actively conducting educational outreach programs to residents, advising them not to give to moochers (sorry, label borrowed from the 2012 Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States, Mitt Romney), and their police departments have been instructed to bully panhandlers, especially around the downtown zones. Developing countries are more creative; they have added the supernatural element or voodoo to the pretexts. While touring several third world countries, paranoid guides and friends always warned me not to give money to street beggars, and if I ever dare, supposedly, money will mysteriously disappear from my pockets, and I would have brought some juju curse on myself. I did laugh at and broke this ridiculous rule. I can testify that I did not turn into a goat or was struck by lightning, and all my money's disappearance has been accounted for by my pursuits of worldly happiness.

It is deplorable that people around the world from different ways of life, race, and background would bluntly say that they hate active solicitation or aggressive panhandling. They do not mind passive panhandling of which an example is opening doors at the store with a cup in hand but saying nothing. As to say, people are more comfortable to give when beggars do not bother their conscience and make their presence less felt. I have taken my time to watch cool kids rushing through New York City's central station exit with the latest super expensive Dr. Dre brand line of headphones covering more than their ears and government officials speeding through the bumpy and dusty roads of Kampala, Uganda, on brand new black-tinted 4x4 Prados, without any of them noticing the poor on the corner. These spectacles brought me to the realization that the indefensible and heartless attitude toward the less fortunate is truly an omnipresent global phenomenon. When I find myself outnumbered and starting to lose hope, I always come across another batch of individuals on this beautiful blue planet from diverse ways of life, race, and background. Unlike famous academic charlatans who merely brush off the poverty issue to get a degree of academic notoriety, they dedicate their lives to break the momentum of the indifference towards the poor. I find this sentiment very moving, and it echoes the deeper desires of my own heart; a decent society does not happen miraculously. As I do (I guess), they cannot stop seeing poor people.