The Philanthropist … (another short story)

(Dear Canadada Readers: here’s another edit of an older ’story’  – would appreciate any feedback…. good, bad, indifferent – Thanks! – c)

I sat in the small audience with twenty-four other representatives from various Foundations at the Adopt-a-Village symposium. We quietly listened to a well-built black man in his early forties talk about starvation, mal-nutrition, malaria, military intervention, the heroic efforts of the Canadian Red Cross and the overall generosity of the Federal Canadian food banks. He talked too of the urgent need for family planning. As a humorous aside he mentioned that his hotel rate in Gobi was “a whopping” $3.00 U.S. per night.

As he spoke his large body flowed with a natural lilting of the head. He gently swayed from side to side like a contented elephant. His hands swept passively through the air and his long brown fingers would slowly unfurl. From time to time he would lazily scratch his head, or place his left hand inside his jacket and press, caress, his chest. His hand would go to his shirt collar and he would absentmindedly tug in discomfort. At one point his palm was turned out to us and I was startled to see how very white it was. His voice was melodious and soft. Low, deep, and sonorous. His entire body energy seemed to reflect a well-tempered contemplative individual. The overall body movement, the overall picture, was, to my watchful eye and curious mind, very appealing, and basically sexual.

I tried to concentrate, and listen. I tried to really listen to this whole black person talk as he moved so gracefully through such confining and restrictive white space. I listened acutely for the half-truths, and the half lies, listening to see, if this sexy massive man knew the difference himself between the politically correct white lies and the simmering elusive black truths.

He spoke well, with a polite firmness, yet with the craft of a well-versed and artful diplomat. As I said, he was good. Very good.

I found I could resist no longer, I had to speak to this big man. Investigate. So I asked one question after another. I wanted to get a sense of our private dialogue, the potential of our own undulating intimate rhythm. I wanted to see how he would answer me, if he would answer me, or just answer the question. He was very good. It was hard to tell exactly. Precisely. Yet, even so, his manly earthy charm was riveting. As he walked by me to answer yet another question from the audience I caught a whiff of his sweet smell body sweat. I lapsed completely from the job at hand and could only think of his black body on top of me. Laying over me. Lying beside me.

As he passed by I noted there was a gentle flabby jiggle at mid-section beneath his khaki coloured shirt. The tip of his tie twitched. And that made me vaguely uneasy. (If his people are starving, then why is he so well-fed and so well-dressed?) But I scoffed at my superficial assessment: he had obviously pruned himself for this important fund-raising presentation, and yet, there was something else, something else.

The man oozed. That was it. He just oozed sensuality. It was sheer and feral. Potent with potential.

I wondered about my white woman lust for this hulking black man. I noticed that he didn’t come too close to me. I flattered myself to think that he too felt our toxic sexual sub-current, our sultry sub-text. No other woman in the audience conversed with him as much as I did, except perhaps that hen-pecking frau in the back who kept after him about proper accountability, zealous Christian missionaries, unpredictable cycles of agriculture and the diminishing cleanliness of the water table. She spoke forcefully with a kind of condescending marmishness. And after her last question, I deliberately softened my inquiring voice, and almost spoke in a whisper. He smiled at me. Several times.

Towards the end of the presentation, he showed a beguiling slide of a sun-baked riverbed with a scraggly patch of cultivated maize growing in the sunken hollow. Beside the maize a bent old man with porcelain white eyes stood in a colourful mustard sarong. He was barefoot and leaning on a wooden stick. He gazed quizzically at the camera. Two small hairless children were freeze-framed as they played happily in the foreground with what appeared to be a tiger cub. A well-shaped and well-groomed mature bejewelled woman sat near them on the ground holding onto a gigantic water gourd, laughing at them. It was a pleasant picture.

I asked the Adopt-a-Village representative where the seeds had come from so that this rock hard farmer could plant his precious maize crop. He started to tell me that the genetically strengthened corn seeds were supplied by the Agricultural Ministry funded by various global bio-pharmaceutical Foundations like ours but then he stopped, and said, “Oh, you mean these people,” as he glanced quickly over his shoulder at the simple family portrait. “The Matsi carry their own seeds, they always have, from generation to generation.” Suddenly his large open friendly face snapped shut, and he did not meet my eye that time as he moved forward to the front of the room clicking rapidly to the next slide.
He had inadvertently slid from the script, and he knew that I knew it.

I instantly understood. The photograph was just a prop. A sophisticated yet ‘primitive’ sales tool for this global charity gambit. None within the photograph had known why their picture had been taken. They had no idea that their simple traditional lifestyle would now be used to raise cash. Their frozen visages were merely an eternal testament of ‘backward’ global poverty. A celluloid image to trade with the First World. It was equally as clear that they would never be the immediate recipients of any kind of global assistance. And by the look of it, they didn’t really seem to need our life-altering charity.

I looked again at the sexy black man as he moved stealthfully along the side of the wall selling his Adopt-a-Village concept to well-heeled, and isolated Canadian philanthropists. And, yes, suddenly I experienced a massive earthquake of doubt. He was not one of those stone faced and timeless self-reliant nomadic people. No, he was far too well-trained, well-educated and totally dependent on our Western commercial ways. Our money, my money, fed him and kept others like him in Gobi hotels at $3 a night U.S.

His effusive black charm instantly vanished, his skilful sonorous voice no longer seduced. He was just like any other polished floor-flusher. As I stood to leave, I did not look back at that handsome smooth talking hustler. How foolish of me to think.

But, I did pick up one of the well-designed four colour glossy brochures strategically placed beside the front door for the Adopt-a-Village programme. It was still an appealing idea, all things considered. Perhaps not all the money, I reasoned to myself as I hopped into the Benz, went to the well-organized administrators and skilled fund-raisers. There had to be some kind of trickle-down effect otherwise the whole scheme was just a fraud. And that couldn’t be true, now could it? I would make the recommendation to my Board, I decided, driving up Yonge Street, that we grant a provisional small endowment of $500,000. According to the brochure, that would be enough to care for 5 villages of 500 inhabitants for 5 years. That should do.

As I sat at the red light the sweet smell of that sexy black salesman lingered on in my nostrils.