The Last Train to Zona Verde

by Paul Theroux

  At Namutoni, over cheese sandwiches, Oliver and I swapped stories of the Peace Corps. He had been a teacher in a rural village in Madagascar.

  “One day the mailman came with a letter addressed to me,” he said. “Funny — I didn’t get much mail. This was from someone in a town about twenty kilometers away. It was a very short note saying, ‘I would like to see you.’ It was from a girl I had said hello to at the market there. How did I know that? Because she included a picture of herself. She was sitting under a bridge — naked.”

  I said, “I can’t top that.”

  Trevor said, “We want to know more.”

  “I thought you might,” Oliver said, looking inscrutable.

  As we had only one more day together, I asked Oliver over dinner about the Millennial Challenge Corporation. Passing the lodges at Etosha — they were large and sprawling and some could accommodate hundreds of tourists — he had mentioned that they were being upgraded. “The staff quarters are going to be moved over there,” he had said as he drove around the rundown workers’ housing. “This is all going to be cleaned up.” Oliver knew the plans and the people involved, and he’d said that one of his tourism projects in the country was being funded with Millennial Challenge money.

  The Millennial Challenge Corporation had been started in 2004 during the Bush administration, a consequence of the frustration of people who saw USAID and other agencies pouring money into countries with no tangible results and little oversight. The money either disappeared into the pockets of local politicians or financed projects that were never finished. Anyone who has spent even a short time in a Third World country has seen this waste of money and the futility of a great deal of foreign aid. Africa is the happy hunting ground of donors, also of people seeking funds. The classic African failed state is composed of a busy capital city where politicians on large salaries hold court and drive big cars; dense and hopeless slums surrounding the capital; and the great empty hinterland, ignored by the government and more or less managed by foreign charities, which in many cases are big businesses run by highly paid executives.

  In 2007, Oliver, with his Peace Corps zeal, had started working for the Millennial Challenge Corporation in the area of “project appraisal.” The following year he became deputy director in Namibia, and in 2011 was appointed the resident country director.

  “How much are you giving to Namibia?” I asked.

  “A little over three hundred million — but let me explain,” he said, because hearing the large number I had started to snort. “The grant is administered in stages over five years, in what we call a compact. And before a country qualifies for a compact it has to pass the eligibility requirements. It takes two years for a country to go through the process. This isn’t handing over money, the way it was done in the past. It’s a rigorous process.”

  “What sort of requirements, apart from ‘We need money’?” I had my notebook out and was writing down his replies.

  “There’s three categories we measure them by. Ruling justly. Economic freedom. And investing in people. If these don’t exist, no money. Each of the categories is broken down into seventeen indicators — like land rights, civil liberties, control of corruption, freedom of information — and they have to be low- or middle-income countries. Botswana doesn’t qualify, because they already have money. After the coup in Madagascar in 2009 their compact was terminated.”

  “So a country simply applies, and hopes to qualify?”

  “We can help a country to qualify by giving a threshold grant — fifteen or twenty million. They’d use this to sort out their policies. That creates a pathway to getting a compact that ranges from two hundred to five hundred million. Like I say, Namibia qualified for three hundred million.”

  “What’s the limit?”

  “Tanzania got seven hundred million for roads and energy and some other projects. That’s spread over five years. They’re now three years into it, and it’s working out.”

  “Almost three quarters of a billion for Tanzania! They don’t even like us!”

  “Remember when George Bush visited Tanzania in 2008?” Oliver said. “It was a very successful visit. He made promises to them.”

  “I also remember the 1960s when the Tanzanians claimed they were Maoists. They got the Chinese to build them the Tan-Zam Railway, which is now falling apart,” I said. “Anyway, who gets the money? I mean, are American companies hired to do the work — say, on roads?”

  “A U.S. company successfully competed for the energy project in Tanzania. I think I can say that we’re achieving U.S. development and foreign policy objectives.”

  I mentioned that I had read in a Namibian newspaper that a Chinese company in the country, financed by American aid money, had underpaid and cheated its Namibian employees.

  “You saw that, eh?” Oliver said. It had been a front-page headline. “Chinese government firms once qualified for this money, but that’s not the case anymore.” But he added that less than 10 percent of Namibia’s grant went to American companies. Most of the money went to Namibian or South African firms.

  “So we’re giving money to foreign companies to do the work. And we used to give it to the Chinese?”

  “It’s an open bidding process,” he said. “And we do audits. There’s no evidence that contractors are misappropriating the funds.” Slightly exasperated by my questions, he said, “You wouldn’t believe how much time we spend in monitoring these grants and double-checking.”

  “Still, it’s a ton of money.”

  “But there’s constant evaluation of performance. We don’t take people’s word for it, or list numbers as USAID once did — meaningless numbers. We invest money in monitoring, in making sure the money is used the right way, looking at the target, and the performance against that target.”

  And, he said, sometimes a Millennial Challenge compact is in place and something changes that queers a development deal. Malawi was a recent example. Its government signed on to a $300 million compact for investment in the energy sector, but not long after the signing there was a demonstration in Malawi’s capital against the government’s human rights abuses. Nineteen demonstrators were shot dead by the army and many were injured.

  “So we put an operational hold on the compact,” Oliver said. “And then the Malawians hosted Sudan’s al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court.”

  “And what happened?”

  “The MCC questioned Malawi’s commitment to the principles.”

  “So no money?”

  “No money.”

  “That’s how it should be.” But I was not sure what “investment in the energy sector” meant — perhaps speeding the flow of foreign oil, or subsidizing it, or creating alternative sources. One of the problems with the whole discussion was the vagueness of the terms. Even the millions seemed like abstractions.

  I remembered the tourist herds at the Etosha lodges and Oliver’s showing us the places to be upgraded. Were U.S. funds invested in Namibia’s tourism industry?

  “Yes.” And Oliver elaborated by saying that the tourism project allotment was $67 million, which was for the improvement and management of Etosha National Park and to help in marketing Namibian tourism. The intention was to promote Namibia as a splendid, game-rich, tourist-worthy destination. Some of the money was allotted to develop an interactive website for the Namibia Tourism Board. It was also used to help Namibia in the areas of conservation, ecotourism, and poverty reduction in households within conservancy areas.

  All of this was well intentioned in terms of development — even if vague in description — and laudable in the efforts made to ensure the funds weren’t stolen or wasted. If the money was misused, the grant would be cut off. But money for tourism? Many tourist destinations in the United States, which get nothing from the U.S. government for infrastructure or websites or training, would have been glad to get the $67 million grant Namibia had been awarded. Places I knew well got no money from the government to prop up tourism
— Hawaii got nothing, Cape Cod got nothing, but they struggled along. Maine’s tourist industry was still in serious trouble in the aftermath of the 2008 economic slump, with high unemployment, high gas prices, and a lack of awareness outside New England of the delights of Downeast Maine, one of the noblest and best-preserved seacoasts on earth.

  Were the hard-pressed residents of Maine, many of whom worked in the state’s hotels and restaurants, contributing to the improvement of the Namibian tourist industry, helping to lure the herds to Etosha and the Skeleton Coast?

  “Let’s say I happen to be a Maine lobsterman,” I said. “I get up at four-thirty every morning, go out in my boat, and haul hundreds of traps. Some days, fuel is so expensive and there are so few lobsters that I lose money. But I keep hauling, and steering my boat in circles. I pay my stern man. I pay my taxes. I’m wet and cold most of the time.” Oliver was smiling, knowing what was coming. “What would you say to my friend Alvin Rackcliff of Wheeler Bay, in Midcoast Maine, about the use of his tax money to attract tourists to Namibia?”

  “I’d say we’re trying to help create countries that are stable,” Oliver said as I scribbled.

  “I don’t think Alvin would care too much about that. He’d say” — as Alvin said to me once — “human life means nothing in Africa.”

  “It’s less than one percent of the total U.S. budget,” Oliver said.

  “It’s still a lot of money. Alvin is heavily taxed and works very hard and he’s pretty old. But he needs to keep working.”

  “Aid builds good relationships,” Oliver said.

  “Alvin would want to know what Namibia is doing for itself.”

  “Each country contributes, up to a half of the total,” Oliver said, then, seeing that I was impressed, he added that low-income countries were not required to contribute any money. “Look, it helps make countries viable. It builds infrastructure. Ghana is a good example of how loans and investment help. We had a successful compact there.”

  At this point Trevor piped up. He had been listening intently throughout my needling interrogation. He said, “How about these politicians in Windhoek who are living like kings? Why are we giving free drugs to the country if they’re spending money on themselves for luxuries?”

  “Namibia has had regular elections since 1990,” Oliver said. “As well as tourist-based development, we’re doing education and agriculture. Hey, it’s five years, and we keep checking that no one steals.”

  “I get it,” I said, because of all the foreign aid programs I’d come across, this one seemed to be operated in the most efficient way. I remembered the highly critical book Dead Aid, and asked, “What does Dambisa Moyo think about it?”

  “She’s skeptical. She’s taken some shots at us,” Oliver said. “But the whole idea is that we shouldn’t be here forever. There shouldn’t be a long-term-donor drip feed.”

  I was persuaded that the Millennium Challenge Corporation was doing its work well. (And to put the $67 million figure in perspective, soon after my talk with Oliver I heard on the radio that the European Union and the IMF had voted to give a 110-billion-euro bailout loan to Greece, to help write off its debt.) I liked the idea that the MCC would cut off funds to countries that did not live up to their word, and that tyrannies did not qualify. The best news was the close monitoring of the projects and the cash flow. Some nations benefited, and were perhaps grateful and more stable as a result. What did all this mean to the U.S. taxpayer? Not much, I felt.

  What did it mean to sorely taxed and hard-working Alvin Rackcliff in Maine? He was well over eighty now and still fishing, still hauling traps. I could see him in his yellow slicker, gloves, and rubber boots in his lobster boat, Morning Mist, laughter ringing in my ears.

  “If you believe that, Paulie,” he would say, “you’re crazy as a shit-house rat!” Or perhaps, “The only free cheese is in a mousetrap.”

  The next day, Oliver dropped me off in the town of Omuthiya, which was so small it did not appear on my map. We met his friend Moses there. Moses was an Ovambo, from Oshikati, near the border. He said he’d take me fifty miles up the road to Ondangwa, where there was a hotel.

  I thanked Oliver for enlightening me about his projects, and for putting up with my needling questions, and thanked Trevor for his good humor.

  Trevor said, “We’re going to miss you, man.”

  “You’ll be fine from here on,” Oliver said.

  I threw my bag into the back of Moses’s truck and climbed into the front seat.

  On the road, Moses said, “You’re going to the border tomorrow?”

  “Yes,”

  “You’ve been to Angola before?”

  “No.”

  “You speak Portuguese?”

  “No.”

  “You have friends there?”

  “None.”

  Moses was a handsome man, but his scowl gave him a fierce mask. He held the steering wheel in both hands, hanging on, ruminating.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  He turned his scowling, pained face toward me and said, “It’s a nightmare!”

  Moses didn’t know the half of it, nor did I. Though I was not aware of it until a month later, that day in Namibia, or perhaps earlier, in one of the hotels where I had used my credit card (I had used it only fourteen times in Namibia, always for hotel bills) my personal information was stolen. My name and numbers were printed on a duplicate card, identical to mine (“It’s easy,” the fraud squad told me), and beginning on my last day in Namibia, and for the next month, this duplicate card was used in more than a hundred fraudulent transactions.

  Some of the purchases were substantial ($4,000 worth of furniture from OK Furniture in Windhoek, almost as much at Edgar’s Furniture); some were tiny (a $3 meal at an Olympia Quick Shop, $20 for beer at Shoprite). Much more furniture, lots of sunglasses from the Sunglass Hut, numerous computers, a used car, tinted windows, new alloy wheels, $800 worth of new shoes, and many supermarket bills. The total came to just over $48,000 — U.S. dollars.

  11

  The Frontier of Bad Karma

  ITRAVELED up THE ROAD, the road grew more tortured, and even before I got to Ondangwa, forty miles south of the Angola frontier, I knew I was in a different country, but a nameless one, an ill-defined borderland, a zone of decrepitude and hunger.

  Having crossed the Vet Fence again, I was over the Red Line, in the land of skinny cows and poor housing and trash heaps and shredded plastic bags blown against wire fences and fluttering from thornbushes. It was also a land of drunken men, idle boys, and overworked women. Nearly everyone on the other side of the Vet Fence was hard-up, and the best houses were square, miserable, flat-topped huts made of cinderblocks. Most of the blocks were fabricated by recently arrived Chinese immigrants for whom this was a profitable business of simple routines, and they worked in open-sided sheds just off the road using crude mixing machinery and rubber molds. The Chinese employed Namibians, who were coated with cement dust, making them look like an alien race, like exploited, gray-skinned Martians. That was appropriate, because this area seemed like another nation altogether, and at times another planet, the dark star of my anxious dreams.

  Though I had heard about them endlessly, I had seen just a few Chinese settlers in Namibia. But here in the north they were numerous (and anonymous), their shops and enterprises shoved up against the border of Angola, the source of much of their business — and they were evasive, usually ducking out of sight when I attempted to ask any questions. Their presence here made me wonder about China’s prosperity, because most of the Chinese I was to meet were escapees from the Chinese miracle who in Africa believed themselves to be in a promised land of no regulation, under-the-counter cash transactions, and improvisation. Here, where no one breathed down their necks, they found cheap labor and easy pickings. This free, happy, capitalistic situation is a blessed rarity the Chinese traditionally refer to by intoning a ritual formula (as many must have done in Africa): “Heaven is high and the emperor
is far away.”

  I was soon in a world of roadblocks and mobs, of terrible roads or no roads at all, a world of lies and scamming and crooked policemen. It was also a world of abuse, a world of “Meester, why are you here?” Which was a good question — why was I here? Over the following legs of my trip I attempted to answer the question. At first glance, it seemed sheer perversity for me to be here, and foolishness to go farther north.

  No tourists ventured into this border area — why would they? The hotels were terrible, the food was filthy, the people were suspicious and occasionally hostile. The roadside was littered with broken glass and crushed soda cans. A foul smell hung over it all — the stink of the latrines of poverty, smoking garbage heaps, diesel fumes, and, at roadside stands, yellow dough balls frying in hot fat. The weather was exhausting — very hot, no shade, no rain.

  Still in Namibia, in the ramshackle town of Ondangwa, I looked for travelers but saw none from Angola nor any heading there, except for the desperate people whose extended family or tribe had been bisected by the border, for this was Ovamboland and Ovambo lived on both sides. It was a world of abruptness and rudeness. I was startled when an official would scream “You!” at me and raise a fist, as though on the verge of hitting me in the face.

  Until a month after I left, when I learned — too late — that I had been defrauded as a result of identity theft, Namibia had struck me as fairly orderly and reasonably polite. But the farther I traveled on this north-trending road, order and politeness deteriorated, and I began to wonder what I might find at the border and across it. It seemed a hot African world of bad karma, near anarchy, and opportunism. I saw poverty and desperation everywhere, a scavenging culture, and ultimately it made me question the whole purpose of my sentimental journey.