How lovely.
I'd be interested to know who planned the conference. It's in Johannesburg. If RSA is the host, the menu was probably arranged by the new black RSA government trying to look "good" to the fancy delegates from all over the world. To show they know how to do it "right" -- and to live it up, too, would also be my cynical guess.
Third world leaders, who are used to the suffering around them and also come from a different culture from ours, can be remarkably insensitive to "appearances," in some situations...not to mention to realities. (From our perspective.)
For example: Peace Corps staff in third world countries are not allowed to live in houses with swimming pools. Peace Corps Country Directors, for example. (This isn't true of the heads, or other staff, of other US agencies, like USIA or AID.) This very American perception of appropriateness, given the "mission" of the Peace Corps (to help the poor), is looked on with absolute incomprehension by host country bigwigs. (Not only American volunteers and staff are supposed to live modestly, though; the same is true of the Canadian volunteer staff, CUSO, the Mennonite Central Committee, the German Volunteer Services, the Swedish International Development Agency, the British Volunteer Services Overseas, etc.)
But the third world guys who've "made it" and are, perhaps, the first in their families to read and write, or even to have come into the city from the bush, the rural areas, find this "hair shirt mentality" entirely mystifying. They live it up, is my observation, and aren't ashamed.
So that article has special resonance for me. I'll bet you anything the elegance of the menu was conceived by Africans (who hired European or white South African chefs), and not by any of the European delegates or any reps from the nations that paid the bills. The first world delegates, I am positive, were mortified. But... can they lecture their African hosts? Can they even criticize them? For the most part, they will be embarrassed, but won't even comment, I suspect. The third world delegates will be above reproach. The first world delegates will speak in hushed, respectful voices, the way males in this country do at a meeting at which there are a lot of feminists present.
That's my guess and my opinion. Other POVs welcome.
As for kissing Bill, sure i will, after he kisses my...cheek! |
