The hidden agenda
behind a courteous reception often gives hope when no satisfactory resolution
will be forthcoming. Pleasantries and small talk often hide a deep-seated bias
against the person who, though hardly naive, nonetheless presents facts that may
act as a trigger to unleash an obstruction that may prove to be insurmountable.
Before the Peace Corps
or the N.G.O.'s, volunteers went to Africa to try to ameliorate the conditions
under which Boer women and children suffered. For the most part volunteers
either paid their way or were sponsored by established charities. The
government resisted subsidizing them as they were thought to be too political
and therefore disruptive of the government's approach.
The very narrow line
between politics and charity is more often honored in the breach. An
inadvertent crossing is forgivable; however accusing someone who adamantly
respects the line, especially if the purveyor of charity is of the opposite
political persuasion, taints the charitable effort. The result of such a
political canard often means that those who would contribute to the relief of
temporary displacement spurn the charity and thus deprive the unfortunates of
needed succor.
War may be like a
fever that rises to a crescendo as it runs its course. In that difficult
process reputations as well as lives lay wasted as the juggernaut struggles
toward its acme. When the fever breaks and the guns fall silent little thought
is given by the warring factions to the months of agony just experienced by
those who in the current parlance are collateral damage. One of those people so
characterized was Emily Hobhouse, a woman whose only goal was to minimize the
suffering of Boer women and children. Rather than succumbing to either
depression or revenge she rose above being a victim to accept the accolades of
a grateful people, not in her own country but in the war torn region of South
Africa.
