A Crying Shame (132 page)

But where were the doctors? What happens to the money many of us send through various organizations?”

His bark of laughter was devoid of humor and filled instead with ugliness.
Forget the money; many of the so-called leaders of those nations are nothing more than despots. Ignorant savages themselves. No better or worse than Amin. The doctors? Oh ... they are across the veldt—pitifully few of them, at best—doing all they can with what they have. Which is practically nothing.

It's the people, Linda; they need education—to be taught how to farm, to irrigate the land, to make the best use of it, to toss aside the old ways and grasp the new. Education, that's the key to it all, to every form of injustice and wrong in the world. It was Huxley who wrote that ‘Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.' ”

She was again filled with awe at the knowledge this man of action had accumulated in his long and bloody life. And at how compassionate he was, hidden beneath his iron facade.

Ahh!” he said disgustedly, hurling the word from his mouth.
I hope to never return to Africa. I have seen enough of the world in my years. And found much of it distasteful.”

Is there nothing any of us can do for the children?”

Not much. Not as long as ignorance prevails in those countries, not as long as the UN is what it is: a wart on the face of perfection, filled with grandiose hypocrisy. Some of its Third World delegates actually dance and prance in the aisles like the ignorant savages they are. The UN is, in my opinion, the most useless organization ever assembled in the history of mankind.”

Strong words, Jon.”

But oh, so true.”

He pulled her mouth to his while his hands roamed her body under the almost sheer nightgown.
I shall have to rise early in the morning,” he told her, his mouth warm on hers.

Then we'd better get started, hadn't we?”

As they walked hand in hand down the hall, Tammy wailed from the upstairs.
Oh, Jesus Christ, Karl—not again!”