The Fallen Read Online Free PDF Page B

which meant jobs and not imported Chinese labourers.  It also meant making sure people understood the potential impact of an industrial scale copper mine on their land so they could make a mildly informed choice about what would happen to them.  For the Ethiopian government, it meant advising them how best not to get ripped off by the Chinese, ensuring a fair proportion of the wealth generated by the mine went into the state coffers and ideally on to help fund services for the local community.  Tim knew that was unlikely to happen.  He had seen it before in Afghanistan and elsewhere; weak governments, corrupt officials and ambiguous land law did not mix well with big money and great, undemocratic powers.  It was likely that a deal would be done for a pittance over cocktails in some bar in the capital, where a connected Ministry man got a suitcase of cash and a girl on his arm and the village next to the mine got poisoned.  Tim was hoping the fact that the British Embassy had also been approached by a British mining company might lead to some pressure for a more transparent deal being struck.  This was just his initial fact-finding mission; he would return with mining industry consultants and Embassy officials if and when they were required. 
    Why was he still in this business?  He knew he had got in to fight injustice.  The little guys couldn’t stand up to the big guys in this world, so someone had to help them fight their corner.  He just wasn’t sure how good at fighting those corners he was.  He remembered the first time he had felt the abuse of authority; he’d been eight years old and a lunch-lady had pulled him out of the lunch line.  ‘You were talking!’ she’d yelled.  He hadn’t said a word and told her so, but in the world of the lunch-lady, the woman with the green apron is king; might is right and the protest of a schoolboy goes unheeded.  Somehow the experience had stuck with him, and that compiled with the multiple safety nets of his middle-class upbringing compelled him to feel he had a duty to help others.  A family friend had once told him, ‘Tim, you are a white, able-bodied, middle-class, man – the guilt of the world is placed upon your shoulders.  But perhaps the guilt is offset by the many benefits of being a white, able-bodied, middle-class man?’ - followed by an ironic yet hearty slap on the back.
    Tim and Asefa met with the local foreman, a portly fellow for whom the mine’s paltry income was a small fortune, making him the local big man.  Tim could see the foreman didn’t want to lose his fiefdom and was more worried about the Chinese takeover than anyone. 
    “Asefa,” said the foreman, with open arms, “It is good to be meeting you again my friend!” He turned to direct his pleasantries towards Tim, no doubt because he was the white one.  “Welcome to the Asanti Copper Mine, my name is Mustaffa Mohamed, but my friends call me Mahmood. You are my guest and your help with the matters we are facing at the mine is most welcome.  Please come to my office and take tea my guests.” 
    Tim and Asefa followed the foreman to a run-down shipping container with make-shift windows roughly cut into the metal and a dusty awning out front.  Tim noticed a large sweat patch on the man’s back as he waddled in front of them.  Was it any worse to help this local charlatan than the Chinese?  Tim doubted it and wondered how the man had come by the concession for the mine; no doubt via means that were as bad as anything that would happen in a bar in the capital. 
    Development workers were too often trying to create socialist utopias out of squalid mud pies.  In the West you would never expect development to work the way it was preached with such simple certainty to wide-eyed African beneficiaries.  You would not go to the north of England and say, ‘Hey let’s reopen the great British coal pits as a workers co-op.  What do you mean the coal is too expensive to sell and we