Years ago, I read a fictional novel by Richard Dooling about the hazards that the rich white man faces while trying to impose his cultural constructs upon Africa, resulting in the loss of his soul. When a local cabbie picks up a generic-looking businessman at the airport, the first question the white man asks him is: why is that big old tree in the middle of town hung with so many brightly-colored flags? He'd never seen anything like that before! What did it mean? The cabbie smiled at the sweating, overweight, red-faced white man sitting in his backseat, dressed too formerly for his trip in a "power suit" and corporate-approved necktie. "That's a 'witch' tree." Another warlock is born.
You see, the tree's decorations were caught in the branches by flying witches on their nightly midnight rounds, leaving their tattered garments hanging from the ancient tree that only other witches could see. The white man had come back to his own heart of darkness. He was looking for a relative working overseas that was said to have been lured into the bush by evil spirits, which naturally unleashed his arrogant condescension upon a nation that had him down cold a long time ago. Sure enough, out came his expensive leather briefcase full of American money, to better expedite his superior search with bribes. But, witches don't feed on just that alone. They wanted his soul.
And they got it. He was so poorly prepared for the cultural shift that he lazed in a dopey haze on the plane ride over there, with not one single true fact in his head about countries that were there long before his boardrooms and executive meetings. He'd make appointments with native people that were never kept, bribing warlords and government officials who laughed at his silly currency, until he realizes that those gleaming eyes in the bush are also calling his name. And so to goes his fate, the same as the pushy social do-gooder with a matching sense of overblown entitlement towards the world about needing our "relief", when they wanted our guns instead. That's where most of the money went to, anyway.
