CAPITALISM'S ACHILLES HEEL Dirty Money and How to

208 CAPITALISM’S ACHILLES HEEL
task of putting disposable plastic milk containers onto the Playtex baby bottle
holder, but other than this little mechanical problem, she was a delight and
her performance was flawless.
With Pauline’s second pregnancy, we brought Mary back to New York
to help take care of Deren, as well as Gayle after her birth. Mary had a natural
affinity for little girls and took to our daughter immediately.
Moving to Bethesda, Maryland, in late 1975, we brought Mary to the
States a second time. Taking care of the kids during much of the day, she resolved
to use her time well and arranged to attend cooking and knitting
classes in the evenings. Brimming with self-confidence, she returned to Lagos
the next year.
On my trips to Africa every year or two, I made a point to see Mary, as
she always wanted to be kept up-to-date on the kids. She held various jobs as
a nanny and seemed to be doing quite satisfactorily. On this occasion in the
mid-1990s, it had been a couple of years since we last met.
My driver picked up Mary and brought her to the Eko Meridian hotel in
Lagos. She telephoned me from the lobby, took the elevator up, and knocked
on my door. I opened it, and there in front of me stood a wizened, emaciated,
and disheveled old woman, who seemed to have aged 30 years since our last
visit. I tried to conceal my shock as I brought her into the room.
Mary greeted me warmly and asked about Deren and Gayle, as I started
to reach for their latest pictures. But unable to contain her emotions, she fell
to her knees on the floor and begged me—with her hands gripping my ankles,
her head touching my feet, and her tears flooding the carpet—begged
me repeatedly to take her only child back to America and bring him up as a
member of my own family.
This was during the Abacha years. Nigeria’s worst dictator had plunged
the country into a downward economic spiral, virtually bankrupting the society.
Mary was a victim of this process: Abacha’s theft, decades of endemic
corruption, stolen oil revenues, tax evasion, money laundering, illegal transfers,
the whole package of economic ills contributing to impoverishment of
a nation. She had fallen through the cracks in Africa’s extended family system.
She was unemployed, homeless, destitute, and completely despondent.
Yet she was not asking for money but instead pleading to give up the only
thing in the world she still had, the only person who might provide for her
in her old age. She was on her knees in front of me because tens of billions
of dollars had been embezzled from her country and spirited into accommo-