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About Mondesa
Keetmanshoop
by Robert Mellis
Five hundred kilometers south of Windhoek is the town of Keetmanshoop
(pronounced Keet-man-swoop), near the southern edge of Namibia. Jo and
I drove down the tarred B-I highway, through the flat veldt, with a
rocky look to the land. We passed troupes of baboons, searching for
tasty treats alongside the road. We found the dirt track alongside the
highway was used by donkey carts, sometimes three donkeys harnessed to
haul five people.
My assignment was to work with Luqman Cloete, a freelance reporter for
the newspaper in this southern outpost. Luqman is self-taught. He’s
smart, eager to learn more. He’s also Nama so I am getting a look into
another side of Namibia’s complicated tribal makeup.
Luqman tells me Damaras and Namas speak pretty much the same language
(click), but Damaras are darker than Namas. He has no car, no office,
but uses an Internet café to send his stories north. I telephoned him
after we arrived in town and he walked over from wherever he was.
We sat on the patio of the Bird’s Nest Bed & Breakfast where Jo and I
are living and chatted about our diverse backgrounds. Then we got down
to the stories he was currently working on.
There were three stories: a follow-up with a former mayor of the town
(“He’d very arrogant,” said Luqman); a story about a 15-month old baby
being murdered by a drunken man; and a story about a baby being born
without a skull.
I asked him how he would normally operate. His life circles around his
cell phone because of the lack of automobile. I told him to take
advantage of my car, that we should drive over to the ex-mayor’s home
and knock on his door.
We did but found the ex-mayor’s wife who invited us in but said the
ex-mayor was out of town. And could we come back tomorrow. We left and
drove to the police headquarters to dig into story No. 2.
The acting inspector of police was welcoming and helpful and pulled
open his book of current active investigations. He had sketchy
information about the killing of the baby. He had the name of the
accused and the name of the baby. He wasn’t sure about the mother’s
name or where she lived.
I suggested to Luqman that we drive to the settlement area to try to
find her but he was nervous about that. He said no one would talk
because I am a white man. They would be suspicious. So I suggested
that I drop him off a block or two away and would circle around and
wait for him.
As we were leaving police headquarter, though, he saw a couple of
detectives whom he knew and we turned around and pulled up to their
car. They chatted to him in click and he said we could go together to
the area they described as it would not be so difficult.
We pulled into a dusty road and bumped our way past shebeens (beer
shops) with names like Goodwill, Two Brothers No. 2, and Love Nest. We
pulled up at a shebeen with no name. When we left and locked the car
we were assaulted by the sounds of Maria Carey singing to us at top
volume. It didn’t take long for men, women, children, teenage boys and
girls to circle around us to gawk at the big white guy and listen to
Luqman as he tried to find out information.
A Bushman named Johannes /Gumbe (the / indicated there should be a
click made at the same time as you pronounce the “G”) swayed toward us
and said he had witnessed the fight early in the morning. He said he
had seen the couple fighting while the mother held the baby on her
lap.
The baby fell during the fight.
I asked if he could find the mother so we could photograph her and
talk with her. He said he could try to help us, although he did not
know exactly where she lived. But we loaded him into the back of the
car and set off into the heart of darkness, well into the center of
the settlement where roads became tracks. We stopped and got out to
walk though the shacks. Snotty-nosed kids with wide-open eyes ogled me
as we wandered through the area trying to find the woman.
We eventually chatted with a couple of old ladies who said the woman
was not around, she had gone away.
So we drove Johannes back to his shebeen and he asked if he could have
a rand (South African currency that is equivalent to the Namibian
dollar) for cigarettes. I laughed and said I thought he would not use
it for cigarettes but for home brew. He laughed but I gave him a
dollar.
But then, it was 10 minutes before the Internet café would close for
the night – not enough time for us to head back into town and get the
story written and sent off to Windhoek. But Luqman had a fallback
position. He said he had a key to the Nampa office and could use the
computer there. Nampa is the Namibian news agency. We drove by the
office but, because it was three days after payday, Luqman said there
was much drinking going on in the office and we shouldn’t go in.
He suggested that we write the story tomorrow and send it in. I didn’t
like that idea because the news was fresh. I suggested we return to my
place and we write the story on my computer, polishing it, and then
make another visit to the Nampa office to try to transmit it.
This worked. We took up residence in the dining room at the B&B and we
fashioned the story together. I think this may have been the first
time in his journalism life that Luqman got any guidance. He was an
eager student and said he liked what we had done together.
We then rewrote the story, polishing it and couple more times. I
suggested that he not write his stories directly in the Internet café
in the future. He should try writing the story as a first draft by
hand in a notebook. Then he should re-read and polish, giving it a
final polish when he sits down at the computer.
We drove back to the Nampa office. It was now just after 6 p.m. He
called through the window and the Nampa reporter told him to come in.
He was a bit bleary-eyed but he was in decent spirits. We wrote the
story onto his machine and sent it off to Windhoek.
I suggested Luqman call up and alert the editors. He did so in his
non-aggressive way but didn’t try to “sell” his story. He told Jean
Sutherland, the news editor, he had just worked with me on a little
piece and had sent it in to her. No mention it was a murder story or
that a baby was involved.
I then drove him home to his mother’s house and agreed to meet the
next day to start all over again.
Jo and I then headed out to one of two open restaurants in town where
she had a game stir fry (it was either springbok or kudo, the waitress
said) and I had an enormous ostrich steak.
Wednesday morning, the paper arrived in town and, lo, Luqman’s story
was in a box at the top of Page One. Oh, happy day! He sat in the car
and read the story three times. “They didn’t change a word,” he said
with delight. I was happy that the editors redesigned the front page
at the last minute to reinforce the value of a good, newsworthy story.
We had a busy day on Wednesday because municipal workers and
townspeople were up in arms over a 1075% increase in their rents
imposed by the municipality. You read that percentage correctly. The
municipal workers had been paying $29 a month and the town arbitrarily
increased the rents to $300 a month. Now that’s a bit of a shock to
anyone’s system so everyone was out protesting.
We walked in to interview the mayor and professed to not have known
about this matter. He told us it was an internal matter (!) and he
asked us not to write anything about it. I choked at the very audacity
of the man. I asked under what circumstances any story could be an
external matter if this one was not. Every municipal worker in town
was affected, as well as townspeople who rented homes from the
municipality. How could such a thing possibly be an internal matter?
The poor guy folded like a pack of cards. He said the increases were
out of line and he would call a meeting of his council the next day to
reverse this decision. I still was reeling from the notion that, as
mayor, he could have approved this without understanding the enormity
of the increase. He tried to blame the town’s Chief Executive Officer
and I asked to meet with him. The mayor went out and brought back the
CEO. He tried the same game: This is an internal matter. And then he
had the temerity to say we would be biased and would be unfair in our
reporting. I told him he was being unfair in judging me when he didn’t
even know me. He folded and started to talk. So we got a wonderful
story.
We then went to the regional governor’s office where a group of
pensioners and single moms went to complain to him about the
increases.
Luqman told me the governor didn’t like him and might not allow him
into the meeting. But the governor said we could sit in if the
residents did not object. Object? They wanted us in there since the
only way they could see out of this desperate dilemma was to have
publicity and hold the governor’s feet to the fire.
He asked them if they wished to speak in Nama or in Afrikaans and they
chose Afrikaans – even though English is the official language of the
country. So I was locked out of their complaints which they presented
passionately.
After that story, we headed over to the hospital to try to interview
the mother of the baby born with no cranium. The medical director, a
Nigerian, was friendly but said he would have to call the Minister of
Health in the capital to get permission to proceed (everyone covers
their ass in this society). The minister actually answered his phone
and said he had no problem with us doing a story on this rare case if
the mother was told of her rights. So the doctor asked us to call him
later in the day, after he had a chance to find out if she would be
willing to chat. She declined to meet with us – for which I have no
regrets since the poor woman must have been suffering.
I found Luqman to be such an eager student that I called Windhoek and
told the editor that I planned to stay in the south an extra day.
This took Jo and me back to the only restaurant in town that stays
open after 5p.m. I asked the waitress what the difference was between
a hamburger and a steak sandwich. “Steak is meat,” she replied. But
hamburger is meat too, I said. “No,” she said. It’s not meat like
steak it’s more like a mince patty.” Well that’s true enough. So we
had one of each and they were delicious.
I asked her for an Irish coffee to finish off our meal and she asked
what kind of whisky I would like in it. I told her Jameson’s but she
laughed and said she didn’t have that. I could choose from Grants,
Ballantine’s or one other Scotch I’d never heard of. I told her this
would make it a Scottish coffee since these were not Irish whiskies.
But she didn’t understand the nuances involved. The coffee was
delightful when it arrived.
There was so much more. But this is already too long.
New Namibian pictures are at:
http://photos.yahoo.com/robertsmellis
Sailing story at:
http://www.sailnet.com/collections/articles/index.cfm?articleid=ouread0018
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