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About Mondesa
The North
by Robert Mellis
Jo says I shouldn’t write this log because it will only worry our
armchair voyagers. I say, not to worry. All the bad news won’t happen
for another few years. But it is a taste of the future and you should
know what lies ahead.
A self-styled “black revolutionary, not only offered no apologies, but
also repeated his call for all white people in Namibia to be killed
when he appeared in on a charge of racial discrimination in the
Windhoek Magistrate’s Court on Friday.
The 33-year-old Methural Matundi, also known as “Malcolm X’Matundu, is
the second suspect to have been arrested and charged with offences
under the Prohibition of Racial Discrimination Act in connection with
the display of a hand written poster stating “Kill all Whites” at a
public demonstration in Windhoek on Aug. 24.
“I am the authentic author of that placard,” Matundi told The Namibian
before he appeared in court. “The intention was to solicit the support
of black people to employ that strategy, because the Mau Mau school of
thought, of which I’m the head, believes that killing white people is
the only way that we will get people to take black people seriously.”
This guy utterly believes in the Robert Mugabe method of taking the
farms back from the white farmers and giving the land to the blacks –
even though the black people had had no training or education in how
to make the land fertile and abundant. This movement is growing in
Namibia, too. The government has started the process of taking the
farms from the whites – only two or three so far. But it is all part
of their land resettlement policy. And it spells big trouble for the
white farmers who may have been born on the land, as were their
fathers and grandfathers. The whites are not Namibians so far as this
group of people thinks because they originally “stole” the land from
the black Africans.
We’ll watch how all this plays out in the next few years. But it
doesn’t bode well for the whites or – ultimately – the blacks. They
need to be taught how to make money on this arid land. It is not good
enough to subsist, I think. They need to prosper otherwise nothing is
gained. But that’s my capitalist thinking kicking in.
Oshakati is a large town but it has the look of the Wild West when you
drive through the dusty main street. The cattle and donkeys graze (on
what I don’t have the faintest clue for it all looks like sand to me)
alongside the main street. When they decide to cross the four-lane
highway, it is a nerve-wracking time. The lead steer pokes his head
into the road and stops. It then becomes a test of his will against
the onslaught of taxis, police vehicles, walkers and me. If the steer
has enough nerve he’ll step out and his mates will follow. The traffic
will come to a halt until they all (maybe 20 at a time) cross. Then
the mad flow of cars resumes.
When I left the new Namibian office for which I was responsible (the
old one was a tin shed with no air conditioning and a backed up toilet
that was an awesome thing to behold) I met a tall black man climbing
the stairs. He had the most beautiful pink, broad-brimmed Easter
bonnet on. What better way to keep the sun off. “Nice hat,” I told him
and he beamed at me.
I find the suffocating increase in the temperature in the North to be
quite debilitating. Oswald tells me we are in hell. “When we die up
here,” he says with a chuckle, “We must go to heaven because we are
already in hell.”
Everything takes much longer to accomplish. There is a huge social
element involved in any conversation. Don’t even think that you can
cut to the chase and get an answer quickly. Much time must be spent in
seemingly aimless chatter – mostly about the heat, the drought, the
family, the state of town traffic. Only then, it seems, can a
circuitous question be asked of a town official. And it always seems
to be asked in a quite obsequious way rather than respectfully but
directly. These are the cultural ribbons around which the society
revolves.
I met with another Nigerian doctor yesterday who was a breath of fresh
air. He was so smart, and so aware of the corruption around him among
doctors and patients. He told me he knows most doctors are paid by the
government by the number of patients they see. So they spend much of
their day doctoring the books to show they have met with 260-300
patients so they can be well paid. I said it must be difficult to
remain honest in such a setting. But he told me he has no difficulty.
“I believe in treating not only the man but the metaphysical being,”
he said. “I am a Christian (he had pictures of the Pope everywhere)
and I believe in giving both physical support as well as moral
support.”
Later in the day, a funeral director came into the office and I spent
time chatting with him while Oswald was trying to get his phone
connection to work. The funeral director, who had no front teeth, told
me there are 40 other funeral establishments in the neighborhood
because business is so good. He buries about 45-50 people each month.
Average funeral costs N$15,000 (US$2,500). It includes embalming,
coffin, flowers and the burial.
I asked how he protects himself and his staff from HIV/AIDS when
embalming. He furled his brow and said it is a big, big worry. They
all wear gloves and masks and a plastic suit, he said.
He then went on to tell me his clients usually buy a death policy and
pay N$80 a month to cover their funeral expenses. I asked if I signed
up with him today and paid my $80 and then died in a couple of weeks
if I could get a N$15,000 funeral. “Oh, no,” he said. “You must stay
alive for six months.” I asked what if I kill myself (they are
monumental numbers of suicides in the North). “You must stay alive for
a year and a half before killing yourself or we will not pay,” he
said. And what about if I get AIDS? I asked. “Ah. You must stay alive
for three years before we will cover your funeral expenses,” he said.
We are working as I writing a story as I write this about a leopard
that just killed one man and injured two other men this week in
Oshivielo. It is difficult to get the details because of the
remoteness. But it is my favorite story of the day from the North.
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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