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About Mondesa
The Water of Life
by Robert Mellis
I squatted in the dirt with Oswald, in the town of Opuwo, in the
presence of a council of men. They were Himbas, dressed in suit
jackets and loin cloths. Jo sat back in our car, knitting. She was
surrounded by goats. She could not sit with the men.
The men each wore a woven necklace maybe two inches thick around their
necks. These necklaces had been placed there when they became men 25
or 35 or 45 years ago. The necklaces were thick with grease and cowry
shells, and there was no way to remove them without cutting them off.
Oswald leaned toward me and translated. “The men ask when you think
the rains will come,” he said.
My mind darted around the group. Was this small talk or had they
invested in me some knowledge that is beyond them? I decided to play
the role assigned. I looked to the sky, a cloudless blue that
shimmered in the heat, I looked at the men who waited expectantly and
I pronounced that the rains would come in six weeks, on Nov. 29 to be
precise.
Oswald translated this and the men murmured among themselves. They
each dipped their right hand into a smoky black pot filled with mealy
pap, or porridge, and licked the pap from their fingers.
One man looked at me and asked, through Oswald, “Will the rains come
only to here or will they be all over?”
“All over these hills. All over the region,” I told him. This was
greeted with satisfaction by the men. I was playing the odds. Oswald
had told me the rains usually come in the North by the beginning of
December. I just wanted to push it up a bit.
Behind, sitting in a thatched hut, were the women and the children of
the small community. They were quietly talking and the children made
no noise. The women, all painted in red ochre with much fat smeared on
their bodies to keep the ochre in place, much more fat smeared into
the long plaits of their hair so the red ochre also would cover that
completely. Each woman had two topknots on her head. Each of them
carried a large shell on a leather band around their necks and the
older women also had a slightly thinner version of the woven necklace.
Their breasts were thin, lying flat on their bodies. Only the younger
girls had perky breasts. Old comes quickly to these women. I think the
women in their 30s looked to be getting on a bit. The children were
naked for the most part. But they too were smeared in the fat and red
ochre. Sometimes they wore a leather loin cloth.
Oswald, Jo and I had driven 400 kilometers west to Kaokoland, into the
heart of Himba and Herero country to do a story about the town of
Opuwo not having any water. We interviewed many people, weathered old
Herero men, just a couple of teeth still in their mouths. We chatted
with a Chinese builder (from NanJing, he told us) who cannot build
because there is no water to mix his concrete. We met with the manager
of a lodge who told us he buys water and brings it in by truck. But he
won’t let his guests drink it because it is bad. They can shower with
it. We chatted with a pastor’s assistant who told how the churches in
town had tried to come up with a solution to the problem but the
people are too poor and don’t want to pay N$2 (33 cents) for 25 liters
of water. And now we headed for the local council’s office to find out
the official spin on their disaster.
The mayor and the town clerk were in a meeting and would be for
another hour, we were told. We said, respectfully, that we couldn’t
wait another hour because we needed to write the story and send it by
computer to the newspaper.
The two officials considered this and then adjourned the meeting,
telling the other council members they would resume in 15 minutes.
We sat with them and the town clerk told us the town owes N$600,000 to
NamWater, the supplier of the town’s water. But the people owe
N$1,600,000 to the town for the water that they have used but not paid
for. The townspeople told us they could not pay for the water because
the water is so high in lime that it will not even come out the pipes.
The town clerk, who seemed to be the brains of the two men, told us
they had just worked out an agreement with NamWater in which that
company would take over the management of the town’s water and the
collecting of payments for the water. The taps would be turned on
again in one week. No one in town had been told this. So we had
breaking news of great importance to the town.
Oswald and I left them and raced back with Jo to the lodge where we
sat and wrote the story.
When Oswald writes any story, his style is a convoluted one. Jo
correctly described it as “once upon a time” journalism. He starts at
the beginning of the problem, describing all the players and
eventually getting to the current state of the problem. I call this
the “Adam and Eve are thrown out of the Garden of Eden” style of
journalism.
Because time was running out, I asked him to tell me which person we
had talked to said the most interesting thing. (Remember, none of them
spoke any English so I was on the outside of every conversation). Let
us tell the story through his or her eyes, I suggested.
I then had to create a fake scenario to illustrate my point. Oswald
got it, sort of.
Because he thinks in a linear way, he chose the first Himba woman we
met on the streets of the town. She looked to be in her late 50s and
she had a pot of water on her head and carried a dirty five-liter
bottle of water. She had paid N$5 each for the filling of these
bottles and pots, she told him. She was outraged because never in all
her life has she had to buy water so she and her children can survive,
she told Oswald.
I grabbed hold of this and we started to write. We quickly introduced
the light at the end of the tunnel, telling about the NamWater
solution. We slowly built the blocks of the story, weaving a thread
from the old woman to the little boy with his donkey who had come to a
broken water pipe that NamWater had installed for a road construction
crew. People had found the break, which spurted water night and day.
The boy comes every day with his donkey and fills up two 25 liter jugs
which he hangs on each side of the donkey.
And when we were done, Oswald said, “Man, man, man what a story we
have made. This story would have taken me four times as long to tell
it. But we have told it quickly. What I have learned today!”
We connected the computer to the lodge’s telephone line and dialed
into the Internet to transmit the story and six of our pictures. This
is the first time that Oswald has ever been able to do such a thing
from the scene. Before this, in his 20 years with The Namibian, he
always had to return to the office and then start his narrative. This
was breakthrough time for my friend.
As icing on this wonderful cake, I had arranged to take water samples
wherever we could find water in the town. I arranged to fly these
samples to Windhoek the next day. The requirements were that we had to
sterilize our bottles and after filling them, we had to refrigerate
them with ice to 10 degrees C. I cannot describe how stressful it is
to meet these requirements in this hellhole of an area. But we
collected twelve samples and shipped them the next morning to the
capital. So we’ll now learn in a few days the bacterial contamination
as well as the chemical makeup of the samples. I managed to find an
independent lab so we can trust these samples will not be doctored.
The reporting staff had told me we would have to use NamWater to
conduct such tests – or have the samples shipped to South Africa.
Everyone in town seems to be suffering from some intestinal problem.
Even the cattle have the runs. So this is a story that will live on,
even when the water is turned back on.
We will add some great pictures in a couple of days once I get to a
quicker Internet connection.
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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