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About Mondesa
Bushman Woman
by Robert Mellis
It was a magnificent performance. Oswald and I sat in a hut in the
bush. Jo sat in the car for she didn’t want to cause a fuss by being a
woman in this council. But she need not have worried for women from
the village of Omanakaka joined in the council.
The headman of the village, a man who looked to be in his 60s with
cataract-filled eyes, was angry with both of us. He stood apart from
us, waving his arms and shouting at us in Oshivambo.
Oswald and I had come to the village because we had reports that the
village headman had not allowed a Bushman woman to be buried in the
village cemetery. We had been told he thought the Bushman woman would
bring bad luck to the village and he reportedly ordered her house to
be burned so the cancer would not spread to the other houses in the
village.
We had driven 162 kilometers east of Oshakati until we pulled off the
main road and now we had driven on a truck because there was no road.
We had bounced and banged our way 36 kilometers into the bush, past
tiny villages where people tended their cattle or rode donkeys. We had
visited with the widower of the woman who had died. His own
10-year-old son had been forced by the headman to burn down the hut
where his mother had died, we were told.
We were hot, burned by the sun, and our water jug was more than 120
degrees F. Too hot to drink, but good enough to wet our parched lips.
We had listened to the widower and the owner of the farm who had
driven us into the bush. Now we wanted the other side of the story.
Oswald, ever conscious of the need to be fair, told me we should try
to talk with the headman alone since he might not want his village
people to hear what he said for fear of the headman losing face.
But the headman was having none of this. He did not trust us because
the owner of the farm had brought us so he didn’t believe we were
independent and fair. He screamed at us and told us to talk with his
people and they would tell us the truth.
So there we sat in this lean-to affair, with the burning sun slashing
through the branches. The people were loud and angry as they came into
the hut and sat around us. The hub-bub kept rising to a crescendo and
I wondered if we would get out without being hurt.
But then something extraordinary happened.
Oswald stood up and took control of the gathering. He told them in
Oshivambo that he was of royal blood and he knew their traditions for
he is Oshivambo, even though he is not of their tribe. He then went on
to tell the people about the story we had been told. The crowd was
quiet now. There was much in the way of head-nodding, and an
occasional ee-yeeia, the sound of agreement.
Oswald never paused for 15 minutes. He did his usual linear telling of
the story, with every nuance being covered. Now, I noticed the headman
had even come into the hut and was sitting there quietly.
When Oswald finished, a young woman carrying a school notepad, spoke.
She was the secretary of the village and she told us a completely
different story. She told how the village people had cared for the
dying woman, who was covered in worms. They cleaned her and fed her
and clothed her.
The people are not against the Bushman she said, with the agreement of
the rest of the village. Another man said, “We are all people. They
are us.” Now the headman spoke. He told us he had not kept the Bushman
woman from being buried in the village cemetery. Only one person had
died since the cemetery had been built. Then the government built a
school near this grave. The headman said he did not want a cemetery to
be beside the school. So he had told the farm worker to bury his wife
two kilometers further out in the bush and this would become the new
village cemetery. “Even I will be buried beside the Bushman woman,” he
told us.
So we returned to the truck and made our way back to Oshakati,
exhausted from working in the sun for 8 hours. I should mention I went
into a cucashop (bar) to purchase three bottles of Coca Cola to
sustain us since we had no lunch. The woman asked if I had empty
bottles and when I told her I did not she refused to sell me the
bottles of Coke.
She said I could buy cans of Coke, but not bottles until I have empty
bottles to give her.
While we were doing this story, Oswald heard by phone that there was
trouble between the Kavango tribes people to our east and the
Oshivambo farmers who were moving in and taking their land. We heard
word that blood had been spilled – very, very serious, Oswald said –
that wells had been poisoned, and huts had been burned.
But the story was so sensitive and complex, I told him not to rush
this into the newspaper. We discussed the need for accuracy because
the potential is so great for causing outright tribal warfare between
these two peoples in the North.
On our way hope, we stopped at the Traditional Authority Council to
get a quote from them about the Bushman woman story. I was introduced
to a woman there and Oswald said she was a very powerful woman in the
Traditional Authority. I said I wanted her to meet another powerful
woman, so she eagerly went over to chat with Jo and be photographed
with her.
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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