Introduction
Positive Vibes was born from a Danish NGOs initiatives dating back to the days of the South African apartheid occupation to fight the front-line states forces. When the Danes pulled out, a far-sighted CEO wanted the work to continue and set up a national NGO with the donation of a large building and small grounds in Windhoek. HIV was the main focus as Namibia had the same high rates experienced across southern Africa. My role was to support the development of skills and capacities within the organisation, starting in Ongwediva in the North, close to the Zambian border and then in Windhoek, the capital, in the South. The work focussed on community self-help organisations and on young people advocacy and those living with HIV. When VSO closed in Namibia, I was employed by Positive Vibes to be part of a team supporting LGBTI (the term at the time) across the SADC (ten countries in Southern Africa) region.
1. Three Letters from Namibia
Early Days
Thank you for thinking of me. It can get lonely here on Robben Island and knowing that the folks at home are thinking of you whilst dunking their biscuits during elevenses and asking “wonder what ever became of that nerd-do-well Paul what's-is-name?” raises my spirits.
Well, things have been hot here. Temperatures in the thirty to forty degree range – about what you are experiencing in Fahrenheit, but for us it is Celsius. Windhoek, the capital, turned out to be Germany in Africa. Joe's Bar was notable by its clientele of German and Afrikaans-speakers pretending to be Desperate Dan and Kate eating from a menu of cow pie with steak and chicken side dishes. I kept my veggie tendencies under wraps . At one long table in the Bier Keller sat three black Namibians. The only way to get a seat was to sit next to them – no-one else was.
NOTE: If I give the impression that all Africaaners are boorish, then others were much more sympathetic. In an Ongwediva bar I talked to a black Namibian man who was very friendly with the otherwise all white clientele. They were engaged in couple two-step dancing for which they were perfectly designed. The ample busts of the ladies fitted neatly over the generous paunches of their male partners. The atmosphere was very convivial.
The city? (300,000) was one long street with fancy Malls. From a hill it is easy to picture the original Wild West Town with Ox-carts in which Next and Top Shop gradually took over once the railroad had reached here. Moved recently, from its prime site on a roundabout to a less prominent position, a statue of a German Officer from the early twentieth century commemorates his heroism in ridding the homeland of some 95% of the Herero Tribe for complaining “ Its not fair we were here first.” Young volunteers will go home having been clubbing and dining out for their stay and regale the unsuspecting with tales of darkest Africa. At Xmas Windhoek is supposed to decamp to Swakopmond , which is Windhoek On Sea. I have met wealthier people of European stock who could not think of anywhere in the world they would rather live.
In spite of a feeling that Namibia, has a settled and tolerant view of mixed races, it dawns quite quickly that behind that curtain is the aunt that no-one talks about – The Struggle. SWAPO, the liberation party, fought a long bitter war against the South African occupation and is still, twenty years after independence, untouchable. All of the bitterness that fed that war is still flowing in underground streams, but all is calm on the surface. There was no peace and reconciliation process; the founding fathers simply said that there would be no recriminations and told people to forgive but not forget. They resisted the temptation to grab the land of white farmers, although voices were raised for just that. Gradually, the white farmers returned and claimed their farms once they felt safe. In spite of a rather gentle scheme to buy back farms for indigenous Africans and give loans, progress is rather slow . I asked a nice Afrikaner lady in an agricultural supply store in the deep south,
“ Do you think that the current Government regulations (farmers have restrictions on live meat sales) will drive white farmers away from the land?”
“ Noow , farmin ees in thir blud. They will niver give ap thir land.” – excuse my poor spelling which is better than the accent I would have spoken in.
And they do seem to be a rather tough and outback-minded set of people in the South. We stayed in field camp style tents at a plush lodge for a week's induction training. In between the odd giraffe gawping at us over the fence, thinking we couldn't see it behind the bush and the occasional passing ostrich, a wonderfully gruff and direct young Afrikaner woman told us the true story of the men in this red neck of the woods .
“ I hete thise guys who come heere on Friday ivinings .” I think my accent is improving.
Remember we are in a huge thatched area with a high pitched roof in a circular shape (circus tent point in the middle). Stuffed cheetah, young lion and various deer types have made their way into prominence in the rafters and alcoves. This is high priced tourist land with a lawn.
“ Thiy theenk thiy uwn thees ples . Thiy geet drank and cam biheend the bar. Thiy tern the music ap loud and dance an thi tabelss . Thiy treet me like diirtt . Thin one accuses the other of peenching his wife's bum or makes a comment about hees car and thiy start fighting. Thiy pritend to be frinds but thiy will do inything to git ahead of thi nixt one.”
In spite of this sales pitch for the male Afrikaner farmer in his natural state, the women we saw really were very friendly. They were totally unaware of their privileged position (a point of contact for us both) and even less aware of their racist under-tow, which I suppose had never been challenged. They had a genuine concern for ‘ blick ' children, probably sent their children to mixed primary schools, but shipped them off to ‘good schools in Sath Afreeka ' once pubescent spots were noticed. I can only guess at the clientele of those schools.
 
Certainly, the lady of the lodge was not unpleasant to her indigenous staff and had probably known them for many years. Even the men operate together and all came round to help a farmer hunt a jackal that was killing his sheep. They also meet up to organise farming together. Mariental, the local town, has the feel of a place which is where you come to get supplies from the local Mole Valley Farmers and then go back to the farm. A few people, mainly scraping along the bottom, sit around in front of shops. The result of this all this magnanimity on the part of the ‘formerly disadvantaged' is that they are now the ‘presently disadvantaged' except for those with power and position. Namibia has the widest gap between rich and poor in the whole world and possibly beyond . There is an imaginary line about four-fifths up the country (the red line). The line is supposed to be a buffer zone to stop animal diseases from Zambia and Angola reaching the commercial farms, but reinforces other inequalities. Below the line much of the land is owned by rich, mostly white owners (44% of the total land owned by probably less than 3% of the population ) . Every few miles is a fancy game reserve catering for a mainly German , South African and Afrikaner clientele, as far as I can see . Others farm commercially – mostly sheep and beef. Above the red line are most of the indigenous African population – about 60% of the Namibian population on communal land. This is partly explained by the Ovambo tribe, which has vastly out-bred the others and dominates politics. It also has a traditional land ownership 42% of the total land is communally owned. I have been, of course, been put very firmly on the northern side of the line. Land, is at the centre of everything in Africa. In a country with only 2.4 people per square kilometre (2.2 million people in total) having the tiny amount of good fertile and irrigated land is key. A fifth is desert, a further third labelled arid and most of the rest is semi-arid. Only 8% is sub-humid (500 -700 millimetres of rain per year). That means that the rains that are falling now for three months are vital to grow anything in the poor sandy soils. They mostly grow millet and beans for the year, Everything else except meat is largely imported from South Africa. Namibia holds all sorts of records beside the inequality record. It is the second least densely populated country and one of the least rained upon. Thank God for minerals, which makes the GDP very respectable and does very well for the wealthy. Namibia is now seen as a middle income country with large pockets of poverty.
As for me, I am living in the Ovambo regions in the Central Northern Region. In our four relatively small constituencies more than 42% of the population live, so it feels a bit more like Africa than the sparsely populated South. It is flat, arid, sandy land which is currently turning green as the rains start sporadically. My town, Ongwediva , grew from a village when the South African army established a base here to fight SWAPO guerrillas and move into Angola. More importantly they had a hospital here. People began to settle around both. Now there are three sizable towns within 30 kms on the main road through the north with a branch road off to close by Angola . There is a large amount of building going on. Because of the population, Malls are well-established, mainly in Oshikati a town about 7 kms away.
If you want to Google Map, find Ongwediva . There is a main road going to Oshikati and from the main a right hand turn is the central road of Ongwediva . On the corner of the road is a filling station. As you come down the road a large area of sandy car park sits to the left with shops around the back perimeter. Further along on the right is a green area of an entertainment centre. It has a swimming pool. Almost opposite is a tall red and white phone tower. Close to it is a Mini-Market – shop – with a sandy car park in front between it and the tower. I live to left of the mini market in the corner house on a small sand road going to the left and looping round towards the tower road. I will be waving.
I do seem to live a charmed life with VSO housing. While a young Kenyan woman volunteer is living in the next town under water now the rains have started (oh the irony), sitting on hard tubular kitchen chairs in a dingy house on the edge of a carpark/rubbish dump, I am in a spanking new Batchelor flat (small bungalow) with kitchen/diner, breakfast bar, views of the mini market, hob cooker and two showers and toilets – its stressful deciding which one to use. It must be something to do with risk management and the elderly volunteer , I think. But luxury does not come without a price. I am discovering that outside of my alarmed and electric fenced walls – I even have panic buttons, which I press when I have run out of milk and can't be bothered to walk across to the mini-market – are more white people and few ‘formerly disadvantaged people' If I want to see them I have to go over to the mini-market, where they serve my needs and keep me safe. Now for the sting – in the last week the sensitive neighbours in the corner have had two parties through to the middle of the night and young rich kids (I am talking mid-twenties as kids) come out each evening to amuse the ‘formerly disadvantaged' with displays of radio-controlled formula one model cars that emit realistic formula one screeching. Oh, people only see your advantages, the y don 't know the tragedy that takes place behind closed doors and electric fences.
Night life is rubbish. The common drinking place is the Shebeen, which is the local shack situated every few yards along main roads which men sit at each night to get drunk. There are a couple of Discos but no live music. I can get to see football from time to time but in nice places with no atmosphere. I miss the raucous noisy atmosphere of Malawian bars and nightclubs with constant display, taunting and occasional scuffles. I have been reduced to Sunday morning outings to Benny's Entertainment Centre, an oasis in the Ongwediva desert with a twenty-metre p ool , masses of green trees and a flume. I n spite of its n ature it is m ainly populated by Namibians and A ngolians and as the morning progresses becomes increasingly the domain of young, enjoyable, children petting, d iving and dive-bombing, which I heartily approve of. The only way I can behave disgracefully is my Wednesday night z ulu - dancing class with Zulu Doris, a fantastic forty-something professional dancer, where I amaze the young things by finishing the evening still alive and they are, in-turn, amazed to have avoided being decapitated by my flailing arms.
As for work? Well , there is none. I find myself working in a well-run organisation run by two Danes 8 hour s drive away in Windhoek who have built the organisation over eight years. I have an air-conditioned office, computer, modern desk etc. The office is tile d and we have all mod-cons in the office including free tea and coffee. They have loads of funding, a clear programme, policies overflowing the paperless filing cabinets and a well-trained and competent African staff. I have sat waiting to know what they think I can add, whilst the Boss lady stays in her office wondering what I can add too. The saving grac e is that all o f the people are lovely. One of the Danes has a long history from the 1970s when he was a radical student supporting liberation struggles in Namibia. The other is basically a historian who has writte n a book about the Herero holocaust. My colleagues are also funny and friendly. One young woman was rather take n with my tale that the term for grandparent or revered older person, kuku, was in English a term that meant you were a bit loopy. She now tells people who upset her that they are going cuckoo (kuku). The wonders of cultural exchange.
We are an organisation that trains local HIV-infected people. The training is well-based having a philosophy of claiming people's rights and refusal to see themselves as victims. In the recent past, stigma and discrimination kept people apart and fearful. Now the groups give people confidence, information and a feeling of hope for the future. As treatment is 85% available many are staying healthy for much longer – life expectancy is now up to forty years + following infection and rates of new infection are decreasing. I have been able to join a couple of training sessions with groups – although not able to understand the difficult language (some tribes have click-languages) I have seen how people live.
Because of the arid conditions people need a lot of land to graze, goats, cattle, sheep, donkeys etc. Grass is sparse and dry for most of the year. Unlike most African nations people do not live closely in villages. They live in families in fenced homesteads (traditionally to protect against wild animals) separated by some distance. Some walk up to ten kilometres to meet as a group. As most of the population is young - 45% under 15 years – there is drift towards the town for the young. So, I am trying to stay patient and let things emerge . At Xmas a group of 3 Dutch people, a Spaniard and myself have hired a big car and will do the tourist trail around Namibia. Although it not usually my style it is almost impossible to do things by public transport as distances are huge and people few. As VSO is downsizing in Namibia because of DFID cuts in grants it may be difficult to pull a group together in the future.
Well that's alI for now folks! I hope that all of you have a wonderful white Xmas, and survive the arctic winter. I will do my best to survive the heat.
If you have been, thanks for reading
Best Wishes,
Paul
Harvest Snakes and Koi San Fun Seekers
At last a letter. Sorry to those of you who can no longer afford to go out and depend upon my letters now the libraries have all been closed.
We were working in the mahangu (millet) field when Samuel's sister became very agitated. Gradually, I focussed my gaze in the direction of her gesticulations. There in a tree was a green snake. Trying to look as nonchalant as I could I sauntered to within ten metres of the tree and found myself unwilling to move closer, unsure of what could be done. I had received the lecture on the multitude of poisonous snakes that could be encountered in Namibia ranging from the black mamba that can move at lightning speed and leap through the air to the spitting cobra that made me glad I wear glasses, to the side winder that buries itself in the sand and makes me think of cowboy comics where the hero is thrown from his horse by the sudden intervention of a ‘rattler'. I quickly summed up the situation. This was undoubtedly a boomslang snake, which like to go into trees. They have two setof fangs and are highly dangerous if they get their rear fangs inserted into your body. I was immediately decisive, providing the leadership that was expected from a white explorer.
“Best to just let it go. It doesn't want to hurt us” I said retreating to 15 metres distance just in case I had misjudged its mood.
White explorers are not held in such high regard these days and Samuel's sister disappeared. She returned with a young man from the next homestead. He simply took a hoe and smashed it towards the serpent, which recoiled, leapt from the tree and disappeared into the undergrowth at the base of the tree. From here things escalated. A plastic bucket was broken-up and thrown into the undergrowth. The under growth was then set alight and a crowd gathered to monitor the progress of the hunt and to try to spot the snake. Eventually, the undergrowth was burnt away, the tree probably killed, but the snake, although immobilised, was obviously still alive. I showed my true courageous spirit at this point and hit it over the head with a big stick to end its suffering. I think the locals were impressed.
Today, we were gathering the mahango harvest and snakes were everywhere. Yesterday, a rather large snake had crawled under the mat in Samuel's house and he had killed it with a big stick. Today, we were called by a meme (mother) because she had seen a big black snake in her mahangu patch. We did not see it but found another smaller green snake. Our young snake man pulled it from the fence by its tail and swung it round and round with a windmill action as we all scattered for cover. Eventually, he let it go and it flew through the air – a snake equivalent of bungee jumping- into the mahangu jungle. It was not poisonous we were told. It is not usual to see so many snakes, but Namibia seems already, to be experiencing the effects of global warming that make it one of the African countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. This year's effect in the north is the worst flooding in memory following heavy flooding in the previous two years. The effect on the snakes is to drive them into smaller and smaller areas, looking for warm dry places to sleep. The effect on people is, at worst, death – nearly seventy have drowned mainly in rivers that form and swell suddenly during the rainy season and disappear for the rest of the year. Our main town, Oshakati, has a refugee camp of people who have been driven from their homes by the water spreading across the flat land into their fields and houses. I saw the rather disorientating site of a man canoeing along the side of the road in an urban flooded area waiving at the passing cars.
Our area has from the beginning of time experienced seasonal flooding. Indeed, without it, life would be almost impossible to sustain for a farming community. My region is called Oshana, which is the name given to the river-fed lakes that form across the fields during the rainy season. VSO has been looking at how it might organise its work around the effects of climate change and it is becoming very fashionable among us western do-gooders. Somewhere along the line there is a small danger that we fail to notice that people here have spent the last few thousand years dealing with the effects of harsh climatic conditions. One of the immediate responses to flooding is the growth of a sudden fishing industry. By every bridge a community of small boys, teenagers and women becomes established. Mosquito nets are spread across the raging rivers and people wade in up to their chests with sticks and hooks. Youths can be seen everywhere walking along the road with bunches of sizable fish for sale. The protein intake is, paradoxically, probably higher in this time of crisis – a state of emergency was declared by President Pohamba.
One of the treasures of Namibia is the diverse tribal culture. As a country of close to 2 million people which is now seen as a modernising middle-income country, it still has distinctive tribal cultures with a strong sense of identity. I have been seeing a little more of the different tribes. Last week I attended a presentation to traditional leaders. Ten of the nineteen leaders were Koi San. These are the original inhabitants of Southern Africa (the bushmen). They were delightful tiny people with light skins and delicate facial features. Even the old men looked as though they had been trapped in a Peter Pan childhood. After lunch it is customary to wake people up with an ‘energiser' - a playful energetic activity. I wondered how these older traditional men would react. They loved it and wanted to do it again. It reminded me that African cultures are based on physical activity, dance and storytelling. Sometimes our western approaches forget this and we fail with our wordy, poe-faced, joyless methods. For those of you interested in tribal matters I have written a little about the Himba in another story.
At Christmas I did a tourist tour of Namibia, visiting many of the places I wanted to see before I die. We did see some wonderful things. In spite of my natural sniffiness at tourist sites I have to say that most were wonderful. In Sosusvlie there are miles of red sand dunes sculptured by winds into abstract shapes of shade and light, curve and edge. You have probably seen them in car adverts without knowing where they are. Naucluft was a landscape of chocolate layer cake escarpments and walks. At Cape Cross thousands of seals were mating, birthing and dying. Males fought for females, hundreds of tiny babies huddled under walkways in the hope that mothers would return from the sea with a fish supper and many died, some at the hands and clubs of fur traders. In the middle of nowhere a huge fat boer ran a bakery serving apple struddle and we saw exciting falls, deserts, wild beasts and tribal peoples.
At work things have improved as people gradually begin to build trust and understand where I can be useful to them. I will be spending more time in Windhoek now either because they want to use what sparse skills I have or because they want to give the North a break from my preaching. Whilst work has become much more interesting I don't think it will ever become exciting. So sorry, but as I work mainly in offices, whilst others travel the length and breadth of the unknown world, my output of traveller's tales is likely to come as a trickle rather than the floods we experienced this year.
I am hoping that I can return to Malawi soon, so maybe I can find some human interest stories there.
Best wishes to all.
Paul
Botswana Trip
Thanks to everyone who sent Xmas and Birthday Greetings. When you are stuck in some Godforsaken hell in 41% heat with only the sand and flies to talk to it is great to hear that things are even worse back home. I am sorry to those to whom I miserably managed to miss-out in the sending of greetings. I took an early holiday and ran out of time to do my duty. At least when I had something resembling a proper job I could blame it on my secretary – no excuses now.
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I have always liked travelling alone. I find that you get into conversations with people much more easily and things come along. This holiday I decided to do a circular route from Windhoek out through Gobabis, with its Texan, bull- statue and ostentatious ‘ you are in cattle country' sign and onward through tourist Botswana to Caprivi in Northern Namibia, which thinks it is part of Zambia.
Botswana is a high price, low volume holiday destination with a lot of big spenders taking snaps of elephants while sitting by pools and living the life style. The camping sites are filled with South Africans in monster 4x4s towing fold-away palaces. I had little trouble fitting in with my £10 Chinese tent and a sun hat, made from a cardboard drinks tray with a hole cut for the top of my head to stick through (based on a design that Steve Smith developed for a Chinks fancy dress party circa 1985 – classic designs never date.) Several people called me ‘boy' and told me to take their bags to their room. The tips came in handy.
The Okavango Delta is one of the high end tourist destinations and a massive areas of rivers and teeming wild life. To experience the full package required a week's stay at luxury lodge reached only by air. I had neither time nor funds for that so set up my Chinese tent at a backpacker camping site that ran trips at the edge of the delta. My guide was also the canoeist and his main interest was getting this over as quickly as possible and going home. He was not pleased that I wanted to walk and look at the gazelles splashing around in the wetlands. To annoy me even more, on our way back he stopped paddling.
“Is there something wrong?”
“There is a hippo in the channel. We cannot go past until it moves.”
The hippo kills more people than any other animal. I had been told a story by a man who helped on Zambezi canoe trips of a time when a hippo had come up under a boat, tipped out the occupants and bitten the arm off of one of the passengers. We went nowhere for an hour until the blockage had moved away.
Next day I was packing my tent, slightly disappointed at the narrow range of animals and environments available to me. I started talking to a man in a nearby small truck with sleeping platform overhead. I was asking him for advice on my next move.
“I am on my way to a party at a forest lodge site. Why don't you come along?”
We chatted amicably along the way and arrived to be met by a spotted Hyena ambling through the site, attracted by the smells of human activities. They told me the camp, which was a small group of cabins in a clearing, was attractive to animals. Last week they had awoken to find a lion sitting on the porch. A small party ensued and I slept in the truck bed.
At the end of my Botswana trip I took a combi (mini-bus) for the last stage of the journey to the Namibian Border and found myself befriended by a woman who lived alone with her 3 children, having kicked out her philandering husband (this was now a trend – two women at the party had done the same). We talked of her life and position as President of the ruling party Youth League in Kasane and her hopes to be elected as the local Councillor. She described how effectively the Botswana system of development worked from the bottom up. I enquired where she was going to.
“I am going to the funeral of my aunt”.
“Oh I am sorry to hear that.”
“Yes she was killed by an elephant.”
Even in Africa I am not used to hearing of such events. She went on to tell me that at least a person a month is killed by elephants or buffalo in her area. It is easy to see why. Whilst we all rightly support anti-poaching campaigns, there in Chobe there are so many elephants that they are becoming a problem. On the drive from Nata to Kasane (5 hours) we must have seen more than 50 elephants at the roadside. People told me that there are anything between 150,000 to 450,000 elephants in the area. This death was particularly tragic as the older lady was taking a shortcut with her 3 year old grand-daughter and probably died protecting her. Somehow the little girl found her way home to declare that her kuku had been eaten by an elephant – a terrible start to life.
When I finally got to Caprivi , back in Namibia, they were careful to check for crocodiles and hippos before I went to the river. I also spoke to a man who worked with conservancy sites in Caprivi. He told me that the worst part of his job was having to deal with people who had lost cattle to lions or had their crop trampled by elephants.
“They can abuse you and shout at you” he said with a pained expression on his face. What is meat for the tourist can be poison for the farmer.
The Caprivi strip is a colonial folly. The Germans wanted a route to the east out of Northern Namibia, so Britain swopped a narrow strip of land, probably for beads. That means that people who speak Silozi, the same language as the Zambians across the border, are part of Namibia which doesn't speak Silozi. The strip was dangerous until a few years ago because a separatist movement wanted independence from Namibia. Now life is peaceful and I decided to spend Xmas at a small cultural centre right on the border of Angola, Zambia and Namibia. It took the best part of a day to travel the 19 kms off the main road to the site, but the wait was worth it. I was the only visitor at the Mafwe Living Museum that promised an unrivalled cultural experience, run by local people. I thought I was in heaven. The camping area was a grove of mature baobab trees on a small hill overlooking the Kwando river some 100 metres below. It was a pastoral scene straight from a Constable painting, filled with birdlife, but without a man in a cart. Looking a little closer at the initials carved on the baobabs I became aware that history had not been so tranquil. The names and dates showed that this had probably been a rebel camp during the struggles against South Africa. Victor Kamyana 1975, FNF 84 and so on. One tree had a bullet still showing proud of the bark.
Then there were the people. There was no prior booking. Just turn up to be sure of a warm Mafwe welcome was what the sign said. I arrived to find a large traditional Namibian stockade made of tree- ranch- posts supporting bundles of long reedy grasses. The entrance was designed to ensure that nothing could be seen inside and to enter you had to walk into the porch and turn 90% to your right. Children scuttled into the interior and soon arrived with six older women, only some of whom had a full set of teeth. This, however, did not stop their sunshine smiles and the promised warm welcome was delivered in Silozi. I was already beguiled and putty in their hands. Four children were then pushed out of the compound to entertain me with a preview of the dances to come, the youngest at four years winning my heart with her unbounded joy and unknowing improvisational skills. Moves, I thought a little sexualised for such young children, I later found out were representations of two lions fighting.
The next day was set as the day for the cultural programme. They offered three options. The first was a brief introduction to their way of life and a short walk in the bush taking an hour and a half in all. The second, at twice the price, promised a whole day experiencing the life of the Mafwe people. The third was a guided walk around the modern village. Given that I had already walked around the modern village and wanted to support their efforts I plumped for the whole day programme. A young man who spoke English came to meet me. Would I mind waiting a bit as the people had not had their breakfast yet? Eventually, he took me inside the compound where the old and young were in their traditional dress. Women were naked to the waist with skirts of cut pieces of hollow bamboo-like wood strung on home- made string. They made a rustling sound as the women moved. The men similarly naked to the waist wore hairy cow-hide swimming trunks. I saw dances, how to trap animals, how to make string from tree bark and some fine raffia work. After an hour and a half we walked the two hundred metres to the river and came back having seen the roots and plants used for medicine and perfume.
My English-speaking companion said that they had finished. I enquired what was to happen during the rest of the longer programme. He looked a little confused. I realised that I had actually experienced the life of the Mafwe people and the rest of the day would be taken up with sedentary activities or food preparation. In reality the long programme and the short programme were the same, they just had different costs. Somehow it did not matter and just added to the already considerable charm of the people and their enthusiasm for their project. I enjoyed spending Christmas day in such tranquil surroundings with people who had just the basics of life and appeared to want little more. I shared my baked beans on bread with the children, who were delighted with the Christmas treat. A small boy played with his new xmas toy, a car, or more accurately, a coke can on a long stick.
Back here in my Namibian life I have indulged my enthusiasm for football by attending a few ‘Black Africa FC' matches in Windhoek. They were the champions last year and I have already become an official supporter with promises that they will find me a proper Black Africa shirt. I went with a woman ‘from work who's son plays for the team to watch them play Katatura rivals Orlando Pirates. The crowd all came from Katatura, which is the area that 60% of Windhoek's population inhabits. The area is a modern echo of apartheid. In the 1950s the black population were forcibly moved out of other areas of the city and segregated in tribally defined areas on the edge of town. Hostel accommodation was built to house Owambo contract workers required for industry. The areas they moved from have since been gentrified and house the wealthier Namibian middle class and white property owners. Katatura is the only affordable area for the poorer black population and people still largely stick to colonially defined tribal areas. Although most of the housing is brick built and of reasonable standard, the area has all of the problems of deprivation. From my perspective it provided a noisy and rumbustious crowd for the match. Drunks fawned over me, people danced and sang and women shouted at the players and at each other. We won 1-0 to stay top of the league.
At work, the chill wind of western capitalist decline is blowing in Namibia. Donors are pulling out of the country as they prioritise poorer Nations. The problem is that it is the Government, the multi-nationals and property owners that are wealthy. The majority rural population will be left to suffer unless there is a major shift in the distribution of wealth. This is happening at a time when there is real hope in the HIV world. There is a reduction in rates across the world for the first time. The increased distribution of ARV treatment is changing the lives of people, who now think about how to live with HIV rather than preparing for death from AIDS. It now seems that treatment can reduce the virus in people down to such a low state that they no longer infect others, which offers the prospect of reducing new infections hugely. Several advances seem to offer hope for an eventual cure. This is all good news, except that the money is drying up. The Global Fund, which provides one of every three dollars spent on HIV looks as though it has no money in 2012 except for key priorities. For those of you who are interested I have attached a powerfully argued speech from Steven Lewis.
On a personal note, it has already seen my organisation having to make serious changes. It is trying to work across Southern Africa to make itself more fundable and three staff have already not been given new contracts. Just like the U.K. we are having to adjust and work with less resources. That means that my work will become more about supporting change in reaction to decreasing resources than thinking about expansion. Does that ring a bell with anyone at home?
I am now in my last ten months of the placement. I hope to do a small trip to Zwaziland and Lesotho on the way home, but I am already looking forward to joining you all in the Big Society, which I hope is geared up to look after the elderly.
Best Wishes To You All for 2012,
Paul
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