Tales From Ongwediva
Sometimes Africa Reminds You
It was time to catch the combi (mini-bus) for the seven hour + drive to Windhoek. I got to the bus at eight o'clock on a bright sunny morning. It was already hot. Our administrator had booked a place with her friend's combi. It looked pretty empty but the bus boy showed me a list of people for the day. Most of the seats were taken he told me. I took my seat and waited for the combi to fill. By nine o'clock three people had joined me. At ten o'clock two more. 11 o'clock and the first combi left for Windhoek, but I had already paid and had to watch it leave in the knowledge that eight more were required for my bus to move. Outside, the bus scavengers – men who earned coins for attracting passengers – moved from group to group drinking their beer and occasionally squaring up to each other over proprietorship of a passenger's luggage. One, having spent several minutes tugging at a bag in an other's hands, gave up the struggle and simply lifted both man and bag to take them to his bus. The driver passed time by showing off in his smart customised backie (pickup) driving up and down, sounding his air-horns and occasionally driving off on some business. By 12 noon I was getting hopeful – only five more to go. At least we might reach Windhoek by 7 p.m. just after dark. I must have drifted into a slumber because now it was 1.15 p.m. and we had not moved. I was failing to see the funny side of it. We were now one of only two combi's left and I was already visualising arriving at Monte Christo filling station outside of Windhoek at a late hour. Eventually, at 2.30 we were only one short and halleluiah we moved. I breathed a sigh of relief and watched the road waiting for the combi to turn right towards Windhoek. It turned left. We toured round Oshakati town and eventually stopped by a locked gate. A woman appeared after several minutes loaded with boxes of stationary for a workshop she was to conduct in Windhoek. I looked at the time again. Never mind we were full now and off we went. We passed the underwater garage flooded up to the axels of the trucks. We passed the people catching fish with mosquito nets in the flooded grassland, we passed the sign for Ongwediva and then we stopped on the side of the road. The workshop woman leaned forward imploring the driver over something. We turned back. She had left something important at the house. By now all that stood between her and me giving her a piece of my mind was cowardice. It was three o'clock. Things did not get better. We stopped at a bar to drop some beer once the owner had been found after a long search. We loaded merchandise at Ongdangwa market, where the women flooded from the combi to buy fresh food for relatives in Windhoek and then we were finally off. My mood was on the floor and I settled morosely for the long journey of torture as the endless Namibian pop music blared from the ceiling mounted speakers.
It was no more than a hundred and fifty kilometres from town that a hubbub began in the bus and the driver pulled over to the side of the road. I moodily looked over to other side of the road. There under a huge tree in the middle of nowhere was a small woman seated on the ground with her legs stretched out flat in front of her. She wore a shapeless faded, dirty Ovambo dress and a headscarf wrapped around her head. A small, nearly naked child stood motionless next to her, and next to him crouched a small thin man who looked old but was probably half my age. He had a tattered jacket and trousers with frayed bottoms and on his head clung a battered, shapeless hat. At first, he was unsure what to do. He looked at his wife and she gestured for him to approach the combi. Inside the combi chaos reigned. Plastic bags were emptied, money was passed to window passengers, people contorted their necks to shout through small gaps to the dishevelled man. He was selling marula fruit, which they had collected from the giant tree. Marula fruit are a little like lychee and are much in demand at this season. Just the thing for the Windhoek relatives. The man ran back and forward across the road, risking his demise on the bumpers of the fast-passing vehicles. After ten minutes or more he took the final cash from the willing buyers. He had probably not seen so much money in a long time and was almost overcome with his good fortune. At that moment he looked towards me and a huge smile spread across his face, baring his blackened, gapped horse teeth, surely too big to fit his mouth. He was a happy man and his happiness made me happy. I suddenly remembered that this was what I loved about Africa. Everything that had happened to me was what I came here for but was too stupid to enjoy. The long wait was what happens in Africa. Africans are the most patient waiters in the world. It gives you time to watch the stories of the world unfolding in front of you on the filling station stage. Because of my impatience I had forgotten to notice that the bus driver had uncomplainingly helped the woman with her problem without any need for the payment of guilt. She in return, having said sorry to the whole bus then kept everyone entertained with a ceaseless flow of comments and stories well into the journey. The women had stopped at the market, not to buy things for themselves, but to share with the whole family in Windhoek, and felt complete having done so. And then there was the bedraggled family, sitting under the tree, made happy by the chance stopping of the combi and the collection of a sum of money that some people would not bother to pick-up from a pavement. Sometimes Africa reminds you if you have ears to listen and eyes to see.
If that combi trip opened my eyes, another nearly closed them. Having waited so long the last time, I decided not to book a place and took a taxi with my young Spanish housemate to the filling station which serves as the combi stop. As this was his first time at the stop I warned him that we would come under pressure from the bus scavengers and he should hold tight to his bag to avoid them snatching it to make him use their bus. But, even I was not prepared for what happened next.
The taxi drove into the main roadway through the filling station and stopped in the middle of the combis scattered on each side of the narrow road. Like a fresh dung pat our taxi was covered by a swarm of passenger-grabbing insects. Hands tried to be the first to pull the door open. I sat for a few seconds to prepare myself, checked my grip on my bag and then took the plunge. As I opened the door a cacophony of demands assaulted my ears.
“Give me your bag .” “You come this way.” “Don't listen to Him.”
Hands grabbed at my bag as I tried to be as calm as I could and asked them politely to wait a minute. As I walked a few paces forward trying to look for a bus at the same time as trying to fend off the wave of demands I felt like a drowning man. I tried the broken record technique
“Please leave my bag alone. Take your hands away from arm please” repeated over and over, but nothing worked. In fact as they became more desperate to win me for their bus a pack mentality grew stronger. About ten or twelve men had bunched tightly around me. My arms were held, other hands aggressively tugged at my shoulder bag; I heard the ripping of the seams around the handles. Worst of all I felt hands pushing me in the back. This was a game of rugby in which I was the ball. I saw the bus I wanted to catch, but as I tried to move towards it I was pushed helplessly away from it, across the road, where cars had to brake sharply and towards another bus. I managed to get free from the scrum and put my back against the bus. The pack simply formed a tight wall in front of me. I looked into the face of a man still trying to rip the bag from shoulder and lost my temper momentarily, in spite of knowing that if I got angry I could make the situation worse. The man did not register any emotion. He continued his work. I tried the annoyed customer approach.
“You have ripped my bag and pushed me all over this filling station and I want to choose a bus. I will not go on your bus if you treat me like this.”
One or two tried to protest their innocence. Others were busy trying to pull each other out of the way so they could get closer. Some looked blankly at me and one or two looked menacing. I was still trapped. I saw the bus boy from my bus of preference. I had one last card to play.
“OK you give no me choice I will have to get a police officer” I told them with no hope of moving more than five centimetres. I looked over to the bus-boy,
“Please go and find a police officer”.
At last, a space appeared before me and I made a break for it as fast as I could without breaking into a run, which I knew would spook the herd. The ten metres seemed much further as I weaved and dodged the still grasping hands. I dived in through the combi door, my heart beating at twice the normal speed.
As quickly as it had started the game was over and the pack broke up to resume its scavenging. I was no longer of any interest.
During this time, I had lost all contact with my young Spanish friend, who wandered around without molestation once they had their prey cornered. I saw him and shouted, not yet feeling safe to leave the bus. He was more upset than I was, having felt helpless to affect the course of events. However, he was to have his own problems some weeks later when he explained to the pack that he was not catching a combi but catching a taxi home.
“If I see you going to Windhoek you will have problems” said one scavenger. The Spaniard lost his cool.
“Problems? What problems are you going to give me? What do you mean you give me problems?” It was a mistake.
“ We are Namibians, this is our country. Who are you? You must give us respect,”
He felt that some would attack him but luckily others held them apart.
It is strange that in Namibia, which is noted as one of the safer African countries that I should find this. In all of the other countries I have visited I only experienced something similar once and that was nothing like as aggressive. But people who are competing for coins each day can get desperate. Africa sometimes reminds you.
A Crime Wave Hits Ongwediva .
We middle-classes have always believed that we are on the verge of criminal anarchy. But this time it is true.
It has always been the case, in my experience, that Christmas is the time for a rise in criminal activity in developing countries. One of the more enlightened customs that we have introduced from the civilised west is the celebration of everything we value, or envy, at the birth of the Saviour. Just as in the UK, people have accepted the idea that Christmas is the festival of excess. You drink more, eat more and purchase more than you can possibly need. And this at the time when the food grown for the year is starting to get a bit thin before the new harvest comes in May. So, it is normal to look for ways to supplement your meagre income.
Ongwediva, where I stay, is normally a quiet and relatively safe place to live, except during the week of the trade fair in August, when people come from all over the country to rob you in the streets. So, imagine my surprise when we were hit during the Xmas party. While thirty people were letting their hair down to celebrate the end of work for the year a gang of desperados cut the razor wire on the compound wall, climbed in, hacked through the window burglar bars in the back office and stole everything from the office of Tonata, the organisation run by people living with HIV. Then they ‘fished' the brand new Nikon camera from the bedroom of a Dutch researcher while she typed at her computer in the next room. Fishing is done through an open window with, in this case, a stick with a piece of razor wire attached to hook the item required. Ottilie even saw two of the men lounging in front of the office building, but thought they were part of the party. The bare-faced cheek and typical of the modern criminal.
When I went down to Windhoek, the following week my colleague from Caprivi told me sorry tale of his car. For Kennedy, the car is the possession he prizes above all else. He was late for work because he had to sort out a problem. He sadly told me how he had lent the car to his cousin who had pulled into a filling-station only to be surrounded by thugs who stole the car, cutting his hand with a knife in the process. The car was found by the police later, badly damaged. In his melancholy mood, he told me just how bad things were. First, Ingrid, our colleague had been surrounded in a shopping mall at mid-day, escaping only because she knows the thugs from her area and her son pushed a way through them. Then, when he was having a work car cleaned next to a mall, he watched a group of young men sitting outside a garage opposite playing cards. To his amazement, they suddenly put their cards down and ran up the street. They had seen a tourist with a day bag on her back. They threatened her with a knife and relieved her of her burden. He turned to the car wash boy and asked him if he had seen it.
“Yeah, it's their job.” He replied, unconcerned.
Kennedy saw them do it again before he hurried away with his clean car.
Of course, it is one thing to rob tourists and rich whites, quite another to rob from your own. In Malawi, a man was neck-laced and burnt to ashes close to where I lived, for cutting a girl who surprised him in a burglary. Here in Namibia, a man at a football match I attended felt his pocket being picked and beat the youth badly. People all agree that it should happen.
Often, it really is no laughing matter. Recently a young, profoundly deaf girl was abducted at the side of the road in Oshakati and driven to Ongwediva, where she was brutally raped by four young men.
When I came back from my holiday after Christmas, there was a spate of burglaries close to home. Probably the same gang that robbed our compound at work were turning their hand to night raids on houses. First, two South African construction workers living almost next to the police station awoke to find that their possessions and a large amount of money from their business had emigrated. A week later the house next door was burgled in the night. Then they moved closer to me – to a family in the house opposite mine. At two in the morning the gang of five men pulled down the electric fencing on the wall of the house (like a cattle fence) and tied up the family at gunpoint. The propertied classes spend a lot of money protecting their houses with alarms and fences linked to instant response firms. But night raids make it a waste of money. By now us middle classes were united in a frenzy of fear.
The next Saturday I had just bid goodnight to a sleepy visitor, when I heard a muted sound of what I immediately recognised as gunfire. This was followed by the sound of a car's squealing tyres and a straining engine. I called to my visitor to ask if he heard it. He did not want to think it might be gunfire. Five minutes later there it was again. Pah, pah, pah, pah-pah. This time right outside my back gate. I waited a couple of minutes and then ventured outside to gaup. Sure enough there was a police car and two armed security vehicles parked outside the house that had been burgled just a week previously. We all immediately put our imaginations into top gear.
“Maybe they know he has money in the house and came back.”
“There must be more to this than meets the eye. I know someone in a village who caught two men who had drilled a hole in his wall. They had been sent to kill him by SWAPO.”
Then just two days later, outside of our work compound there were more gun shots in the dark, followed by another screeching getaway. Ongwediva had turned into a Mexican border town – it was official.
Much to our chagrin the truth emerged over the course of the week. I saw Elizabeth, a Namibian teacher outside her house.
“Did you find out any more about the shooting?”
“Yes the man from the house bought a gun and got drunk. He thought he heard burglars and came out shooting all over the place. He still had a bottle in his hand when the police came.”
Still that could not explain the shooting outside my work. I went straight to see Meinke, who was staying in the compound.
“Did you hear any more about the shooting?”
“Yes, the house opposite was rented to a Namibian man. He moved half of his belongings in one night and returned next night with the rest. The landlord was driving by and thought someone was breaking in. he started firing at his tenant. Apparently the police know him and say he is often involved in such incidents.”
It transpired that the gunslinger was none other than the local M.P.
In UK we are always warned that fear of crime is worse than crime itself. Ongwediva seems to prove the point that you are more likely to be killed by fear than greed.
Wild Parties and The Rise of the Middle Classes
A young member of the ANC in South Africa, apparently a very rich man from his gangster background, threw two very decadent parties both costing several million pounds. At the parties, women were hired to use their bodies as platters for food and bling was the rule. The older members of the ANC who had fought for the rights of the vast sections of poor black Africans in South Africa were reported to be very unhappy at this insensitive display of public excess by a member of the party. The man was unrepentant.
‘I will spend my money how I want. We will have more parties. I did not join the ANC to be poor.'
For some time I have felt that the population imbalance experienced by many African countries is a ticking time-bomb. After all, my logic told me, it is from this largely unemployed youth sector that crime and disturbance will emerge. It was thus encouraging to read an article in the Economist that argued to the contrary. This youthful population is just what led to the rise of Asian economies. The workforce is lively and productive. Add this to the fact that African economies have for several years been growing at a faster rate than other continents and you have, for the first time in many years, messages of hope coming out of Africa.
The signs that things are changing pop-up in many ways, especially in urban settings. I met a Namibian man on my travels whose work is to arrange bi-lateral Government funding agreements with rich donor countries. We got to talking about the difference in wealth between Namibia and some other countries.
“Yes, I went to Malawi and the people are very friendly, but the cars are in a terrible condition compared to Namibia. Here everyone (in his urban middle class circle) buys new cars. They can get loans.”
In fact you would be hard-pressed to spot the difference between the aspirations of a young middle class African and a young person in any Western country. On the national TV station they run a morning item which asks young professionals, usually women,
‘what are the ten things you could not live without?'
Invariably the young women start with their cell phone. High heel shoes feature often, closely followed by make-up and, oh yes, Facebook is sure to get a mention. Somewhere down the list a boyfriend or family or bible might get a look in.
A visit to the shopping malls – two large new malls are to open in my small suburban town - demonstrates the taste for Western consumerism and the ability of increasing numbers to join the game. All of the professional women I work with have endless changes of clothes, often featuring very short skirts (anathema to most rural African women). Men tend to put more emphasis on their cars.
A young Ugandan woman volunteer exemplified the new generation of African middle class women. Highly educated, confident and on the surface very African in ways I have come to understand. She goes to church every Sunday, changes her hair extension style every month, feels strongly about family ties and cannot think of eating a meal without lots of meat . However, as soon as she talks about her likes and dislikes the changes are apparent. For a start, she doesn't like walking and given the chance will not walk. Partly, this is because she wears fashion shoes, but even in Kampala at University she took taxis from one part of the campus to the other to attend lectures. She is now 28 years of age and is not even thinking of marriage, in spite of the rebukes of family members. Her passion is the soaps on TV every night and will ignore visitors to watch them – very un-African. She buys women's magazines full of love, sex, gossip and fashion. Her Kenyan volunteer friend of a similar age came with several suitcases full of expensive clothes and immediately went out to buy a new TV, and a subscription to satellite TV. All a far cry from village life, but not so far from a life we all understand in our wealthy consumer worlds.
The next pop-up came at the work Christmas party, which was also the farewell event for our young manager in Ongwediva. The event was a great success. The beer flowed, wine was mixed with coke to make it drinkable, meat, in vast quantities, was put on the brai (BBQ) and speakers were set up to encourage dancing. Young men from a nearby bank turned up in their smart casual wear. It was noticeable that many, who enjoyed dancing, needed some encouragement and alcohol before they would join the dancing – try to stop them in the village. At last the time came for speeches. After all Frieda was to leave after six years. The MC introduced the first speaker. Vicky had written a poem. She started to read it. At the same time Frieda noticed a car that had just arrived. With Vicky's eulogy in full flow, Frieda stood up and walked away to the car where she stood talking for fifteen minutes. Eventually, the process was started again and protocols were satisfied.
I started talking to two young women. Both had young children, but no husbands.
I asked “would you like to get married again?” The answer surprised me.
“No” one said with feeling, “I prefer to stay with my grandmother, my mother and my family.”
The other told me “I will never marry again.”
I asked why she felt that way and she told me that she did not want to bossed around by a man. She had started her own business and valued her freedom.
I had a similar response from three assertive young women in Botswana. This party was in a national park with the novel attraction of being opened by a spotted hyena that smelt meat (no fences between the animals and the staff houses). Again the women talked about marriage, one had a child. All were against marriage, although one was open to the idea if she could find the right man, she said, without any great sense of hope. They laughed at the idea that women in Botswana might be oppressed by men.
When you ask young African professional men or women how many children they want they invariably say two or three at the outside. They usually quote the cost of bringing up children and the desire to make sure they have everything they need. Compare this to the average of six per women in Malawi. However, in one area men are always traditional. They will not marry a woman who earns more than them. Why? It is the man's role to provide in the household and to make the decisions. One of my young colleagues told me,
“Suppose she earned more than me, I could come home and she could tell me to cook her something.” Could anything be worse?
It seemed to me that things are changing in women's lives in particular. It would be wrong to say that traditional African values are disappearing, after all in many nations most of the people live in rural traditional settings. However, I think I see the next urban generation emerging with ideas that are much closer to our Western ways of seeing life. With predictions that 50% of Africans will live in cities by 2050 it looks like things will change fast and increasing numbers will lose contact with their rural African traditions and ways of living, just as I did in my upbringing.
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