The bridge over the Cuvelai has been restored

Urgent needs in the most critical time

All bridges of the strategically important tar road in the north from west to east through the Ovamboland were guarded by the military. The situation was tense. The conflict came closer and the war was escalating. PLAN (People’s Liberation Army of Namibia), the military wing of Swapo, and its allies were fighting for an independent Namibia against the occupying South African colonial power and white apartheid regime of Pretoria which was supported by the majority of white people who fought for the white privileges in a status quo. The black population did sacrifice tremendously and the number of victims has become uncountable. People were brought to the hospital with lacerations, bloody wounds with bloodshot marks on the chest or back, on arms and legs after they were interrogated by the special forces of koevoet (Afrikaans for crowbar) on the field or in the villages or at the police station. Since koevoet had recruited black people, it often happened that black koevoet men beat and tortured their brothers and sisters, if the white captain was of the opinion that the person was a supporter of Swapo. It were most innocent people who became victims of the brutal stick treatment. The suspicion was enough to get beaten, tortured and deported. It was the spiral of force and violence which was cruel and awful. It was seen on the bodies of victims, who came to the hospital for treatment. If there was a suspicion of collaboration that for instance a PLAN-fighter was hiding in the kraal, the heavily armoured Casspir vehicles flattened the kraal down that the inhabitants with the old people and their children were literally left behind with nothing on the open field.

This civil war lasted for more than ten years and became more destructive the longer the war went on. The insecurity in the north and the military struggle in the close-to-border region to Angola escalated. The white perspective became increasingly critical what had consequences for the hospital as well. Dr Witthuhn as the civilian superintendent was removed from office and replaced by a tall man of the mid-thirties with the dashing uniform of a major. The new superintendent was a medical doctor, but this in second line of smaller importance. He spoke Afrikaans and English eloquently and juggled between the languages ‘ad libitum’ and made repetitions ‘ad infinitum’. He repeated a sentence in English five times and added the repetition of the same sentence in Afrikaans ten times. With each repetition the sentence got stretched longer up to a chewing gum hanging out of his mouth without any further meaning. The nouns were colourfully decorated with adjectives and the verbs were attached with numerous adverbs, thread-like appendages and other threadbare substitutes like empty shells that in the end the core was gone, and what was ‘invisible’ in the beginning were hidden in the end behind all these nonsense decorations.

The verbs about what had to be done what gave the noun the meaningful substance, had disappeared in the trapdoor. Subject and predicate were buried under a jumble of useless decorations and word rubbish. The sentences became irrational that one could not find out what was first and what not or what the superintendent in his dashing major uniform did try to say, not to mention what he was thinking under his word covers. It became clear that this man enjoyed to juggle in a erratic manner from one language to the other and back without speaking a short and meaningful sentence. His eloquence had the format of a barrel organ. People attending the morning meetings were confused and little later bored as well by the bilingual splits that he did not stop, and of the fact that they could not understand what he liked to say. So it became practice that the attendees looked at their watches, though the meeting was not far from the beginning or in the middle. The question was when would the superintendent stop his endless nonsense with the swinging empty shells and threadbare ingredients in a salad which was tasteless and meaningless. If somebody asked him a question, a torrent of words started again until the question had been crushed and chewed that nothing was left, but an answer did not come.

Meanwhile I had got a small flat allocated by the Bantu-administration. The flat had a small sitting room, a one-bed room, a very small kitchen with a semi-automatic washing machine, a veranda with a mosquito screen and a shower room with toilet. I did appreciate this improvement, espe