Barriers on the Path to Freedom E-Book

Helmut Lauschke

• Herausgeber: neobooks
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 302

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The story gives insight into the everyday conflicts caused by psychological and physical sufferings of the people in regard to helplessness, poverty and starvation on the one side, and ignorance and apathy on the other side. The story goes beyond the colour bar during the apartheid era, it goes deep down to the roots of culture and traditions to reveal the causes of ignorance and malpractices and their consequences. The story is based on personal experiences about courage, commitment and caring for neglected, injured and disabled people. It is a story about life and devotion of a few doctors at the hospital in the far north of Namibia close to the Angolan border, inside the war zone where the war for independence was escalating. The story challenges the reader to value the people's character and to re-evaluate the honesty in regard to their social commitments. The story, with its various conflicts, is a confrontation between truth and the permanent temptation of untruth. Freedom with responsibility should become the foundation of life and education, with providing reason, reasonableness and strength to overcome the weaknesses of disrespect, prejudice and opportunism, from where come the evils of unsocial behaviours like dishonesty, arrogance, nepotism and corruption associated with bribery and self-enrichment, which leads to discrimination, segregation and exploitation. All these aspects of inhumanity and irresponsibility cause the social imbalances with loss of trust among the people resulting in insecurity, increase of poverty and unrest. Die Geschichte gibt Einblick in die Alltagskonflikte, verursacht durch die seelischen und körperlichen Leiden der Menschen in ihrer Hilflosigkeit, Armut und Verzehrung auf der einen Seite und der Ignoranz und Gleichgültigkeit auf der anderen Seite. Die Geschichte geht über die Farbschranke während der Apartheid hinaus und reicht tief zu den Wurzeln der Kultur und Traditionen.

Leseprobe

Helmut Lauschke

Barriers on the Path to Freedom

Novel

Dieses ebook wurde erstellt bei

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

Barriers on the Path to Freedom

Foreword

Inside the war zone

A new day

Starting Work

Heavy Detonations on a Thursday Morning

Glossary

Impressum neobooks

Barriers on the Path to Freedom

In memory of the children

who lost their fathers or mothers or both

children who swallowed stones against hunger

children with water bellies on stalk legs with big eyes

who could not keep their lives

children who were torn in pieces by landmines

and those whose arms and legs were cut off

after they have survived the blast

children who got the misfortune by birth

and those who could not make it up to birth.

Foreword

The liberation stuggle had been carrying on in the north of Namibia since long before 1985. The apartheid regime was trying to hold on to the last threads of its existence. The Western powers continued their sanctions against South Africa. Decisions made by the United States and the former Soviet Union (USSR) ultimately led to the downfall of President P.W. Botha, and paved the way for resolving the issues in Namibia. After President Botha’sretirement in 1989, South Africa was pressurised to retreat and accept the inevitable independence of Namibia as a country with its own national sovereignty.

It was during the time of war in the north of Namibia that Dr Ferdinand set foot on African soil for the first time. He was met by the beauty and vastness of the country, the scorching sun and the face of poverty and deprivation at Oshakati Hospital, all in one day.

Barriers on the Path to Freedomis based on experiences of a medical doctor at Oshakati Hospital during the liberation struggle. The story touches on culture and traditions, ignorance and arrogance and the pain of the injured and the lost. It speaks against apartheid during the liberation struggle, the corruption and the inhumaneness.

The story tells about the suffering of innocent and helpless people, the hardworking nurses and the few doctors who kept the neglected hospital running inside the war zone. The story is set against the backdrop of the hospital, the village and the lokasie, describing the military activities, the dusty roads and the poverty of the black people.

The author introduces the characters in their emotional nakedness, the hatred and arrogance, but also the respect and companionship. He portrays the antagonism between the inexperience ot youth and the experience of age, between the military and civilian life, and how the evils become the ground for underhandedness and unscrupulous behaviour and competition, which in one case led to the death of a 14-year-old boy. The story describes the skills of doing operative procedures using improvisation due to the lack of the basic equipment and the shortages of drugs and blood units.

The author contrasts the reality of the war and the poor conditions at the hospital with the beauty of music and art, the spectacular sunrises and sunsets and the extraordinary friendships. It is an intriguing story with compelling characters, medical work and innovations, and the poor people, waiting … waiting for the doctors, waiting to be treated, waiting to be healed, waiting to b heard!

Inside the war zone

Dr Witham was the superintendent at the hospital. He picked up Dr Ferdinand with in his car, and together they drove back to the North. It was a long and tiring journey of more than seven hundred kilometres. The African sun burnt down mercilessly on the tarred road. The two men unbuttoned their clammy shirts, trying to cool down, but the shirts were wet and stuck to their skin. It was Ferdinand’s first time on African soil and he tried to take it all in – the vast plains, the thorn trees, the brownish-green grass and the occasional oryx or springbok. It was so different, so breathtakingly beautiful.

“This is Africa in all its splendour – so beautiful but so merciless and sad,” said Dr Witham, reading Dr Ferdinand’s thoughts. “Be careful, it will grow on you and capture you,” he said.

Ferdinand stared at the scenery a while longer without answering. A sudden smile changed his expression. “I think I might like it here,” he said, looking sideways at Dr Witham.

***

Ferdinand felt uncomfortable. He smelt the beastly, penetrating urine stench in the hospital square. The mouth was dry as he reached the entrance of the hospital. The entrance door was broken away from the hinges. It leaned against the side wall, barricading a part of the passage. He walked fast, as if he was in a hurry, but he couldn’t escape the stench, even when he held his breath for a short while. The surroundings looked astonishingly poor and dilapidated. I slowly dawned on him that he had taken his first steps into an unknown world of poverty and privation.

For a moment, he lost his companion, who had hurried through the entrance into an overheated hall, lightened up by the fiery yellow rays of the Namibian sun. Ferdinand realised it was the waiting hall. He stopped in his tracks. What met his eyes was ghastly and overwhelming. The hall was overcrowded with people sitting on benches and on the floor. Mingling smells of sweat and dirt formed a dense odour cloud that hung heavily around the the waiting crowd. There was not a prick of movement in the air. The people waited patiently for the doctor. Ferdinand had never seen or smelt such crowds before!

Witham was calm as he passed through the crowd with a certain air of confidence, but not unaff by the sight in spite of its familiarity. Looking at the helpless faces of the people, Ferdinand feltected instinct within the human clusters. The faces of the people looked helpless. Ferdinand felt lost. Witham took him by the arm, saying in a low voice, “Not everything is bad.” He started the round of introduction.

“Come, let me show you the operating theatre of the outpatient department,” he said and took a narrow path through the waiting crowd, breathing in the penetrating stench. The path was skirted by barefoot mothers carrying thin children with big eyes, wrapped in old cloths and rags, in their arms or on their backs. Many of them looked exhausted. Some of the older girls – barely teenagers themselves – carried sick and malnourished children on their backs. The people in general had thin arms and thin legs. Their clothes looked threadbare and shabby and some were dirty and torn. The tired faces showed prominent cheek bones. Many looked old and weary as if not from this world.

For a fleeting moment, the scene took Ferdinand many years back. He was in Germany and ten years old. He remembered the withered and emaciated bodies of the prisoners marching in broken shoes without socks through the fresh snowfall in columns down the street. He remembered their old-looking, expressionless faces, knowing they were marching to their death.

Children were crying and screaming from hunger, fear and pain. Small children lay with their mouths at flabby breasts. The signs of poverty and distress could not be mistaken. There were men and women with injured hands and feet, others had injuries to their eyes and other body parts, probably due to ill-treatment. The walk through the dense clusters of patients, the overpowering smell of sweat, and the sorrowful faces were Ferdinand’s first frightening encounter with Ovamboland. It was his first walk among a ‘naked’ kind of human poverty and plight, a kind that he had not seen before. He felt as if he was taught a first lesson in life, a lesson about the different faces of everyday life in terms of basic needs, or lack thereof, and how people were treated ‘every day’ for generations. For some, life was easy but for for others, a struggle for survival.

The path narrowed between the waiting people as they neared the section which Witham indicated with his left hand as the operating theatre for smaller surgical procedures of the outpatient department. Here, the entrance door was heavily dented and its left wing was missing. The small glass window in the right wing was smashed. Two glass pieces with razor-sharp edges stuck out dangerously in the window frame. In the operating theatre, there was an old, German-manufactured operating table with rusty spots where the nickel coating had peeled off.

A young doctor in uniform of the South African Defence Force [SADF] was working on a hand injury. The young man on the operating table twisted his face of pain. The air conditioner was not working and the heat in the theatre was unbearable. Only three of the seven bulbs in the operating light were working. The hinge holding the light was out of order, it kept moving away from the operating field, and the young black nurse – with a beautiful face – had to manually adjust it by holding the lamp.

Sweat dripped from the doctor’s face onto the operating field. The instruments were old and showed the rust and wear and tear of the years to use. Some only functioned partially, and the instrument set was poorly equipped. The wheels of the instrument trolley were stuck, making the table barely movable. An old woman with a young girl on her knees sat on an old chair with a broken-off back. A young student nurse, obviously at the beginning of her training, clumsily bandaged the girl’s left foot.

The narrow suffocatingly hot theatre room with the unbearable smells of sweat pouring in from outside through the entrance prompted Dr Witham to leave this room. He asked Ferdinand to follow him so he could show him the various wards of the hospital.

“Come, let me show you the wards.” The way out was even more difficult. The patients stood in dense clusters still waiting for treatment. It was already late afternoon and sunset was curfew time, after which the people were not allowed to leave the hospital grounds to return to their villages. Many of them would spend the night there at the hospital.

After they had made their way through the jungle of people, the superintendent took his colleague along a small concrete passage full of cracks and rifts. A corrugated iron roof covered the passage to provide shade against the blazing sun, but the sun poked its rays in under the roof at a perfect angle to gulp away half of the promised shade. Witham, broad-shouldered and with signs of a paunch, wiped the sweat from his face.

“Here in the wards you will see what our doctors and nurses achieve”, he said, as he turned his face sideways to Ferdinand, who followed him silently. They passed by patients with dressings on their heads and arms. Some of them walked clumsily on home-made walking sticks and crutches.

“Now, we follow the blue line,” Witham said, pointing with his left hand to the blue line on the concrete floor. Parallel to the blue line were red, green and yellow lines. All the lines were weathered in some places barely recognisable and and over some lengths even invisible.

“These lines are guides for our patients and their relatives to find the right ward,” Witham added.

Ferdinand kept onr eye on the blue line while he looked at the patients who passed by with difficulty, trying to keep upright while struggling to walk with their worn-out crutches, old sticks or the support of a family member. Women, with children in their arms or on their backs, old people with wrinkled faces, and blind people, guided by children with a hand-to-hand stick, passed them by.

The two doctors followed the blue line that turned in the direction of a building with a flat corrugated iron roof. The outside plaster of the buildung was badly weathered by the years of neglect. The brown painted door was battered and dirty, and without a handle. They entered the orthopaedic ward for males. A porter struggled to transport a patient from the theatre building to the ward with a trolley on three squeaking wheels – the fourth wheel was missing. The patient was a young man who had not yet fully woken up.

Ferdinand saw a bandaged dressing on a short left above-knee stump. The porter made every effort to keep the trolley stable to avoid the possibility of the patient falling. He reached the ward corridor and pushed the trolley into the first bedroom to the left. Two nurses lifted the patient from the trolley onto the bed. It was an eight-bed room with four beds to the left and four beds to the right. The beds were occupied by patients who had recently undergone operations. Five patients had bandages on either their arms or legs.

“There is no single day without patients are not brought in with injuries,” Witham said. He added: “Many of them are admitted with blast injuries caused by landmines or with gunshots wounds.”

Strong smells of sweat and urine filled the ward which was hopelessly overcrowded. Then Ferdinand saw the patients with fresh dressings lying on blankets on the floor between the beds. Among them, there were two old men who had had surgery for hernia repairs a few days before. A male nurse and a female student nurse in her second year of training did the late shift in the ward with its thirty-four beds. Despite being overworked – which clearly showed on their faces – both nurses greeted Ferdinand warmly. When they shook hands, they asked in Afrikaans, the official language of that time, if Ferdinand intended to work at the hospital, as they only had only a few medical doctors. When Witham told them that his colleague was a surgeon, the nurses became excited and replied that there was no surgeon at the hospital.

“We will find a solution,” Ferdinand said thoughtfully, foreseeing the challenge of handling the huge workload under the unfamiliar climatic and other conditions. He guessed that the hours in a day were never enough to finish the work needed by the large numbers of patients.

“Come!” Witham said and added: “I know what it looks like but not everything is bad. Let’s talk about it in my office.”

The superintendent’s office was noticeably spacious. Old chairs of different types and shapes stood against three walls. A huge desk stood close to the fourth wall. On the wall behind the desk, there was a big white painted, wooden-framed cork noticeboard. Some papers were stuck by drawing pins disorderly all over the board. Two air conditioners, which gave the office a pleasant temperature, rattled noisilyfrom above two of the four windows. The colleagues sat down, Witham on an old upholstered swivel chair behind the desk and Ferdinand on a simple chair in front of the desk.

Witham groaned with relief when he sank into the comfortable chair with the soft back and two armrests. The fabric cover over the back of the chair was yellowed and had dark stains and tears showing the foam rubber stuffing. Witham looked at his watch and called the secretary for two cups of tea with milk and sugar.

He asked Ferdinand if he had gained an impression of the hospital and the work to be done. Ferdinand’s eyes roved along the wall with the windows. Through one of the windows, he saw the knotty branches and some bizarre thick stumps of an old tree between the administration building and the opposite building with the flat corrugated roof. There were no air conditioners over the windows of the opposite building.

“The impression far exceeds my experience. I have never seen such huge crowds of patients and casualties,” Ferdinand said, withdrawing his eyes from the branches with the bizarre stumps, which he had counting.

Witham was a man in his midforties with dark brown eyes and a broad nasal bridge. His dark eyebrows looked wild, and when he spoke, he revealed a dazzling white set of teeth. His hair was dark brown and bushy, with the early grey shades showing at the temples.

“Since I have become the superintendent five months ago, things here at the hospital have improved. Some old instruments have been replaced, two defective operating tables have been repaired, and, most importantly, the number of doctors increased from eleven to fourteen. I know it is not enough compared to the huge number of patients, but considering that we are in a war zone under difficult circumstances, the improvement has been remarkable,” Witham said.

The black secretary, a beautiful young woman built typically like the African women, brought the tray with teapot, two cups, milk jug, sugar bowl and two teaspoons, and put it on the desk. While doing so, she told Witham in her soft voice that Dr Eratus, the Secretary of Health and Welfare, had phoned and asked him to return his call, and that Dr Jodman also asked to talk to him.

“There is no time to talk now,” Witham said. “You see I am busy talking to my colleague from Germany who came to work at the hospital as a surgeon.” The secretary smiled because she knew about the need of doctors.

“Tell Dr Jodman that it is impossible today. He can come to tomorrow after the morning meeting,” Witham said while lifting his body ponderously to fill the cups.

“Do you take milk and sugar?” Witham asked.

“Two teaspoons of sugar, but no milk,” Ferdinand answered quickly. Witham stirred the sugar in the cup and passed it to Ferdinand from behind his desk. Then, he put sugar and some milk in his own cup. Holding the cup in his right hand, he explained that they had to apply for a work permit for Ferdinand from the South African Medical and Dental Council in Pretoria as a matter of urgency.

“This procedure will probably take one week”, he said very optimistically, stating that the council was always helpful in this regard. He offered Ferdinand accommodation at his house while they were waiting for the work permit.

***

There was a loud knock at the door. Without waiting for an answer a middle-sized man with a pale face, dark hair and flashing dark-brown eyes entered the room. His face looked fiery, signalling an impending attack. He wore an immaculately ironed, clean uniform shirt with the epaulets of a second lieutenant in the South African Defence Force. The superintendent introduced the man as Dr Jodman. The doctor, in his late twenties, took a seat on an upholstered chair in front of the window, between the superintendent and Ferdinand.

Only for a second the young doctor in uniform kept his tongue under control while he suspiciously scanned the newcomer with dark, fiery and restlessly moving eyes. There was no doubt that his look was condemning and full of dislike. Suddenly, he interrupted the introduction and asked Ferdinand with importunity. “Are you on holiday or do you intend to work at the hospital?” Before Ferdinand could respond, Jodman continued by indicating with an expression of importance, “Nobody should underestimate the war, particularly not the foreigners. It has escalated in recent months and has led to a dramatic increase in the number of casualties.”

Jodman in his clean uniform with the immaculately ironed creases obviously preferred speaking instead of listening. After the brief introduction, he pulled out a paper containing a list of complaints from the breast pocket of his shirt and unfolded it ceremoniously. Disregarding the fact that the two doctors were discussing important matters, Jodman started complaining about the poor cooperation of the nurses in the surgical male ward.

“They don’t change the dressings as prescribed and don’t do the infusions and blood transfusions as ordered. They simply do not cooperate,” he pointed out.

After patiently listening to his complaints, Witham tried to explain the situation from his perspective. However, Jodman did not allow him to finish the sentence and interrupted him by continuing the complaints. The more he stressed his personal views, the clearer the psychogram of his egocentric personality became – a personality that arrogates to himself the right to a monologue.

Ferdinand was still pondering the importance of wearing a uniform as a small lieutenant when the young man suddenly spoke arrogantly to the superintendent as medical doctor. It was a demonstration of military power, though this kind of demonstration was at that moment totally misplaced. He threatened to report Witham to the colonel.

From this discussion, Ferdinand realised that Witham’s relationship with the colonel, who was also the Director of Health and Welfare, Dr Eisenstein, was a tense one. As head of the Department of Health and Welfare, he occupied a comfortable office with an air conditioner. He did next to nothing during working hours. His concerns were focused on his teeth and other personal things, and of course, on keeping up a good relationship with the brigadier by obediently following his instructions and orders. As far as the hospital was concerned, he merely wrote letters, circulars and memorandums. Although most of his circulars and memorandums were contra-productive and ridiculous, they had to be followed. Because he had little or nothing else to do, these letters appeared quite frequently. It was obvious that the colonel used these letters to demonstrate the importance and power of his position. The phrasing in these papers became sharper and more piercing from one month to the next. His expression of discrimination against black people could not be ignored.

Opposing this discrimination, Witham, as superintendent, put all his efforts into helping the black people as much as possible by keeping the hospital running. As an educated civilian, he argued and fought against the narrow-mindedness of the powerful people in uniform, particularly the director of health. Although Witham was a pacifist by nature, he was a doctor with heart. He saw his duty and task as helping the people. It let to clashes between himself and the people in uniform. He courageously argued that there should be no difference in the way patients are treated, least of all because of skin colour!

Jodman interrupted the superintendent who was explaining the reason for the problems in a mixture of English and Afrikaans. Witham called the young doctor to order.

“Don’t interrupt me,” Witham said. “You should insert the intravenous injections and put on the drips yourself before leaving the ward for theatre. Maybe the nurses will cooperate better if you are a bit friendlier and mor cooperative. Cooperation is what we need in the time of war.”

Jodman didn’t respond but just looked at his paper and mentioned the shortage of antibiotics and certain solutions for intravenous infusions.

“The antibiotics and infusions have been ordered from the central pharmacy in Windhoek. More I cannot do,” the superintendent said.

The doctor in the spruced up uniform refused to understand the point. He disagreed that he should insert the intravenous injections and turned a deaf ear to the superintendent’s request for commitment and understanding of the problems in the ward. From the expression on his face, it was clear that Jodman rejected any kind of advice. He gave the impression that a doctor in uniform didn’t need any advice or instruction from a civilian superintendent. Jodman regarded himself as important enough to oppose the superintendent’ arguments.

“I will discuss this matter with the director,” he said arrogantly.

The next day, the young doctor went to the director and complained about the issue he had discussed with the superintendent. The director immediately wrote a circular to inform the nursing staff in the wards that they had to strictly follow the orders of the doctors and had to perform certain additional tasks, such as inserting intravenous injections and drips. The circular was signed by Dr Eisenstein as ‘Colonel and Director of Health & Welfare’.

***

Ferdinand learned more about the tricky situation in the public health system and about the Regional Bantu Administration on his first evening at Witham’s house. Witham was born as the son of a German missionary in the Cape Province in South Africa. He was one of three children. He studied medicine at the UCT (University of Cape Town) and stayed in Germany with his family for more than a year. He worked as a medical doctor for the German Bundeswehr at the airbase Luftgeschwader Richthofen in Oldenburg in the north of Germany. He spoke German, English and Afrikaans fluently, and sometimes he mixed one language with the other.

“Come, I’ll show you your room,” he said and showed Ferdinand a small room that was crammed with filled cardboard boxes. Shirts, trousers, underwear – ironed and not ironed – and socks and other things were lying on a small bed, together with written and clean sheets of paper, and various journals. In a few movements the superintendent had removed the things from the bed and pushed the full and partially-filled cardboard boxes towards the opposite wall, where he stacked them into a pyramid that almost reached the ceiling.

The room was little bigger than a cabinet. Ferdinand tried to fit himself and his belongings into this narrow, looking around for some empty space to put down his stuff. Witham went to the sitting room, where he put Mozart’s The Magic flute on the record player. He enjoyed lively music, like Papageno’s Aria, to which he joined in with a musical voice. With pride, he told Ferdinand about a choir competition in which he competed in 1976 in Dublin. Their choir, the Cantare audire, was awarded the third prize. With his gift, Witham could have easily made it as an opera singer.

Apart from being a remarkable singer, Witham, like Ferdinand, had a good understanding of visual art. As he remarked on the individual reproductions of the paintings hanging on the wall, it was clear that he had a detailed knowledge of the paintings from the impressionistic era. The paintings were not hanging straight and Ferdinand put them right, while Witham elaborated on the compositions and the details of the colouring and lines.

The house was given to Witham by the Bantu Administration. It was a bulding with asbestos walls and ceilings,, and a corrugated iron roof. The house had three bigger rooms, a kitchen, a toilet with a shower and a small sleeping cabinet, which was Ferdinand’s room.

An important aspect in Witham’s life was food. He was a gourmet who enjoyed food. At sunset, he put some knotty pieces of chopped branches in a braai made from a rusty drum with some holes. He put the pieces in a weird pile and lit the fire, while imitating Papageno with his musical voice.

“Is’nt it wonderful?” he said, delighted from the cheerfulness of the The Magic Flute, combined with the colourful spectacle of the sun over the horizon. The music came to the lapping fire through the tilted skylight of one window. The Wiener Phiharmonic Orchstra, conducted by Karl Böhm, played this wonderful music. The record had some scratches where the needle went through rutted grooves with squeaking sounds of different lengths.

“This is medicine for the soul after a day of Oshakati hospital,” Witham said and laughed. He went to the blue BMW given to him by the Department of Health & Welfare. He opened the boot and took out some steak, boerewors (sausage made with minced meat and spices), a two-kilogram bag of potatoes, a bag with vegetables and a pack of twelve Guinness dumpies (bottles of beer). He had to walk to the car more than once and eventually placed everything on the small garden table next to the fire. The flames licked high over the drum and charred pieces fell through the holes at the bottom. Witham opened two dumpies and, after handing Ferdinand one, he said jovially, “Cheers and welcome in Oshakati !”

After the welcoming cheers, Witham emptied the dumpy almost in one swig. The flames went down and he spread the glowing coals at the bottom of the drum with a grill tong. More charred pieces fell through the holes and Ferdinand realised that he had to be careful not to step on the hot pieces on the ground. Witham put an old grid iron with rusty rods on the drum and placed the pieces of meat and a large curl of boerewors on the grid. A delicious smell curled up with the smoke, which made Ferdinand’s mouth water. Witham turned the steaks and wors and left some potatoes, wrapped in foil, baking amongst the coals. He opened the second round of dumpies and once again said, “Cheers!” when missiles suddenly whizzed over the braai and detonated seconds later with loud bangs. Ferdinand was shocked.

The familiar sounds of war shook him, and his hand lost its grip on the bottle. He spilled some beer on his trousers. He thought he had stored the memories of fear and death at the back of his mind. For a fleeting moment, he was back in Germany in the corner cupboard with his hands over his ears trying to escape the piercing sounds of the bombs. He remembered … and was overcome by a bewildered feeling of being thrown back into the reality of war, accompanied by all the depressive emotions involved with his recent divorce, all the hurt and heartache that drove him from Germany, the country of his fathers. At that moment, he felt very alone.

“Don’t worry, things like this happen when the new contingent of soldiers arrive to replace the others who have finished their service and are waiting to be flown back to Pretoria,” Witham said and opened another dumpy for Ferdinand.

He heard the squeaking and roaring sounds of military vehicles approaching. In the clouds of dust, he saw the Casspirs with their huge wheels speeding along the gravel road. There were machine guns erected over the drivers’ cab and they carried heavily armed squads. They caused huge sand clouds to blow over the braai, which left fine dust particles on the meat and boerewors. The eyes were scratchy. Witham, undisturbed, turned the potatoes and checked the meat.

“Now, we’ll have another beer,” he said and opened two more. “Cheers! It is not so bad,” he added optimistically, taking a good swig and turning the potatoes. The smell from the meat from the meat engulfed everything. Witham moved and turned the meat on the grid like a professional. They emptied their beers wishing other well for what lay ahead, working together and for a better future.

It was with his sense of irony that Witham said, “Nothing is better against thirst than a cold beer.”

After the unexpected missile attack, Ferdinand realised that he was inside the war zone. Therefore, he understood the cold beer phrase as Witham’s way of showing and maintaining his optimism. Ferdinand thought of the people who had to live under such fearsome conditions. He thought of the children who were deprived of their childhood in much the same way he was as a child during the war in Germany. About the ‘good life’ in the North that Witham once mentioned, Ferdinand had become his doubts.

The village, where the hospital is situated, is kbown as Oshakati. This indigenous word means ‘village in the middle of the Ovambo’. Over the years the village played a meaningful role in den development of the future the country. But the whites still had the power and the keys that locked the doors for the blacks!

During those days, under the white apartheid regime, the system of injustice against black people was clearly in place. The bloody fight for justice and the turning of the key to open the doors according to the UN Resolution 435 resulted in the increase of misery and casualties. The doors in those days were open for whites but closed for blacks. The whites kept the keys firmly in their hands. They decided for both themselves and the blacks. This was reality, and it was often far detached from reason. Not personal integrity and intelligence but skin colour determined the quality of life, education and physical movement of people. The system of apartheid was anachronistic, ridiculous and unreasonable, which left the realization of the UN Resolution 435 still very much out of sight.

“You see, we have to deal with some formalities before you can start working,” Witham said as they enjoyed their steaks and boerewors with baked potatoes. “As I said, we need a work permit from the Medical and Dental Council in Pretoria. I will phone the council on Monday morning, but I first need a letter from the director stating that you are urgently needed.”

What he did not say was that the council would not, as opposed to how they handled British certifications, acknowledge Ferdinand’s German specialist certificates. It meant that Ferdinand had to work as a general practitioner and in addition to that, the permit would be restricted to Oshakati Hospital only. Witham knew that Ferdinand would no be happy but for now decided to keep quiet, not to complicate the situation.

Witham felt bitter about the unequal treatment of doctors by the council, though doctors were urgently needed in the North. Dr Witham knew about Ferdinand’s qualifications and expertise and of his scientific reputation, but the council was not interested in that. The hospital needed Ferdinand and to a certain extent, he needed the hospital. But Ferdinand would soon see the ominous dark clouds building up on the horizon.

Dr Eisenstein, Colonel and Director, gave a brief recommendation letter two days later, on a Tuesday, in which he stated the urgent need for a surgeon at Oshakati Hospital. Witham sent this letter with certified translations of Ferdinand’s certificates to the council, which telephonically confirmed receipt of the faxed documents.

***

Every morning at half past seven, there was a meeting with all the medical doctors, the chief matron and her deputy, the pharmacist and a social worker in the superintendent’s office. Except for the superintendent, there were a total of eleven doctors. Seven were military doctors, wearing their South African Defence Force uniforms, and four were civilian doctors. Of the civilian doctors, three were Ovambos – onr man and two women – and Dr Ferdinand. Two of the black colleagues had studied in Durban and one at UCT (University of Cape Town) like Dr Witham. All of them had a Bachelor of Science degree. Eight hospital doctors were white and three were black. That was the situation back in January 1985.

Ovamboland formed part of the war zone. It was a restricted area that could only be entered by special permission. The war between PLAN (People’s Liberation Army of Namibia) and the South African forces was extremely tense. Oshakati Hospital was situated in the war zone and overcrowded with patients. The few doctors at the hospital were totally overworked. Work at the hospital was difficult and further hampered by shortages in basic medicines against infections, malaria, tuberculosis (TB), and protein and vitamin deficiencies. The lack of basic materials and equipment in the operating theatres made the performance of operations and treatment of bone fractures, in particular, more complicated.

Under these demanding and tense conditions, the meetings became more or less repetitions of needs and problems that largely remained unsolved. The meetings confirmed the group’s powerlessness to improve the situation for their patients. The hospital was not only poorly equipped and ill-maintained, but it was in a bad condition overall. The number of people working at the hospital was not enough, and the hospital administration had to depend on the goodwill of the Regional Bantu Administration and the Central Administration of Health and Welfare in Windhoek.

The high-ranking people in the Central Administration were whites who mostly turned a blind eye to the burning health and other problems in the North. They focused their attention on their gateway to Pretoria. These people were politically manipulated and motivated by money. As long as they acted without asking questions and maintained the opportunistic attitude, they were well paid and received many added benefits and allowances. This did not help improve the situation in the North. Their constant attention to South Africa and the always obedient readiness to comply with the orders from their ‘big white brother’ made them blind and deaf to the basic problems in the North.

It was on Wednesday morning that the superintendent introduced Dr Ferdinand to the other colleagues. Dr Nakale, the black male doctor, and the two black female colleagues, Dr Rachel and Dr Teeleni, greeted the newcomer with friendly smiles. The young doctors in uniform with their folded berets under the right epaulets of their perfectly ironed shirts, remained stern and didn’t move a muscle. They looked rather pensive. Curiosity as well as resistance, showed on the face of the young lieutenant Dr Jodman.