Dr Omidhi E-Book

Helmut Lauschke

• Herausgeber: neobooks
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 526

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

If force is equal to right, nations will exhaust each other and will finally find the lasting peace in the big grave that covers the atrocities of violence with their creators. Therefore, victory by force on an unlawful way cannot compromise or nullify the meaning of rights got on a lawful way. (Immanuel Kant) The situation had further deteriorated and the front of resistance against the whites and the occupational forces had further hardened in the black population. The number of casualties went up from week to week. Koevoet had not changed its rude and brutal behaviour against the people. Paramilitary squads mowed down the kraals with their heavy Casspirs, if there was a suspicion of a hiding Swapo-fighter. Since koevoet squads consisted mainly of black recruits, the tortures, deportations and killings of their brothers and sisters happened every day. Old people became physically so weak that they passed away before the time, this mostly because of starvation and infectious diseases. Old people were maltreated by their sons in koevoet, because they did not speak badly or kept quiet about the sons and daughters who left the kraal and went into exile to take part in the liberation struggle. Koevoet continued the nightly raids inconsiderately toward the patients and frightened the sleeping people and mothers with their children on the concrete passage in front of the outpatient department building. The distracted people had to show their IDs. Koevoet beat men who had no ID. "The soul is the color of your thoughts. Our life is what our thinking makes it. The best way to get revenge: Do not reward like with like. The ability to live happily comes from a power inherent in the soul. Despair inevitably afflicts those whose souls are out of balance. If you knew the source of human opinions and interests, you would cease to seek people's applause and praise." (Marc Aurel) It is the roots from which the thought grows, it is the soil that supports and nourishes the roots.

Leseprobe

Helmut Lauschke

Dr Omidhi

The storm clouds of change

Dieses ebook wurde erstellt bei

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

The last year of the white rules

Reflections under the universe of stars

Diamonds under the hand

Easter Monday

A psychologist who brought young soldiers in line to shoot

The siren wailed and somebody knocked

A new day

A koevoet officer kept his promise

The central thread in mind

Thoughts and guesses about the future

The negligence of the superintendent

The cocks crowed before dawn

The years of learning and reconciliation

Preparations for the future and the withdrawal of the army doctors

The telephone rang on a Saturday morning

Dr Nestor became the first black superintendent in the history of the hospital

To cut off the girl’s arm

The siren wailed in three waves over the village

Reflections and meditation

From the center with the point.

Too deep a silence makes me as alarming as too loud a scream.

That's the whole shame: the stupid are so sure and the clever are so full of doubt.

The beginning of wisdom is the definition of the terms.

Being able to ask wisely is half the story.

The happiness of life depends on the nature of the thoughts.

Logical thinking is the pattern of complete fiction.

The philosopher must be regarded as a researcher of wisdom.

Be the change you want in this world for yourself.

Intuition is a divine gift, the thinking mind a faithful servant.

The mind is everything. What we think we will be.

Impressum neobooks

The last year of the white rules

The storm clouds of change

B121

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) said, if force is equal to right, nations will exhaust each other and will finally find the lasting peace in the big grave that covers the atrocities of violence with their creators. It is a fact that nations take their right by force and not by a judiciary process. Therefore, victory by force on an unlawful way cannot compromise or nullify the meaning of rights got on a lawful way.

About physics and philosophy:

Thoughts can have the speed of light

Space and time save the thought

Thoughts are alive and create forces, thoughts are wireless messages

Thought transmission as silent communication

Undulating and swaying thoughts

Thoughts as an expression of energy

Thoughts bring knowledge and create science

Thoughts have shapes of different sizes and weights

The world of thoughts is limitless

In the order of thoughts it comes to knowledge and philosophy

The world is anticipated, bundled, stretched and merged by thoughts

Thoughts are timeless in the change of reality

Thoughts are the bridge from zeitgeist to spirit and vice versa

The thought sets its environment in all directions in vibrations

The thought is inexhaustible, so thoughts are immortal.

The situation had further deteriorated and the front of resistance against the whites and the occupational forces had further hardened in the black population. The number of casualties went up from week to week. Koevoet had not changed its rude and brutal behaviour against the people. Paramilitary squads mowed down the kraals with their heavy Casspirs, if there was a suspicion of a hiding Swapo-fighter. Since koevoet squads consisted mainly of black recruits, the tortures, deportations and killings of their brothers and sisters happened every day. It was compulsory to follow the orders of the white captain. They did their reckless and often cruel work for monthly salaries and regular meals. Koevoet men did the controls and ‘investigations’ consciously but unscrupulously with filled stomachs. In contrast, their brothers and sisters in the liberation movement struggled under extreme conditions and risky circumstances against apartheid and white-blinded injustice without salary and without regular meals. The brothers in grey uniforms of koevoet were well-nourished and had a safe place to sleep. In contrast, the liberation brothers had to struggle often with empty stomachs on open sleeping places in the field. The parents were concerned and felt sad about the killings of brothers and sisters. The physical conditions of the old people had dramatically deteriorated, though they gave the liberation sons and daughters what they could afford. The old people were silent in handling discrimination and degradation with all aspects of privation in poverty and miseries. They gave mahangu, blankets and clothes and the last money to their sons and daughters who went the way for the liberation, and sat back round their huts with little or nothing. Old people did not complain despite poverty and privation, but they waited for salvation from the yoke of oppression to get back their basic human rights. These silent and haggard people had the necessary life experiences of two generations when they exercised patience with great humbleness and wisdom. They said little, while poverty and stress gnawed on them on every day. It were the old people who felt extremely sad about the Kaïn-and-Abel incidents of their sons and daughters that they prayed for an end of the war with its madness and destructive activities.

Old people became physically so weak that they passed away before the time, this mostly because of starvation and infectious diseases. Old people were maltreated by their sons in koevoet, because they did not speak badly or kept quiet about the sons and daughters who left the kraal and went into exile to take part in the liberation struggle. Sons and daughters with the vision of freedom and justice were upset how the whites and koevoet treated and tortured their fathers and mothers. They left the kraals and villages in groups or alone and walked after sunset through the field and through the night hiding them behind bushes and in ditches and holes from the patrolling koevoet. When they approached the border, they asked the local people for the mine-free path. They crossed the border to Angola, some with empty stomach and empty water bottles with torn clothes and worn out shoes. Young people who left the country, did it with patriotism to fight for liberation resisting the system of white apartheid with its discrimination and degradation of the blacks. There were school classes in the north which left together with their teachers Namibia and went into exile. There were children who did not even inform their parents waiting for them to come back from school. These classes built up their companionship with a high degree of discipline and solidarity needed to keep up the morale as the fundament of mutual trust and helpfulness. All of them had the same vision that future for all the people becomes better when the racist system has been defeated.

Koevoet continued the nightly raids inconsiderately toward the patients and frightened the sleeping people and mothers with their children on the concrete passage in front of the outpatient department building. The distracted people had to show their IDs. Koevoet beat men who had no ID. They pushed them into the Casspir and brought them to the police station for further questionings which were often associated with heavy stick blows or other kinds of torture. The civilian superintendent in the short-sleeved shirt with the red nose bulb and the sleep creases in his face was still in office when he left the morning meeting and disappeared to the toilet. He had to respond to the comment on the brutal behaviour of koevoet who threw an amputee into the Casspir and his above-knee prosthesis which had fallen off afterward, since he had no ID. This superintendent had not changed his attitude and stepped aside, if a sensitive question came up. It was his standard reaction that he pulled out the handkerchief and blew the nose or got a sneezing attack which took so long until the momentum for answering the question has subsided and finally disappeared. Sometimes he held the handkerchief against his face and the right glass, when the attack came so fast to his surprise that he could not remove the glasses from the nose. Then he looked with the left eye through the left glass like a clown into the forum that the people in the meeting started smiling and stopped repeating the question. It became a kind of standard reaction that the superintendent pulled such a clown’s face, when the question has touched the burning point. However, his run away to the toilet was the top of his dramaturgical performance.

The army doctors who had finished their military service in the north were not replaced from 1987 onward, since the military strategy had changed. The command concentrated on the combat troops and had stopped to provide the hospital with army doctors any longer what was the refusal to give medical service to the black people in the time of war. This was an indication of how the situation had escalated politically and militarily. However, new faces were in the morning meeting. These faces had Asian features. It were questioned from were the short people with the rather cubic heads and pale faces had come from who had brought with their families to the north despite the dramatic war escalation in this region. Some of the Asian people looked old as they belonged already to the senior group of pensioners. It were Filipinos who arrived from KwaZulu/Natal in the southeast of South Africa where they had worked as doctors at a general hospital. It was the time when KwaZulu people revolted against the oppression of the apartheid system and killed as kind of revenge white people and other non-Zulus on a larger scale. The lives of the Filipinos were in danger that they had left South Africa and came with their families to the far north of Namibia close to the Angolan border. Asian faces had something mysterious for me. I needed more time to learn about their way of life and why they arrived in the zone of war. It was strange for me right from the beginning that these faces showed no features of anxiety. They kept quiet and covered regardless of the topic brought up in the morning meeting or of the way the topics were handled and discussed.

The Bantu-administration had provided the Filipinos and their families already after two weeks with houses in the village signposted as “For Whites only”. Also the old Filipinos who came without relatives to the far north moved into spacious houses with large front or back gardens. It was the first time that I started doubting about the Boers’ definition of a white, but I welcomed the undermining of the anachronistic and discriminatory racist rules. An old Filipino said that he had still to work, since the pension money on the Philippines was too short. He had children and grandchildren on the Philippines and had to support them. It became apparent that the arrival of the Filipino doctors in the far north was related to the increase of insecurity in KwaZulu/Natal and the salary which were offered to them in the north. These doctors were medical officers. None of them was a specialist.

The presence of the Filipino doctors at Oshakati hospital did show: first, the uprest in South Africa had started and was in full swing in KwaZulu/Natal. This had to be seen as not less dangerous than the war situation in the far north; and second, the time of the white apartheid had to come to an end in the near future. The superintendent allocated the new doctors to the internal medicine including the TB-wards and to the paediatric ward and the outpatient department. Army doctors who had worked in the surgical department and had left, were not replaced. Dr Hutman was one of them and the medical and the nursing staff felt relieved that this arrogant doctor had left who acted as ‘lieutenant of the devil’, because he was an insidious trapper and schemer. The workload had become more heavy and I appreciated the commitment of the young colleague in orthopaedics who had collected in a short time so much of skills that he had become a real help. Doctors and nurses liked him because of his humble nature and steady friendliness.

The young colleague was the writer of a contemporary story about emigration of a young couple of which the man was white and the woman was black. They lived in a small village close to Pallis Bay in New Zealand where they got married and had rented two rooms in an old small farmhouse on the edge of the village. The young man had found a job as a motor mechanic in a garage in Wellington. The couple had settled in the village and the wife was pregnant in her fourth month. The vicar, young of age, had convinced the villagers that the black woman should be allowed to attend the Sunday services and to take part in the prayers with the rest of the congregation. Lastly, the villagers had put aside their objections. They greeted her and did not resist any longer her integration in the village community. The couple became happy and enjoyed the great view over the ocean. It was the difference that a mixed couple could live in dignity and freedom in New Zealand what was impossible in white apartheid South Africa.

Sunrises and sunsets were as blazing as they were before. The security measures were tightened up. It was prohibited to keep a black person who worked as a cleaner or ironing woman or somebody else who was black overnight in the house inside the village. White people were much concerned about future how it will look like when the apartheid system would collapse. The white majority feared this moment. It was the white history with the white privileges and the white blindness that they felt more insecure from one day to the other, since nobody was able to imagine the consequences after the apartheid had passed away. Nobody trusted the future or expected something good for the whites. White faces got paler with the worry lines, but these were still superficial compared with the deep worry grooves in the black faces. The thoughts were readable on all the faces. It ranged from self-rescue over ‘disappear before it is too late’ and the various forms of escape like running away or leaving the place, up to the resignation with the hopelessness into a black future.

It was a Saturday afternoon. I got into the beetle and drove to the post office to look for letters in the post box. The box was empty. So I drove to the checkpoint on the other end of the village what was next to the water tower with the two machine guns on top hidden behind piled-up sandbags. I stopped in front of the barrier rod and showed the permit to the guard, while two guards inspected the car, one from the right side and the other one from the left side. Both looked through the windows into the empty interior. The guards opened the boot in front without taking out the spare wheel and the bonnet in the back. Another guard lifted the barrier rod and I passed the checkpoint. I bypassed the huge potholes on the gravel road, but the wheels bumped into one and the other pothole when I drove to the ‘T’-junction with the tar road. I turned left and after one kilometre right and was on the road to the Catholic mission station in Okatana. I passed the road settlement of shabby huts built with boards, pieces of wood and corrugated iron. This settlement showed the extreme poverty. It wore the name ‘Angola’, because Angolan refugees lived there with their families. Thin pigs with flabby bellies and meagre goats with protruding hips and dogs with prominent ribs, spines and hips crossed the road in both directions. Others moved along the roadside searching the ground for grass and vegetables and for leftovers of chicken and other bones which were thrown away.

A skinny bitch stood with flabby mammary glands over some puppies which tried to suck her empty. The milk flow was too little that one puppy bit her empty teat. The bitch cried out in pain. Casspirs have driven deep ruts in the gravel road that the beetle swam from side to side and the sandbanks in between scraped and scratched the chassis under the floor. I passed some hundred metres after the long-stretched left curve and recognized to the left the water tower with the machine gun on top. I remembered well when the flare cartridges flew over the car and the machine gun started rattling when I came back from the mission station in Okatana. The deep ruts led to the mission where the Casspirs had thrown up the ground between the small mission hospital and the church. It was the reflex that the term ‘the last decisive battle’ came up in my mind as the brigadier had called this stage of war, when much was at stake for the whites. But it was a bad sign with the ground thrown up around the missionl. The Casspir ruts were fresh. Otherwise the people with the sisters and brothers would have smoothed the ground for the festive days, since the people of the mission were looking for order and peace in general and especially the day before Easter.

The gate to the mission premises was locked with a chain. I sat in the car and was waiting. An elderly nun with the kitchen apron came over the place. She unlocked and took the padlock from the chain and opened the gate. I greeted and thanked her and crossed the spacious premises up to the end where I parked the beetle under one of the old shady trees. There was the patres’ house. The nun has closed and locked the gate. The veranda and the entrance door to the patres’ house were closed but not locked. I passed the dark and narrow corridor and heared the voices of two patres coming from the third room. The door was open. I entered the room where three patres sat of whom one pater was old with grey turned hair. I greeted the patres. “The doctor! It’s nice to see you. Long time you have not visited us.” This said a pater, while he put the German edition of the Osservatore back on the table. The old pater with the grey hair held the Deutsche Zeitung, the country’s only German newspaper, in his hand. They offered me a chair that I took a seat at the table. The table top was decorated with a palm branch from Palm Sunday. The old pater put the Deutsche Zeitung also aside.

“You know” said the younger pater, “koevoet had visited us yesterday. They searched the mission and our hospital for detainees who had escaped from police custody some days ago. They told the men were armed Swapo-fighters. We told that these men were not on the ground of the mission, but they did not believe us and started their raid. Can you imagine the upset? It was evening of Good Friday. People were preparing for Easter and then such a disturbance by koevoet.” The three patres had serious faces. They told that koevoet did comb through the whole mission and even the patients’ bedrooms and went through the classrooms of our school and searched the teachers’ accommodations. The kitchen were not spared out where the sister was busy with the personnel in cleaning up and washing dishes. Koevoet searched the garage hall and the cars and looked into each corner in the harsh light of torches. Eventually they went to the chapel where the sisters held the night prayer. Pater Huben persuaded them not to disturb the sisters in their prayers. He spoke with angel’s tongue and stopped koevoet from entering the chapel. Thank God, the church was spared out from the raid.

Koevoet then confronted the good old night watchman who is on the mission since many years. Pater Huben recognized early enough his problem. The old man could not show his ID or work permit. Koevoet was close to put the old man into the Casspir to take him with. Pater Huben with his angel’s tongue could prevent this. The raid was unsuccessful that koevoet left the mission. The vehicles made curves round the church with turned-up searchlights. They drove deeper into the countryside searching kraals and settlements surrounding the mission. We heard later that koevoet took some men to Oshakati who were without identification documents.

I thought of the last decisive battle how the brigadier called the situation in a morning meeting when he said that the whites were sitting on a volcano that can erupt any time. The pater was excited when he asked the question: “Can you imagine the nervousness after what had happened and this before the celebration of the resurrection of the Lord?” I understood the dramatic turbulence after my own experiences how koevoet had carried out the night raids at the hospital in Oshakati. I had in mind the koevoet searching for Swapo-fighters through the wards when a koevoet bumped the straddled leg of a patient after hip reduction that he cried in pain. I had the other incident in mind when koevoet pushed sleeping people in front of the reception with rifles and boots and threw a man who was an amputee into the Casspir and his fallen-off above-knee prosthesis afterwards into the vehicle. I remembered the night incident when a schizophrenic patient blinded by the harsh headlights stood with gesticulating arms in front of the Casspir to barricade the way. The gatekeeper pulled her in the last second aside and saved her life. A koevoet hit this female patient hard with the butt in the back that she has fallen. She cried in pain and wished the thug to hell. This was in my mind when the pater said that most of koevoet are uneducated and primitive people who had lost respect toward human beings. This could explain their rude behaviour. The old pater with the grey hair objected. He said that some of koevoet were at the mission school whom he had taught to read and write and use the bible. “It makes me sad”, he said “that these people have lost the good behaviour and the human respect. For them the school was useless when they come back as rude people and turn the mission which deserved their respect upside down.” I understood the anger of the old pater that his efforts in teaching to read and to write and using the bible were fruitless, since his former schoolboys were now koevoet with such bad behaviour and disrespect to the people what they did for money and regular meals.

“These people have learnt nothing”, the old pater said sitting with the slightly forward bent spine. He added: “Despite school they have become bad human beings, since they did not understand the word of the Lord or they have thrown away his word, though they had to ask for the word of his message. The people did not do so. They ignored the word of the Lord and came off from the rails of an orderly life. They are narrow-minded and blinded that they violate the fifth and the other commandments. I could not have foreseen this bad development of the people with the loss of the good behaviour when I looked at their faces when they sat as schoolboys in front of me in the classroom. I should have sent them home as useless learners, because many other children had waited for a place in our school as well what was impossible. The school had only two classrooms, one for teaching and the other room for doing the homework. Accommodation for the beginners was restricted. I was the only teacher and I taught the children up to grade 4.”

I asked myself, if a teacher can expect good people when they got a good school education as children. If that were the case, the world should look better. But as long as the devil haunts through human brains, the personality will be damaged by an asocial behaviour and social injustice. It is known that the devil is equipped with the high intelligence and seductive power and a nice-sounding voice. I asked the old pater, if he did not see his achievements too pessimistic. “Could be, but believe me and I say it with the experiences of many years that the gap between optimism and pessimism is very narrow. Only a short footbridge is needed to cross the gap in the one or the other direction. In reality there is a deep gorge between the both. You can see the reality only partially as you can see the tip of the iceberg only which is on one side bright by the sun and shady or dark on the other side. The whole iceberg does not come up to the daylight. That is the problem. You look at the face of the boy on the school bench and you think to recognize his character and later you get surprised when you see which kind of human being had come out of the boy.”

I had the picture of the deep gorge in mind and asked the old pater how he could say of having sent children as useless learners home, if he could not have foreseen this kind of bad behaviour like of the rude koevoet which had put the mission in big trouble instead to respect the mission with its former school and teacher. “You see”, the pater replied, “life is short and there are only a few chances to become a good human being, while there are many chances to become a bad human being. Children have the faces of innocence, though the sprout or the seeds of the contempt for a human being are already there whoever had sown the seeds of the devil in them in such early years. But a few children with the same innocent faces are still clean. They had deserved my attention as teacher to make them able to read and write and to perceive the message of the Lord by teaching the right prayers and the gospel. I am of the opinion that I did mistakes in selecting the children for schooling when koevoet did show that some other children were not given the chance at the right time to bring them up to educated sprouts of humanity. It is these mistakes that I have to blame myself and nobody can take the blame away from me. On the other hand I ask you, if you could it better? Could you prevent the mistake I have done?” I looked at the old pater who cleaned his glasses waiting for an answer. “I don’t think so that I could do such selection, since I understand too little of a human being”, I said. The pater replied: “You see, now you understand better what my problem is what I could not solve why I keep up my self-reproach.” “Is there a human being who is able to make the right selection at the right time?”, I asked. “I don’t know. However, the problem which I could not solve does not release me from my responsibility that I had taken as teacher even then, if the problem is insoluble”, the pater replied.

I mentioned that bad behaviour and disrespect against human beings do also exist among medical doctors. There are egoistic motives that negatively affect the team spirit and is destructive when people look for personal advantages and status. In such cases, the sprout had grown to a bad-smelling plant of human contempt with its dangerous chemistry, if not with the poison what made it impossible to understand as a medical doctor the needs of the people and to treat the patients accordingly with the respect and devotion they deserve. The old pater was not surprised to hear about the problem with the lack of humanity also among medical doctors. He called the multiplication tables up to ten when he said that the bad-smelling and full-grown plant is the logical consequence, if one have not learnt the tables up to ten that one is unable to distinguish the value of ‘one’ from the value of ‘two’, if the plant owner thinks that the ‘two’ is indivisible. The problem in recognizing the character of a human being at the earliest time is coming close to a mystery of squaring the circle.

A small bell rang and the patres took me to the dining room which was on the opposite side of the mission premises in an old building where the kitchen was located as well. Pater Huben said the grace as follows: “Lord, look into our hearts which are silt up. Give us the strength to clean the holy spaces from the sand. Tell us what we have to do, how we must shovel out the sand. We had become weak, since we have lost the light of confidence. We sit cramped and depressed and do not know what to do. New avalanches of sand thunder constantly down on us and fill us with fear and fright. We shiver before you, since we do not follow your word and we do not have the courage to take your word seriously and to practise it without the ifs and buts. Lord, give us the strength which is needed to perceive your word and to take it not as we like, because we let always something out that the untruth starts. Help the poor and starving people and stand by the outcasts and the sick people. We command the fate of all these people into your hand, since we are not sure if we keep these people in our mind as needed and do for them what we should do in helping them to alleviate their heavy burden when we sit in front of the filled dishes. Teach us to share and to do good and help us to overcome our weaknesses, if it comes to practise charity. Lord, you look into our hearts and find us churned like the ground before your church where the wheels of force with the rough tyre have pressed in the ruts of inhumanity and mistrust. Tomorrow is the feast of your resurrection and the people are full of expectation. Take us as your children with our weaknesses and mistakes we are doing on each day and guide us to and on the right way. Give us the right word for our prayers and the strength in our belief that we shovel out the sand and make the holy spaces clean. We shall no longer pretend not to hear, but listen more carefully to your word. You set the points for peace and freedom. We ask you for these in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.”

On the table were a bowl with pickled herring and one bowl with boiled potatoes and a third bowl with green salad. The taste was delicious. The salad was prepared with lemon. A carafe of home-made lemon juice with ice cubes stood on the table. The cool juice quenched the thirst extremely well. After the meal, I told the anecdote how the superintendent got his sneezing attacks and made the manoeuvres with the handkerchief in the morning meetings when questions were asked he did not like to answer. The patres were laughing when I showed them how the superintendent covered half of his face by holding the handkerchief in front of his right glass and looked as a clown with the left eye into the meeting as his response regarding the nonsense of the nightly koevoet raids in the hospital. They kept laughing when I told the story that the superintendent left with red eyes and a smell of alcohol the meeting and ran away from his desk and bumped the head against the door that he has nearly fallen. He disappeared and locked himself in the toilet that the people declared the meeting finished after ten minutes of waiting and left the office, while the superintendent was still in the toilet.

When I told that the reason for the superintendent’s run away was the statement about the reckless behaviour how koevoet carried out the nightly raid that the commander should be informed, the old pater smiled and said that taking responsibility is difficult in the difficult time like this when the principles of right and order have lost their validity. It was a critical remark and I agreed. I said that the long stay of the superintendent in the toilet had been recognized as a sign of inability to take the responsibility needed and to act accordingly for the interest of the patients and the people working in the hospital.

I said goodbye and the patres accompanied me to the beetle. They had still a smile on their lips about the anecdote. I got into the car and turned the window down and wished the patres a quiet night and an undisturbed Easter celebration. The younger pater repeated his saying of the last time when he said it was nice and interesting. He added that the story was funny and remarkable that they could laugh about. Pater Huben was opening the gate at the other end of the mission. I switched on the headlights and crossed the sandy premises. At the gate and I greeted Pater Huben and wished him a happy Easter as well. He replied the wishes and I passed the gate. I took the right curve over the place between the small mission hospital and the church with the fresh ruts of the Casspirs which had thrown up the ground. I heard the rattling noise of the iron chain when Pater Huben locked the gate.

After the left curve with the mission school on the left side, the beetle swam between the ruts over the gravel and the driving gears grinded hard through the sandbanks with the sand-covered cemetery to the right and the short steep slope up to the main road in front. The wheels bumped into potholes what was impossible to bypass. A convoy of Casspirs came with blinding headlights that I brought the car on the side slope to a halt. Five Casspirs passed by with high speed and roaring engines wrapping the beetle in a dense sand cloud. I waited some minutes before I could continue the drive back to Oshakati. I took the car back on the road and drove some hundred metres when I saw a donkey on the roadside lying on the back with its legs upward. It was my impression that a Casspir had taken the donkey and had flung it from the road. A second donkey held the right hind leg drawn up and sniffed at the dead one.

I saw the light on top of the water tower right offside the road and did not repeat to risk my life from the rattling machine gun. I left the road putting back the gear to get through the sandbanks on the small path to the tower. The post looked like a fortress. Two Casspirs stood next to the tower surrounded by koevoet squads. A machine gun was mounted over the drivers’ cabs and one koevoet turned the machine gun onto the beetle. A soldier signalled with a torch to stop and gave order through the open window to leave the car. The soldier searched me with the torch from each side and asked for the permit. I gave the document that became examined in the light of the torch. Another soldier with a rifle hanging over his shoulder did the inspection of the interior by moving the front seats back and forward. He looked into the boot and under the bonnet with putting up and down the spare wheel. He then looked with the torch to the underside of the mudguards. Other soldiers walked several times around the car. The officer with the driver’s permit in his hand asked for the reason of the late trip. I explained that I had visited the mission in Okatana and the patres had invited me for dinner. This explanation was accepted. The officer gave the permit back and said: “Jy kan maal ry” [you can drive]. I got into the beetle, started the engine and left the checkpoint. The driving gears grinded heavily through the sandbanks that the beetle swam between the deep ruts to and fro. The sand hills scraped harshly against the floor of the chassis. The beetle got stuck before I reached the main road. It was a manoeuvre with repeated backwards and forwards when I eventually succeeded. The gas pedal were pushed to the bottom and the gears brought the beetle through the long sandbank up to the main road. The further trip back was without problems.

It was dark over ‘Angola’ when I passed the long street settlement of poverty to the left. Adults and children were still outside their huts. Meagre dogs strayed around on both roadsides sniffing for bones and anything chewable. Other dogs crossed the road in both directions. All dogs kept their tails retracted. One dog had a tin in the snout and another dog held a leg bone of a goat and a third dog a piece of chicken still with feathers. Some dogs limped on three legs. I reached the ‘T’-junction and turned left on the tar road. No car, no walking person and no crossing or standing donkey was on the road. It was the militarily strategic road which connected the Ruacana military camp next to the Angolan border and hundred and eighty kilometres west from Oshakati with the copper mine town Tsumeb two hundred and eighty kilometres in the east. I left the tar road and turned right onto the gravel road with the huge potholes up to the water tower with the two machine guns on top where I stopped at the checkpoint. Six soldiers with guns stood behind the barrier rod. I left the car and showed the permit to the guard while the other soldiers inspected the beetle from top to the bottom and from one side to the other side. They took the spare wheel out and searched under the mudguards and under the floor sheet as well. They pushed the front seats forward and backward and looked into the glove compartment at the dashboard. The spare wheel was put back and the bonnet and the boot were closed. The guard in front of the lightened control room gave the permit back and another guard lifted the barrier rod. I left the checkpoint for the last one and a half kilometre to the flat. Two personnel carriers with young soldiers on the open loading space patrolled through the village. The soldiers sat in rows of four side by side and back to back on a double bench and held the rifles between their legs.

I put the beetle on the parking place and closed the gate. I pulled off the sandals in the veranda and took a seat on the step in front of the veranda door where I lit up a cigarette. Easter weekend was close to come, but it could not be an Easter I wished with peace that could be connected to the greatest event of Christianity. People suffered under the white oppression in an outlawed status of inferiority, though there was no doubt that the system of segregation and degradation was not far from its end. I saw in mind people coming up to the far north for a personal advantage of the imminent upheaval by making profitable businesses without any scruples.

People would appear on the scene of weak or no character flitting around like gnawing rats and grasping the last bag. For these ‘rats’, the period of the uncontrolled and uncontrollable disruptions and distortions and the many other kinds of upside down disorders veiled and covered in the darkness of the lawlessness, were the most promising time to achieve their corrupt and dirty goals. These types of people had the nose with the instinct of rats to draw recklessly their advantage out of the mess in a situation of general confusion and to jump with the spoils off from the sinking vessel in the right time. They would be the first who arrive on the shore and dry river banks of life to look as ‘survivors’ as the first for new possibilities in making things safe by applying for safe jobs, posts and positions in a new system before the posts get officially announced and advertised. The spoils were abundantly without any hesitation taken from the old system and profitably converted into the new currencies or otherwise transformed under the hand and sold to new people coming in charge inside the new system.

The ‘rats’ which left with full bags the sinking vessel in time, throw rules and regulations including the run-down system overboard and will stand with their false but ‘innocent’ faces as the first in the row for the well paid posts in the new system. Corrupt characters do not note or recognize borders. They cross borderlines unscrupulously, if the big advantage is on the other side of the border. They do not care or bother about any principles of honesty and political constellations or social values. As the old pater had said, it is difficult to take responsibility for other people in a difficult time when the fundaments of law and order had gone lost. I added to the pater’s remark that a system as the apartheid with its anachronistic racist injustice and oppression by degrading and making people lawless, attempts to corruption and self-enrichment on the costs of the oppressed, and to various other inhumane and irresponsible activities

.

Reflections under the universe of stars

When I looked at the clear night sky with its myriads of stars inside the galaxy, I heard the crackling of a machine gun from one of the water towers. A long chain of cartridges were shot. The military did not spare with ammunition, if there were suspected Swapo-fighters. But mostly it were innocent people who were shot when they were busy to catch a cattle or some goats which had escaped from the kraal. The war did not care about humanity. Its related manners had sunk in this region to a level which was significantly below the behaving of animals in their natural habitat. However, it was not the time to put the whole devil on the wall, if after all Easter was knocking at the door.

I associated the war and Easter with an egg held over an open fire. The eggshell bursts and the liquid yolk what makes the value of the egg, runs out and gets burnt in the flames to an useless mess together with the sooty shell pieces. The greatness of the Easter event in its holistic meaning was difficult to perceive under the circumstances of the days. The principles of life and the reasonableness had fallen apart and the doors of civilization were torn off from the hinges of a sound human behaviour with the social aspects of good neighbourhood and the consciousness of togetherness.

The system of the white apartheid with the white opportunism and injustice had pulled off the rug under the feet of the white apartists and their fellows. The white view had no vision. It was shortsighted and anachronistic and got combined with fear and insecurity as a result. The motto for the future was: everyone had to look after himself. Nobody dared to give a prediction. Bad premonitions hurried ahead the uncertainty, since nobody was innocent though they put on this mask. Everybody had the sinking vessel with the white captain and the white crew in mind and in the ‘thinking room’, and everybody felt sad that the white era should take such a miserable end. But it was not in the white mentality to take the black people with their long degradation, poverty and needs into the white consideration.

People laid cards and played dice games to discover on this way how future would go. The Sunday services in the austere white painted Dutch reformed church were full. The dominee preached in clear words and strong phrases and conducted the prayers of and for the whites only. The pigeons on the short bell tower however took things as relaxed as usual when they shat the churchgoers on their heads and Sunday clothes, if they stood pensively or held their after-service talks close to the tower. The grey-white shit spots could be taken prophetically as a likely token for the future. It did happen that a pigeon shat on the face when a person looked up into the blue sky with the silent request for mildness and reconciliation. The way of thinking ahead had remained shortsighted, since there was no vision that had gone ahead with the apartheid.

Shortsighted people felt insecure. They were afraid what would happen in the near future. They looked with eyes of disbelief and no-confidence. It was their pessimistic attitude that they did not trust anybody. They kept their thoughts behind and also the articles of value whose owners they not were. The people thought of leaving the place soon for the southern regions in the country which were safe, or back to South Africa. They took things with whose owners they were as the other articles whose owners they not were, like tables, chairs, washing machines and fridges with the brands ‘SWAA’ [South West Africa Administration] and their registration numbers. The same was with bedclothes and towels with washing-proof brands and the dishes and cups with ‘SWAA’ brands burnt under the bottom, and other things that were not nailed down.

It was thought of everything what should be packed for the departure that had to go with to be prepared in case of an emergency. Responsible behaviour was rare in this difficult time of the ongoing war. White people thought about leaving the place. Some people did not distinguish between the right and false owners of articles when they packed the things together. The principles of law and order had lost validity in the region that it became true what the old pater of the Okatana mission station had said. The upside down disorders did block the way of thinking as it were responsibility and honesty. To survive, this was what mattered most. It was incompatible with trust in and responsibility for other people.

The number of whites did shrink who believed in the administrations’s capability, since it became known that administration people were involved in cases of corruption to greater scales. The activities could not be kept secret, because to much people had their fingers in the pie. But there were ‘good’ reasons not to hang these activities in the last minute on the big bell. The respect for properties of others what public property was, had gone lost in the time of an increasing confusion. Black people also had knowledge what was going on in the white administration, but could do nothing, since they were degraded into the status of the deprived of the basic human rights.

I had the picture of curving vultures over the victims to pounce on the carcasses and strip it down up to the bones after the lion had filled his stomach and lies peacefully looking at the prey with a torn-open belly. However, where morals had gone lost there cannot be a start for a better future. For what are the strong words of the preacher and the conducted prayers in the austere white painted Dutch reformed church? The pigeons on the small bell tower over the entrance of the church were coo-cooing, but the people did not listen. I remembered the words of the brigadier in a morning meeting who said that he and all whites were sitting on a powder keg that can explode at any time. But who behaves so bad, he cannot expect to fly like earl Münchhausen through the air into a save haven. I ended the pre-Easter reflection and went to the sitting room and switched the light of the standard lamp on and made in the kitchen a cup of coffee with the chicory supplement. After a while of reading, I fell asleep with the open book ‘The great philosophers’ on my knees. When I recognized this kind of ‘reading’, I put the book on the veranda table, switched off the light and went to bed. It was with regard to the mosquitoes that I pulled the sheet up to the chin.

The cocks crowed in half-hourly intervals. It was Easter Day. Matthew told in his gospel of a huge earthquake and the angel of the Lord came down and turned the heavy stone away from the entrance of the tomb and sat on the stone. He appeared in a flash and was dressed white like snow. The tomb guards were shocked. Mark told that Mary Magdalene and Maria the mother of Jacob, and Salome bought spices when the Sabbath was over to anoint the deceased. They were horrified when they found the tomb open and empty. They entered the tomb and were shocked by a young man sitting with long white clothes inside the tomb. Luke also mentioned the spices and told of the stone which was removed from the tomb’s entrance. He spoke of two men in shiny clothes who asked the startled people why they were looking for the living one among the deads. John mentioned Mary Magdalene who arrived at the tomb before dawn and found the stone removed from the entrance. Mary cried when she looked into the empty tomb. She saw and asked the angels for the body of Jesus, while he stood behind her and spoke that Mary recognized his voice.

What has man learnt from the cross and the people who call themselves Christians?

I followed the stations of the carried Cross and remembered what I saw with ten years of age only a few months before the end of World War II: A column of emaciated men and women with haggard faces and cut-off hairs marched in dirty and tattered prison clothes with blue and whites stripes and in worn-out and torn shoes and in foot rags in the fresh snowfall through the street of the small city. The column were accompanied on both sides by SS-men with pistols on the belt and rifles hanging from the shoulders. The prisoners dragged exhaustibly and apathetically the feet and some limped on sticks. They marched into the certainty of death by getting shot into the back of the neck after the column had passed the bridge over the Spree river and had left the city, but still before reaching the next village.

Killing was a well organized business. It was done on a large scale. It became lucrative when the killers took the properties of the people they have killed. The specialists who organized the mass killings and were responsible for running the huge killing machinery were located in the upper floors of the pyramidal administrations and ministries. Above them were the brains of the killing profession who were on top and supervised the gigantic killing machinery. They decided about the ways and speed of killings. It were the agents of the devil who looked through the windows down on the executing squads that followed the order by killing the helpless men and women and children without any hesitation and reservation. Who should understand the meaning of Easter? Were human beings still interested in the event of Easter and be prepared in perceiving the greatness of this event? The cross will serve and save mankind, but man did not understand the sacrifice and did not recognize the dimension of the Easter event for the future of mankind..

The cocks crowed in strong voices the Easter morning. I read in the Epistle to the Romans where Paul said about ‘the new life’: “Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.” [chapter 6; 3-6]

What a powerful faith and vision Paul had! Man had not deserved the mercy, as long as he did bad and made his business with the devil. It was known to Paul as well that he became the strong fighter for the faith in God through the Passion of Jesus and the resurrection of Christ and branded the corrupt behaviour and selfishness of man. He was the apostle of the oppressed and poors and of the degraded and rightless people who were in the cul-de-sac of desperation. Paul encouraged them into the faith of the goodness, the strength and grace of God.

I reflected on the verses under the shower when the small bell on the short tower of the white painted austere Dutch reformed church called in high and short sounds the Boers with their families to the Easter Day service. I was convinced that a new start of man has to be taken to slip off the old and bad things. The rotten core had to be cut out, if man will become a better one. I put a sheet of paper on a cardboard on the veranda table and started writing an Easter poem to an unnamed person whose address did not exist:

Easter on the border

because it is the border

where I sit and write.

Have you gone through the cross

which stood at night in the south

and have crossed the border

with the fields of hidden mines?

It is at the back of beyond

where I sit and think

it is the end of that world

where things seeped into the sand

of which the desert is made.

Bones and stones are casted out

which didn’t pass the sieve’s holes.

If there is the spirit on the border

it should separate the good from the bad

before both pile up in layers

which makes later excavations difficult.

When I looked more thoroughly

what had happened at night

it is inexplicable on the borderline

with all the shootings and the killings

what takes away the speech.

People stood and lay on both sides

if they had still something to say

to bring it in words would only be an attempt

when it comes to the reach of the border.

Are you standing behind me

saying I should not be afraid

because it shall come in another way

than I think and write about it?

If that is true that the good is coming

the bad has to go before.

What else is with the border

where they stood on both sides

in their good faith with the little they had

what silts up like grains.

The time will bury them

in layers one over the other

together with pain and their stories

which are filled with tears and tries

down to the deepest layer.

They have tried for a better life

what they couldn’t achieve

since the breath went lost.

So the good beginnings fell silent

and the last stumps still stuck out

what the wind will cover as well

before the dawn of the second day.

It is Easter on the border

where was no goodbye

and the farewells ended silently.

Give you the new beginning

don’t let us stand and silt up

as long as man takes the trouble to go.

Fill him with new life

and take his bowl of pain

when he sank up to his neck.

Give relief and hope and fill man with confidence.

Create new life out of the cross

and put it like a fresh rose on the window seat

that the wind doesn’t break it

and the desert doesn’t swallow it

by putting the new life to the old layers.

The ink tube was empty that I wrote the last lines with the pencil. It was my intention to attend the church service together with the black people who were Lutherans to find out how they celebrate this great event. I put on the white shirt with long sleeves and the dark trousers and got into the beetle. I passed the checkpoint at the exit of the village after the usual procedure of showing the ID and the inspection of the car. I passed the fenced hospital premises to the left and turned on the ‘T’-junction with the tar road to the right. I crossed the bridge over the Cuvelai which led little water. The bridge was blown up a year ago and was restored within one month. This bridge was guarded by a soldier with a gun slung over his shoulder. All bridges in the north had strategic significance and were guarded around the clock. After two kilometres, I left the tar road to the left on a small sandy path that was full of bends. The beetle swam between the deep-in driven ruts and the sand scraped against the bottom sheet. I passed big old trees and small houses with solid walls. The outside plaster had fallen off in big parts. Houses and trees witnessed the hard work of the Finnish missionaries who had founded the Lutheran mission in Ongwediva in the beginning of the 20th century. No maintenance was done since then for keeping the houses in a good condition.

I reached the old mission church which was a wooden construction. It had a short bell tower over the entrance built of wooden beams. The church was surrounded by big old trees which gave the shade to the people standing with their children who were waiting for the beginning of the service. The men wore dark Sunday clothes and the women wore colourful traditional long dresses. They stood in small groups with the hymn-book in their hands and listened to each other. Peace featured their faces with the engraved worry lines of a hard life. They greeted friendly the white face. I recognized some faces from consulting room.

People spoke their language what was Oshivambo, but used Afrikaans when they greeted me as the doctor from the hospital and wished a Happy Easter. They knew that I was a German who had nothing to do with the apartheid nonsense. I thanked for their friendly greetings and put myself back under the shade of a big tree not to disturb the people in the conversation with exchanging their thoughts and views about life and hopes. Old people stood next to the entrance. The small bell started ringing and the strokes with the clear sounds got caught in the dense foliage of the trees with their sweeping branches. The sounding bell invited to the Sunday service and the people entered the church. Old people went ahead followed by young people with their children. I followed the children. The people entered the small nave calmly and expectantly. They took their seats on the short benches. Old people occupied the first benches and the young people with children took the following benches. The pastor wore the plain Lutheran cassock with the white ruff. He stood in front of the dull brown wooden cross and greeted each member of the congregation by nodding his head with a friendly face. He looked older and had the deep worry lines like the faces of all the old people. Though he didn’t know the doctor, the pastor gave me a nodding as well and this with a slight smile on his lips.