The Boston Phoenix December 14 - 21, 2000
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In the African nation of Namibia, it's unsafe for a carload of females to pick up male hitchhikers -- even though hitchhiking is a major method of transportation here. So when we, three twentysomething girls, stop for an African woman waiting on the side of the road and an anonymous man pushes past her to stuff his bloodied friend into our back seat, I'm extremely nervous. Culture shock
Life at the bottom of the world means dancing with strangers, keeping your clothes ironed, and going to a lot of funerals
by Camille Dodero
"I will take the woman," my friend Debbie orders, gesturing from her place in the driver's seat over to the matronly figure standing in the dirt.
Namibia gallery
Elephant butts, wily-tongued giraffes, nocturnal fires, and more"Huss-pee-tal!" the anonymous man rages back, ignoring Debbie's demand and squeezing in beside his semi-conscious companion. "Huss-pee-tal!" his sharp syllables repeat.
Speeding away, our vehicle scrambles for the nearest hospital, almost immediately reaching 160 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour), and we veer into that nebulous zone between Good Samaritans and fools.
Namibia. The word evokes a curious state of nonplus: where's that?
Huddled at the bottom of the globe, pierced by the Tropic of Capricorn, and lapped on its left side by the Atlantic Ocean, Namibia sits northwest of the country of South Africa. Only 10 years old -- until l990 it was a South African colony called South West Africa -- the infant republic has one of the lowest international profiles of any sub-Saharan nation. Even when the mainstream media pay lip service to southern Africa's afflictions, Namibia isn't usually mentioned, even though it has its own morass of atrocities.
Truth be told, until the Peace Corps stationed my old college roommate Debbie there, I didn't know anything about it. So when Jen, another college roommate, and I decided to visit Debbie for two and a half weeks, I researched Namibia's history and found words like "neocolonialism," "apartheid," "guerrilla," and "warfare." I thought, Why haven't I heard more about this place?
For a few reasons. Partly because Namibia is a politically inert, savanna-patched desert with a relatively small population -- 1.7 million (about the size of Nebraska) as compared to South Africa's 39.4 million (about three million more than California). Because the numbers are smaller, the floodlights get shifted away from Namibia and over to Angola's bloodier fights, Zimbabwe's more virulent racial tensions, and Botswana's higher percentage of HIV-infected adults.
It's also partly because Namibia is -- and always has been -- culturally disconnected. Explored by the Dutch, colonized by the Germans, and then annexed to South Africa after World War I, the land Namibia occupies was controlled by various foreign slumlords. But even before brutal squatters ambushed the premises to hammer in their tyrannies, the terrain served as a battleground for cultural clashes: in the 19th century, migrating African tribes like the Hereros, the Nama, and the Damara butted heads and often went to war.
As a result, present-day Namibia has a completely fractured national identity. The country's nascent school curriculum encourages its students (here called learners) to be fluent in English. Afrikaners, the white oppressors of the apartheid era, still have a strong presence in the south. German influence marks places like Windhoek, Namibia's capital and largest city, and Swakopmund, a lily-white seaside resort town on the western coast. And most regional ethnic groups -- Herero, Ovambo, Damara, San -- remain divided from one another, despite any alliances formed under colonialism.
"I would not say I am a Namibian," says a 24-year-old Herero woman who lives in Namibia. "If you are a Ovambo, you say you are a Ovambo. If you are Herero, you say you are a Herero. [The word] `Namibian' does not explain."
But it does explain. Saying you're Namibian explains, at the very least, that you subsist in an environment where herds of cattle are bank accounts, coffins are furniture, and bodily fluids are venom. And it indicates that you live in a country where petty crime is merely a public nuisance, regarded much the way graffiti is in America. Identifying yourself as a Namibian also suggests that if your rental car were to moonlight as a mini-ambulance, you'd just be happy to be at the wheel of a rental car.
Okakarara is the central Namibian town where Debbie has taught 11th-graders for the past 18 months. At mid-morning, cows, goats, and children stream across the paved main way. Modest houses crouch in rows, their yards spangled with stacks of tires, six-foot-high termite mounds, and chicken-coop wire. Heavyset women vending "fat cakes" -- doughnut and fried-dough hybrids -- dot the roadside with their iron pots.
Debbie lives down the street in a house that's considered a palace by Namibian standards -- a one-floor domicile with two bathrooms, running water, a television, a stove, electricity, a back yard, and a guest room. During the apartheid era, white folks resided in this neighborhood, but now, other than Debbie and her two British volunteer roommates, ivory skin is rare. "The whites left and broke the pool," Debbie complains. "Bastards."
Now that light skin is scarce in Okakarara, unfamiliar white faces tend to cause a commotion. Everywhere we go in the small town, Jen and I are treated like celebrities: people always stare, sometimes they want to talk with us, and sometimes they congregate around us. The few times I go walking alone, women and children come out of their houses to peek, spy, or converse. At one point, a train of six or seven kids trails 20 feet behind me. And every once in while, from just beyond my peripheral vision, I hear a young voice chirp, "Ocheeloombo." Debbie says it means "white thing."
So when Jen and I turn up at Debbie's secondary school for the first time, there is a similar public display, this time performed by gawking teenagers. Debbie ignores them and shepherds us to her morning faculty meeting, a 10-minute pre-game huddle that on this day has a cadre of 20 or so impeccably ironed and shined Namibian teachers clapping for Jen and me, two tired strangers in wrinkled clothes and running sneakers. (Only later do I discover our gaffe -- in Namibia, it doesn't matter whether an outfit matches or how frequently it's worn, as long as it's nice-looking and ironed. And yes, Namibians do own irons.)
After the assembly, Debbie passes us off to her colleague Jennifer Uatuiihe (pronounced "Y-too-yay"), a 26-year-old Herero woman with a husband and a young son. Jennifer is openly curious about us. How many siblings do we have? Are we married? What do Americans think of Namibia? I don't bother telling her that Americans don't think of Namibia.
In turn, Jennifer talks about her family. "I don't see my mother very much anymore," Jennifer says wistfully. "Things are difficult for her. She doesn't have enough cattle anymore. But I cannot help her. I do not want her to starve, but I must take care of my husband."
She appears to notice my quizzical expression. "See, if we [women] get married, we have to choose which way we go," she says, and explains that since her marriage, her in-laws have been her surrogate parents. "I could stop supporting my husband and go back to help my mother." She pauses. "But I would not do that."
Later I mention Jennifer's predicament to Debbie. I'm told that Jennifer has it good.
