Helmut Lauschke

Namibia - The difficult Years

The most critical time

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

The blown-up bridge over the Cuvelai has been restored.

Horrific thunderstorms and apocalyptic lightning

A young superintendent in major’s uniform

A civilian successor as superintendent

The brigadier intervenes in the morning meeting

The final battle was in full swing

Visit to the Mission hospital in Oshikuku

Dr Johan spoke about ophthalmology

Crippled children and adults were waiting along the passage

A brutal night raid of Koevoet

Impressum neobooks

The blown-up bridge over the Cuvelai has been restored.

The most critical time

All bridges of the strategically important tar road in the north from west to east through the Ovamboland were guarded by the military. The situation was tense. The conflict came closer and the war was escalating. PLAN (People’s Liberation Army of Namibia), the military wing of Swapo, and its allies were fighting for an independent Namibia against the occupying South African colonial power and white apartheid regime of Pretoria which was supported by the majority of white people who fought for the white privileges in a status quo.

The black population did sacrifice tremendously and the number of victims has become uncountable. People were brought to the hospital with lacerations, bloody wounds with bloodshot marks on the chest or back, on arms and legs after they were interrogated by the special forces of Koevoet (Afrikaans for crowbar) on the field or in the villages or at the police station. Since Koevoet had recruited black people, it often happened that black Koevoet men beat and tortured their brothers and sisters, if the white captain was of the opinion that the person was a supporter of Swapo. It were most innocent people who became victims of the brutal stick treatment. The suspicion was enough to get beaten, tortured and deported. It was the spiral of force and violence which was cruel and awful. It was seen on the bodies of victims, who came to the hospital for treatment. If there was a suspicion of collaboration that for instance a PLAN-fighter was hiding in the kraal, the heavily armoured Casspir vehicles flattened the kraal down that the inhabitants with the old people and their children were literally left behind with nothing on the open field.

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

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

Meanwhile I had got a small flat allocated by the Bantu-administration. The flat had a small sitting room, a one-bed room, a very small kitchen with a semi-automatic washing machine, a veranda with a mosquito screen and a shower room with toilet. I did appreciate this improvement, especially that the sleeping room was spacious and not packed with cardboards from the bottom to the ceiling.

The first what the new superintendent in uniform of a major did, he let move the desk and swivel chair to the opposite site in the office. The old white painted asbestos board was hanged on the opposite wall where a telephone connection plug was put on as well. It was the side where the matrons and pharmacists took their seats when Dr Witthuhn was the civilian superintendent. That was the time when the lean white chief matron complained of the urine stench on the hospital square assisted by the short black matron who pulled the grimaces of disgust. It was also the time when the chief matron gave in one morning meeting an impressive speech regarding the team spirit by understanding each other and each other’s problem to work trustfully together in the very interest of the patients despite the many shortcomings under the poor hospital conditions in the critical circumstances of war. Her intention became a stillbirth by undermining and the false activities of Dr Hutman whom I soon recognized as the lieutenant of the devil.

Dr Witthuhn was moved down on the post of principal medical officer to the department of internal medicine. He took it cool without any effort of resistance, because he needed the regular income by the monthly salary. Above this, he was of the strong belief that the madness of the white arrogance and desperation would not last long. It also was no degradation salary-wise, since the white Bantu-administration had put him only as an acting superintendent on the previous chair and that for a short period of time. The military had mistrusted him as civilian superintendent because of his liberal, but ethically correct way of acting.

He made now the ward rounds as the other doctors did and was respected by the nursing staff as a friendly and understanding doctor with a human face, who made his notes with the big handwriting on the sheets in the patients’ files. Dr Witthuhn had a big heart and also big problems. It was part of his personality that he made big excursions when he was far away in his mind. He was a person, who was not simply to measure in the range of normal standard. He rejected the small-minded attitude of jealousy and malevolence, but was alert against people who were false and sly. He sat behind a small table in a small consulting room in ward 7 and examined the outpatients. A running ventilator stood on a chair opposite to him for some air circulation. It was a room of humbleness also in diagnostic terms as he sat back listening to the patient’s complaints and following the excursions in his mind. It was the case that he had to be touched for coming back to the world’s reality in this small consulting room with the smoothly running ventilator.

The health director sat in a flawless uniform of a colonel further and untouchable on the comfortable swivel chair behind his empty desk with the polished wooden plate in an air-conditioned office with the photo of the unyieldingly looking South African president in big format under glass on the wall. The director’s main concern were his teeth. His only work was to draw up decrees of what had to be done in the hospital and what not. So it was decreed and signed by this director that it was forbidden to treat Swapo-fighters and active Swapo-supporters. The Bantu-administration had no saying how the hospital had to be run. It was obvious that those white people remained indifferent about what was going on. They were not interested to look into the problems the hospital was confronted with.

It was the time when two officers of the SADF [South African Defence Force] occupied the chairs of the highest posts at the hospital administration. They controlled the medical work that had to be done under the most primitive conditions in using old and outdated facilities with the many missings. Nursing staff as patients and the population at large did not trust the military authority. The hospital got a strategic importance at the expense of being an open health institution for all the sick and injured people. Since the military had taken over the command in the hospital, the paramilitary Koevoet patrolled the hospital ground in nightly raids with their armoured Casspirs searching with floodlight for hidden PLAN-fighters up into each angle and corner.

The replacement of the civilian superintendent by the young major has not brought any improvement. The Sekretaris had not kept his promise given one year ago to send a clerk to look into the critical matters and to list up the most urgent points for repair and replacement. The conditions remained miserable under which the huge workload had to be solved. The old central sterilization unit broke down from time to time what caused long delays in performing the operations. The outdated operating table ready for the scrapyard was not replaced and the old and defective surgical instruments had still to be used. The overcrowded wards were old. Some toilets were clogged or otherwise not usable. The doors of the wards were battered and the door handles and locks were broken off. Panes were broken in many windows. New bedsteads of the basic standard did not exist. The old, torn and smelling foam rubber mattresses were not replaced.

The hose against the urine stench in the square was the single improvement after some battles of the former civilian superintendent with the stubbornly stuttering Sekretaris. This was possible after Dr Witthuhn had convinced the Sekretaris by describing the urine stench as smelling so bad that he pulled the skin on his nasal bridge and got hit by the strong feeling of revulsion.

What the new superintendent in his dashing uniform of a major did achieve, were a new ambulance and two small Ford-buggies with open loading spaces. The major who was proud of this achievement after his few weeks in office reserved one buggy for his ‘official’ and private purposes. The administration followed without any criticism the military command what did not result in a single move in improving the condition at the hospital. It virtually ignored the responsibility of making one substantially constructive input into the miserable situation. It was the heavily disappointing fact that the functional standard of the hospital was brought down by the white-run Bantu-administration.

If the whites themselves had a health problem they were served by plane to bring them to the specialist in Windhoek or South Africa where they claimed the high First World standard in medicine. These privileged people recognized the medical standard at Oshakati Hospital with the penetrating urine stench in the square and the primitive and defective ward facilities as obsolete. It was the hospital for blacks only. It was common practice that the whites used the quick and gratis transport by air for other things as well, when they had an appointment with the dentist or a medical doctor. Hairdressing and go shopping were included. Formal and informal communications with influential people in the floors of the central administration were of importance in the time of the increasing insecurity. One had to look forward to prepare the steps into the unknown future. What bothered white brains most it was the question how to maintain the high living standard when the apartheid system would collapse.

The morning meetings lasted longer by the bilingual jumps and countless repetitions of the new superintendent. The one black female colleague attended the meetings more often, but with a regular delay, who did not attend the meetings at the time of the civilian superintendent. She, who put the head in the civilian time through the open office door and back to make sure that the meeting was finished, took now part in the discussion in a more excited manner. She preferred her eloquence as the new superintendent did that the point to make got a smoke in the air. Dr Hutman had changed his cheeky and know-it-all behaviour, but kept covered with his intention to please the major. The outcome of the meetings remained poor and useless.

Dr Bernhard was a new colleague who was a specialist surgeon with a Swiss certificate. He had collected his experiences in traumatology on the hospital ship ‘Vietnam’ anchored in the harbour of former Saigon during the last year of the Vietnam war. Dr Bernhard came to Oshakati with his expertise and intention to help. He was a highly talented surgeon and took over the responsibility for orthopaedics, while I was kept responsible for general surgery. The new colleague was a relief from the huge burden. In the first year at Oshakati Hospital I did circa one thousand six hundred operations. I felt sorry that the friendly cooperation with Dr van der Merwe came to an end, who asked the major superintendent to be transferred to the department of surgery for the last months of his military service. The major promised to accept his request after new young doctors from South Africa has arrived for their military service in the north.

Dr Bernhard could not believe that Medical & Dental Council in Pretoria did refuse his recognition as a Swiss specialist. Like me he was put as a senior medical officer and both felt the degrading as a box round the ears. The administration promised to upgrade the position of both doctors after one year into the category of chief medical officers. A probationary period was compulsory, and that in a time when specialists with experiences were needed most. The arrogance of the Council in Pretoria got combined with the blindness of a stubborn-short-sighted administration. It was the discrimination at the first place and the clerks and other white stooges were at the hands of the Boers. This anachronism had exceeded Bernhard’s tolerance limit. In his second week he already decided to ignore this nonsense and prepared his return to Switzerland in the first year. He told that he is neither a donkey nor prepared that idiots can dance on his nose.

Dr Hutman remained covered. He visited the major in the superintendent’s office on a daily basis. The other army doctors did not trust him with personal matters. Van der Merwe told this in a conversation in his caravan one year ago in connection with the fourteen-year-old boy, who passed away on the operating table in the delayed craniotomy when Hutman had rejected my advice and assistance. There was a hearing in the director’s office when Hutman accused me of having caused the death of the comatose patient by disturbance during the operation. The hearing revealed that the accusations were false and insidiously calculated that the colonel director gave this lieutenant only a verbal warning, since Hutman was his extended ear. Now he had become the extension of the major’s ear as well.

This egocentric doctor was son of a wealthy family in Johannesburg. He had his personal career in mind, but not the needs of the black people to whom he showed an emotional abstinence. The careerist pleased his superiors who occupied a big part in his corrupt thinking. The specialists came twice per week from the military hospital in Ondangwa. They were flown up from the central military airbase ‘Waterkloof’ [water gap] north of Pretoria to the north and were replaced at the military hospital after two weeks. These specialists in uniforms of high-ranking officers were lecturers and professors at the medical schools in South Africa. In their two-weeks-service they had to ensure the surgical care of the combat troops.

Why these specialists still visited Oshakati Hospital was not fully understood, since the two civilian specialists, though downgraded to senior medical officers, worked in general and orthopaedic surgery. The army personnel got surgical treatment at the military hospital on the airbase in Ondangwa. It was thought that their visits had not only to do with medical support, but with the reconnaissance by searching for PLAN-fighters as well when they did the surgical ward rounds. This kind of intelligence service was easy for them by reading the history and evaluating the injury, since all the doors were open for the military authority which controlled the activities in the hospital. On the other hand it was true that Swapo enjoyed the broad support from the black population.

There was no illusion that any improvement in the working conditions would not come as long as the military and the whites ruled the regulations and mistrusted the hospital as an institution for hiding the enemies and Swapo-sympathizers. It was against the oath on the South African president and white apartheid flag to treat the enemy, whereas impartial and equal treatment was compulsory according to the Hippocratic oath. The gravity of the political schizophrenia became even more visible in the miserable conditions with the defective facilities. The many promises for repair and replacement from the white-run Bantu-administration and its stuttering Boer on top remained empty. It was an old and widespread political advice to keep up the white opportunism. The white stooges kept quiet when medical ethics became tortured and crippled. I thought of the psychological impact that should come on the young doctors after graduation from university with the ethical oath when they had become second lieutenants in the SADF and had to take the other oath on the South African president and the white apartheid flag. They stuck in the schizophrenic gap as they treat one patient and had to refuse treatment on the other patient. It was the excess after having lost reasonableness and humanity which caused the deep-going conflict between medical practice with medical ethics and its opposite by following the military order in regard to the political absurdity in the arrogant apartheid system.

The non-recognition of the specialist certificates of the two civilian surgeons and the languishing and depraved condition of the hospital were of great concern. The question was when would the hospital collapse due to the miserable conditions caused by mismanagement and white-political short-sightedness. The political formulas were implemented and administratively followed in an opportunistic and corrupt way against the majority what was the black population. Not much of nous was needed to understand the political baseness. The facts were visible and terrible enough without further proof of devastation. It was the time of the tensile tests in the conscience of each doctor and health worker, and this in the time when the big upheaval stood before the door.

In this difficult time Hutman kept himself camouflaged to play his insidious games against the civilian doctors, who worked hard and round the clock. His ambitions were selfish and traitorous without any sympathy for the black people. If there was an award for false denouncing of people, Hutman deserved it with the devil’s star for outstanding achievements as the opposite of bravery before he left for his family to Johannesburg. He was the only example compared with the other army doctors, who ruthlessly used the elbows and intrigue for his career. Since the privileged status had been taken away from him, Hutman put all his effort into the intention to harming me, who was responsible for the surgical department.

There were annoying word battles that I had to stand against Hutman who provoked the battles by arrogance and refusal to listen for reason. All the battles could be avoided, if basic education and respect against an older colleague were exercised and the rules of civilized thinking and speaking were practised. The first battle of this kind was in superintendent’s office when Dr Witthuhn called and confronted me with Dr Hutman. The superintendent sat behind piles of patients’ files on his desk and Hutman sat accompanied by two young army doctors on one of the upholstered chairs on the window front under the rattling air conditioners. One young army doctor sat right and the other young army doctor sat left of Dr Hutman.

What was the point? Hutman accused me of not seeing the patients regularly in the intensive care unit, since there were no notes made on some days. The superintendent looked through the files and could not deny the accusation. He asked me, if that is true. I told that I have seen the patients every day, but in the early morning and had made notes in the files only, if something important has occurred in the patient’s condition. A reason of having done this was the time pressure, since I tried to see the patients in the other wards as well without delaying the operations.

The truth came out and Hutman’ face became pale. Instead of searching the files for missing notes I have seen the patients before the early shift of nurses has started. The superintendent has asked Hutman how he saw his responsibility when he camouflaged as a doctor to destroy what others have built with great effort to help the people, who are in need for medical treatment. And in the critical situation of war, only a few doctors were available. The superintendent understood the point. He said to Hutman, who turned his head to the companions on the right and on the left, that he should look after his patients and stop intriguing against me. After this ugly confrontation I called Hutman an insidious trapper and lieutenant of the devil following Carl Zuckmayer’s “The Devil’s General”.

The other battle was the disciplinary hearing that the director in colonel’s uniform held in his office when I had to defend myself against the false accusations of Hutman in connection with the death of a comatose fourteen-year-old boy on the operating table. This army doctor delayed the operation of putting burrholes for brain decompression from a haemorrhage. Instead of this he drank tea and chatted with some young army doctors in the theatre tea room. Also his operative performance was far from skilful and professional. At the end of the long hearing followed by the civilian superintendent, the director gave Dr Hutman a verbal warning, though he had deserved a strong written one which never came.

However, the lieutenant of the devil did not give up and continued his role as schemer of a low and corrupt character camouflaged as medical doctor. The devil sat on his neck and rode his bad character in a furious gallop. He was not interested in the damage he did by his traps and lies. His dark eyes remained restless. The immoderate arrogance expressed the psychological abnormality in a sense of a magnified ego in the mirror of an obsessional neurosis which was incalculable and unpredictable. The ego of Hutman and his restless agitation had stirred up the mistrust of the military against the civilian and had certainly contributed that Dr Witthuhn was removed from the superintendent’s chair and replaced by an eloquent but meaningless major-superintendent. The obsessed personality of Hutman was the main reason that the team spirit emphatically propagated by the dedicated chief matron had become a stillbirth.

The working climate became even more tense with the major on the superintendent’s chair and the dark machinations of the neurotic lieutenant of the devil as an extended military ear. The contra-productive activities inside the hospital gave the mirror image of a neurotic strategy combined with nervously shaking military and paramilitary activities in an exhausted apartheid system outside the hospital as well. The conditions were miserable and the medical facilities were defective. The wards were overcrowded and some funnel-shaped zinc toilets did not work or were clogged. The water pressure was weak and the old water pipes were rusty and furred up. There were hours and days that the hospital was without water when the pipes outside the hospital were broken and the repair took longer than told. Was the water pressure high, the water squirted through the holes of rusty water pipes. If not the water, the power was cut off with a negative impact on the operative work in the theatres, the central sterilization unit and the work at large. Excrements as diarrhoeal or piled were lying in the children’s ward and outside the wards marking the unhygienic state of emergency.

I criticized the indifferent behaviour of the people in charge, whether they were civilians or people in uniform who have neglected or ignored the problems of the toilet conditions and of the lacking hygiene in and around the wards. It was the academic status that these people did not put their noses over the badly smelling toilets or have looked into the filled-up funnels. But hygiene in general and in a hospital especially starts with the toilet conditions. If a doctor kept the hands clean by washing them after various procedures, he should understand the importance of cleanliness that includes the ward toilets as well. A medical doctor has not only to keep his hands clean, he also is responsible for the cleanliness in the wards where he does his daily round to see and examine the patients. It was one basic obligation that the doctor’s responsibility should not come to a halt without considering the smelling and otherwise malfunctioning toilets. The question is justified how patients should respect doctors who impose the unhygienic and smelling toilet conditions on them.

The new superintendent neglected the hospital and its needs and imposed his unreasonableness with the state of dilapidation on the patients, the nursing staff and medical doctors. The Bantu-administration run by white clerks did nothing to correct the mismanagement that lasted too long. No single administrative ‘arse’ came to the hospital to look into the vast number of burning issues what the stuttering Sekretaris with the square face had promised several times and long ago. The people in the administration had given up their interest and responsibility to restore the hospital to a better condition. They sat back in their comfortable and air-conditioned offices and kept the faces of innocence when they took their coffee and tea breaks every day at the same time and of the same duration by following up their private interests that were substantially pleasant and profitable. The personal advantage lay in the centre of their thinking that they did not ‘waste’ their time on public issues like the anyway neglected hospital. If the phone line went through, administrative people consistently complained of work overload, though they finished office hours always in time and returned home, if no private business after hours were to handle. The doctors with their work-related small salaries without car and other allowances had still to work hard in seeing and treating patients waiting in huge numbers or to perform the unexpected emergency procedures.

One question remained: Where is the money allocated in the budget for maintenance, repair and replacement in the hospital? This question came periodically up, at least once in a year when the miserable conditions with the big number of lacks and shortcomings were pressing on the eyes and depressing the minds of those people who did the hard work with dedication on the patients. In which direction had the money disappeared? This question answered itself by observing the lasting situation of the critical conditions and by getting insight into the administrative mismanagement by measuring the scale of corruption. If book keeping were done in transparent ways, money could not simply disappear. Where were the pockets, bags and other containers that were filled with money what was allocated for the hospital? The question remained unanswered in all the years. But in wartime it is known that things went missing without coming back. The fire-reds of sunsets and sunrises indicated that something new was on the brink that could be expected very soon. The old time ran out and the whites met their measures, if things were not handled timely or would go wrong.

That unprotected black people suffered most, it did not bother much the apartheid-privileged people who kept focused on their lives and properties often with a collection through the years and that in contrast with the poverty of the black people, who were hoping for a better future by getting rid of the forced degradation and discrimination by the apartheid laws and regulations. So signalled the fire-red over the horizon for the ones the change with the hope for betterment by liberation and release from the white chains, and for the others the change was packed with worries and fears how the way would go into the uncertainty of an irrevocable future.

However, the white administration was still in place with the stuttering Sekretaris on top, who did not bother about the dilapidated condition of the hospital. All the written and reasoned requests of Dr Witthuhn when he was the civilian superintendent had remained unanswered. Urgent requests had never reached the practical phase of quotations or ordering. Piles of letters and requests lay on desks of the administration and were laid ‘ad acta’ without response. If a hospital person visited unexpectedly the administration to query why there was no response, no letters were found, but cups, glasses, bottles, teapots and sugar bowls were on the plates.

The visitor were pleased with excuses of work overload what was almost always the first shield of defence. There were other things to arrange which had little or nothing to do with the hospital and the numerous written requests, if not hospital-allocated money was already moved into non-hospital related channels. A clearly substantiated answer was never given that the visitor returned to the hospital without result. The visitor could make his own thoughts on the forty-five-kilometre-road back to Oshakati why he had achieved nothing by his visit. The fact of mismanagement and the suspicion of corruption lay on the hand.

Administrative people with greying hairs and the blink of harmlessness knew what they were doing. They were well-rested and motivated in their businesses when they sat the office hours comfortably on chairs behind empty desks with the little work to do in their air-conditioned offices. It was in their power in which direction the budgeted money had to go. Despite the shruggings of not knowing whereto the money has gone which was allocated for the hospital, these people knew of the slidings in which they were administratively or otherwise involved. The suspicion despite the miserable state of the hospital was evident that money had been shifted to anywhere under the hand of mutual confidentiality. The amounts were considered as quite substantial what was moved to other non-hospital related channels.

Auditors from the central administration investigated a case of a Ford mini-loader of which the engine was replaced twice in one year, though the first engine had driven less than twenty thousand kilometres. The four tyres on this car were replaced several times in the same year. The investigation led to the suspicion that something was not in order. The auditors went to the office of the Sekretaris to get more insight into the mysterious story. However, the Sekretaris leant back with an innocent blink and shrugged his shoulders. The auditors showed him the entries in the book, but the Sekretaris continued shrugging his shoulders and blinking his innocence. He as the auditors sat up on the chairs and were looking in the opened book. The auditors waited for an explanation what the Sekretaris was unable to give. He put up the phone and ordered stutteringly the person responsible for the car pool to his office. The stocky gentleman in the middle of his age entered the office with a face of the total innocence. The Sekretaris explained to him the problem in connection with the Ford mini-loader in the language of the Boers, but the gentleman from the car pool kept quiet with an innocent face as he could not understand the point. The auditors became annoyed. They pulled out the invoices and receipts of payment for the replaced engine and tyre sets and put them on the desk of the Sekretaris, who pulled his face with grimaces of ignorance and unwillingness to understand.

The investigation proved that the mini-loader had an accident and was written off and scrapped two years ago. The number plate had been removed, but the number on the plate was written on the various invoices. The auditors asked where the two engines and the four tyre sets were, which had been invoiced and paid for. The determination of questioning brought the Sekretaris and his clerk responsible for the car pool into the embarrassment of the lack of evidence and credibility. Their faces became ash-grey and their eyes lost the blinks of innocence. The fact was that the engines and tyre sets had disappeared as they had been dissolved into thin air, though the records were on the polished wooden plate of the desk. Those kept quiet, who knew about this kind of business. None gave an explanation to resolve the discrepancy. The auditors insisted. “Nobody will buy this from you”, one auditor said looking at the grimacing face of the Sekretaris, while the other auditor made a note on his notepad. The Sekretaris did not back his clerk. He let him fall like a hot potato, though the clerk had several times fulfilled wishes of his superior for free. Now the clerk should see how he could come out of the steam of lies what he in his smaller capacity was unable to achieve. Disciplinary measures were predicted. In the end and after some other topics in the same conversation and after a braai in the private atmosphere in the spacious garden with a spacious house of the Sekretaris, the auditors nevertheless gave their approval for the correctness in keeping the books and left the Bantu-administration and the north back for Windhoek.

It was guessed that the auditors’ report with the grey zone in regard to the purchase of the second engine and the four tyre sets for the already scrapped Ford mini-loader had got the okay by countersigning of the person in charge of the next higher instance and were laid as finished and approved to the other approved and countersigned reports in one of the filings and drawers or were put straight-away into the voracious jaws of the oblivious abyss. Disciplinary measures as predicted took never place, since the culture of corruption was widespread in the various branches of the administration up to the top floors. ‘Pretorianic’ mince-hymn by linking Gregorian expression of Greek pentatonic melancholy with manic-depressive hip hop and side jumps came along with the dilemma of rejection of responsibility that the culture of corruption was open, if the camouflage was appropriate. It was similar to the cackle hymns of a group of geese with in between and irregularly chopped lasting slogans. Things had exaggerated that affected the situation. It was like a walk on a tower-high tightrope with the balancing pole, but without net and return. Neglects and dissipations in the final stage violated coarsely the remainders of law and order. I kept eyes and ears open, while others preferred blindness and deafness to enjoy the higher degree of comfort. The story had many faces on the eve, but the whites feared the imminence of a sudden change.

Horrific thunderstorms and apocalyptic lightning

It was the night from Saturday to Sunday of the second week in February when a heavy cloudburst occurred. Series of lightning flashed through the night and the thunderstorms rushed most powerfully hammering rock-hard blows in ear-splitting and rolling staccatos down followed by trembling counter-tremolos over the ground. The walls shook and the doors rattled, the cups, plates and pots clattered and the asbestos plates in the ceiling grinded. A torrential downpour struck the corrugated roof and splashed against the panes. Down-flashing lightning glared like ghosts in acute windings over the swimming ground sponge. One lightning tore off a big branch from an old tree. Storms raged heavily and the glaring of the lightning were accompanied with hiss sounds of the power of thousand pythons. Hit waves rolled powerfully out like big cannons gave sharp shots that heavily detonated up to far for a stretch of some seconds.

An apocalyptic dream could not be more eery and horrific. It could be the dream of the shipwrecked man in the forlorn endlessness on the storm-foamy ocean between crashing-down wave mountains and the tearing-away wave valleys. The feeling of tininess and helplessness of the human against the powerful natural forces was present with the big trouble to save the soul in front of the drowning rift. Each time I felt the relief when the hitting waves rolled away and were fading down afar with the dull roars of the night. Forceful thunderclaps had torn the night’s sky like a gigantic sheet lightning flashing in wild zigzags across the sky behind and through the cut-off cloud banks. The optimism was unfounded in understanding the sheet lightning after the heaviest thunderstorm I ever have experienced as a message of peace, since the blood-red in the colour scale could be seen as the infernal hellfire as well.

I looked through the window at the raged-through sky and was waiting for further signs what the sheet lightning had to say, if there was the message of a peace angel or rather the devil’s message with a white-hot iron forged in the smithy of the hell to a huge killing sword of destruction. It were the flash pictures of nocturnal illuminations when it became still outside and the moon shone through the widening cloud banks and mirrored itself in the lake in the front garden. During this natural spectacle the question arose of defining life with the poor hospital conditions and the meaning what could be achieved in peace and with a right management what the war and associated mismanagement with the various kinds of corruption made impossible. I got tired and went to bed, but could not find the sleep.

It was after a long ‘walk’ that he gave up parts of his consciousness when the phone rang. It was three o’clock in the morning. I was on duty call. A nurse of outpatient department told that a girl had been brought, which was hit from the lightning. I put on shirt and shorts and went barefoot with sandals in my hand to the hospital that was approximately seven hundred metres away. I had no car and a hospital car for the doctors on call was not available. I walked through the darkness. The cloud banks were closed and prevented the moon to come through. The gravel road was soggy and covered with lakes that I trudged in deep potholes that the mud splashed up on legs and shorts. I tried to keep the walk in the middle of the road to avoid slippings into the side ditches that were filled of muddy water. I reached the unshielded dim road light at the checkpoint of the exit of the village where I showed the permit to the guard who stood back-leant against the small control room. No car was driving to give light to the road marking the huges lakes after the heavy rainl. I continued walking in the middle of the road what was difficult in the darkness, and stepped many times into the water-filled potholes that the mud splashed up on me. I passed the hospital gate and left the right wing open and crossed the square in front of the outpatient department building by trudging through puddles that covered the place.

I reached the entrance of the building and was full of mud spots up to the white shirt and arms. I washed off the mud in the scanty light under an outside tap and put the sandals on. Water dripped from arms and legs when he entered the outpatient waiting hall. The wet feet made squelch sounds on the cork of the sandals. The nurses on night shift made big eyes as they saw me with mud spots on shirt and shorts, but they did not say a word that the doctor had walked through the mud in deep darkness. I approached the trolley where a girl lay covered with a sheet. The girl’s face was burnt and she groaned with pain. She did not speak.

I pulled slowly the sheet from the chest down to the toes when I got shocked. A lightning had severely hit the girl. She had deep burns on the right lower leg from the knee down to the ankle. The soft tissue coat had partly burnt off on the frontal and lateral aspect that a large part of the shin bone was uncovered and charred. Other burns were on the left arm and left leg. Shock treatment has started by putting on an intravenous drip to a vein on the right elbow. I felt very sorry for the girl whose eyes already signalled that she could not keep up her life.

The girl was brought to the intensive care unit to control the basic parameters as pulse rate and blood pressure in short intervals. The girl was laid in a bed next to the window in the first two-bedroom. The wounds were dressed and an old bed frame was put over the lower leg that the sheet didn’t touch it. The resuscitation was combined with injections against pain. It was out of question that the girl would lose her right leg, if she would survive. I took a seat on a stool in front of the bed and measured blood pressure and pulse rate and made the first notes on the observation sheet. The girl was in a very critical condition, since inner organs were affected by the high voltage as well. I connected an old ECG-machine which was the only one in the hospital, and fixed the electrodes on the girl’s chest with small plaster stripes and read the oscillogram of the heart action on the moving paper stripe. The ECG showed the tachycardia with irregular extrasystoles. The oscillogram confirmed the pulse rush as palpated on the wrist artery. The pain killer became effective and the girl closed her eyes.

It was Sunday morning five o’clock when I set off for the way back to the flat. I was extremely tired and looked for a rest. Kristofina was the girl’s namel. I took her name in my mind on the walk barefoot through the mud with my sandals in the hand. I passed the checkpoint and the guard looked at me with big eyes, since he could not believe that I was a doctor coming back from work with all the mud spots on legs, shorts and shirt. I removed the spots from the legs under the tap water outside the flat and entered the small veranda and put the sandals down. I went through the small sitting room to the kitchen for a cup of instant coffee with the chicory supplement. I stirred two teaspoons of sugar in and put the cup on the small table in the sitting room and started reading in Martin Buber’s ‘The Book of the Praises’, so the fifth psalm: “Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation. / Recognize the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: what I will pray to you. / My voice you should hear in the morning when I direct my prayer to you and look up to you. / Since you are not a God that has pleasure in the wickedness neither shall the evil dwell with you. / The foolish shall not stand in your sight, since you hate all workers of iniquity. / You will destroy them that speak leasing: the Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man.”

I saw with the inner eye how Kristofina bent her body in pain and final agony. I tried to console the suffering girl by reading the verses of the sixth psalm and sending her the verses with my deepest sympathy: “Lord, do not rebuke me, neither chasten me in the heat of your anger. / Have mercy on me, You, because I am weak and my bones are as my soul is. / But You, my Lord, till when I have to wait ?! Return and untie my soul, rescue me for the sake of your mercy ! / Because in death there will be no remembrance of you. Who can thank you from the grave ?!” I felt exhausted when I cleaned my mind trying to encourage Kristofina to go her last way given from the fate after lightning had hit her so severely. I had her burnt face in mind when her eyes ‘told’ that she cannot keep up her life. Now Kristofina should go her way even when she must do it alone, but bravely and with confidence in her soul.

The phone rang close to ten o’clock. The nurse from the intensive care unit told that Kristofina had passed away five minutes ago. I became tears in my eyes and wished this young girl the great peace by crossing the last bridge. I felt deeply sorry for her that she had to cross the bridge alone without taken on her mother’s hand. I was shaken by the fact that life on this planet could be so short and unfulfilled. After I had put down the receiver, I opened the ‘The Book of the Praises’ and sent her the following verses of the last psalm afterwards: “O praise him ! / Praise God in his sanctuary, praise him at the vault of his power./ Praise him in regard to his mighty, praise him according to the fulness of his greatness !”

I had fallen asleep when Mr. T. knocked at the door around eleven o’clock. He came from the Sunday service in the white painted church with the short and small bell tower over the main entrance where the pigeons sit in front of the small bell chair and shit the churchgoers on their heads and Sunday clothes. Pigeons could shit into the face, if the churchgoer looked up to the forth and back swinging bell with its small rings or was looking up for something else. Mr. T. had dropped his wife and the three sons at his house to have a chat with me. He took a seat in one of the two outseated armchairs and lit up a ‘Camel’-cigarette, while I went into the shower. When I came back barefoot with a clean short-sleeved shirt and shorts, Mr. T. leafed in the book ‘The great philosophers’ of the historical philosopher Karl Jaspers, who had taught this subject at Basel university.

It was the lack of understanding German language that he put the book aside and said that he had a great interest in philosophical books, when he was at school. He recently had read some essays of Martin Buber. I asked Mr. T. about the core of Buber’s philosophy. He said that the core of his philosophy is the I-You-relationship or the dialogue between the ‘I’ and the ‘You’ reflecting on man and mankind. I said that each philosophy should go about the personality in its cultural diversity from man to man to understand each other more and comprehensively and to control together the ‘it’ by examining the social aspects which go beyond the analytic scientific thinking what had led to the manipulation of minds by setting the materialistic priorities that had caused spiritual impoverishment and ignorance. People of the day do question the existence of God or any supernatural power. They ask, if such an existence could accord with the principles of natural or other sciences and with human reason and reasonableness. With the ‘disappearance’ of God, the values of ethics and humanity had dramatically declined.

The materialistic-oriented manipulation has led to the small-scale thinking and loss of the humanistic education and destruction of the personality with decadence and coarsening in human character and behaviour. It is demonstrated by examples to what human beings were able to do when they kill on a mass scale other people as done in the holocaust. The core in Buber’s philosophy is the dialectic contemplation in human life in which things are contrasted in dialogues that the subject is finding itself through and in other subjects. The way of thoughtful and you-related communication leads to a mutual understanding which has to be seen as the basic fundament in social life. It is the dialogue what gives the foundation that human beings respect and love each other in values of life and dignity.

In connection with the holocaust, Mr. T. mentioned the Boer war when British put thirty thousand Boers with women and children behind bars where most of them had starved to death. I mentioned the great and courageous conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler of the Berlin philharmonic orchestra, who had saved lives of some Jewish members of the ensemble by his personal intervention with propaganda minister Goebbels. There were musicians who left with other Jewish artists, doctors and scientists Nazi-Germany and emigrated to Britain or the United States, while others were still deported and killed in the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka.

It was the personal commitment of this sensitive conductor what was not without taking the risk. His dedication of saving other lives had made Wilhelm Furwängler immortal as he was as conductor in presenting the symphonies of Beethoven. The other savers were the families in the working-class areas of Berlin. These families kept circa three thousand Jews and some other thousands of victims hidden behind wardrobes, in attics and cellars. It were families of labourers which supplied them with food and washed and ironed their clothes and linen and were caring for them till the end of the terror regime. They risked their own lives, when the club-footed propaganda minister trumpeted with big lips that Berlin was ‘cleaned’ and free of Jews. I didn’t mention the chamber orchestra in Auschwitz concentration camp where the deported philharmonic musicians played Beethoven and Brahms and the SS-officers and other Nazi-bigwigs attended the concerts in their sparkling killer uniforms, who had sent these musicians afterwards as a matter of routine naked into the death chambers. I also did not mention Isabel the Catholic, the daughter of Philip II of Spain, who robbed the Jews of their belongings and ordered then the merciless massacre on them.

The topic of the conversation came on Buber’s Psalms’ translation into German which Hermann Hesse praised as an authentic linguistic creation close to the original Hebrew text. I cited the fifth and sixth and the last psalm of ‘The Book of the Praises’ that I read for Kristofina in the morning. It was the last psalm I has sent her as she had passed away. I told Mr. T. the story of Kristofina how she was hit from lightning that she had burns in the face, on the left arm and the right lower leg with the open and charred shin bone. I told that I have seen her on the trolley in the outpatient department shortly after three o’clock and was shocked about the severity and that a human being could survive such a strike though her eyes already signaled that she couldn’t keep up her life. Despite the necessary medical measures were taken, a few hours later she passed away. Her soul has left the physical body. The termination of her short life was not forseeable, since a human being belongs to both the soul and the physical body and both together determine way and length of life.

Mr. T. stood up and said that his family was waiting. He thanked for the conversation and expressed the wish to resume the talk which he assessed as substantial when he climbed into his Toyota ‘Hiace’. Mr. T. closed the driver’s door and left the place. I closed the gate and went back to the small sitting room and left the door to the veranda open to get some air movement. It was hot and the flat had no air conditioning. I made a cup of instant coffee added with chicory and put the cup on the small table in the sitting room. I lit up a ‘Stuyvesant’ and leant back in the outseated armchair with Karl Jasper’s ‘The great philosophers’. I continued reading where the philosopher said: “The value of the reality of the four most influential human beings (Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus) is the experience of the basic human situation and the assurance of the human assignment which had been spoken out by the four important people. They had touched and answered the ultimate questions by their lives and work. Each of these personalities is to us as following human beings as to mankind at large like a permanent and restless questioning.” [R. Piper & Co. Publishers, München-Zürich 1981, 3rd edition, Volume I page 227]

I reflected on my life and possible meanings and included the young girl Kristofina in this contemplation. Every second of thinking about life, new questions came up that I could not answer. I asked himself, if I had learnt something new to understand the basic things in life when I discovered that the answers became lesser and more doubtful the more I questioned the various aspects of life. The answers were more unsatisfying the older I got. It became difficult to understand the reason for the question-answer gaping. The fact was not compatible with the conception and meaning of life. I closed the book and put ‘The great philosphers’ back on the table. I worried about the inability in putting things together when I went for another cup of coffee and came back and lit up another cigarette. I sat back in the armchair and followed the smoke rings and trails when I remembered older people’s sayings not to look for an answer of everything what was going on in life.

Smoke trails moved under the asbestos mats in the ceiling and along the wall as I thought of Kristofina. I saw her burnt face and body with the charred shin bone and saw her eyes which told that she will lose her life what she gave up a few hours later to free herself from the pain of a disfigured body with one leg only and the contracted scars. I asked the astronomic question, though I had no knowledge of ‘far-visual’ science where Kristofina was ‘walking’ now after having left the planet and having crossed the ‘bridge’ to the universe three hours ago. I ‘saw’ her soul flying like a bird flapping powerfully the wings, while she passed one sun after the other deeper into the galaxy. I looked into ‘The Book of the Praises’ and sent her the best wishes for her ‘flight’.

Some cars drove through the standing water to and from the ‘International Guest House’ opposite to the flat. Broad tyres on the big wheels of the passing Casspirs splashed the mud up to the treetops and against the mosquito mesh of the veranda. Dark clouds drew up when I had the wish to visit Dr Witthuhn. I put on trousers and rolled the trouser legs up to the knees and left the flat closing the veranda door with the sandals in my hand. Mud and standing water went up to the ankles or higher when he stepped into a pothole. The rain started when I reached with mud spots on the trousers the house of Dr Witthuhn who carried a twelve-set of ‘Guinness’-dumpies from the car into the house. He trudged with shoes through ankle-high water in the front garden without rolled-up trouser legs. Gate and boot shutter were open. I closed the boot and followed the friend. “That was a night spectacle. It was not far that the water had flooded the sitting room”, Witthuhn said on the way from the car to the house, while I washed the mud from the feet and rolled down the trouser legs. I put the sandals behind the main door and entered the sitting room. There I greeted Dr Bernhard who was accommodated in the small sleeping room packed with cardboards and other things. It was the room where I have slept or lain sleeplessly a couple of weeks before.

“Take a seat I bring a beer”, Witthuhn said. I took a seat on one of the upholstered chairs next to the club table. Dr Bernhard had occupied the two-seater and leafed in a glossy magazine forward and backward. Witthuhn put three dumpies on the glass plate of the table. He went back to the kitchen and brought the glasses and put them on the table as well. He filled his glass and took a seat on the other upholstered chair and said cheers and emptied the half of the glass. “How was your duty?”, he asked with some beer froth on the upper lip. When he heard the story of Kristofina with the charred shin bone and the tachycardia with extrasystoles and that the girl passed away after a few hours, he said that he has not seen a human hit by a lightning. Dr Bernhard leafed in the magazine forward and backward and read passages on one and the other page. The fatal fate of the girl seemed not to touch him. He was busy with himself. I was wondering about the colleague’s indifferent attitude. It revealed a personality outside normal range. Dr Bernhard was close to fifty. He was not married and had no family. His character was reserved. He did not speak about his private affairs. It was in contrast to the openness of other colleagues who had exchanged their life experiences under the seal of confidentiality. When Dr Bernhard opened himself to a small gap, he spoke of his mother, but not of his father. His behaviour was of an introverted loner, though he could be a charming person as well. He was sporting, played tennis after working hours and was a dedicated mountain climber of the Swiss Alps.

The telephone rang. Dr Witthuhn went to his sleeping room and took the call. He came back and told that two patients were brought to hospital, who needed urgent attention. The overture of the ‘Magic Flute’ had ended. I emptied the bottle, wished the colleagues a restful afternoon and rolled up the trouser legs to the knees and left with sandals in my hand the friend’s house. I stalked through ankle-high water in the front garden. It was raining when walked barefoot on the muddy road to the hospital. The guards at the checkpoint were in a relaxed Sunday mood. They let the mud-walker pass without requesting the permit. I walked and crossed the square and washed the mud under the outside tap from the legs. The sandals were put on and the trouser legs were rolled down when I entered the waiting hall of the outpatient department. Two trolleys were standing with patients. A circa forty-year-old man lay on the first trolley with a broken right ankle. He had slipped off and had bent the foot.

On the second trolley lay a five-year-old emaciated girl with a bloated abdomen. The girl had no bowel movement since a couple of days and vomited since two days. The palpation of the abdomen was painful especially in the upper part beneath the xiphoid of the breastbone. The examination resulted in the suspicion of an obstruction at the exit of the stomach. The X-rays confirmed the fracture of the upper ankle joint on the man and a couple of hazelnut-sized stones in the girl’s stomach. The mother told that the girl had not eaten since two days. The stones had to be removed. The mother followed the nurse who brought the trolley with the child to the ward to prepare the child for theatre. I informed the theatre staff and the army doctor who worked in the paediatric ward to give the anaesthetics. The operation was set for five o’clock. In the meantime I reduced the ankle fracture on the man and immobilized the foot by putting on a padded leg cast. After this, the patient was brought to the orthopaedic ward. Other small surgical procedures on other patients were done as well.

It was close to six o’clock. I hurried to theatre and changed clothes in the dressing room. The young army doctor who was a dedicated and friendly colleague, had started the introduction of the anaesthesia. The young instrumenting nurse put the instruments on the instrument table in systematic order, while I washed hands and forearms and dried them in some sterilized sheets of blotting paper. A young nurse pulled the operating coat over me and tied the laces on the back, when I pulled the gloves over the hands. I entered the operating room when the nurse had cleaned and covered the sleeping girl with sterile green sheets. The girl had no fat tissue under her skin. I did a midline incision from the xiphoid to the umbilicus. After dividing the fascial and peritoneal sheets the abdominal cavity was opened. I examined the stomach and palpated the stones. An incision was done before the pylorus and eleven stones were removed. The incision on the stomach and the layers of the abdominal wall were closed by sutures. The wound dressing was fixed with some plaster stripes and the girl was brought to the recovery room where a nurse put the oxygen mask on her face and measured blood pressure and pulse rate in short intervals. Here the girl regained consciousness. I put the eleven stones into a small plastic bag and left the theatre room to change clothes in the dressing room. I gave the plastic bag with the stones to the mother who was worried outside the theatre building. She looked at the plastic bag in her hand and thanked for his work done. This I read from her face. The mother could not understand that the daughter had swallowed so many stones. Since the daughter did not show signs of any mental disorder, to swallow stones had to do with hunger. Girl and trolley left the recovery room. A nurse carried the trolley to the surgical children’s ward, when I followed the trolley and the mother followed me. Both were reflecting on the question why the girl had swallowed the stones. I helped to put the girl from the trolley on the bed and gave some instructions to the nurses. I made my notes in the file and left the ward for the outpatient department where no patient was waiting.

I left the department and rolled up the trouser legs and took the sandals in my hand. I walked barefoot through the mud of the square, passed the gate and kept the walking feet on the middle of the soggy road. A heavy rain came down. I was wet to the skin when I arrived at the checkpoint where two guards stood under the tin roof of the small control building. The guards let me pass with the sandals in my hand when a Casspir passed by and threw the mud in a high arc in my face that the sand stuck in the hair and eyes and ears. I put off the wet and dirty clothes on the veranda and stood naked behind the mosquito mesh and looked on the lake in front in the twilight of the Sunday evening. It was raining when he went into the shower and washed the sand from the hair and face and body. I went to the kitchen in underpants and cut two slices from the tasteless mixed-grain bread and spread some margarine on and ate the slices with appetite, since I had not eaten the whole day. I emptied the cup with cold coffee from the morning and looked over the place with the pouring rain and trees standing in the lake. Voices came from the guest house on the other side. A women giggled that two men started laughing.

I reflected on the day’s events, while I lit up a cigarette and again I experienced the old phenomenon that answers got shorter the deeper the questions went. I stood up and switched on the light. I took a seat on the hard veranda chair at the veranda table in the small sitting room and started writing a letter. The letter was not finished when I laid the sheet aside and took another sheet to write a poem addressed to myself about loneliness of a stranger and of strangely looking people with a strange language I could not understand and about poverty and faces of fear and many other things that made me feel as stranger in this godforsaken corner. The writing went from the hand that he wrote a second poem about love and human being in need of love. I wrote down the thoughts and desires and smoked some cigarettes. I was worried about the strange reality with working days under the extreme and miserable conditions.

The night went by. There was no radio or tape player to listen to music I liked so much. I went to bed and did not pull over the sheet and listened to the hammering sounds of the rain beating the roof. I had a dream when stones were raining from the sky. They cracked on the roof that I crawled under the bed and put hands over my ears. A rock chunk broke through the roof with an ear-splitting bang and crushed me. I saw the girl Kristofina on the other side of the bridge. She turned her head and called my name like a siren to the other side of the bridge. Kristofina shouted that I should take courage and should follow her. She stretched her arm backwards out to get hold of my hand and to drag me to the other side where she was waiting. I came closer when she said with a smile of confidence that lightning cannot strike her anymore and that the rain has stopped. She thanked for the wishes and blessings by reading psalm five and six and the last psalm I did send her afterwards when she had crossed the bridge.

Kristofina could not finish her words of thanks and I was not sure, if she got hold of my hand when the phone was ringing and interrupted the conversation. I was torn off from the dream of the last great bridge. I felt that I was hanging in the air. My skin was sweaty when I took up the receiver. On the other end was the nurse from outpatient department. She asked, if there was a problem with the phone, since she had tried several times to reach me. I apologized and gave the deep sleep as reason, but did not mention the dream about the last bridge where I met Kristofina. The nurse understood. She told that a female patient was brought from Catholic mission hospital Oshikuku with severe abdominal pain. I was awake when I put the receiver down. The rain had stopped as Kristofina has said in the dream.

I put on the clothes which were still wet after I had beaten shirt and trousers against the mosquito mesh to remove the sand. I rolled up the trouser legs when I looked on the paper of the unfinished letter and read the two poems about loneliness in the strangeness and of the desire for love. I put the poems on the table and thought of the poor little girl on whom I had removed eleven hazelnut-sized stones from the stomach and set off for the hospital. The light was on that I could bypass the puddles in the front garden, but the soggy road lay in darkness. On the walk through the mud I had the sandals in my hand and remembered the ‘raining’ stones and the rock chunk that crashed through the roof and crushed down on me.

I passed barefoot the checkpoint at the exit of the village. A bulb gave a dim light in front of the small control building. The two guards with carbines over their shoulders remembered the mud trudger. They started laughing when I told that I was a doctor and had to walk to hospital. One guard asked why the doctor was not fetched by a car that he must not walk in the darkness alone and barefoot through the mud. I said that no car is available to transport doctors on night duty. I did not say that the major-superintendent had a new Ford mini-loader reserved for himself, though he did enjoy an undisturbed sleep. The guards could hardly believe this explanation. They became quiet with signs of sympathy and respect for the walking doctor, but disagreed how a doctor on night duty was treated by the hospital administration. I passed the checkpoint and looked to keep the middle of the soggy road with the water-filled potholes.

As the night before, I washed the mud from the legs under the tap next to the entrance of the outpatient department and rolled down the trouser legs and put on the sandals over the wet feet. I entered the waiting hall and the nurses looked with big eyes at me. I approached the trolley with the patient brought from the Catholic mission hospital Oshikuku [founded 1924 by frater Hermann Bücking]. The patient was an old woman who could not tell her age what was common with old people. Her sister told that she was fifty, though her face looked older. The abdomen of the patient was bloated and I could not hear sounds of bowel movements through the stethoscope. But there were gargle and murmur and splashing sounds around the umbilicus. Blood was taken for chemistry and a nurse brought the sample to the lab. Since the X-ray machine was not working, the diagnosis had to be made by the physical examination only. I puzzled the findings together and diagnosed an obstruction in the lower segment of the small intestine with intussusception of the last intestinal loop into the large bowel [with a cuffing effect]. An operation was inevitable and the nurse translated the findings and diagnosis and the necessity of an operation into the language of the people. The lab-technician brought the blood chemistry results. The protein was below normal and the white blood cells were increased. The potassium level was above normal. I asked Dr Nestor, the black colleague, who was on duty for the department of internal medicine, to give the anaesthetics.

A nurse and I carried the patient on the trolley to the theatre building. After changing the dressings I filled a cup of tea in doctors’ tea room and stirred two teaspoons of sugar in. The patient was on the operating table when Nestor arrived and changed his clothes. I informed him of the findings and operative management needed. The instrumenting nurse had put the instruments on the instrument table and cleaned the skin over the abdomen with the brownish disinfectant solution and covered the rest of the patient’s body with green sterile sheets. After the midline incision from the xiphoid down to some centimetres below the umbilicus I spread the fascial and peritoneal sheets and opened the abdominal cavity. The small bowel loops were bloated and the large bowel was black with the smell of decay. The instrumenting nurse assisted. I removed the gangrenous bowel and connected the end segment of the small bowel [ileum] with the end bowel [rectum] by suturing the end-to-end anastomosis. It was a big operation which lasted more than two hours. The nurse gave a great example by assisting and instrumenting this operation.

It was three o’clock in the morning when the patient were carried from the theatre to the recovery room where the nurse put the oxygen mask on the patient’s face and measured the blood pressure and counted the pulse rate in short intervals. A bladder catheter was inserted to measure the urine output. The two doctors went for a tea to the tea room. They spoke of the critical situation in the hospital and mentioned the airs and graces of the superintendent in major’s uniform, who turned and twisted the words upside down. He made the morning meetings useless to a waste of time, since nothing came out of practical importance what could lead to an improvement. They agreed that Hutman continued his game as informer for the superintendent by snooping around the people. He undermined the spirit of good work and destroyed what the others tried to improve in this difficult situation. The military was controlling the activities in the hospital. “It is ridiculous to refuse medical treatment to patients who are suspected Swapo-fighters or Swapo-supporters. This is absurd and unethical ”, Nestor said and added that black people reject the occupation by South African forces, since the people reject the racial segregation with the colour bar. Only Swapo will bring the change according to the UN-resolution 435, what the whites in their opportunistic attitude oppose.

“As long as the whites are the masters, the situation remains hopeless for the blacks. That is the reason that the blacks resist the white system and support Swapo to make the country independent and restore the human rights for black people as well by giving them back human dignity.” It was a programmatic remark of the black colleague who suffered under racial discrimination like all the black people. I called the South African ‘apartism’ the African fascism as an anachronistic system that had become frail. It could not be held alive, also not militarily.

Nestor told his story: He was a child when he helped an older white lady by carrying a heavy box. He followed her to the exit of the shop. Another white lady did not wait passing the entrance that he touched her accidentally with the box. She beat him so hard in his face that he fell with the box. The content of the box spread over the pavement. The woman shouted loudly at him, while he was lying with pain on the pavement. She said that a black boy shall never touch a white lady. The other white lady came back from her car where she had opened the shutter. She helped him up and collected the food articles from the pavement and put them back in the box. She saw his left temple was bleeding that she dried it with a tissue. She gave him a five-Rand coin as compensation for his suffering as some extra money after she had stowed the box in the boot. “There I have experienced by myself how white women treat a black child who did nothing wrong by helping an older woman. From that time onwards I was afraid of white people who put their skin colour above the plight of a black child.”

It was the sad story of an innocent black child. I saw that Nestor started stuttering when he told his story and when he spoke to the superintendent in major’s uniform. This speech disorder was certainly related to his traumatic experience as a child. I asked Nestor why small black children started crying and grasped the mothers’ hands when they saw me coming on the square or when I entered the children’s ward. Nestor told that this had to be seen in the historical context what the whites had done to the black people. Children had seen how the whites had shouted at their fathers and mothers, had degraded them by beating and deporting them. Since then a black child did not expect something good from a white man. “Such a child needs time to experience that there were other whites who have a good heart and care for a black child”, Nestor added.

It was four o’clock in the morning when we left the theatre building and wished another some quiet hours. I went back to the outpatient department where no patient was waiting. The nurses of the night shift, one man and two women, sat in the hall around the table. Their heads were lying on crosswise-topped forearms on the tabletop. I left the waiting hall and rolled up the trouser legs to the knees. With the sandals in my hand and I stalked like a stork through the mud. I tried to keep the feet in the middle of the road and trudged in big puddles and some deep potholes. I reached the checkpoint. The sleepy guard on the chair put up his head and turned it from left to right signalling that I should pass, while another guard was snoring on the second chair with his head bent over the chest. So I continued walking through the mud.

I reached the flat and pulled off the dirty clothes in the veranda. I went into the shower to clean the body from the mud and to refresh my mind. I did not think of a sleep anymore. I dried the skin and put on a fresh underpants and went to the small kitchen to make an instant coffee with the chicory supplement. I cut two slices from the tasteless mixed-grain bread and spread some margarine on, since the fridge did not offer more. I put the stuff on the veranda table in the small sitting room next to the papers and books. I wrote down the experiences of the weekend and mentioned the terrible lightning that had hit Kristofina fatally. I mentioned also the five-year-old emaciated girl on whom I removed eleven hazelnut-sized stones from the stomach, and the old woman from the Catholic mission hospital in Oshikuku, on whom I removed the badly smelling dead large bowel and connected the living parts by a deep bowel anastomosis.

It was around six o’clock when I read the two poems of the evening before. I added a second page to the second poem about loneliness and why love is so important in life. I put my life between the details and the smoked cigarettes what is not healthy as other things are not healthy and not human as well in this godforsaken corner of the world. It was Monday morning and humid when sunrise had started. No wind came through the open door. The sun dived the cloud banks into a red-violet ‘fire’ ocean of melancholy. Some rays cut small strips. I left early for the hospital and walked along the road bypassing the puddles and potholes filled with mud water. Several times I had to cross the road from one side to the other. The soggy ground was slippery under the old sandals with the walked-off profile.

I tried to prevent a landing in the mud by getting hold at a tree stem or stake or post. The two guards at the checkpoint were the same who sat four o’clock with the carbines over their shoulders sleeping and snoring outside of the small control building. These guards greeted and let me pass without asking for the permit. The one guard, who turned in the earlier morning the head signalling that I should pass, was wondering that I obviously did not need a sleep. I reached the hospital where people covered with blankets were waiting in front of the reception. I washed the mud from the feet and sandals and entered the doctors’ dining room for breakfast. I was the first. To the three slices of the tasteless grey bread the warder in the tea kitchen put a boiled egg on the small plate. He brought a tin pot with hot water and put it on the table. A small tin bowl with chicory-added coffee powder and a filled sugar bowl and a milk can and a flat tin container with margarine and two other small tin bowls with chemically refined jam were on the table.

After a short breakfast with a cup of coffee I went to the wards to look after the patients who were operated in the previous night and day and other patients admitted after bone reduction with immobilizing plaster casts. The five-year-old girl with the eleven stones smiled that she was released from the heavy pains. Her abdomen was soft and the temperature was normal. The intravenous drip ran properly. The old woman after resection of the dead and badly smelling large bowel with a deep anastomosis was in a better condition, though her temperature was still febrile. She was on antibiotics and the intravenous drip was running. The patients with casts after bone reduction were in good condition. Some of them waited for the discharge. I made notes on the observation sheets in the files and filled in the death certificate for Kristofina remembering the eyes in her burnt face telling that she cannot keep up her life that I read her the psalms five and six and the last psalm. I also remembered the dream when Kristofina crossed the last ‘bridge’ and when her soul flew with powerful wings into the universe passing one big star after the other.

A young superintendent in major’s uniform

He sat with the major-epaulets on the fresh-ironed uniform shirt behind the desk and scribbled on a sheet of paper when I entered the office and took a seat as usual opposite to the window front. My head had to turn right for a look at the superintendent’s face of importance with the military grim features reflecting the ‘white’ point regarding the critical situation. The young lieutenant-doctors entered with their clean and ironed uniform shirts and the folded berets under their right epaulets. They took the seats on the upholstered chairs under the two rattling air conditioners at the window front. Their eyes looked respectfully at the major’s epaulets with the big golden star. The dark eyes of the lieutenant of the devil hung as attracted on the major’s star. It was no question for me that these both played the great part in the devil’s game of spying, trapping and informing the colonel and health director with the big star on the epaulets with the broad red stripes.

The ‘pretorianic’ face in its square format had many servants. However the lean white chief matron and the short portly black matron sat as the pharmacist lady on the small side opposite to the superintendent with his large but empty desk. The time had changed and the situation had escalated that the army uniform got the importance of managing the hospital affairs. The medical ethics was still existing, but the practice to do so was at risk, if it came to the point of medical attention to treat sick and injured people equally. The colonel and health director insisted tirelessly in his circulars to ignore the ethics in cases of a suspected Swapo-fighter and active Swapo-supporter. Regarding the escalating political and military situation, the total collapse of the hospital as an health institution for all the people was on the verge of happening.

It was the critical situation that everything could collapse what was not according to the white ‘philosophy’. The material was supplied by whites and nothing could go without the white mastermind what was the military authority inside the war zone in the north of former Southwest Africa. Within the vicious circle of the military strategy the people of the Bantu-administration kept quiet and followed carelessly as obedient henchmen the military orders and made their private businesses without disturbances. That some white people did not consider the imminent upheaval, was a significant sign of an anachronistic stubbornness instead to open eyes and mind for the future. The cul-de-sac phenomenon as result of the distorted thinking occupied many white brains. In this context had the undermining activities of the lieutenant of the devil to be seen what were parts in the puzzle of the cancer of destruction and decay from inside the hospital. There were enough indifferent and corrupt people and traitors and other people of low character. In contrast there were a few dedicated and hard working people of strong character. The chain of colonization and depression was rusted and the chain rings were breaking one by one. It was a question of time that the powder keg of the black eruption would explode.

Dr Witthuhn entered as the last the office to attend the morning meeting. He took his seat next to me and the black colleagues what was opposite to the window front. The major-superintendent pulled the face of greater importance in his elaboration on Swapo-fighters who were hiding in the hospital and indoctrinated the nursing staff what had to be seen as a serious matter and security risk. “There is evidence that the number of insurgents has increased what was causing disturbance by their agitation in looking for support. As superintendent, I cannot tolerate that the hospital becomes a platform for an ideology that aims destruction. How can order be kept up as the indispensible fundament for the work on the patients, if ideologic activities get a foothold to stir up people by the subversive agitation that result in discord and chaos?”

The superintendent scratched his nose, pulled out a folded handkerchief from his left pocket and unfolded it with the expression of a heightened pensiveness and blew his nose emphatically in as he would know what is peace and what had to be done for peace. He folded pensively the handkerchief and put it back into his trousers’ left pocket. I looked at Hutman who followed back-leant the nose cleaning act and how the superintendent did handle with the handkerchief and the nose manoeuvre. A deep silence was in the room, since the topic was explosive for both sides of the consideration. It was the reason that the superintendent had enough time that he blew ostentatiously his nose and folded the handkerchief. After this demonstration he continued his elaboration by saying: “The present situation is dangerous. I expect from you the alert responsibility. The situation must be brought under control. The commander had expressed his concern about the security and had informed the director that he will not tolerate any political activities at the hospital. Therefore, I order officially to report each suspect person who you think is a political activist or could be a Swapo-fighter. I strictly forbid to supply any medical treatment to these people, and I will take the necessary measures if my order had been ignored.”

The superintendent made a break and pulled out his handkerchief again to wipe round his nose, though there was nothing to blow in. He put the handkerchief back and smoothed his uniform shirt after he had asked the forum to respond, but it was silent and the air conditioners rattled. Everybody seemed stuck in own thoughts. It was Dr Bernhard who asked the superintendent quietly which kind of evidence he could give. The major pulled out the handkerchief and rubbed his nose, though nothing was to blow. He started his stretched but boring play with words by jumping back and forth between Afrikaans and English. He said that he could not give details due to security reason, but he had enough evidence that Swapo-activists infiltrated the hospital. Dr Bernhard was not satisfied and became spurred. He asked how the medical doctor can find out if a patient is a Swapo-fighter. The superintendent looked at the doctor as he found this question totally displaced or unintelligible or exaggerated. Hutman as the fast-acting lieutenant of the devil jumped in and said that taking the history and doing the physical examination can give the evidence. Dr Bernhard asked back how he can take the history when he did not understand the language. Hutman could not answer the question. Dr Bernhard said most doctors depend on translation by the nurse who would not tell the doctor if the patient is a Swapo-fighter. In the case of a shooting accident Dr Bernhard continued: “you have to X-ray the patient to locate the bullet and to remove the bullet for further investigation from which kind of gun the bullet was shot. It means, the doctor has to diagnose and to treat the patient before the suspicion could be affirmed that the patient is a Swapo-fighter.”

I became concerned at the illegitimate claim of a military authority in handling ethics in medical practice. I asked the superintendent, who was fiddling with the handkerchief round his nose and wiped over parts of his face down to the neck, if a medical doctor is allowed to treat patients unequally, since this would fulfil an unethical and criminal state of affairs. The army doctors in lieutenant uniforms sat on the upholstered chairs at the window front and looked down to the floor, while the dark and restless eyes of Hutman sparkled against me as he accused me of a political betrayal. The superintendent folded the handkerchief and put it back into the left pocket. He pulled the greatest importance over his face and repeated that he strictly forbids any sympathy for Swapo and treatment of Swapo-fighters and Swapo-agitators. “Where will we end up, if the necessary steps are not taken now to secure law and order? It’s time to take action before the situation is going out of hand. Therefore, I expect from you to keep strictly to the order.”

I was angry and thought of the conceited henchman in his ironed uniform shirt, who had nothing achieved and contributed to an improvement of the hospital situation, but had taken one of the two Ford-mini-loaders for his private use. The doctors on duty have to walk through rain and mud in the deepest darkness while the superintendent enjoyed his undisturbed sleep. The only thing he did: he opened his mouth and spoke nonsense. Like his meaningless fiddling with the handkerchief around his nose, his shallow sentences were unfounded and unjustified. It revealed more the strategic fiddling in an escalated situation of war that the military cannot win. The central point what he overlooked was to take responsibility and action to improve the conditions for more efficiency.

Silence lay over the heads of the attendees that Dr Van der Merwe opened a window and another lieutenant doctor opened another window. It was an imposition in ethical terms what the superintendent stated by order in regard to the unequal treatment of patients. The order was not more than a further discrimination as the people were not degraded enough and this without any solid explanation or evidence. It was like an ape circus that the white matron who had deserved respect by hard work, asked how the nursing staff should behave in suspect cases without evidence. The superintendent in the state of agitation and fiddling with the right hand in the right pocket, said: “There should be no question! Each suspect case has to be reported immediately. To make it clear”, he continued in his agitation: “any case of disregard or non-compliance will be considered as complicity. In such a case a disciplinary hearing will follow. I will make sure that this person will be removed from hospital, if the suspicion of complicity has been proved.”

It was the heavy ammunition in a political game of a questionable efficacy by distorting the truth, since there was no evidence that Swapo-fighters did hide and agitate and infiltrate the hospital. However, the fundament of the medical ethics were cracked and the doors were open for further manipulations. The hospital was already wounded in respect of its neglected status with the old and outdated technical and otherwise defective facilities. Now it became ethically wounded with regard to the medical treatment, if the equality could not no longer be guaranteed.

It were pessimistic signs what had arisen from the morning meeting and that despite the fire-gleaming signs over the horizon of the imminent collapse of the oppressive apartheid system. The departure of this system could not become a good one, if the hospital and its people were treated such unreasonably and ‘apartly’ as the superintendent with the major’s star on his shirt epaulets had ordered. He did this with backing by the director and the brigadier. It was a situation that the white bed sheet with the spots and tears had put on the corrugated roof of the outpatient department building as the flag of surrender of the medical profession. I considered the needs and plights of the people, but things were still white, because the system in administration and education, in corruption and wealth, and the blind stubbornness was white. However, the end of this system would be definitive and irreversible.

During the superintendent’s long and neurospastic elaboration the black colleagues looked down to the floor as some of the young army doctors did. The faces looked serious and the lips were closed rejecting any participation in regard to the chapter regarding the white-apart schizophrenia. The down looking colleagues obviously thought about the consequences for the people in need who were degraded to poverty and insecurity and rightlessness. It was the reason that the black colleagues dismissed the dubious offer to respond to this absurd elaboration. It was in their mind as well that a flowerpot was never to win with a sheet as the flag of surrender on the roof.

The ethical responsibility has not to hang on nails like uniforms or civilian clothes. In this regard the silence of the black colleagues was the answer to which I had nothing to add. The elaboration reminded on case presentations in psychiatric lectures when patients with schizophrenia saw black or other colours instead of white and vice versa. But here and inside the war zone, the schizophrenia had the white apartheid paint that was flaking off. The political fractions were absurd and insoluble caused by a broken status based on arrogance aud illogicality and inhumanity.

Lastly, the morning meeting went about the admissions over the weekend. In this part the superintendent looked at his watch what was understood that he had wasted most of the time by his eloquent and absurd monologue. I gave a brief report on my work over the weekend when I mentioned Kristofina with the charred shin bone after she was hit by a lightning, who passed away a few hours after admission. Then I told the story of the five-year-old and emaciated girl with the eleven hazelnut-sized stones I had removed from her stomach. I mentioned the old female patient from the mission hospital in Oshikuku on whom he removed the dead large bowel and have done the deep anastomosis of the small bowel to the rectum. I mentioned the patients who came with bone fractures and were admitted after closed reduction and applied casts for immobilization. The superintendent was not interested, but bored from these reports and wiped the handkerchief around his nose. It was the curse that a superintendent of this small format led the hospital who did not care for anything but the stories about the Swapo-fighters. It was the dramatic decline of what a medical doctor had to be. The meeting had ended ten o’clock. “The system should go to hell. A new start is needed”, I said after I have left the secretary’s office to Dr Witthuhn, who had not said a single word.

The black colleagues left with faces of great concern the superintendent’s office. They did not comment on the major’s elaboration on the way to the outpatient department. I changed the clothes in the dressing room and went to theatre 3 where the patient for repair of a big inguinal hernia lay on the operating table. The friendly army doctor who worked in the paediatric ward and had given the anaesthetic on the five-year-old girl, had put the breathing tube into the patient’s throat. He moved the anaesthetic machine closer and connected the tube and turned the knobs for the anaesthetic gas mixture. The instrumenting nurse opened the sterile set and put the instruments on the instrument table. I had washed hands and forearms over the zinc tub and a young nurse pulled the sterile operating coat over me, while I dried my hands in some blotting paper and put on the gloves. The operation went smoothly and fast. The wound was dressed and the patient woke up. I thanked the anaesthetic doctor and the theatre staff for their work well done. The patient were lifted onto the trolley and carried to the recovery room.

I left the theatre room and went to the small tea room for a cup of tea. I took a seat next to Dr van der Merwe who was quiet and obviously reflecting on the topics of the morning meeting. Hutman sat with two doctors in uniform on the other side of the small table and chatted about trivial things. Dr Bernhard entered for a cup of tea and took a seat putting the cup on the scribbled wooden plate. His face looked angry. “This is impossible in Switzerland that a doctor goes first with his finger along the friend-enemy-scale to decide whether or not he will treat a patient”, he said and added: “It was even not allowed on the ‘Vietnam’ where injured soldiers were equally treated regardless, if he was an American or a Vietcong. What is the value of medicine, if doctors become degraded to recipients of orders by polit-officers? In this case, we should go home.”

He took a mouthful of tea and put the cup back on the wooden plate. Hutman with his dark and restless eyes sat leant back and was quiet. Nobody responded to Dr Bernhard, but the concern was readable on the faces. Van der Merwe offered me a cigarette and gave the light. Dr Bernhard asked the people, if there were any evidence that Swapo-fighters came to the hospital. Nobody responded, since everybody knew that Hutman was the extended ear of the military authority. Dr Bernhard kept his angry face and took another mouthful of tea. I responded saying: “At least, a fact of evidence should be given.” Hutman felt threatened. He emptied his cup and left the tea room. The other two young army doctors followed him some minutes later. The tension caused by the superintendent’s elaboration on the critical situation at the hospital and on the Swapo-fighters had reached the tea room. Dr Bernhard was the one, who expressed his rejection: “I won’t be dictated by anyone in my behaviour and attitude as medical doctor.”

I went back to the theatre room to do the second operation what was a tumour of the right parotid gland. It was a difficult operation due to the intricated anatomy of the face that I had refreshed the days before and was repeating when I washed my hands. The main part of the operation was the separation of the gland from the facial nerves and blood vessels. Then I removed the big tumour with the gland from its anatomical bed. I followed the course of the glandular duct up to the mouth where he ligated and dissected the duct. The operation lasted three hours. The instrumenting nurse did her work with great attention and patience. The patient breathed spontaneously when he was brought to the recovery room where the nurse put the oxygen mask on his face and measured the blood pressure and counted the pulse rate in short intervals.

The third operation for removal of a gall bladder on an old female patient was postponed to the afternoon, since lunchtime was close to end. A plate with food stood covered on the small hatch in the tea room where I took my lunch. Plate and food were cold and the meat lobe was tough like leather which I took in my hand, because I could not cut off a piece with that blunt knife. A small tin can was filled with the sweet-chemistry of orange taste. I sat alone in the tea room. Dr Ruth, the black colleague, came in to inform the theatre staff that she had to do two Caesarean sections, and the patients were on the way. She said that hospital and doctors would face hard times as long as this superintendent is in place. I agreed and asked, if she could see an alternative. Dr Ruth shrugged the shoulders and left the tea room.

Dr van der Merwe entered the tea room and offered a cigarette as a dessert substitute. He expressed his concern about the morning meeting saying that it is unacceptable to dictate persecute the mind of doctors…. He cut the sentence when Hutman stood in the door between dressing room and tea room to check, if I was still busy with an operation. I told that the operation for the gall bladder removal was postponed to the afternoon, since the previous operation took longer and the first operation had started with delay due to the extended meeting. Van der Merwe had changed the subject and spoke of the time when he was a student.

I found it reasonable and Hutman in the door listened for a short while. The talk was unsuspicious, though the lieutenant of the devil sensed the political betrayal in each corner, also when the corner was filled with cobwebs or some dried-up beetles and ants. Hutman told that he had to go to the outpatient department to see the waiting patients. He disappeared from the door, washed his hands over the basin in the dressing room and left the theatre and closed the exit door. After this short intermezzo, Van der Merwe took up the topic of the morning. He said he disagrees with the order of the superintendent. He wants to help the people and to be a good doctor for the patients. There was no evidence that Swapo-fighters were hiding in the hospital and above the unfounded assertion, it should not be the attitude of a medical doctor to suspect in each patient a Swapo-fighter. The medical doctor should act responsibly by giving his attention to the sick people with dedication and professionalism without compromising the ethics. I reflected on the statement and paid Van der Merwe tribute who in his lieutenant uniform remained honest and conscientious by resisting the arrogant unethical order given by the superintendent, not to treat a patient, if he is or could be a Swapo-fighter.

I left the tea room for theatre 3. From the corridor I saw through the window that Van der Merwe sat leant back and smoked pensively his cigarette. What was he thinking? This question moved my mind when I opened the tap over the zinc tub to wash my hands. I dried the hands in the blotting paper, while a nurse pulled the operating coat over me and tied up the laces over my back. The patient was in anaesthesia and covered with sterile green sheets. After the abdominal cavity was open there were adhesions round the enlarged and bulgingly filled gall bladder that had to be released. After ligation and dissection of the blood vessels and the small bile duct, the gall bladder, which contained many small stones up to the bladder neck, got removed.

It was after five o’clock in the afternoon when I pulled off the soaked operating shirt and rubbed the sweat from head, neck, chest and back. I pulled on the civilian clothes and left the theatre building for the outpatient department. Many patient had still to be seen. I took a seat at the table in the hot consulting room and started my work. I saw an old man with a skin tumour of the size of a five-Rand coin over the left temple. A smell of decay came from the tumour with its necrotic central part. There were enlarged lymph nodes on the left side of the neck. It was no question that this tumour was malignant and had to be excised as the enlarged lymph nodes as well for histology. The big skin defect had to be covered with a free skin graft. The patient was admitted and his name was put on the preliminary operation list. The next patient was a nine-year-old boy whose right testicle was in the groin and the right scrotal pouch was empty. It was a congenital disorder that the testicle had not descended completely. I told the mother who was concerned about the missing testicle that she brought the boy late, since the repair had to be done not later than in the third year of age to prevent functional disorders in terms of a hypogonadism. The boy got admitted and his name got on the list for an orchidopexy.

It was past six o’clock, but Hutman was neither in the small theatre room nor in the surgical ward. He had simply disappeared without saying a word. This behaviour did not matter much, since I did not expect loyalty from this doctor in the lieutenant’s uniform who was more the tool of the devil than a dedicated doctor. After having seen the last patient, I thanked the nurse for her cooperation and left the consulting room. When I passed the exit of the waiting hall I saw Hutman on the hospital square chatting with the superintendent who sat in the Ford-mini-loader that he had required for himself. Patients who were treated late prepared their places for the night close to the reception. There were mothers with small children who could not return home due to curfew hours what started with sunset. The hospital was the place they had to stay over night. So they sat on cardboards and papers and were eating and feeding the children and waiting for the next sunrise.

I felt exhausted after the busy weekend with the little rest and from the work of the day when I passed the square. I was angry when I thought of the morning meeting. I needed rest and passed the inveterated ‘apartists’ and collaborators of the devil without greeting. I left the hospital and took the short path along the barbed wire and rotten picket fence with the broken slats to the left and the five caravans to the right. I wished in mind Van der Merwe and his young wife a good evening and quiet night when I passed the third caravan. I passed the checkpoint where the guards greeted me with “goeienaand” (good evening) without asking for the permit.

I felt better after the short walk and pulled off the sandals and washed the feet before I entered the veranda. The soaked shirt got pulled off and laid over the veranda chair in the small sitting room. I pulled everything from the body and went into the shower. The real refreshment did not come, since water from the cold water tap was hot and the water pressure was low. After the hot shower I made something to eat what consisted of two slices of the tasteless grey bread spread with margarine and a cup of instant coffee with the chicory supplement. I looked at the sheets of paper with the poems lying on the veranda table and thought of some other aspects in life.

I put on a dry shirt and the shorts. I closed the veranda door and made a walk barefoot to the mini-supermarket and bought some stuff to put on the bread, and a packet of ‘Stuyvesant’. I put the spread stuff in the fridge and lit up a cigarette. I enjoyed the relaxation and looked over the muddy place between the flat and the International Guest House. The cigarette was finished and I set off for a turn to Dr Witthuhn, but left the wet sandals in the veranda. I viewed the footprints walked in and how fast they disappeared. The sun sunk behind the horizon and dived the cloud banks into a red-blazing ocean. The philosophical point of viewing was to keep the feet walking for the continuity of new footprints into the ground as evidence of human existence.

The water in the front garden of Witthuhn ’s house was still ankle-high. I stalked like a stork through the water washing the mud from the feet. The entrance door was open that I entered the sitting room. Witthuhn and Bernhard sat on upholstered chairs around the small table and drank the cups of coffee. The Berlin philharmonic orchestra played under Herbert von Karajan the ‘Symphonie fantastique’ of Hector Berlioz. The record player produced some scrape sounds. “Have a seat! I bring you a cup of coffee.” It was the friendly greeting of a friend who had the feeling for a lonely person in the war zone with the enclave and the huge work burden in the hospital under terrible conditions. Bernhard said ‘hello’ and leafed through the German-English and the English-German dictionaries. He occupied the two-seater like the day before. I took a seat on the one-seater opposite to the two-seater. Witthuhn brought a cup and the container with coffee from the coffee machine and filled the cup over the glass plate of the table. Then he brought the container with the rest of coffee back to kitchen. “How was your day?”, he asked when he came back and took the seat. The question had the paint of routine, but he had not said a word in the morning meeting.

I started with the last and told that Hutman had disappeared from OPD [outpatient department] when I came from theatre in the afternoon after the last operation. “I have seen him in the theatre tea room. He drank tea and chatted with some people”, Bernhard said and added: “I washed my hands in the dressing room and heard his voice calling my name and making bad remarks about colleagues who had questioned the superintendent in the morning meeting for evidence regarding the hiding Swapo-fighters. When I looked through the passage to the tea room it suddenly was quiet. They have not expected me.” I lit up a cigarette and said: “The situation is messed up by this damned lieutenant who cannot be stopped in his destructive activities.” Bernhard: “As I have said, I’m not prepared to take this nonsense.” Witthuhn made the prediction that the system would not last long. There are whites, who pack their bags for going back to South Africa. Bernhard said: “If some people in Africa are getting rich as the black presidents after independence of their countries got rich and became the richest people, while the African nations sink deeper into poverty, it is the black corruption with nepotism which is reckless und brutal against their own people.” I replied that the forecast is too early, since the whites has still the saying who did enrich themselves by corrupt practices on the expenses of the blacks. Bernhard made a serious face and said: “Wait! If you stay in the country, you will see that the skin colour of the people in power will change, but the corruption will continue and I tell you the corruption will become worse, since black people are brutal, if it comes to money and enrichment.” Witthuhn laughed and agreed. It was a change of subject I had not intended, but a few years later I should remember the remarks of Dr Bernhard.

I asked Witthuhn why he did not say a word in the morning meeting. Witthuhn looked slightly amazed: “Do you think I could change something? The wheels have stuck. The major only executes the orders from above. Of course, it is stupid to demand from a medical doctor to treat this patient, but not the other patient, because of the suspicion of being a Swapo-fighter. But as I said the system will not last long and the meeting did confirm in its way that the system is close to end. I hope it will collapse soon.”

Bernhard was quiet and busy in the dictionaries. I understood the comment and saw in mind the spotted and torn white sheet as the flag of surrender on the bent and rusty rod on the roof of the outpatient department building. “Should the hospital come under the hammer?”, I asked. “I don’t know, but it could be possible, if the hospital is such a big thorn in the eyes of the military”, Witthuhn said. Bernhard looked up: “Where hops and malt is lost, there cannot help a word of reason.” I replied: “But you gave your opinion.” Bernhard: “And you too when you asked for the evidence regarding Swapo-fighters. I said already I have nothing in common with the pigsty which is worse compared with the difficult situation on the ‘Vietnam’ what is caused by the stupidity of idiots in the Medical & Dental Council in Pretoria and by the fellow administration in Ondangwa. What I want is to climb the Brandberg and to go back to Switzerland.” The black resistance has reached the boiling point, but this was not enough. The melting point was needed to move the system from the scene of degradation and oppression. The final situation was the cul-de-sac when understanding is impossible and the words for a reasonable and humane compromise do not exist.

It was dark when I was on my way back and reflected on the remarks of the colleagues. A missile whizzed over my head and gave a huge detonation shortly after. I was shocked that I lost the balance, slipped away and landed lengthwise in the mud, while a second and a third missile whizzed over me and detonated loudly in a greater distance. I had not recovered when the heavy mortars from the military camp started their shooting ear-splittingly. There came four missiles more over the village with the horrific whizzing noises. The detonations were heard, but the impacts were outside of the village. Armoured vehicles of the type Eland with the long ninety-millimetre barrels and other armoured vehicles of the type Casspir with machine guns over the driver’s cabs and sit-up squads raced along the road with turned-up lights and turning spotlights flinging the mud against panes and walls. I stood up and continued barefoot my way back to the flat. I was covered with mud from top to toes. It was a power cut. I removed the dirty clothes in the darkness and threw them on the floor in the veranda and washed the mud from face and body outside under the tap. I went naked and wet through the sitting room to the shower. The water pressure has improved and the water from the cold tap was cooler than in the afternoon. I dried the skin and was naked when I lit up the cigarette in the veranda. I stood behind the mosquito mesh and looked into the darkness and listened to the heavy mortars’ shootings in five to ten minutes intervals that the windows vibrated and the asbestos plates crunched in the ceiling.

The shooting stopped after one hour, but the power was still off. There was grave silence in the village. Even dogs had stopped barking. A car was driving. The diesel-generator on the other