I thought it would be the coolest job in the world: a runner in the art department on the set of Angelina Jolie’s latest movie. So I was there all eager and bug-eyed at 6 in the morning standing in the fold of Rossing mountain where something strange was taking shape in the dawn. It was mid-December.
The set dresser was already there, always on his job, 24/7, a brilliant film-maker by the name, Delarey. He reminded me of one of those Boer generals from the English war I read about in school. He dominated every room he entered. He was the kind of guy who made people feel that it was much better for them to be on his side, with just a hint of a threat. He planned his logistics like a guerilla commander with a huge purse; making all the pieces fall into place at the right time at any price. From the first diagram of the village that I looked at with three others in a room, to seeing this camp growing for real, I watched him use the money to set hundreds of people to work at so many different little chores. He would tell me, get ten, twenty more workers and I would go and look for people who could do the job. But he was ruthless in creating his vision. Everyone suffered, including him. He was building a refugee camp in our desert, to resemble one he saw in pictures from Ethiopia in 1985. He pushed a copy of the script into my hand. It said: ‘by Oliver Stone’ on the front. His pupils dilated and he smiled.
He told me straight. ‘Look mate, our budget is about a million dollars a month, now if we don’t spend that money, we not getting any more next month, verstaan jy my’? The day before he sent me to the bank to cash a cheque, I felt like I just robbed the place when I came out, my rucksack was packed full of cash, it could hardly close on top. Delarey said I should buy anything that is beautiful for the set, any old shit that I saw in the township. He can use that throw-away material to make his set look like real people lived there. So I went from being the broke-ass to being Father Christmas in one week. Everywhere I went in the township people were throwing stuff at me, old blankets, piss-pots, broken chairs, anything and I was dishing money. Lucky I never got hurt. Some people wanted to shag you because they thought you are famous in movies, even though you may be only carpenter casual. The glamour of the dollars made everybody shine in that time. We all felt like we’re in the movies. And dishing out the cash, even though I had to wash in disinfectant at night, I thought I was doing good.
Delarey had been to hell before. He knew secretly also that hell had a name, and it was not far away from where stood. For some reason he wanted to send me there. I still don’t know the real reason why, but he decided to send me to hell by myself. He was loading the van, full of new blankets, pots and pans, things that he had bought for the set, we only stopped when nothing else could fit. Then he gave me the map, the key, a tap on the shoulder and closed the door with a metallic slam, as if to say, hurry, there’s no time!
That is how I came to make my way to hell on my own, with a fist full of dollars. The afternoon struck as I turned at Okahandja north onto the Otjiwarongo road. About half an hour later I turned east onto a gravel road and it seemed a long time on that bumpy dusty road, that I realised that if you only travel along the main raods you do not really know this country. That is how I came to Osire refugee camp. My mission, to deliver the new blankets and buckets and things in exchange for old ones.
It was very hot and no trees were visible within the barbed wire refugee camp. I made my way inside and found some humble people there. They were very needy and weak-looking. It hurt my eyes. The children looked neglected and thin, their bellies swollen, some were clearly starving, some were covered in sores. I entered a large tent, the roof was black from the many fires and smoke. About 60 families lay inside huddled in holes in the ground, like the ones that animals make for shelter from the cold. Children crawled in the dark stink through muck. It was palace of disease. It must have taken a few minutes to walk through that tent, but the memory remains strong, the smell of death germinating, of people writhing in the soil next to their helpless children, that unforgettable stink of death. The most destitute and wretched of the earth were crammed into that dank space. I couldn't breathe after a few minutes. I passed through the tent into the light. I had never known such conditions, even though ten years have passed I cannot quite find the words to express the pain of those people, to go into and live in a place where death is breeding and dominant over the most fragile lives. That such a place exists in our time, in our country disturbed me - I looked up and saw a boy with smiles, inviting me to play, he took me by the hand for a walk and a teenage girl met us on the way and started to spread the word that I wanted to swop.
As I went to open the van something unusual happened, the ground tilted forward and hundreds of people were running towards the van with old blankets and broken pots and things. Suddenly there was a great crushing around the van and I was stuck, unable to open the door even to get the blankets out, the young girl was pressed so hard by the mass at the back trying to get to van that she could not move and her nose started to bleed. I realised this is gonna be chaos. So I did what my coward nerves told me to. I jumped in the car and drove off into the street, now I had a few thousand people running after the van with only 200 blankets. I was in trouble.
I count my lucky stars, because suddenly there was a fellow my age in the way, he waved me down, got in and told me 'Man, you can't do that! This is how you supposed to issue stuff orderly. We had to got to a barbed-wire pen and everybody has to come through a gate like cattle in a long row. I looked at him, he was an impressive youth, muscular and black with a reassuring smile. When I saw how the people acknowledged his leadership I thought I might survive the day. He spoke English and spoke to the people in different languages to get into some kind of line. It was not much use. Old toothless women were throwing themselves onto the windscreen to cry for help. That look is just desperation from beyond my experience. The children were begging me? Clinging to my legs. Me? To help.
Something inside me ached, I'd been speared with many a thorn to my chest. I was a tourist in hell. The young Angolan took me to his hut. I met his little family in the shade they made for themselves behind their shelter. Everything swelters in that heat. He shows me their rations for the month. A bit of oil, some maize, two tins of fish, I feel like crying. They share their food me, their eyes are laughing and pleading, they are clinging to that fragile thread of life, I realise they cannot put any hope in me, their visitor from the free world. But in my new Angolan friend I still see some light shining through in his eyes, he wanted to do great things, he was not going to be a prisoner here for ever. He exercised every day and spoke many languages, he had dreams and helped me through that day, I was grateful and left them with only my thanks. There were so many skilled and educated people there. Talented people are wasting away in silence in their thousands, while nobody knows. Or nobody cares.
It’s true I drove back to the beach in a hurry, glad to be gone from that secret and festering corner of our country, but unable quite to shake the image of horror to this day; the nightmare I witnessed burnt itself into my mind, even now it is vivid, so many eyes begging for a chance to live. Suddenly I felt that it was unfair, all my own freedom and even the privilege of walking about freely, up to then I had been quite happy in my ignorance. Now I felt guilty as sin. By the time I hit the main road to Okahandja my face is caked with dust and tears and I can’t see straight. Delarey had ordered me to take that filthy tent down and bring it with to make his movie look more real and authentic, he did not care about much else. I saw how the refugees worked on that project of taking it down and they finished in a few hours undoing the massive beams, they were very eager to show their skills and strength. As I drove through the dusk toward the setting Namib sun a certain fury built up in me, I put my foot down on the pedal and faster the van went with its load for of blankets, from Congo, from Sierra Leone, from Liberia, from Rwanda, the reeking blankets that dried so many the tears and so much blood and the fearful sweat of so many homeless refugees of Africa on the run, like so many nightmares and ruined dreams those blankets were stinking up the van. People had been stuffing their blankets in my face and throwing them over me the whole day, I felt sick with guilt and disgust and kept driving faster as night fell.
I couldn’t look anymore at the feasts and banquets laid out every day for the ‘stars’ and crew, the shipments of bottled water, expensive wines, the separate toilets, the limousines, lush hotels, the running streams of Jack Daniels and the drunken orgies, everybody on coke and the glamour all seemed fake and wasteful to me. I saw those 20 000 people trapped in the barb-wired bush-veld not far from here. The movie-moguls could easily spend 30 million dollars to construct a fake village in 3 months, while ignoring the reality of the needs of the real refugees trapped and doomed to live like fenced animals. I realised that we have entered the realm of the absurd, increasingly all the contradictions of social life manifest themselves as absurdities that no longer make sense. The logic of the system no longer holds. The values of the dominant groups in society are no longer persuasive and begin to break down. This is the origin of rebellion. I quit my job on the movies a few days later and threw Stone's script in the dustbin.
I found out that the production company that recruited the ‘extra’ people for the movie in the DRC in Swakopmund found thousands of people who are so emaciated and under-nourished that they closely resembled the Ethiopians during the famine of 1985. They felt like they had struck gold and had to hire a train to carry the extras to the set. The casting agent joked that if they fed the extras from Mondesa and DRC, as well as they did the rest of the film crew, the poor would fatten up and would be no good for their film parts as starving refugees.
But after I saw the plight of the refugees in Namibia I could not pretend that I do not know or that I am innocent of this crime to my fellow man. As for Delarey, I had to abandon him to follow my own path, but that day he showed me something more than the amazing artificiality of film-making.
Hell is a place on earth and it has a name: Osire Refugee Camp.
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The Day Jade's Bubble burst 
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