Vox Pop: An Occasional Series that Profiles Namibians

This Vox Pop makes for uncomfortable reading. Not one for children. The interview was conducted some time ago. But time is relative in Namibia. Things haven’t changed.

We speak to a young San (Bushman) woman in North East Namibia.

START

QUOTE ONE: “I gave birth to a healthy baby boy in 2004. Later I killed him.”

/Xpundi, a San woman, aged 21 at time of interview.

(For obvious reasons her name has been changed for this publication and there is no photograph.)


QUOTE TWO: “She was never a one-man-woman. To be direct she sold herself to get onto a high. She was a whore. But she has changed a lot. She is now almost a pillar of society – definitely working hard at it.”


Dries Alberts, Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) Warden of Khaudom National Park, her friend.

/Xpundi belongs to the San Ju’hoansi tribe (meaning ‘the Real People’). The tribe, still commonly referred to as Bushmen, numbers some 3,000. Almost all live in, or within the vicinity of Tsumkwe, the tiny, dusty capital of a homeland area that was designated during the Apartheid era as ‘Bushmanland’.

Tsumkwe is located in a vast wilderness area in north east Namibia close to the Khaudom National Park. It is reached with difficulty due to rough roads and has little to offer its residents. The few shops are poorly stocked, the petrol station has been closed for years and there isn’t much to do.

Until recently both alcohol and money were alien to the Ju’hoansi’s way of life but with the war in Angola and the arrival of South African Defence Forces in the area in the 1980s both became readily available with disastrous consequences. Karin Beytell, a nurse working in the area during that time recalls witnessing the social upheaval and collapse that followed. Unaccustomed to alcohol a wave of drunkenness, fighting, loose sexual behaviour and related diseases engulfed the Ju’hoanasi with catastrophic results. Even now the legacy of that time lives on, Karin says, casting a shadow over the community.

Alcohol in the form of ‘tombo’ (a locally brewed Owambo beer made from yeast and brown sugar) and a distilled liquor called ‘Kashebembe’ (this is 50% alcohol and induces hallucinations and brain damage) is readily available. Both drinks are cheap. Half a liter of Tombo costs only N$2. 100 ml of Kashebembe sells for $5. Dries Alberts, the warden of Khaudom and a resident of Tsumkwe describes Kashebembe as “lethal beyond belief.”

/Xpundi’s parents died of alcohol-related illness when she was young and she was forced to rely on the generosity of friends and distant relatives. “They were spread thin and far at that time. I was not living. I was surviving,” she says.

She still resides in the same shabby concrete “single quarter” shack that was her shelter during childhood. In the winter months the temperature plummets as the exposed concrete absorbs the cold. At this time of suffering she says she turned to alcohol for comfort. She also sold her body to men to earn money to buy drink.

When she discovered that she was pregnant she was overwhelmed with despair. She had no idea who the father was and felt “as if the whole world was against me.” “Drink was my only friend.”

Most government run medical facilities in Namibia are experiencing staff shortages – exacerbated by a brain drain to the private sector and overseas. There is, to take one example, a 49% vacancy rate for social workers. Tsumkwe’s provisions for expectant mothers are particularly thread bare. There is one government run clinic but it has no permanently stationed doctor. It is visited only once a week on Tuesday by a female doctor from the Mangetti Dune settlement some distance away.

“If people get seriously ill they get transported by the Tsumkwe ambulance to Mangetti Dune,” Driess explains. “Dr. Malita has X-ray machines but there’s only a ten percent chance they’ll be working and there’s a 50% chance that the town generator won’t be working. That leaves you with only a five percent chance. Not great odds. If things are critical they will be taken to Grootfontein. That journey can take a lot of hours.”

/Xpundi’s pregnancy progressed without the need to try her luck at Mangetti Dune. Instead she took her ‘clinic passport’ – a basic health record – to the Tsumkwe clinic where she received simple pre-natal advice of the ‘don’t drink, don’t smoke’ variety. Her weight was checked. The service is provided by a resident nurse to pregnant women and is free of charge.

The boy was born without complications. And despite her alcohol abuse, he was normal, healthy and his arrival brought her joy.

Before and during her pregnancy /Xpundi relied heavily on milk donated by aid agencies and the Government of Namibia’s hand-outs in the form of “Drought Relief”, also known as “Emergency Food for Marginalized Communities.” The ration consists of a 10 kg bag of maize meal, powdered soup, dried fish and cooking oil. “This food carried me through each month while my baby was in my tummy,” she says.

After two months of single motherhood, post-natal medical support ceased and the craving for alcohol returned. Obsessed, she began to sell her monthly food allowance to buy drink. “Some mornings I would wake up with a stranger (man) in my bed and my baby crying because I’d not fed him the previous night because I had been out and about.”

One of her boyfriends “kind of moved in.” Soon his abusive nature entered the picture. He began to thrash and punch her, called her a whore and accused her of being lazy. On some nights the beatings would only cease when he passed out after too much Kashebembe.

/Xpundi’s neighbours saw how quickly she had been re-ensnared by alcohol and that her boy was being neglected. They tried to help but it was too late.

The little boy died aged one. Malnutrition was the officially recorded cause of death. /Xpundi describes how she used to hit him in an attempt “to stop him crying all the time.” Although this did not happen every day she is adamant that it was she was the one that took his life. She drank, she sold her food, she couldn’t produce milk for him. She hit him in fits of wretched rage.

/Xpundi still lives in Tsumkwe. Since the death of her baby her neighbours say she has changed. She now has a husband and life in general has improved. She and her partner are unemployed, still reliant on food aid, but she also sells trade crafts of chiseled ostrich egg jewelry.

The San communities, particularly the Ju’hoansi clan, are in general, survivors. They have lived off the land for centuries before the arrival of immigrants and external forces. Although the intervention of modern medicine has statistically improved the child birth survival rates Dries points out that the women who still live in traditional villages far from clinics provide the most “astonishing results.”

Child birth, pre and post natal counseling and support are traditionally provided by the older women in the remote communities. They act as mid wives during the birth process and use locally collected plant medicines. Dries observes that they have one more weapon to prevent the corrosive influences that led to the death of /Xpundi’s little boy.

“It is distance. It cannot be beaten.”

As simple as it is logical, alcohol has to be transported by foot from Tsumkwe to the villages. Thus villagers are faced with a decision: either carry a bag of food or “a bunch of bottles” back home (which might be as much as 50 km distant). The obvious answer is leave the alcohol. Take the food.

/Xpundi’ ends her story with these words. “Had I stayed in my village I would not have had the knowledge to tell you this story. If I had stayed there this story (may not have needed to) been told. It might not have happened. If only I can be forgiven.”

NOTE: The pseudonym was chosen by the interviewee./XPundi means ‘hope’ in the language of the Ju’hoansi.

Vox Pop: An Occasional Series that Profiles Namibians Hugh Paxton's Blog