Helmut Lauschke - Namibia - The difficult Years

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.

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.