There is a a lot to catch up on. At the end of November I finally ran a few of the focus groups for the TB research. It turned out to be a difficult endeavour. The first one went ok (though patients painted a very cheery picture of the program of which we are sceptical of being the whole truth), the second and third got sidelined by mistrust. The NGO that organises the treatment supporters, the people who visit patients once a week and the cornerstone of this new approach, organised a meeting at the weekend before with a similar intention to me: to evaluate how the program is going. However, apparently payment was promised to the patients for their transport to the meeting but when they arrived they were told there was no money. The patients were fuming! So when it came to my meeting a few days later, understandably no one trusted I would pay them, or felt inclined to make the effort. The fourth focus group suffered from being too close to Christmas, despite being in the last week of November. Many of the residents in Khayelitsha travel to the Eastern Cape to reunited with family for the festive season - family who are scattered else where across SA, or still live in the Eastern Cape.
So with no way of interviewing holidaying patients I thought I may as well make the most of this early break. I headed off to Namibia!
We piled into my car, Rachel, her friend Ali visiting from Ireland and Mark, a medical student from Namibia I first met in a karaoke bar in Cape Town and made the hot and dusty 14 hour journey to Namibia’s capital Windhoek, fuelled by lots of coca cola and Rachel’s RnB collection.
Windhoek feels like little more than a large desert outpost. Its surrounded by kilometers upon kilometers of sand and dust which seem to threaten to sweep in and overwhelm the city at any moment. Though its a fascinating microcosm of apartheid and some of the problems of fledgling independent countries. On the Sunday Mark’s dad took us on a tour of the city. We saw the university, the pharmacy which he runs, the charming but distinctly out of place old german colonial administration centers and churches, the remnants of the cities very own mini safari park, the controversial named Robert Mugabe Avenue and Mark’s old school. What stood out the most however was the new presidential palace, currently under construction. It's a 500 million Namibia dollar (35 million pounds) gold-plated fenced, marbled floored, extravagance. This is not even the final cost, ministers said recently that the final cost "cannot be know until its finished". To make matters worst, many of the labour jobs have apparently been given to Chinese people, following a Chinese government donation and subsequently being awarded the building contract. For a country thats got 40% unemployment, to be honest, its sickening. Of course its important for a country to project a positive self image, but driving literally 5 minutes to the other side of the city and witness people living in wooden shacks the inequality is untenable.
Windhoek is also a map of apartheid, only having gained independence from South Africa in 1990. It is obvious to see where the lines of separation were drawn between areas of the city asigned for different races simply from the standard of houses. While buidings such as the University, originally built for a the small white population, are now used and open to all, the socioeconomic legacy of apartheid means the populations living in each area have changed little. One new change has been the influx of people to the captial, now no longer constrained by pass laws. On the outskirts of the city you can see informal houses dots the hillsides to and beyond the horizon.
The reaction of white people to this is confusing. I don’t think I have yet quite got a handle on it. While generalizations are dangerous, I think it can be a mix of guilt, defensive pride, feelings of responsibility not extending far beyond family, and apart from anything it is percieved to be hard to engage in post-apartheid’s socail issues leading to dissolution at the current state of affairs. Racism is not an obvious phenonemon, and all to easy bandwagon to jump on and especailly hard to see under the cloak of, righlty so, being PC. It's difficult for example to decide if expressed disappointment at the new government is because they are not actually doing a good job or as a slight - “we ran it better”. I wonder how far some sectors of the white community have reversed their thinking, thinking which they grew up with, and now how it now affects their function in their communities.
Pictures above:
The new presidential place
Windhoek's informal settlement
Decerning look from Rachael Phillips
Funky Town, the entrance to the old “coloured” area of the city.
