Introduction to the slums
To really appreciate the colors and the beauty of Namibia's friendly and unusually hospitable poor, you have to see the extremely harsh and oppressive surroundings, they are forced to live in. They moved me deeply as they
stood in utter contrast to the unfriendliness of the white Boers and Germans in their barbed-wire-fenced fortresses and luxury homes in which they continue the arrogant and racist life styles of the apartheid years.
One step from
the dessert
Typical slum dwelling
in Windhoek
Typical slum dwelling
in Owamboland
Woman cooking in
front of her home
Single woman outside her shack in Katutura
Woman in Big Ben - a slum around Windhook
Background for my Namibia trip
American Pictures was set up to give financial aid to the struggle against apartheid in Southern Africa. In 1983 we held meetings with the
president of the guerrilla group SWAPO, Sam Nujorma, in order to support Namibia's
independence struggle. We decided to give the money through
IBIS
with matching funds
from the EF/EU and helped finance
the school for
training nurses
headed by
Libertina Amathila
(Free Namibia's
first Minister of
Health)
set up in Kwanzu Zul
in Angola by SWAPO.
Our foundation was
set up to give
humanitarian aid. So
like IBIS we were
afraid of supporting
the military wing of SWAPO
- also because we were
starting up in
president Reagan's
America at that time.
Reagan supported
South Africa's
bloody apartheid
regime and called
the freedom fighters
for "terrorists".
Most of the
money came from our slide shows around Europe. Or rather from the fact that we usually slept in ice-cold cars rather than wasting money on hotels and only had a personal salary of 40$ per show. With such idealism
we generated a lot of support and small cash donations from volunteers.
When I many years after met some of the people (see below) who told me that without Kwanzu Zul
they would not have been alive today, I am glad that we did it.
I had previously been invited to the independence celebrations
of Namibia in 1990 by the country's first elected president, Sam Nujorma,
but couldn't go then
because I had
lectures in Hawaii
that week. During my
18 years of
lecturing in the USA
I forgot all about
this, but was then invited
by
IBIS to see and photograph the outcome of our joint efforts in the past.
Unfortunately I
ended up there
during
9/11 and described
that event seen
from a Namibian
perspective.