of the blacks. This imbalance could not last for ever and should not be without consequences in terms of justice, righteousness and human dignity. In this understanding, Dr van der Merwe mentioned the ‘apocalypse’ in his letter which would sweep over on South Africa as well.
I put the letter aside and read the typewritten letter from Germany in which was drawn the affluent society where the faces looked seriously as they had lost the ability to laugh and to enjoy their prosperity. The people were under permanent stress. Air and noise pollution in the city reached the limits of the tolerance and the unemployment jumped up as never before. The social security contributions are ridiculous. The youth is unprepared and unwilling to learn and the juvenile delinquency is on the rise. The people become like outsiders of one to another. It was a depressing description of the situation in the west-German society in the second half of the eighties.
Materialism has degraded and mutilated the spiritual and other values of great importance and the Mammon had swallowed much of the culture of humanity with the great believes in humanism and religion. The high finance of the big businesses ruled the economy and politics, and those who controlled the newspaper and media industry had the final say. The profiteers with and without the dark beards, but with the specialized noses for money were busy as always and ususal, whether in Frankfurt or Johannesburg. Mankind does not get away from the brink of decline and decay.
I put the letter aside and emptied the cup of the cold rooibos tea. I read the psalm 34 when David called: “What is that for a man who desires life and loves the days to see the good? Therefore, keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking guile! Depart from evil and do good! Seek peace, and pursue it!” How far had mankind drifted away from David’s call!
The cocks crowed and the new day began. I left the flat earlier for the hospital to enjoy a walk in silence of the morning. The sun sent the early forerunners from the horizon. Dogs strayed from one roadside to the other as they had lost something last evening. Cats jumped out of the roadside ditches and whizzed into the high grass of a large front garden as they had seen something what was hiding there. I showed the permit to the guard at the checkpoint and said ‘goeiemôre’. The greeting remained without reply, since the guard had a dream and rubbed his right eye with his hand. The morning gave the calm to the other guards who stood leant back against the closed barrier rod and chewed on pieces of biltong.
A thin segment of the fireball appeared over the horizon when I reached the hospital. The gatekeeper sat on the chair and held the morning egg in his right hand and looked at it from various aspects. We exchanged the greetings and I crossed the square where the Casspirs had pressed the tread of the nightly raid into the sandy ground. Some of the many people of the evening lay wrapped in blankets and sheets on the concrete passage in front of the outpatient reception. The missing ones had moved to other places inside the hospital premises. I entered the first building with the intensive care unit and passed the private consulting room with the hanging sheet over the door frame. The nurses of the night shift told that koevoet had done the night inspection. They went from bed to bed, but have done it faintly. They asked for a glass of water that they got and thanked for.
The three patients who were victims of the blast in the huge detonation the night before, were in stable condition. The face of the third patient after plastic-reconstructive surgery was severely swollen. The flat nose due to the missing cartilage bridge had given the patient the shape of a goat’s nose and the small left ear looked like a mongoose ear. I changed the dressings on these three patients and completed the records. Then I left the intensive care unit for the general wards.
I went to the children’s ward to see after the ten-year-old girl who was on the operating list of the day for the amputation of her right arm because of the malignant bone tumour. It was the grandmother who agreed with the operation and had signed the operation form. The girl with the beautiful face had sad eyes which looked anxiously. I stroke her head to comfort the girl as the grandmother had done in the consulting room, though I knew that I couldn’t take away the sadness to continue life with only one arm. However, my hand was not the father’s hand who could do better in this difficult situation. This I felt, since there was no change in the girl’s eyes. The sadness in her face moved me tremendously and I could cry together with her about the big negative impact that the operation would have. A large-scale tragedy had overcome the girl and her family with the loss of her father and her sick mother. I left the girl whose fate I couldn’t change and looked after the other children of whom many had improved and were running in good mood through the corridor and bedrooms. The nurses in the male and female ward reported on the nightly koevoet raid which went without big disturbance.
It was time for the morning meeting. Dr Witthuhn as acting medical director had taken a seat on an old upholstered chair at the window side under the rattling air conditioners. It was Dr Nestor who had decided that the medical director should be Dr Witthuhn despite his white skin, this with respect to his outstanding commitments for the benefit of the hospital and its patients when he was the superintendent. The white Bantu-administration however had with view of the expected power change offered the post to Dr Nestor to be the first black medical director. The matrons, the pharmacists and colleagues were attending the meeting except the one black female doctor who more or less did never attend.
The black paediatrician had taken his seat next to the director at the window front as well. He started a conversation with the director which caused a laugh of the paediatrician, while the black superintendent opened the meeting with a ‘good morning’. The paediatrician continued chatting that the medical director had to put it to an end. Dr Nestor informed the attendees that the missing drugs had arrived with the hospital bus. The bus had a delay of one day because of a wheel change due to a flat tyre. The superintendent told that no patients could be sent to Windhoek in the following two weeks for intern-medical and urological specialist treatment, since the specialists were on leave and the wards at Katutura Hospital were overcrowded.
Dr Nestor gave a brief report on the conversation he had with the koevoet commander who had asked, if his people behaved better during the nightly raids. He could not answer the question, though he had not received new complaints in this regard from the nurses. He however had asked the commander, if he considered the raids as helpful. His answer was that no Swapo-fighter had been found in the hospital yet what however could not exclude that they will do so in the near future. He promised to discuss the matter with the brigadier. Dr Witthuhn who was the acting medical director, said that the hospital administration is powerless against the military that it is useless to object. The black paediatrician considered the topic as explosive. He did not see the necessity to follow up the topic of the nightly koevoet raids and rather suggested to be quiet.
The courageous matron expressed her different opinion. She said that the hospital administration is obliged to do everything possible to ensure the resting night peace for the patients that would accelerate the recovery time and would reduce the overcrowding of the wards. So were her arguments of practical relevance. The paediatrician leant back and kept his legs crossed, while his eyes viewed along the asbestos mats in the ceiling. The acting medical director reiterated his experiences with the military that it would not deal with the nightly peace argument of the matron.
The superintendent gave room for other points to speak on. Dr David the physician took the floor and described the unhygienic conditions of the wards in the internal medicine as catastrophic, this not only because of the defective bedsteads, the dirty mattrasses, the spotted bed linen and sheets, but also because of the poor washing and toilet facilities and the missing hospital clothes and the lack of washing bowls and spittoons for the TB-patients. He criticized the insufficient and lacking meal portions for the patients of the low protein content, and emphasized the urgent need of milk for the convalescence and improvement of the poor nutritional status. The superintendent understood the problem and requested the matrons to look into this matter and to take care that the meal portions are sufficient and the patients get milk of one litre each per day.
The
