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 guerrilla group SWAPO and it's president Sam Nujorma in order to support Namibia's
independence struggle. We decided to give the money through
IBIS and helped finance Kwanzu Zul - SWAPO's guerrilla camp set up in Angola.
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 now 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 now invited
by
IBIS to see and photograph the outcome of our joint efforts in the past.
