The fries come with chili powder on them. Taxis are flagged by pointing in the direction you want to go. True desperation and hunger can be seen in the eyes of street beggars. An auto mechanic is characterized by a tattered house with a small metal ramp sitting out front to park a car on. Walk-up bars can be found on every corner. Kids play in dirty polluted water. Stop signs are treated as yield signs; yield sings as no sign at all. Petty crime happens out of need and desperation, not boredom and entertainment. This is Windhoek, Namibia.[cut]
Most businesses in the states want a slim, efficient work force. Here, 40% of the population is out of work, making labor so cheap that efficiency is not necessary. Most retail, grocery and fast food stores employ two to three times the employees you'd see in the States. Most of them just sit around, waiting to clean your table once you finish; Standing guard over an isle; ready to weigh and tag your produce. Security guards are among the largest employers in the Nation, sending out thousands of poorly-trained bottom income earners to guard the stores and cars of the top 1% of wage earners; sometimes with guns.
Retail outlets are almost universally tourist or rich resident oriented. You can see this by driving outside of town to the sprawling slums and noting the numerous small businesses run by local residents from their front yards; everything from clothing and furniture to fresh meat and auto repairs. The largest employers for this area is the textile factory (more than 15,000 employees) and the numerous security companies, both of which fairy their employees to and from work each day in the backs of pickup trucks and crammed toe to toe in busses. Government and in-town retail employees constitute the lucky few who managed to get out of the slums. Even then, pay is low and living expenses are much higher in the city.
Here, the most important thing you can have is family. Above all ambitions, high school youth dream of having families; the sooner the better. The more people you have in your family, the larger the contact network you will have access to, and the more wage earners you will have contributing to the household. Small one and two room shacks are inhabited by four, five, even six family members to a room. Housing is cheap (actually completely free in the "Location") but food, water, electricity, toilets, and trash services are very expensive. Better to pool your resources.
The average grocery bag for a family of four is N$250 a week, counting only essentials. Most families are larger than six and have a combined weekly income of just over N$100. Illegal hunting and diets that consist of mostly corn and wheat make up for this huge disparity. And this is Windhoek, the capital city. 35% of Namibians live on less than $1 US a day, more than 90% of that number are rural. During apartide tribes that were mostly subsistent were driven to less fertile lands. Now they fight to survive in a land where they once had flourished.
The government is making honest efforts to address these problems. Shelters are being built to feed starving children. Schools are being erected in even the most remote villages. Farms are being purchased (annexed) by the government and re-distributed to native tribes. But progress is slow and corruption makes every step forward a painful one. Even now the Prime Minister is having a huge billion-dollar estate built in the hills across town from the numerous schools that need additional classrooms and textbooks. It's hard to live in a place where there is so much unfairness and injustice. It makes it harder when I sit on the just and fair side of the fence, wondering whether pity or anger is the best response to a wholly uncontrollable situation.
One thing is for sure, apathy is rampant. It's a lack of concern for the problems that allow the owners of $300,000 BMW's drive by the men who guard it and think there's not a thing wrong.[/cut]
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