Nein, dieser Beitrag wurde nicht von mir geschrieben, sondern von einem schwedischen Funkamateur, der in einem Buch FA interviewte und über sie berichtete, wenn sie etwas besonderes geleistet haben.
Es sind Menschen, die sowohl in herausragender Postion sind (gekrönte Häupter oder Staatsoberhäupter), Menschen die sich an besonderen Rettungsaktionen beteiligt haben, wissenschaftlich an vorderster Front arbeiten oder in sonstiger Position sozial herausragend positionierten.
Leider hat der Schreiber zwei Dinge missverstanden:
Ich gehöre nicht zum Deutschen Dipl. Dienst sondern bin involviert in Malawi HONORIS (Ein Staatssekretär)
und
die internationale korrekte Bezeichnung des BVK ist "Knights Cross Order" und nicht "Cross of Merit"
Aber petitessen
DL8OL Klaus If we could all be like Klaus!
==================
When British firefighters asked their government for transportation of the equipment they had bought for their own money to Malawi and the minister hadn't even responded to their letter, the editor of a British magazine for firefighters wrote: "Can we sit back and shut our eyes to the daily tragedies of the third world caused by fire and accident and call ourselves a civilized and caring nation? If that is the view, then I resign the human race; it is actions like Klaus' that restore my faith in human nature!" After reading about Klaus, you will know what the British editor means!
I was born in Hamburg in 1942, but I grew up in a small village because our house was destroyed during the war. In 1964 I became a ham. My first training was as an electrician and after some time with the German Air Force (in electronics), I joined the fire brigade in 1967, where I became a fire fighter captain and since 1967 also a paramedic. Apart from Amateur Radio, I like to write and one of my favorite themes is to write about my job.
How my international training program started
It is a quiet evening in 1978. My wife is at work and the children are asleep, and I´m watching a TV-show, when the phone rings. I try to avoid it, but it keeps ringing. Reluctantly, I pick up the receiver. “Good evening, Mr. Bethge, I´m H… on night duty at the station. We have a problem: Five gentlemen with dark skin are standing here, we don´t know who they are and what they want.
Could you please come down here? You will of course be compensated for the extra hour overtime.”
This „extra hour” would in fact become two very tough years!
My quiet evening came to an abrupt end and all this due to my command of foreign languages. It is of course itself pleasant to do something else than the regular duties, but the timing was not the best…
At the station, I met with five tanned gentlemen, who were relieved to know that at last they have met someone, whom they could tell why they were here. They were Iraqis, invited to study in Hannover and now they were here. Logic, or???
It would take some time to find the background to the invitation…
Doctor A.-H., who was born in Iraq, worked at a hospital in Hannover.
His father-in-law in Baghdad was the representative of a leading German auto manufacturer, who had sold 40 rescue vehicles to the government AND promised that this of course included the necessary 8 weeks training of five groups of medical assistants in Hannover.
That it should be necessary to ask the fire-brigade in advance never entered his mind. He was an important man with connections everywhere, which would later become evident, when some people in the city administration were reluctant to cooperate.
My colleague B, who had been responsible for our foreign contacts, spelled it out: “Now I´m going on vacation, you guys do whatever you like!”
So the group had arrived at the airport. As there was no one to pick them up, they took at taxi and went to the fire station.
What were we to do? We managed to find some beds and served them tea.
I was told: “By the way, Mr. Bethge, you have the day shift tomorrow.”
Fine, that made my day! My plans were no longer valid. Nobody asked me if this was OK with me or not, it was just a fact!
The following morning started with a crisis meeting with the responsible training manager, Mr. S, who had two reasons to be in a bad mood:
First of all, it´s not easy for the fire brigade to all of a sudden start a training session for foreigners.
Secondly, he didn´t like me too much - (something which would change later)!
I had one basic problem in the fire brigade: I was known as a man, who spoke his mind; something which was not always appreciated.
What they didn´t think of me - after all I was a relatively young guy with the normal duties - was that I had the ability to work hard, when I got a demanding assignment.
Mr. S had no alternative. There were no other colleagues with a good command of foreign languages.
The boss also shook his head, “We must get started at once, we can always replace Bethge later!”
Hence, you had everything you could ask for to start on a successful mission!
Nobody wanted to get involved, but we had to do it.
This enterprise was a new experience and there were several aspects that we still didn´t know about at that time and that I would have to ask about later. For example, what happens if the person in charge gets sick and can´t continue?
Exactly this happened to me some years later, when our responsible doctor wanted to send me home on sick leave due to bronchitis, which he was afraid would lead to pneumonia. Reluctantly he agreed to give me a high dose of antibiotics. If this hadn´t worked, I really don´t know how the fire-brigade could have managed to finish the project.
After I had trained this first group, another four groups followed and there were plans for additional groups, but everything came to an abrupt end due to the Iraq/Iran war in 1980 …
However, my international training program would continue…
Senegal in 1982
If you love your job and you´re a ham, a natural combination is to use your station to talk to other fire fighters to become friends and talk about your job. One day in 1982, our conversation on the firefighters´ net was overheard by Claude, 6W7FZ, a Swiss born hotel owner in Senegal. Claude broke in and told us how two days before; a fire in his area had revealed that nobody was familiar with the old fashioned fire fighting equipment. I thought about this for a few days, then changed the time for my vacation, waved goodbye to my family and went to Senegal.
A manager, who was determined to get things going, a group of Africans, who were very eager to learn, greeted me. A completely obsolete equipment and an extremely hot weather; those were the conditions under which we were going to work. The short time available made me start the course the same day I arrived.
I had to start with basic facts such as "what is fire; what is glowing; which are the extinguishing materials?" After that, I wanted to start a practical exercise to see how the 20 participants reacted. I started with a simulated kitchen fire and after that, I wanted them to rescue an injured person. The latter exercise, I had to stop abruptly, they almost killed the "victim" in their ambition to help him! I had to start talking about distribution of the work. 20 eager firefighters shall not all try to rescue one victim!
We made a list of all the equipment they needed for their voluntary fire brigade. One thing I demanded from them was that they must also serve the adjacent city with its 50 000 inhabitants, 10 km away. When I returned home, I was able to continue to assist Claude with advice via radio.
Malawi
A few years later, I had a group of trainees from Lesotho in Hannover. I couldn´t believe it, when I heard that for example Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, with its around 3 Million inhabitants has no fire department at all! And Zambia used to have the best training school for fire-fighters in East Africa. They had to give it up due to lack of money!
The group from Lesotho was followed by the chief officer of the fire brigade in Blantyre, Malawi, who was with me for 9 months. To my surprise, I was told that firefighters in Malawi had no training in first aid. What I heard made me decide to sacrifice my vacation and hold a training
course in Malawi.
Down there I found nothing, says nothing that could be used for the training!
Everything had to be improvised and apart from some basic technique, I had to concentrate on the theoretical training. Back home, I wrote a drastic report to the Lord Mayor in Hannover and told him to make sure Malawi got a paramedic unit. This was arranged and later a small patient’s transfer ambulance was also donated by the Hannover Fire and Rescue Service. After a while, the Lord Mayor asked the City of Hannover to send me down there again.
This way, I was down in Malawi again a year later, now on official duty for 9 weeks and accompanied by my wife, (whose ticket we had to pay). She found work there as a voluntary nurse in the mother-child care. With access to the paramedic unit, it was now possible for me to go ahead with an actual paramedic training with a specially selected group of people. It was a pleasant surprise for me to see how much the men remembered from the previous year! However, they soon became aware of the fact that this was not a refresher course; they soon found themselves into anatomy and specialist training!
At the end of the course, I asked the local health officer to make a neutral test of the trainees and gave him the questions, I wanted him to ask. He was confused and asked me if I really wanted him to ask that kind of questions. Apparently he doubted the ability of the men. That the average result was 75 % must be considered very well under these tough conditions. Less pleasant was that I was hit by malaria, but after two days with high fever, I was back on my feet.
The ambulance was still not in operation when I arrived, but once it was, one of the first victims was a Malaria sufferer, whom I found in an absolutely traumatic condition, with a fever around 42oC (104o F) and almost unconscious. He soon recovered after hospital treatment.
During my stay in Malawi, I was often called to fires, mostly at night. When I heard the siren, I jumped out of my pajamas and into the uniform, ready to be picked up in front of the hotel.
The Lord Mayor wanted to build another fire station, backed up by voluntary stations in outlying areas, but the problem was the lack of money. Many Europeans mean that "African States spend too much money on military equipment". This is not true in Malawi, the army is very modest and no money is wasted.
People in Malawi are industrious and friendly; they work hard to improve things and are keen to acquire new skills. For these reasons I believe, they are worth helping in any way we in the West can! Their code is "Help yourself before you ask others to help you!"
I asked for permission to invite the head of the fire brigade for four week training in Hannover the following year to be able to show him how the fire brigade is organized. After that, I went down to Malawi with my wife again. Now I could really concentrate on improving their skill.
Civil war in Malawi in 1992
I feel miserable, my whole body is shaking, but I haven´t started sweating yet.
The first thing that enters my mind is: Now you´ve got malaria again!
I already know malaria, this African epidemic. Despite careful preparations my wife and I had already suffered from it and we were aware of what it means.
Only the pain in the limbs was not there, if it were, I had been absolutely sure.
We were told that people were in despair, the inflation was skyrocketing and people no longer knew how to be able to get enough to eat.
A bag of corn, the basic food cost almost a month´s salary for a fire-fighter, who would earn around 100 Euros.
For comparison: The cost for things like shoes and clothes, which were imported from South Africa, was similar to the price in Germany.
This is of course out of reach for everybody. I was once asked how much I earn and carelessly I answered the question. Once - and NEVER again!
In those days in May 1992, Malawi was a one-party state, led by the old
president "Kamuzo" Hastings Banda, who controlled the country with a
firm fist, but who definitely tried to impose law and order in the country. He was not the kind of evil leader, who only thought about himself. He made efforts to improve health services, education, and life for women. He wanted every household to have its own garden to make sure everybody would have enough to eat. However there was no political freedom in the country.
Malawi had been a very quiet country for 20 years, not even the police were armed, but since it was a one party state, the G7-countries (at that time G5) decided to deny the country all help, if it didn't change to a democratic system. The result of this was that everything collapsed. There was famine and the political situation became very unstable.
Before we look at democracy in Africa, we must remember the hardships we had to go through before we learned our own rules of democracy and I still have reasons to question how they are practiced.
The tribe is still the natural society for the Africans and even the "Chief" must follow stringent rules. Democracy the way we know it is something strange for them and we must respect these rules to prevent a suffering people from being pushed further down into despair just because they don´t want our strange "way of life."
Several organizations also have problems. "Bread for the World" always accepted this and they have become successful. "Doctors without borders" also have a good reputation in Africa. Some other organizations have created more problems than they solved. I have always tried to avoid discussions about human rights issues; I was not here to solve these!
This was all I knew about the situation that morning.
It was very hard to get the complete information. Those, who asked too much risked being immediately put on the next plane, wherever that one was going.
I felt so miserable that I had to ask one of my colleagues to bring me back to the hotel. I still didn´t know what was wrong with me, not until much later, when I was back in Germany, it was established that I had got Hepatitis A.
On the way back to the hotel, my eyes refuse to believe what I see. Large groups of people are yelling wild slogans and blocking the streets with wood. They are approaching us; the situation becomes more than threatening. Now I´m really scared! What´s going to happen to me, and where is my wife? She should be working in the bush clinic today!
My colleague slowly approaches the next obstacle and discusses with the men, who to my surprise respond in a friendly manner.
They remove the obstacles and lower the stones in their raised hands. - "What did you tell them?", I ask. - "I told them, you are a white man, who has nothing to do with the problems, but who is here to help us!"
Obviously no professional revolutionaries, even if the situation seems too perfect to be spontaneous.
In the hotel I hear: "General strike!" The staff in the restaurant have stopped their work. They don´t quite know why, but they had to go on strike.
When my colleague returns to the fire station, the car is hit by a large stone in the window-pane.
I can´t stand up any more, I get down on the bed. My wife, Edith is there, HURRAY! The nurses never went away.
I tremble like a leaf in the bed. When I wake up, I don´t know how long I´ve been asleep, but my wife is shaking me violently. "Klaus, Klaus, they are shooting outside!" - "Can´t be!" - "Listen for yourself!" She opens the window and immediately starts to cry. Teargas enters the room and to my shock, I hear a sound I recognize all too well; automatic rifles firing complete rounds.
What´s next?
In these countries it´s customary that every embassy has a house, usually the private home of a diplomat, where the citizens of that country gather to be able to be evacuated if necessary. The only problem is, I don´t know where this house is located! I grabb the phone and call the German ambassador, who lives 340 km away from us. - "Mr. Bethge, there can´t be any fighting in your city!" - "One moment, Mr. Ambassador!" I say, opening the window and inhaling another dose of teargas. - "What! BY YOU AS WELL!?! Please keep me informed!" He gives me advice on how to behave, but to keep someone informed is a serious issue because the telephone lines are monitored by the news media. He assures me; they have other issues to keep them busy.
I still feel miserable, but I am now also concerned about the fire brigade, what are my colleagues doing now? Never mind, I got to go there!
My love, Edith, only shakes her head. Of course she is right, but there is nothing to hold me back, I get into my uniform and go away.
Only 50 Meters from the hotel I meet the first armed man. Underneath his military uniform, I see the blue police uniform. He looks at me, not unfriendly, but rather confused. What is this coming towards him? A white man in a uniform!
What I didn´t know was: In cases like this there are of course the wildest possible rumors and one of them was that South Africa had sent soldiers into the country!
"Sir, can I help you?" - "Yes please! I´m a fire fighter officer and I would like to go to my colleagues!" - "Please wait here, a patrol will come in 10 minutes."
This must be noted here: There had been armed fights the day before between the army and the armed "Young Pioneers", leading to 20 fatalities and the disarmament of the "Young Pioneers." This didn´t mean they have given up; they simply moved into the bush with their remaining weapons and started to act as gangs of robbers. The army simply returned to their barracks…
The only armed persons to be seen on the streets now are from the Mobile Task Force", the armed police; in reality the presidents own forces. They are not known to be overly friendly.
The guard has understood that I want him no evil and we spend a few minutes talking in a friendly manner until a truck with 50 armed soldiers arrive and stop when they see us. The officer jumps out and immediately points at my belly with his gun. -"Who are you?" I explain and ask for help to get to the fire station and I add: "Could please remove the gun, Sir?" - "Oh, I´m very careful with it!" OK, let´s hope he is!
I want to get up in the back of the truck, but I´m told to sit up in the cabin with him. We talk like old friends and this is something that has surprised me the most.
The atmosphere among the policemen is pretty relaxed. Despite their tough life, people in Malawi are known - apart from a few negative sides - for their gentle attitude. That this gentle attitude has its limits would later become obvious for me!
The officer makes a note of my details and we drive to the fire station and he follows me in there. An incredible scream of joy greets me! "Bwana Klaus Sir, good, you are here!" The officer is pleased and leaves. I get the feeling that it
would have been unpleasant for him, if he had really caught a bad guy; that would only have led to bad publicity and problems.
"So, guys, who is the officer here? " Again only a subordinate. "Where is John?" -"He went home!" - "Francis? (At that time deputy officer; it would take me years to reach that position, I was here as an "associated Officer",) -"He went home!"
Gilbert, the responsible officer, was sick since a few days, he wouldn´t show up here anyway. I was pretty sick myself and I stood on the floor. I was furious! How ALL the officers could go home and leave their personnel alone, this was something, I could not understand or tolerate!
"OK, so what do we have so far?" A shop is burning in Ndirande, a section the President has described as the "Soweto of Malawi. ". An unpleasant area. "Can we go there?" - "No, there should be fighting there!" - "And if we ask the police to escort us?" - "That might work!"
A call to the police station in the area confirms: "Just get here, three houses are on fire!" - "Can you escort us?" - "Yes, we can!" So we leave for the police station, where six men with rifles squeeze into our truck, sitting on our laps.
At the fire site, I see a violent fire and a large group of people, trying to steal anything they manage to carry. And then it begins! The first stones start to fly; the policemen rush out and start shooting above the crowd. Fire is returned from somewhere and we take cover. The policemen don´t hesitate, a moment later one of the trouble makers is on the ground with a policeman´s boot on his neck.
We begin to extinguish the fire in the bungalow-building with its three shops. Two of them are fully ablaze; the fire in the third one has just started to burn.
Soon we run out of water, there are no fire posts and I tell the men to return to refill the water tank. Now I make a mistake, which I can only blame on my illness: I send the fire truck back without any police escort!
They don´t return and the radio is not connected. After waiting for half an hour, I order the second fire truck to come because the fire has now started again.
I become more and more nervous. The police have arrived with a pickup as enforcement, I jump in and we go away, looking for the fire truck. We can´t find it anywhere.
The crew at the second fire truck has managed to limit the fire.
The police have noticed how the "Revolutionaries" also have tried to put the adjacent gas station on fire, fortunately they didn´t succeed!
When I return from my search for the fire truck, it´s still not back.
If something has happened to them, I would have no excuse for it!
45 Minutes later they return, just as happy as ever. They haven´t found any water post (The best known they couldn´t reach due to the riots.) I become mad again!) When the fires have been stopped after midnight, the police tell us that there is a curfew and anyone found on the streets will be shot without a warning.
(They actually didn´t practice it that way. I could notice that this Mobile Task Force were really professionals with officers, who had got some of their training in Germany or England!)
We return to the hotel, I´m exhausted. If anything happens: "PICK ME UP!"
In the hotel I´m surrounded by people, who want to know what it looks like outside. From what I could see in the darkness, like a bomb raid!
This impression is confirmed the following morning in daylight, there is not one unbroken store-window.
Deutsche Welle as well as the BBC –Overseas Service- report around 30 fatalities, a totally unrealistic number! I talk to a doctor, who during the night has seen 265 victims with gunshot wounds!
Most of the fatalities are not due to shootings; most of the people died,
when they tried to "re-socialize" property. It often happens like this:
Malawi A has stolen a TV, Malawi B wants it. A says no, B settles it with a bullet or a knife. Of course in the general commotion old bills are also settled. These murders would be reported as "political" in the statistic, although they had nothing to do with politics.
I want to go back to the fire station in the morning, but an unfriendly police officer stops me. Apparently the report from the escorting police had made the secret police scared and they didn´t want any white man found dead.
The comments two days later from the responsible officer at the fire department were along these lines. After three days of turmoil he suddenly was well enough to return to the fire station, where he thought he was going to scold me.
He became aware that he was barking up the wrong tree! I told him what I thought of officers, who abandon their job at such a critical situation.
Yes, he had been sick. "SO sick that you were not even able to come to your office? And how about the others?" - "Yes, they will get scolded by me!" The problem is always caused by someone else!
In any case our relationship was seriously impaired, I shouldn´t have spelled it out, but I can´t accept being treated like a stupid boy - and on the other side, he didn´t like that I had shown his men how to handle the situation when you are a real firefighter.
But back to the second day. We couldn´t get out, so we all had to stay around the swimming pool. This was all OK until suddenly bullets started to fly above our heads! Those were not aimed at us and despite the fact that the house was surrounded by a 2.5 meter high wall the bullets might have led to fatalities.
So slowly the turmoil comes to an end. The police have acted and after three days and two nights things are back to normal.
We go out for the first time and it´s incomprehensible how people can
destroy so much within a few hours.
What have they achieved with this "Revolution"? A minor pay raise, which helped the inflation grow a bit faster. The knowledge that they should
get used to the idea of what elections mean, but most importantly, the loss of the investors, who have considered Malawi one of the best African countries and now they don´t know what to think of the country any more.
Malawi´s problems are directly linked to the problems in South Africa.
Malawi is economically dependent on South Africa. Should something similar happen in South Africa, it would be a disaster for Malawi.
Malawi has another, almost impossible problem: The country has a long border with Mozambique, where civil wars have been going on for several years.
(I have seen the Frelimo soldiers along the border after clashes!)
The border is no wider than a roadside ditch, people on both sides belong to the same tribes: On the Malawi side, kilometers of huts, belonging to Mozambicans, who have escaped across the border and now live 50 meters away from their own country on Malawian soil.
No matter how often I have complained in Malawi, but when it comes to this matter, people are worthy of my utmost respect: Even if they don´t know how to protect their own people from starvation, they support three times as many refugees as the country´s own citizens and they were been compelled to do this on their own for a very long time until the UN, this bureaucratic union, finally acted and the UNHCR (United Nation High Commissioner of Refugees)
began to help them. The fact that I dislike the UN doesn´t include their representatives, who work in the field, often to self-abandonment to help.
It is the eternal problem: When help becomes connected to politics, there is no help!
Summary:
Do I really have a reason to be sad? Yes and no. I have managed a lot, I have built a rescue service, which for the circumstances has meant a giant leap forward and I have trained good people. Without my help the fire vehicles would have been "dead" by now.
This might sound like bragging, but the facts remain:
During my time in Blantyre, I have been able to get them:
· One dry powder vehicle
· One rescue vehicle, which my colleague Carsten miraculously managed to rebuild into a triple combination pumper
· One rescue vehicle, (also known as a pioneer appliance, i.e. a large truck with a generator, crank up device, etc.)
· One ambulance
· One portable fire pump
All the vehicles above have come from the fire brigade in Hannover
From the fire brigade in Berlin I have found them a triple combination pumper plus miscellaneous equipment from the fire brigade in Leipzig such as hoses, fittings, boots, type writers and uniforms, breathing equipment with masks as well as a compressor to fill the bottles
It has become necessary for me to learn something that I really dislike: To beg!
I have become unpopular. If I have been thrown out through the front door, I have returned through the back door!
My colleague Carsten has made an unbelievable job among voluntary organizations to find nozzles, training material such as a dummy to practice revival and and….
What made me sad was to see the condition of the equipment after a short time.
When I started my work in Blantyre it should be just simple first aid training
All the fire brigade had were two old Carmichel triple combination pumpers that were close to falling apart, an extremely old crank-up ladder and an old pick-up.
The fire fighters had a coat, a cap, and a pair of rubber boots, that was all.
The men would stay away from the job for private matters.
I was not welcome because an intern from Hannover was there at the same time and had left a very bad reputation. His only ambition was to play around, have fun and to make life miserable for the British town clerk.
Robin, the British city manager later told me: "Klaus, I thought I would be forced to suffer from another one like that!"
I remember our first meeting after my arrival: "Mr. Bethge, we will of course arrange a cruise on the lake for you! " - "That sounds nice Sir, but my time here is short. Your help is much more important, when I need it for my mission. Then I must be allowed to contact you immediately!"
His face became radiant! He was an old fire fighter himself from the colonial days. "And that´s exactly the way we´ll do it!"
When I was leaving, I was invited to the city administration. Everyone with those typical British wigs, and friendly words about my job. "May I say something?" - "Yes, of course!" - I spoke of my love for the country and promised to remain concerned about the future of the fire brigade. After Margret Thatcher, I was the second European to speak in this parliament.
The response was overwhelming.
Later I received the Bundesverdienstkreuz (The order of merit of the German Federal Republic) and I became an honorary member of the German Diplomatic Service.
I have had several personal unforgettable experiences.
Which normal citizen can tell about how he almost stepped on the nose of a crocodile or how he got away from a hippopotamus, one of the most dangerous animals in Africa?
I remember how I went to a camp fire in open sandals and when I looked down, I saw a scorpion which was just about to attack. My jump would have given me a sports medal!
I think of the evenings in a bush camp; of hunting the Rhino (in this case
it was a run away Rhino bull that I had to bring back and later there was a TV-report about this on German TV.)
I could tell about the unforgettable evenings at the "Nkonde", Club Veranda, watching the sunset and the monkeys in the trees.
An old proverb says: "Africa is an addict!"
When you have traveled through the savanna, seen the clear stars in the south,
and the half moon, you have become addicted!
I have experienced this country, when it was still a part of the genuine Africa, where people in the villages danced out of pure joy of living.
But I have also brought my Malaria and my Hepatitis home with me. I am very sorry for the bullishness and helplessness shown by the administration and the endless envy.
I have seen people die from starvation; children die from infections that we can treat with antibiotics. I have seen a miserable administrator, who wanted to "take care of" the money that people in Germany had donated for a school.
Whenever I think about Africa I think of the South African national anthem,
"Nkosi sikile l’Afica" = "God protect Africa"
There is no end to my sorrow!
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