Lucia Engombe, a Namibian “GDR-Child No. 95”

Lucia Engombe is one of more than 400 Namibian “GDR children” — the children of fighters of the Namibian liberation movement SWAPO, who were adopted by the GDR for upbringing and training in 1979—1989. She was brought to this country from a refugee camp in Zambia in 1979, and she lived and studied there until 1990, when all the Namibian children were returned to their homeland. However, she is not quite an ordinary “GDR child”, due to the complexities of her parents’ fates. Her father was in opposition to the SWAPO leadership and was considered a traitor, and her mother, after studying at a Moscow university, became close to SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma. This left its mark on the views of Lucia herself. In her memoirs, which served as the main source for this article, one can find information and considerations that differ from the memoirs of other “GDR children”. She is critical of the SWAPO and its efforts to transform the “GDR children” into the future elite of independent Namibia, to GDR indoctrination in the spirit of building socialism. She is preoccupied with the problems of her own identity, and at different stages of her life she sees them in different ways. In independent Namibia, Lucia Engombe's fate was difficult, she did not join the “new elite” of the country, and at critical moments she was helped by “capitalists” — German farmers and charitable foundations from Germany. The life of Lucia Engombe and other “GDR children” reveals a number of interesting aspects in the problem of cultural transfer, which occupies the minds of many modern historians.