Report from Tweeriviere.

Christine Koerner, a West German journalist who has been a writer for the UN Yearbook since 1982, was assigned to UNTAG's Mariental distrtict, 261 kilometres southeast of Windhoek, as part of a mobile registration team to oversee registration of potential voters. She travelled in a four-wheel drive vehicle with Namibian-born interpreter, Niels Simon, and Roland Martin from Austria, the UN police monitor who also served as driver. They accompanied four South-West African government officials, who were to do the actual registrations. In a four-week period, the two teams covered more than 4, 000 kilometres over vast expanses of southern Namibia, registering more than 2, 000 persons, many of them farm workers on the sprawling cattle and karakul sheep ranches of the area.

The biting wind penetrated all the layers of wool and down I had donned to protect me from the southern African "winter" in july. While days were sometimes warm, sometimes brisk and fall-like, the nights were bone-chilling cold. We were at Tweeriviere, a name on the map that was really a farm road-junction where two dried-out rivers meet in a dusty valley at the edge of the Kalahari desert. Our job: to set up a temporary registration centre for Namibians so they could participate in the November elections.

Our vehicle was equipped with camping equipment, tents and sleeping bags, but often we did not have to use them because of the hospitality of the local people. At Tweeriviere, however, no pot roast or warm bed waited. We arrived at the local farmers' association hall to find ourselves out in the cold. The doors, this time, were closed! So we gathered some twigs and pieces of broken wood from the surrounding area to start a small fire. Our plan: to crawl into our sleeping bags under the stars. It was so cold that my two companions finally decided to sleep under the roof of the hall's open porch. I climbed into the back of the car, enveloping myself in the extra comforter I had bought in Windhoek, managing to keep somewhat warm. The next day, the weather was equally unfriendly. As we opened our make-shift "registration office" on the veranda, harsh winds attacked the registration papers, blowing them in all directions. Finally we secured them with staplers, rulers and pencil boxes. The mobile team was to monitor the work of the four registration officers, who, with semi-frozen fingers, entered the name, age and other information of potential voters on the application forms and registration cards. This time more farm workers than usual had no proper identification, so affidavits had to be made out and sworn to. Despite the adverse conditions, 180 persons were registered that day. Tweeriviere was our last stop. We had moved from farm to farm, setting up "offices" in barns, sheds and garages. The majority of those who came to register were farm labourers, brought by the farm owners. Our interpreter-who spoke English, Afrikaans and Nama/Damara-helped as much in "breaking the ice" with the registrants as in explaining the procedures. When I got back to my desk in New York, I learned our work had been a success: more than 700,000 Namibian voters registered by 23 September.