Stories of Students, Friends, Country, Racism, and Kindness
Excuse the blue teeth, I had just eaten blue cake |
I sit in my aunt’s and uncle’s house in Cape Town. I
am on the porch with a majestic view of the vibrant green slopes of Table
Mountain in front of me and a glass of orange juice next to me. Palm trees are
swaying in the wind. I hear cars on the road.
China, the family pug is making her pug snorts next to me. I pet her and
she looks up at me lovingly much like Mendchen, the village dog would at Shamangorwa. The last
time I had been in Cape Town was May of 2013. I looked as Peace Corps as you
could look. I had grown out my beard and hair for more than three months. I was
underweight, I still had dust from the village clinging to my skin, and my eyes
had a glint of bewilderment and confusion. I had been living in the village for
about six months. Bathing in the river had become normal. Fetching water from 5
km away had become normal. No bathroom, 140 km from the nearest food market,
and all the other realities of my new life had become normal. Being in Cape
Town left me shocked at the opulence and luxury that I had previously thought
was normal. I struggled with it and had a hard time reconciling this with my
life in Namibia.
Now it is September 2014. My orange juice is half
gone and China is snoring happily next to me. I was alone in the house and I
had just spent my time looking at myself in the mirror and thinking. I had put
some weight back on and felt fit. I was clean shaven, my hair was cut trim, and
my eyes where clear. Less lost. I had just completed my Peace Corps service and
was heading back into the world that I was from. The world that I had entered
as a foreigner and left as a brother was being left behind. I gave myself time
to think about what that meant. I couldn’t think of anything. No profound
thought came to me. No epiphany, no flash of inspiration or deeper meaning to
it all. I didn’t even feel like I had left.
Off road adventures |
It is now exactly a month and five days since I
officially completed my Peace Corps service. I am in New York and soon to be in
Rio de Janeiro by way of Miami. I have delayed writing this post, my
reflections, because no idea, thought, philosophy, or neat way to summarize my
service has come to mind. I am beginning to realize that I will never be able
to have a tidy, coherent presentation on the entirety of my Peace Corps service.
The closest I have come to that objective is to call it thus. The toughest,
craziest, and some of the best two years of my life. Hopefully I will be able
to unpack that and present my service to you in a way that you can understand
the way I felt, why I did the things I did, and what it all meant.
I had various reasons for why I came to Peace
Corps. When asked, my stock reply is usually that I want to pursue a career in
international development, I love travel, adventure, and I want to make a
difference in the world. If I allow myself to speak from a deeper, more
personal place my answer changes. My life has always been blessed. I constantly
think to myself that I must be within the luckiest percent of the world’s
population. I have always had everything I needed. My relationship with my
family is wonderful, I have always had great friends, been to good schools, and
had a positive outlook on life. But this did not mean that I was sheltered or
kept away from the realities of life. Having traveled extensively even at a
young age and having grown up in South America exposed me to poverty. I had
never understood why I had been so lucky to grow up in such easy circumstances
while other people who were no different from me grew up in impossible
circumstances. I didn’t feel guilty about having an easy life, but I knew that
I had the capacity and the desire to step away from my life and use what had
been given to me to uplift others. To at least give people who haven’t been as
lucky as me a fighting chance in the pursuit of their goals and dreams. Dreams
that for me are within comparatively easy reach due to a wonderful education
and supportive family. So I decided that it was time to step away from the
lucky one percent and test myself in the uglier, harsher world that so many
have to face.
On Teaching
In several of my posts I have described how I didn’t
particularly enjoy my job as a teacher. Now that it is done I am happy that
that was the job assigned to me. I think back on the relationships with my
students. Most where younger, several where my age and a few were older. If I
knew then what I felt now I wouldn’t have believed it. My students have caused
me to have a meltdown, to make me want to quit, yell at them, throw chalk at
them, slam the desk while one was sleeping, and in a an unfortunate
circumstance reduce one to tears. This all makes it sound like a pretty
negative experience both for myself and for my students. But, those where the
darkest moments in a long two year road. I asked my kids to write goodbye
letters to me and they were simply incredible. I blushed when I read them.
My single biggest frustration was the lack of help
that I felt I was giving to my students. This frustration caused me to vent my
unhappiness on my own perceived failings as a teacher onto them. I couldn’t get
them to perform the way I wanted them to. The letters they wrote have melted
that regret away. I compared them to some of their previous writing that they
had done in my class. The improvement was phenomenal. I had just been too close
to the process to notice it. Not only that, their level of appreciation for me
was something I never expected. Students would go on and on writing about how
they would never forget me, how they loved me, and how they wished I could
stay. One girl even wrote that she wished she could speak directly to the
President to order me to stay in Namibia. I think back on my students now and I realize that I loved them to. After so many insane days with 50
students, 14-30 years old, in a classroom meant for 30, 35 Celsius outside,
even hotter inside, me sweating straight through my shirt while students
giggled at all my sweat patches, even through all that, somehow they were able
to wiggle their way into my heart. I am now facebook friends with a few of my
students, I hope that as facebook becomes more common place I can keep track of
all of them. They now feel like my children and all I want is for them to be
able to escape the poverty that they were born into and achieve their
dreams.
One last story on about my students. Back before the
water project was completed I would go to the river with the other male
teachers to bathe. There were different spots on the river for the men and the
women. I arrived there and there were other male students also bathing.
Everyone was cool about it so I just joined in with my shampoo and soap and
started bathing in the river. We were bathing on a part of the river where
rocks where sheltering us from the main flow of water. This spot was picked
because it provided some protection from crocodiles. One of the 11th graders, Alfred,
approached me and asked, “Sir, do you want a fish?” I knew there was tilapia in
the river so I said yes. Alfred promptly dives down under the water a few
times. He starts wading closer to a rock and quickly dives down. He then uses
his hands to trap the tilapia against the rock and catch it! He then hit it on
the rock, killed it, and we took it back to my house where he cooked a
delicious fish dinner for me!
On my Namibian Friends
Mukena, Bassy, and Osby |
Chaze and Petronella |
My teachers asked me to deliver a speech at my going
away party. The speech focused along the lines of how I had come to Namibia as
a 22 year old boy and was now leaving a man. I gave all the credit for the
transformation to my friends and colleagues. So many conversations, adventures,
experiences, and shared struggles with them created a bond that I will never
forget. On one of my last few months I was riding to town with my principal,
Mr. Mayira. We were 60 km away and the car petered out because it had run out
of gas. He pulled the car over to the side of the highway. I went to the back
and fetched a few five liter containers. We chatted for ten minutes while
waiting for a car to pick me up to go into town and fill up the containers with
gas. I get a ride, stop at the gas station, fill up the containers, and hitch
back out. I get back and Mr. Mayira is still sitting on the same spot, car
parked under a tree, a monkey orange in hand, vibrant blue sky above, soft
breeze blowing by, and an idle smile stretched leisurely across his face. I ask
him, aren't you bored or annoyed that you couldn’t get to town on time? He
replies, “My braddha, this is Africa, I am enjoying, this day is treating me
nicely, I am hammering this fruit, and now you my friend, are back, I have no
worries, no stress.” He pounds his chest and says, “My heart is good” So I put
the gas down, sit next to him, crack open my own money orange, and stretch out
my own idle smile. We then go on to talk about how I must bring him back a nice
fat American woman so he can marry and that I must find a wife, have many
children and bring them back so he can meet them.
On Namibia
It’s strange to think that even though I only spent
two years in Namibia, it might be the country that I know best. Certainly
geographically there is no other country that I have seen as much of. I was
blessed to travel the entire country, see all of the largest towns and many
other villages. From the Skeleton Coast, to Katima Mulilo in the Caprivi
Strip, and all the way down to the diamond mines of Ludderitz. How can I even
begin to describe this amazing yet flawed, but also beautiful and rugged and
let’s not forget diverse country. I have never seen or experienced so much
heartbreaking racism before. I have also never seen or experienced so much
kindness. I have never seen or experienced community like this, despair like
this, hope, poverty, and most of all a sense of we are all in this shit
together, let’s all make it out together and leave no one behind. As a
volunteer teacher I made 200 American dollars a month. I was the lowest paid
staff member and the average for other teachers was about $800 a month. I lived
fine with that money, during vacations I would call home and ask for some extra
but I was doing alright. At the end of every month my colleagues would complain
that their money was all gone. They all lived like me and I couldn’t figure out
where their money was going. Eventually I found out that most of my colleague’s
money would go to their families. They might be the one person in a family of
six that had a job. Instead of using their hard earned money for themselves,
most of it would go back to their families. I asked, but what if you don’t like
what your family is doing with the money, what if they are alcoholics
(alcoholism is an epidemic in Namibia). “Andreas, it does not matter, they are
my family, I cannot leave them, I must help.”
Bassy |
Stories on Kindness and Stories on Racism
Some of my favorite/most interesting/most depressing
stories that have happened to me concerned these two topics, I’ve wanted to
write an entire blog post on this but I never got around to it so I’m going to
do it now.
Let’s start with the good:
First off, know that in Africa, we share. This is
the motto that I heard most often, not just in Namibia, but also South Africa,
Zambia, and Malawi. On my final trip from my village to the capital I got on a
combi. Combis suck. Overcrowded, slow, hot, blaring music, and all kinds of nonsense.
I didn’t hitchhike because I had all of my life belongings with me and didn’t
think my chances where great to get out of Rundu (my regional capital). So I
got on the combi, took the back row and put my music on. Three other grown men
crowded in the back with me. I looked outside and saw a mother with an eight
year old boy being held by the hand. She puts the eight year old boy next to
me, says goodbye to the boy, and leaves. The combi starts moving and I start
zoning out. The kid next to me starts fidgeting and I see that he has some
candy. I’m looking out the window and then the kid starts poking me. He looks
up at me, hand open full of candy and offers me one. To give some perspective,
my region is notorious for having very quiet and shy people. My whiteness did
not help with that at all. I’ve made kids on buses cry just by smiling at them.
This kid did not care though, I took a candy and said thank you. Half an hour
later, he pulls out French fries from his backpack and a bottle of juice. Again
he offers it to me. I take one because I didn’t want to steal all his food.
Thirty seconds later he pokes me again and without saying anything offers me
more French fries. At this point I have anointed him as my favorite child in
the world. I take out one earphone and put it in his ear and we listen to music
together for the rest of the 700 km drive. The boy also offers me some of his
juice, and he offers his fries to the three men next to me. We stop at the gas
station and I buy a chocolate which we share together. We jam out together for
the rest of the bus ride, he was particularly a fan of reggaeton, and we arrive
in Windhoek late afternoon. I ask him if someone is picking him up, he doesn't
answer, I’m pretty sure he didn’t understand what I was saying. I get out, get
my things and hang out for a bit to see what happens to him. The boy runs to
his father and jumps into his arms and gives him a hug. I go over and tell him
that he should be very proud of his son and how brave and generous he is, I
tell him how we shared food and listened to music together. The father shakes
my hand and gives me a knowing smile and tells me that his son is very special,
they walk away and the coolest boy in the world smiles and waves as I leave.
Some of my stories involving racism are pretty
lighthearted while others are a bit heavier but it never boiled down to any
kind of violence or serious confrontation. One of my first interactions with it
was when I was out one night in Rundu with another volunteer and a Namibian
friend. We were having drinks at a lodge, it was a good time but we were tired
and started to head home at 11:00 (we village, bedtime is early!) On my way out
a black Namibian who is standing with two coloreds (this is the term in Namibia
for a mixed race person) starts talking to me, he asks me if I am scared. I ask
why should I be scared? He says, “Because your ancestors came here and killed
my people.” I started to make a reply but my friends shepherded me out of
there. It was a bit shocking, first time a Namibian had reacted that negatively
to my race. Besides always being stared at and being targeted for money which
became a normal everyday event, that was my one moment where I was attacked
because of my skin. So really not too bad considering that Namibia was a post-apartheid
country, I kind of expected more moments like those.
The most heartbreaking racism, and the most common
that I saw in Namibia was black people against themselves. I have had countless
conversations, heard countless comments, and seen with my own eyes how many
black people in Namibia saw themselves as less capable, less hardworking, and
less desirable than white people. One of my best friends and running buddy, a teacher from my school, would have this conversation with me all the time. His basic premise
was that whites where naturally more capable than blacks. He was a young guy,
apartheid had finished when he was three years old but he still held this racist
belief against himself and the people around him. He would always say that if
you want a job done right you hire a white person. A common quote that I heard
from multiple people, including my principal was, “Ahh! These blacks! They are
not serious!” My colleage and I talked nature vs. nurture, I gave examples of
black people that had changed or where changing the world, and we even jumped
into a hypothetical. I would basically say, “So, let’s say my
parents gave birth to me over there at Nyangana hospital but they abandoned me.
A family here at Shamangorwa raises me just like their other black children, my
life is no different than anybody else’s here except that my skin is white, are
you saying that in school I would have been the best student?” He thinks for a
bit and replies yes, you would be getting A’s while the others are failing. I
tried so hard to dispel this theme throughout my two years but I failed. My students
where more receptive to my message that your race will not limit you (unless
you’re working for a racist but I didn’t mention that), you have the same potential
as a White, an Asian, or an Indian to achieve what you want to achieve. I think
that message did reach my students and I did sense a pride in being black from
them. With the adults though it wasn’t the same. Desirability was another issue I noticed
a lot. I would always hear Namiban men and women say I want a white lady, I
want a white man. I would ask why, “Oh they are just better,” would usually be the
reply. A few times I had the sad occasion to want to take a picture with some
of my beautiful female colleagues, some of them refused to take pictures with me because
the contrast of our skin would make their skin look darker. Also all the time
they expressed that they wished their skin was lighter. I would always tell
them that white people where the opposite, that they would go out into the sun
and sit there just to get darker. They didn’t believe that that was true! One
of my greatest hopes for my students and for Namibia is the growth of pride and
confidence in yourself. Apartheid left such a vicious legacy on the country, I
hope that there is continual progress on such an important issue.
On the bit more lighthearted side was when my kids
where practicing dance at school. The sports at school where soccer, volleyball
(which I had a great time coaching), and traditional dance. I had finished my
marking so I was outside watching. There were three of my boys playing three
five foot tall drums and forty students doing their dance moves. Each region
has its own particular form of dance, in Kavango it’s all about the shoulders.
They gyrate them incredibly fast and do a few steps with their feet but it is
mostly in the shoulders with a bit of hips thrown in to. One girl wasn’t very
good at it and the teacher calls out “Stop! You are dancing like a white now!”
Everyone looks over at me and starts laughing. I shake my head, smile, and say “Practice me and I will dance like a black now!” That caused an uproar but no one ever did teach me the dance. When I was alone in my room I would practice and I think I was alright! Leading up to my going away all the teachers kept telling me “At this party, you must dance now, we want to see you shake nicely you!” I asked them the next morning how I did and they said “Very good Andreas! Your shaking made us happy!”
Everyone looks over at me and starts laughing. I shake my head, smile, and say “Practice me and I will dance like a black now!” That caused an uproar but no one ever did teach me the dance. When I was alone in my room I would practice and I think I was alright! Leading up to my going away all the teachers kept telling me “At this party, you must dance now, we want to see you shake nicely you!” I asked them the next morning how I did and they said “Very good Andreas! Your shaking made us happy!”
I’d like to finish my final blog post with a story
of kindness. Thank you for making it through this post, I know it was a long
one but I had to get it all out at once. It was one of my first weekends in the
village and it happened to be my birthday. I was still feeling weird and trying
to cope with my surroundings. It was Friday afternoon and I am at home feeling
lonely while watching a TV show. I hear a knock on my door and its Bassy,
Mukena, Osby, and Rumeta dressed up in sports gear. They tell me that I am
spending too much time inside the house and that they were going to take me
somewhere special. We pile on to the back of a pick up truck. They grab a
basketball and give it to me with big smile and yell happy birthday! We keep
driving as we are all singing together. I still didn’t know where we were
going. We were deep in the bush, just a bunch of scattered villages, the
Kavango River and Angola to our right side. After 30 km we pull up at a school.
A few of the teachers walk up and greet us. We start walking and I’m still
confused as to what we are doing. Mukena says, Andre, bring the basketball. I
start getting my hopes up, was there a court here? We walk for about a
kilometer and out of nowhere, overlooking the river and Angola while the sun is
setting is a basketball court! I love basketball and a huge smile broke out
across my face. We played for about two hours. After, my colleagues said that
they weren’t going back to school but where going to town. I had not brought
anything, no money no clothes. Mukena and Osby say, “Don’t worry bra, you are
staying with us tonight!” So I go into town with them, take a shower, they give
me some extra clothes and when I step out I found that they had cooked a
delicious dinner for me! We sat around, ate, talked stories, laughed and
listened to music. I was so grateful for that afternoon, I was still a wandering child in the village and these guys had brought me into their family.
The End
Well, that’s it, I hope you have enjoyed reading my
stories as much as I have enjoyed writing them. Thank you for reading this last
piece in particular, I know it was a smorgasbord of a post, but hey! This is
Africa, and in Africa we share! I hope
you were able to make sense of my time in Namibia and were able to see it
through my eyes as I lived it. Please let me know if you have any questions
about Namibia, if you plan on traveling there, or just want to hear more
stories, there’s a few that I didn’t include! Thank you everyone for reading! –
A.H
Our Peace Corps Group 36! |