Chris has a rough day

Chris is a student that I got to work with a lot in the fourth grade. He has a unique home-life in that he has a father at home. When we were at the school, Chris had a number of very out-of-character outbursts of anger. David is one of his teachers and after Chris and another kid got into a physical scuffle (as much as 4th graders can scuffle), David asked if everything was going OK at home. Chris was just silent after David asked if things were OK at home. Then he started breathing heavily and started mumbling through tears and then talking faster and faster until David couldn’t understand him any more. What David could make out of Chris’s mumbling was that Chris’s dad tried to kill himself and Chris found his dad. One aspect of Namibian culture that is very hard is that it is a shame-based system. Failure is something that is to be avoided at all costs because the weak are pointed out at every opportunity.
In public school, there are tests throughout a student’s education: 4th grade, 8th grade, 10th grade, and 12th grade. Passing means you advance on to the next level but failure means that you failed school, permanently. There is no retaking the test, there is no starting over from the beginning. You’re simply a failure and will either work at a gas-pump for the rest of your life or simply be one of the 50% of black Namibians that is unemployed. Even if they find jobs, it’s usually at a low-level position. Regardless of how well they do at that position there are still demeaning signs at cash registers warning customers to “Demand a receipt and count your change.” Even the way people treat gas-pump attendants or grocery-store workers is as though they were ordering a dumb animal, rather than a capable human being. The underlying message is that this person is lesser than me and deserves no dignity. This is just a daily reality.
I didn’t ever hear why Chris’s dad tried to take his life, but Chris had a lot on his mind that day at school. How does a 4th grader think of their dad when he’s just given up on his family? How does a 4th grader see the world when a parent, their safety, just failed to kill himself? How does Chris feel about himself when his dad just quite on him?

One of the things I've heard people say really bothered me, and I couldn't quite get past it; they tried to tell me, “These people don’t value life here.” By "these people" they meant the black tribes. I think that’s a load of crap. I think “these people” are no less human than anybody else who has a father or mother or person that they care about. What’s different is that life is so much more transient. Life is less reliable. Can you imagine the cloud of depression that would smother this culture of people who have at least a 30% rate of HIV/ AIDS (not to mention the Meningitis epidemic that swept through Katatura while we were there or the Polio outbreak in Katatura the year before or the countless other diseases that plague people who are not educated on simple sanitation)? We have the luxury of not facing death at every illness, not having a steady rotation of neighbors because of this epidemic or that neighbor being raped and killed. We have the luxury of mourning. Can you imagine the inescapable shroud that death would cast on “these people” if they were forced to cope with death in the way that you and I do? So do “these people not value life?” Hell no. Chris was learning to deal with one of the darker aspects of death in the 4th grade, and that will give him a very different perspective on life, but that doesn’t mean he values it any less than you and I.
Living in poverty has a lot more weight to it than I could understand before I worked with Chris. It’s not just hunger, it’s not just shame, and it’s not as simple as putting the value of life at a higher or lower premium. Chris has a lot on his plate, so I’m just glad that he has a little more stability than the kids who don’t have a reliable adult, even if it’s only in the form of his teachers at school and that that school gives him a lot of positive support. Chris is very lucky to have a teacher like David who will let him be a kid and cry.