Katatura: (noun) Cat ah tour a—The title that the white governing bodies gave the part of town where they exiled the blacks because they didn’t want to live around such uneducated people with poor hygiene. Literally translated it means “Place where I don’t live.” Loosely translated it means “Please go suffer somewhere that I cannot see it.”
Today, Suzanne took us around Windhoek to the tin-shack village on the perimeter of the city. It was upsetting. We drove by this little encampment when all the school in Windhoek get out (about 1:00). All the kids were going home; walking along the shoulder and edge of the highway in school uniforms. There’s a famous African poet that wrote “Dry your tears Africa, your children return home to you…” and this was the most horrific bastardization of what the beautiful poem intended. These kids weren’t going home to anything. They didn’t go to school to get anything but a demeaning, terminal public babysitting that provides no nutrition or education that will help them reach their potential. They were going “home” in their home-land to the poorest housing and sanitation that Windhoek has to offer. It was upsetting, but some of the kids walking home were smiling, and many were poking fun at one another to pass the time on the hot walk home. Kids are kids, no matter what latitude they live on.
We passed through this scene as Suzanne explained that those kids were from the families in the area that could find the money to pay for uniforms, underwear, and books so they could go to school. Once we got to the more stable housing, but still Katatura chic, there were tall fences made out of purely barbed wire around anything business oriented.
It was poverty with emaciated concrete skin, slathered in thin layers of cracked paint and old coca-cola signs. Then we pulled into Community Hope.
I didn’t recognize it until I saw kids running around the recess area with the uniforms on. These kids were beaming. Jenna and I got out our bags of books and toys to deliver from the trunk. Two fourth graders ran up to the car immediately and Suzanne asked if they wanted to help. They were elated to help Suzanne with anything, so we stacked their arms full of books from one of the large duffle bags. Once that was emptied, I (Bryan) had a messenger bag full of heavy books and a large duffle of lighter toys and yarn. Jenna asked what she could carry so I handed her the large duffle—mind you it was at most equal in weight or lighter. One of the little girls who was watching the whole scene charged up to me, “No-no-no. You do not give the big heavy bag to the woman!” She scolded.
“Oh, no?!” I shot back. She was not used to new-comers being so forward and stepped back. “You want to hold my little, light bag?”
She held her hand out and I dropped the full weight of the messenger bag stuffed with hark-cover books on her. She almost fell over, laughing all the way. “What is in here?!”
I think Jenna and I made a friend very quickly, but she still insisted on at least helping Jenna take the big “heavy” bag. We didn’t get to say very long today, but we got a chance to play with some other kids and talk with some of the staff. I think we’ll get along well here.
While we were there it was extremely clear that we were in a poverty stricken community, and that at about 1:30 these kids would hang up their childhood on the gate as they left, returning to something you and I would not consider childhood. That part of Community Hope I realized the entire time I was there. Right up until we left, right before I got in the car and looked back at the school-yard of gravel in a whirlwind of dust from playing, that I remembered that many of these kids’ parents were dead from AIDS or this was a looming possibility. That was a moment of recognizing this school as a part of the Kingdom: offering these kids at least half of their day that they could just be kids, to have adults whose entire reason for being there is to love and care for them. Please don’t get me wrong, I am positive that many of these kids have parents or guardians who love them more than a school staff ever could, but many of them do not. Any way, these kids get to have this experience to just be a kid rather than having to grow up a lot faster than a first or third or fifth grader really should. More than that, this school is equipping them to be able to grow up and get a job rather than continue the cycle of oppression and poverty. I think that’s a pretty good thing.
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