Four Village Women

PICTURE 1: Doorway to grade 9A, Ngombe Nicolas with his little cousin during break.
PICTURE 2: My grade 9A girl, Himwara Ritha (pink skirt) with some family on their way back from church.
PICTURE 3: Jump rope in the schoolyard with a rope made from stretched out plastic bags tied together.


~ for Mwata Imelda ~


“Some women want to come talk to you about business,” said Mr. Sivera during the English exam last Friday.

“What about business?” I asked, immediately put on guard.

“I don’t really know,” answered Mr. Sivera. “Can they come Sunday after church?”

“Sure.”

Generally speaking, when someone has a inquiry that might be blunt, they’ll raise it via a vague, indirect question that barely relates. So I suspected something suspicious. Around 10am Sunday morning, Mr. Hamusira came to the house with four women in tow. He’d translate, he said, while the women asked me some questions. I greeted them, morokeni (good morning) and they gave me the usual nawa (how are you), to which I replied yee….awo…nawa. Took me a while to get the cadence of that particular greeting down, but I finally got it.

The woman on the leftmost side started, through Hamusira, to give me the background of the story. A while back, they applied to the electrical company through the governing political party, SWAPO, for the company to install a transformer near their cluster of homes. After the application was approved by SWAPO, the transformer and lines were installed, tragically, in the wrong village. In fact, the electricity was installed over 250km away from Sitopogo. So long story short, they need money to help hook their houses up to a transformer the local governing council promised to provide.

A quick aside. One thing you learn promptly at school is how bad and illogical kids’ excuses can be. One of the boys from grade 9B, F. Paulus, told me he was going to miss the mandatory afternoon study session because his brother was eaten by a crocodile the day before. This isn’t necessary far-fetched, so I told him how sorry I was and of course I understood why he had to miss. Turned out to be a lie. So what I mean is, why can’t Paulus think of something more subtle. Like maybe his mom is sick and he needs to cook dinner, or he’s sick and needs to go rest.

So, not that I’m assuming duplicity, I can’t necessarily believe that the electric company made a mistake by putting electricity 250km away from where it was supposed to. It could just be their way of asking me for money. Oh, the women added, the local tribal leader had told them to come ask me because, naturally, I am American and have access to the endless fortune that accompanies such citizenship.

The woman second from the right traced a one and nine zeros on the floor. “That’s NA$ one billion”, I said. “No, they mean NA$ one million (US$ 143,000)” Hamusira clarified. I laughed a little. Oh they’re serious? “Um, that’s a large amount of money. It’s basically impossible to get that much money.” Sometimes my candor can be hurtful here. Hamusira relayed the message, and the women conferred and came up with a revised amount: NA$ 16000 (US$ 2,300). Quite a drop, I thought, from a million.

I tried my best to explain that while, yes, the US is rich, I, a 24-year-old volunteer, wasn’t privy to much of that wealth. They countered with an example of a Catholic mission providing a grant for water and electricity in a nearby village. A mission, I said, is an organization with a foundation of money, while volunteers are individuals without that backing. But, try as I did, there’s no bridge across that cultural divide. Ultimately, it was a humbling moment highlighting the limited extent of my experience.

They left after they agreed to get some more specific information to me (types of materials, cost of materials, location, etc.)

So this morning I talked to my most trusted advisor at school, Mr. Siteketa Veikko, the English teacher. He agreed with my feelings on the situation, stressing that people just don’t know how to compile the information necessary for seeking out such money, which has a lot to do with illiteracy. It was refreshing, as usual, to hear his perspective. Then I noticed kids were lining up for assembly, so I asked him why. Assembly is always Friday morning.

Veikko said it was for Mwata Imelda. “Have you heard?” he asked. “No, heard what.” “Mwata died Friday. She and some other girls crossed the river to Angola and were fishing at a fishing hole. Mwata felt a big fish below her and dove for it…she never came back up. But she can swim. It’s because she was cursed by someone. That family in that group of houses (he points east), they’re witches. Everyone knows it.” He proceeded to list my kids that live at that house.

It was tough to go from such a rational discussion about finding grant money to this. Not to mention the gravity of the story. Mwata Imelda was in my grade 8B class. She had the third-highest year mark (65%) out of 41 kids in her class, fifth among 83 learners in grade 8 altogether. Not only that, but she sat in front and, though shy, participated more than most, smiling big each time. She’ll be missed.