A New Pair of Shoes

Things are pretty consistent for me right now as far as my days go. But I do make this entry with an example of why I love working with kids and two stories to tie you over. 1st, the end of the month is a very interesting time in Namibia, and 2nd monkeys only eat wrapped food.
Lets begin with the latter shall we? Yes! It is now a confirmed fact: Namibian monkey’s will not eat your food unless it is wrapped, but they also will not leave you alone until they get said wrapped treat. So one might assume that it would be quite a pickle one would find themselves in if they were relatively trapped in a cab with 4 monkeys that don’t seem to want to let you leave.
SIDE NOTE: One expression you should get used to if you ever feel like trying to rationalize what goes on here is, “It’s Africa.” You would be surprised how many problems that phrase answers quite nicely.
Anyway. I was in a cab a good way into the desert when we caught 4 monkey’s attention when we came to a stop. I personally advised honking the horn to scare them off but apparently that just angers them…no thank you. So the driver asks me if I have any food. No I didn’t because it is a good rule of thumb in Africa to only carry just what you need. Well apparently that’s grounds for the cabbie to get angry with me and decide to double my cab fair. As if I should have anticipated the possibility of a couple of monkey’s barring our passage into town and should have packed accordingly. But hey, it’s Africa! So the cabbie goes into his glove compartment and throws out a sandwich and a granola bar that hasn’t been opened yet. One monkey goes to investigate and throws the sandwich back at the window of the car, then it proceeds to open the granola bar and divide it amongst each of its companions to eat on the hood of the car and then leave. Apparently, monkeys have learned in Namibia not to take any food from a person that is not wrapped, much like kids on Halloween. Unfortunately, Namibians used to poison food and give it to them as a way of killing them. But the monkey’s learned quick. They know we have food but they know to only take it if it’s wrapped. And I can’t teach my mom how to upload pictures on the computer! (just kidding Mom, truth hurts).
My second, less fun story is more of a warning. That is: beware of the city at the end of the month. The end of the month is when everyone that works in Windhoek gets paid. Unfortunately, this has many negative effects. First, 90% of businesses close down. Because most workers get paid, they don’t show up for work for the next 4 or 5 days. Instead they all go to the bar. This has the negative consequence of nighttime becoming a lot more dangerous. The end of the month also means a big increase in muggings because those that would steal from you know that everyone has money now and are a lot more bold. Therefore you should take a cab everywhere and even during the day, it’s a lot safer. Finally, the end of the month is very dangerous for our kids at HISA. Those who are abused are in more danger because drinking increases tenfold for the first week of the new month. For me this is a ridiculously frustrating time. The lack of work ethic and duty is enough to baffle me for the rest of the month. It is not rare to see someone carrying a plasma TV or satellite into their home around this time. A home where his or her kids aren’t fed or there is no running water or food. But there’s a new TV or they have a flashy new cell phone. It’s Africa. But that frustration brings me to my final point in this blog: the resilience, kindness, and potential for the future in Namibian children. Twice a week I work with a youth group ages 9 to 16. I mostly just work on their English and reading skills with them. Last Monday I played a game with them I thought up to help improve their English. The idea of the game was to never answer my questions with a Yes or No. For instance, my questions were ones like: How are you? Do you like fruit? Are you in the same school as last year? May I ask you a silly question?
I would go like that till they got one wrong and then they would stop. It turned into this big competition between the boys and the girls and was really successful. But what stood out in my mind way the type of answers I would get for one of my questions. What would you do with one million dollars? Only three students made it that far in the questioning but their responses astounded me. One boy, Joseph (16) said he would buy everyone in the class a new pair of shoes. Sunday, an 11 year-old girl, said she would buy food for a month for her family. And Mbdele (14) said he would buy everyone he knew a winter coat. Not typical answers for pre-teens huh? But it filled me with such a sense of hope. There needs are so simple and selfless. Maybe if we can just continue to care for one another, and teach the generations below us what truly matters, maybe 15 years from now at the end of the month, we’ll see shoes and coats being brought home to family’s and not cell phones and TV’s.
Thanks for reading. I’ll try not to take so long between future posts. And I am very close to figuring out how to put up a slide show of pictures!