Charity

Apologies for my brief July hiatus. School has been busy, but I was also sick with a bad virus that knocked me off my feet for awhile (no worries—I am back to full health now thanks to a z-pack). And then of course there was the release of the last Harry Potter book, which people dressed up for even in Namibia! (Before you get too excited—the costumes were in Windhoek, not in Omatjete). Couldn’t be expected to write much of anything before discovering Harry’s fate, now could I?

But I am back now with lots of news. The most exciting of which involves a donation from Child-Care-Afrika, a NGO which this week gave Omatjette Primary School N$20,000 (roughly US$3000). Two representatives from the group along with the Governor of the Erongo Region showed up at our school on Monday morning, and we scurried to put together a donation ceremony. School board members were summoned, chairs from all the classes pulled into the central ‘courtyard,’ while a large group of students were chosen to perform for our guests.

The students performing donned brand new beautiful red athletic uniforms (which I am sending pictures of) with the words Omatjette Primary printed across the front, a number blazing on the back, and a Namibian flag embroidered onto each shirt sleeve. They ran around excitedly at the sight of themselves in these new clothes, the boys pretending to be soccer players—fighting over the most coveted numbers, the girls dancing in sync with one another. Every now and then I would have a student come up to me and exclaim how beautiful the uniforms were. I even caught one of the younger boys stroking his sleeve lovingly as if he could not believe what he was wearing was real.

The uniforms came not from Child-Care-Afrika, but from my older sister Ashli and her husband Matt who had sixty of them made for my school. Watching the children, I was celebrating inwardly, not simply because of their evident happiness, but because I have been battling to get the uniforms out of customs for the past four months. The Namibian government wanted me to pay N$5000 in import taxes. Thanks to some much-needed assistance from my field director, a few helpful (and despite many incompetent) members of the Ministry of Education, and my own dogged persistence, the uniforms were finally freed from the Omaruru Post Office without me paying a cent.

I couldn’t help but feel guilty as my principal and a school board member both thanked me vigorously for the uniforms in front of the Governor. The uniforms were Matt and Ashli’s idea from the beginning, and it was there own funds that had sent them over the Atlantic, and here I was getting all the credit.

The ceremony went well. The children were appropriately charming, the Child-Care-Afrika representatives appropriately charmed, and the Governor, though a bit rude in his speech, (he seemed to think it was necessary to repeat over and over how pitiful Omatjette’s exam scores have been) wowed the kids with his ability to speak Otjiherero (he’s Ovambo—not Herero). Then our visitors packed up their cars and headed for the hills, leaving thousands of dollars in their wake.

It is impossible to live in Namibia and not think about charity. Even more impossible if you happen to be a volunteer. Charity has not only become your occupation, but through the eyes of many in the community it is what defines you, and to some, all that you are. I cannot tell you how many times I have felt like a vending machine during the past seven months. Not with my students so much, but with the adults who only speak to me when they want something, whether it’s money, calling cards, copy paper, or me to do their homework. I am as much judged and classified for being white and foreign as the villagers are for being black and local. The water has been out for four days now. The hostel students were sent home today because they have not been able to eat for 24 hours. The kids ran up to me on my way home, begging for water—staring unbelieving when I told them I didn’t have any. “I live in Omatjete too,” I told them, exasperated. “If you don’t have water, I don’t have water.” And still they stared. Surely I must be able to conjure the liquid from thin air just as surely as my house must look grand and rich on the inside, if only they could get in to see. Even in the desert, white Americans always have water. The laws that apply to them do not apply to me—they seem to believe this instinctively.

Thoughts of charity are not simply confined to my job. I watch as the fate of those around me hinges upon the kindness of others. In a country not fully systematized, that does not have the resources to set up wide-ranging programs to help those who are struggling, and whose social safety net is practically non-existent, all most people have is the hope that those with more will notice that they have nothing. It seems a terrifying existence, constantly having to rely on others for your own survival. Poverty is no novelty to me (even if I am from magical America). I have seen it before. But I never grasped how truly frightening it must be until I came here.

Generosity was also never so vivid: the three oranges Tjizakuje’s mother sent me one afternoon via Funa; the light bulb the hostel matron rushed over when she heard that both of mine had gone out simultaneously; and just last week, riding in the bed of an open truck, the sun setting fast, the cold wind whipping furiously at my face, the woman next to me wrapped her blanket around the both of us for the long ride home.

I appreciate organizations like Child-Care-Afrika, and the countless other NGO’s pouring money and time into Namibia. While I have learned there is a right and wrong way (or better, a smart and stupid way) to give, there is no doubt that the need here is genuine and desperate. And many of these organizations, CCA included, spend countless hours at the schools that eventually receive their donation. Increasingly, however, I have little patience with those who write a check and turn away—not bothering to really see the community they are supposedly trying to help—instead just wanting to assuage a troubled conscience. Being charitable, actually charitable, is about more than money (especially if you have it).

It’s about a picture of the Omatjette Primary School athletics team, barefoot and dressed in ragged red t-shirts, standing next to a school team with sleek blue uniforms. It’s about seeing this picture and knowing you could change the image, knowing that you cannot change the world but this, this you can do. And the children will smile. No, they’ll grin.

It’s about a woman, a woman who grows oranges in her yard and survives by selling bread, candy, and homemade popsicles to local kids, dispatching the literal fruits of her labor to a lonely foreign teacher she cannot even speak to.

It’s about seeing someone who is cold and making them warm. Even if that means suffering a few goose bumps.