On May 5th my diary entry began:
“Once again I am about to do something potentially very
dangerous. Once again, I am about to do something potentially very stupid”.
I am surprised I hadn’t written more. I still remember the
worry and the fear welling up inside me. I remember the lectures I was giving
myself, telling myself that it wasn’t worth the risk. I was imagining what my
partner, my mother and father, all of my friends would think if they knew what
I was about to do.
It was the afternoon of the morning where Chris and I had
said goodbye on the side of the road and I was going to hitch-hike alone, in Namibia,
heading in the direction of Victoria Falls.
I waited in the scolding sun for about an hour before a
truck pulled over and I hoisted myself in. I hate to say it, but because he was
a local I assumed I’d have to pay for the ride, I managed to bargain him down
to something reasonable, seeing as it was a work truck he wasn’t paying for the
petrol. He was a gentle guy. He asked me if there was such a thing as AIDS in Australia.
I told him that there was, but it is not as common in Australia
as it was in Africa. He said that his 27 year old sister
recently died from AIDS.
He insisted that it was dangerous for me to hitch-hike alone,
and for a few extra dollars he’ll take me all the way to Oshakati. There he
dropped me at the ‘cheapest’ hotel. They wanted N$380, my budget was N$100. I
walked to the next place, they wanted N$500, and the next one after that wanted
$450. My pack was heavy, the day was hot and it had seemed long, it was getting
close to sunset and I was over it.
I was walking circles following vague directions to an
advertised lodge when I asked a man if he knew where it was. He just happened
to be heading there anyway for a ‘meeting’ but it turned out that lodge was
even more expensive than all the rest.
I was about to heave the pack on my back once again when the
man he was meeting offered me a bed in his house for the night. I thought it
through for an awkward 20 seconds before saying that yes, I would take up his
kind, though frightening offer.
I waited in the bar while the two men had their meeting, and
that is where I wrote those simple two lines.
I wondered:
‘How do you tell if someone is capable of rape and murder?
You probably can’t. But travelling is full of risks. Risks you have to take.
But is staying at the house of a man I know nothing about pushing it a bit too
far? I wanted to trust people. I believed it was important to trust people. I
had had a lot of luck up until that moment, was it a wave of luck I could
continue to ride, or was my luck about to run out? Should I message someone
from home and tell them what I am doing in case they don’t hear from me again?
But I couldn’t do that, it would just worry them too much.’
But my luck didn’t run out, not at that point anyway.
The man who took me to his house, whose first name I
shamefully and regrettably cannot remember (and I never wrote it down, but I
later found out his surname is Megameno), drove me to his very nice house, in a
very quiet suburb on the edge of Oshakati. He had a beautiful wife and four
adorable and extremely polite children. He left not long after I arrived, I
assumed he was going to a bar to drink.
His wife offered me food, I was hungry, but too polite to
say yes. I already felt intrusive. He had invited me there, she had no idea I
was coming to stay, and yet it was her who was left behind to deal with me and
her four energetic children.
The eldest daughter was turning 16 the next day, she told me
that when she grows up she wants to be a doctor or scientist. The 7 year old
girl talked way too much, and was a bit of a know-it-all, but she was so sweet
she insisted on carrying my bags to my room for the night and making my bed up
for me. The 6 year old girl was very shy, and wanted to read her books mostly,
and the 4 year old boy was cute but quite naughty. The kids were hanging off my
every move and my every word, and were literally physically hanging off me all
night too. They showed me their school report cards, and they took photos with
my camera and asked non-stop questions about Australia.
The woman was a school principal, she was telling me that children generally
struggle to pass exams because they are all in English, but at home and out in
the streets they don’t speak English. I remember thinking the same in Ghana,
the school system doesn’t make sense and surely it slows students down?
At 6am the next
morning there was a knock at the door. The woman was asking what time I had planned
to leave. I thought maybe they were wanting me out in a hurry so I said in an
hour. I packed my bags and went to the
kitchen to fill up my water bottle. The man was already up, he said he wanted to drive me to a good spot to hitch
hike but first I had to eat breakfast with them.
I found it a little cruel that on her 16th
birthday he made his daughter Albertina make everyone tea and eggs for
breakfast. She had already spent the morning tidying up and sweeping the floor.
Each of the kids took it in turn to ask how I had slept. Too adorable!
He took me out the front of the house and pointed to the
university. It was expanding, he told me, and soon it would be the second
biggest university in the country. He went on to talk about education today and
in the past during the apartheid era. He talked about when he was at school and
all he learnt about were frogs and lizards, while the white kids learnt maths
and history. He said that as a kid the white kids in his neighbourhood would
call him a monkey. In Sunday school the priest would tell all the black
children that white people are made in the image of God and black people were
created just to serve them.
His eyes were filled with a mix of sadness and hate and I
didn’t know what to say, I felt guilty, I felt that by the colour of my skin I
was one of those people teaching his young-self that he was created to serve
me.
Our conversation was broken when we were called back inside.
The younger children were sitting quietly at a small table taking it in turns
to read each other stories. Those children amazed me; so intelligent, so
respectful, and they absolutely adored each other and their parents. The
younger three had told me the night before that their mother was beautiful like
a queen, their father handsome like a king and their big sister was the best
sister in the whole world.
After breakfast Albertina proudly pulled her birthday cake
out of the fridge. They usually share cake in the afternoon, they told me, but
because they have a special guest they were doing it at 8am. Cake was the last thing I felt like, but I ate the
huge slab placed in my hands. No candles, or singing, and I wondered if anyone
in Namibia does
anything like that?
As soon as I swallowed the last bite the man stood up and
asked if I was ready to go. I said my thanks and goodbyes and got in the car
with Albertina and her dad. I was only in the car for a minute when I had an
idea. I had bought a pair of earrings in Ghana
which I was saving as a souvenir for someone, why had I not thought earlier to
give them to Albertina as a birthday present? I wished my bag was in the seat
beside me? Where the hell in my huge pack are they anyway? Could I ask them to
wait while I search my bag for them? Is that tacky? When we pulled up I didn’t
feel like I could ask them to wait, so I got out of the car and gave her
nothing. Still to this day I wish I had given her those earrings.
The family asked me for nothing in return for their
hospitality and kindness. The whole time I almost expected them to ask me for
money, I actually waited for them to do so. I later felt guilty that I had
thought the generosity was loaded. Then I felt even more guilty for not
offering them anything. I would have, and probably should have given them some
money for everything, but I really was expecting that they would soon enough
they would mention a price.
In my experiences in the five African countries I had
already been to, you rarely, if ever, get something for nothing from locals.
This made my experience with the Megameno family that much more special, they
helped me, took a genuine interest in me and wanted nothing in return. But
still I wish I had given them something to show my appreciation.
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