The Haves, Have-Nots, Hads, and Have-Nows

Oshikunde is a small, sleepy village. The locals call town “opate”, which in Oshiwambo just means “road”, and it recently occurred to me that they can do this because that location is the one and only place where there actually is a road. I live about 3km off of this road and into the bush. When walking at night I have to keep my eyes peeled so that I am not startled by cattle or donkeys walking around me in the dark, but when it comes to human animals, almost everyone knows everyone else, and I am at very little risk of any harm. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the homes of some of my fellow volunteers or for me once I leave the geographic isolation of my school.

One friend of mine, after hearing a rattling at her front door lock one night not too long ago, was approached by a man holding a knife above shoulder-level with the blade pointing downward. She is pretty badass and had the wherewithal to chuck her cell phone at him and use her body to barricade herself in her bathroom until he left with her laptop, camera, phone, and approximately $2000 of learners’ money for a field trip that her school had compelled her to unwillingly keep in her house.

After returning home from her Easter Holiday, another teacher also found evidence at her home of an attempted break in. All of the facts are not in, but she was a bit freaked out upon her arrival.

While on my journey to Swakopmund, a developed coastal city, for my Easter Break, I had my own collision with Namibia’s thief element. My friend Julia and I pulled up in a taxi to the “hike point” in Ondangwa where one catches a direct bus to Swakopmund. Old hats at hiking, now three months into our service, we calmly climbed out of our car - I might have even been texting on my phone – and we smacked into one of the most surreal scenes I’ve ever witnessed.

A mob of I don’t know how many Namibian taxi drivers and taxi recruiters shouting “Oshilumbu!” (White person!), “This way!”, “Come with me!” pressed against us like preteen girls pushing against the stage at a Donny Osmond concert. My first inclination was to flex my educator muscles, treat these citizens like children, and admonish them that if they all insist on acting so unreasonably, then none of them will get a fare. Then I noticed that their combined weight was uncomfortably preventing us from even getting past our opened car doors and began to get irritated. Then I caught a glimpse of men snatching our bags from the taxi’s trunk and making off with them. I forced my way through the crowd, wrestled my luggage from a rather uncooperative man, and spun 180 to see Julia locked in a similar struggle nearer the heart of the mass of people. In an attempt to help I shouldered into the crowd, placed my hand on the man grabbing her backpack’s chest, looked him in the face, and repeatedly and sternly told him to let go. How ridiculously futile this effort was can be shown by the fact that the man was simultaneously being strangled by the bare hands of someone standing directly behind him and he still had not relinquished. We finally pried ourselves from the mob, dived back into the taxi, and asked the driver to drive somewhere else. When we stopped at a grocery store to take some breaths and regroup, I reached for my wallet and stuck my hand into an empty pocket.

My wallet not only contained the several hundred dollars I had recently withdrawn for the weekend’s journey, but also my debit cards to both my American and Namibian bank accounts, my credit card, my driver’s license, my health-care card, and my WorldTeach ID card. And a piece of paper with my Namibian PIN was in my wallet because I had yet to commit it to memory. There also happened to be a branch of Standard Bank (my Namibian bank), directly across the street from the gas station where my wallet was just swiped. The driver assured us that my wallet was long gone, but since I had no other recourse I asked him to take me back to the hike point.

A considerably smaller crowd than before greeted me. I wasted no time. “Where is my wallet?” A diminutive guy with tufts of facial hair took me aside. He told me that he knew who had my wallet but would not tell me in the open because he risked bodily harm if the perpetrators learned who ratted them out. “These guys are thieves,” he said, “they are across the street there. I will take you to them if you ride in my bus to Swakopmund.” Deal. We began walking. In the middle of the road I realized that he was no longer beside me. I approached a large group of men standing, doing nothing in particular, and my eyes landed on my wallet in the left hand of one of the men in the front row. “That is my wallet. I want it back.” I could have been more tactful. Try again. “I am not accusing anyone of anything, you have something of mine, I just want it back.” A little more diplomatic, but it was difficult to keep my tone from overflowing with accusation. A strange negotiation ensued during which one large man insisted he had not stolen but found my wallet…what would I do to reward him? Like a smartass I told him that I had nothing to give him because he had my wallet. Finally, after some progress was gained I made a big show of asking the crowd, “Is this the man who found my wallet? This man right here is the one that found my wallet?” “Yes, he is the one.”

The wallet, with everything inside, exchanged hands (for one moment the thought shot through my mind to just take off running in the opposite direction), and I handed the man N$100 for returning my property to me - a small price to pay for me and a nice 10 minutes of work for him. “Are you still going to Swakopmund?" he asked, "Here come into my bus.” I lied and told him that I had decided against traveling.

I rendezvoused with the man who directed me to my wallet, thanked him profusely, and his friend drove me and the other three in our regular traveling crew safely to Swakopmund. The next Monday on my return journey to Oshikunde I briefly encountered the small man at another hike point in Ondangwa. I shook his hand and thanked him again. “Can you help me a few dollars for a cool drink?” he asked. I figured I owed it to him, and I also understood that the two of us are not exactly friends.