Trying Times

I am officially burnt out. No matter how many hours of sleep I get black marks are permanently under my eyes. At first I was surprised after sleeping ten hours to see them in the mirror, but now I am resigned to their presence. I find myself getting irritable, something that would never have happened in term 1, almost every day. Each week it gets more difficult to return to school from town, and Sunday, a day which throughout high school and college I would reserve for doing all of my work, is now a day when I begrudgingly return home, unload my groceries, eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and immediately fall asleep. One night during our weekly Skype call I unexpectedly started free-associating, harangued my family with my frustrations, and although they couldn’t hear me because my microphone was broken, I cried.

I tell myself that after eight months this is perfectly natural, and I try not to add to my aggravation by criticizing myself for my own attitude. Still, my lows are low, and recently the positive moments have been brief respites from a consistent melancholy. It is a testament to the beauty of some of the people and places of this country that they can still momentarily puncture this understandable but heavy weariness.

One source of happiness has been our school cleaner, Tate David Shapwanale. He is a hard worker and a kind, good-humored man. His English is much better than he thinks and more than good enough to make me laugh. I wouldn’t call his smile pretty, but it is pure. He has enthusiastically participated in my weekly staff computer training sessions, and he routinely is the first to sign up.

On several occasions this term he has unknowingly lifted my spirits. After one particularly taxing day I walked to the local store to buy a few food items. The chance to walk by myself was revitalizing, and when I saw David 25 meters off the road carrying an infant, I felt up to more than just a wave and smile, so I hollered, “Is that one yours?” He beamed, and when I drew nearer he responded, “This is my son, the last born.” He introduced me to his boy, Antonious. We then spoke of his family, he told me he had another older son, and about how David was currently on the lookout for birds to shoot for food, something that he does every morning and evening but I never knew he did. After saying goodbye I continued my walk back to school, and shortly thereafter I had one of those, “That’s what this is all about!” moments, nodded my head vigorously, and grinned like a doofus.

This Wednesday I posted another computer training sign-up sheet and was in the middle of preparing the lab for the teachers’ arrival when Meme Anna, the powerful, intelligent, Oshikwanyama teacher, stopped in my doorway and told me that the lesson would have to be canceled. A child of David Shapwanale had passed away. The teachers gathered and spoke while those with cars arranged the transportation. I sat on the concrete of the school blocks next to a colleague who told me that David’s eldest son, who was still no more than a baby, had died, and he understood this to be the third of David’s children to die young.

The fourth grade teacher, Tate Haiduwa, pulled up, and I hopped into his truck. We drove down the road a ways, stopped, and walked toward the traditional home where David resides. The home is a small plot of land surrounded by a low fence of logs and three lengths of wire. Inside the gate there are a few “rooms” or stone huts. Each hut is constructed on a square patch, no more than six feet by six feet, that is dug about 4 inches into the ground. The sloping thatched roof begins maybe four feet off the ground so that one must crouch to pass through the threshold and then can stand with a little hunch once inside.

David’s tears were audible from outside his room, and a group of male teachers and I slowly entered and sat around him silently. A few comforting words were said, and after several minutes we rose to say goodbye. Being a novice at the language, as I exited I simply placed my hand on his shoulder and whispered, “Ombili”, which means “I am sorry.”

The other men drove to a bar, so I walked back to school alone. Thinking about David, there were several times when I nearly burst into tears. Three children. None of them older than a few years. A six by six stone house. I remembered how I noticed his work boots on the floor and heard the methodical ticking of a small battery powered clock he kept by the head of his bed. I have on several occasions criticized some of my colleagues for having what I consider a poor work ethic, but tears pressed forcefully against my eyelids as I began to understand how hard David had to work, just to live. I thought of how exhausted I was after eight months, and I have light! And a stove! His is an existence that must be so hard, so…tiring. It is not an existence that many people would choose, but with the way he carries himself daily, it is an existence of which he can be proud, and an existence which I enormously respect. He deserves so much better.