Let me be clear, at least to start. I love living here. I love that it’s difficult and complex and that a day never goes by without me learning something. But sometimes, the battling for these lessons makes me tired. And I am indeed, right now, so tired of being tired. Some experiences lately have reminded me of my split personality and how I always feel a little bit in between. I can’t help but feel skeptical of the Westerner who comes to African and proclaims that she is fully home. In some ways, I am. In others, I never will be. The differences between Rachel and Rahele (what Lozi speakers here call me) remain profound. A small illustration:
Rachel: A cousin of my sister Daisy’s husband decided to come for a visit. She didn’t ask, nor was she invited. She just packed her bags and put herself in Daisy’s car last weekend when she was coming back from Vic Falls. Ellen has been here for a week and shows no signs of leaving. Every day, she goes shopping, buying clothes, shoes, an umbrella for the sun, and whatever else. And comes back here, eating and drinking from our kitchen, fanning herself and throwing suffering glances around until someone switches on a fan, painfully forcing herself to eat the mostly vegetarian food we cook in this house. Literally, last night, sooooo slloooooowly, she forked up one agonized kidney bean at a time. After a few days she started to do the dishes and saying thank you for random things like tea. After Daisy told her she should. She has not so much as brought home a loaf of bread to share, but just sits, waits, naps, and moans about the heat. She doesn’t participate in conversations, try to get to know anyone, or do anything but bring a brooding presence to a small house. She just turns the radio on and sits ands stares while I am trying to work. No, I take that back, last night she was reading her Bible. Culturally speaking, Daisy can’t ask her to leave for fear of angering her husband’s family. But I keep thinking, I could ask her. I’m an ass of an American anyway.
Rahele: Reality in Zimbabwe, from where Ellen is coming, is pretty grim for most people right now. Prices spiral upwards every day, and a few weeks back the government re-issued all of its currency with three zeroes removed. Yeah. So shopping here, even as far from the capital as you can get in Namibia, seems comparatively cheap. Living under a regime like Mugabe’s, where ministers are once again tossing around outlawing meetings of the opposition, has got to be a nightmare. The guy has ordered orphanages to be bulldozed, for the love of God. I never thought of Katima as a paradise before, but in some ways it is. And being in a relative’s house, Ellen probably thought she knew what to expect from the cuisine. A meat-and-cornmeal-porridge-heavy table is the cultural norm, but we rarely make either one here. I wonder what fresh vegetables cost in Zimbabwe. For that matter, I wonder how many people can even get fresh vegetables in Zimbabwe. On any given night there at now at least four people here for dinner anyway, so it’s not as if it actually makes any difference to cook some more food. And even if it did, I would do it anyway, because to come here under these circumstances cannot be the most enjoyable thing. She’s quiet and sleeps a lot. What’s the difference anyway? If we can offer her a break, we should.
I swing back and forth between these two, feeling like they are both honest but also each perhaps a bit incomplete on its own. Mostly I realize how much I have changed, and continue to change. I really am a professional nerd, having these reactions but also watching myself have them, picking them apart and wondering how it is that they always seem to knit back together in a slightly different way.
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